IFAC Automatica Paper Prizes have been given since 1981 for outstanding contributions to the theory and/or practice of control engineering or control sciences documented in a paper published in the IFAC Journal Automatica. The prize funds for three prizes are given by the publisher of Automatica, Elsevier Science Ltd. Three papers are selected in the categories of Survey, Theory/Methodology, and Application by the Automatica Prize Selection Subcommittee from those published in IFAC Journal Automatica in the past triennium and the prizes are presented at the Opening Ceremony of IFAC Congress. 

The subcommittee is formed under the IFAC Award Committee after each IFAC Congress held triannually. For 2002, Torsten Söderström, Uppsala University, and Katsuhisa Furuta were appointed to the chair of the IFAC Award Committee and that of the Automatica Prize Selection Subcommittee. The members of 2002 subcommittee are Huibert Kwakernaak, Tamer Basar, Sergio Bittanti, Peter Dorato, Vladimir Kucera, N.Harris McClamroch, and Masayoshi Tomizuka. Automatica Editors were requested to point out the candidate papers and subcommittee members pointed out additional papers.

The subcommittee selected the following three papers for the 2002 IFAC Automatica Paper Prizes in the categories of Survey, Theory/Methodology, and Application, respectively.

• Blanchini, F., "Set invariance in control"(Survey Paper), Automatica 35(11), 1747-1767, November 1999. Citation: This paper successfully surveys the positive invariant set and its applications to wide variety of control problems including Lyapunov function and constrained control.

• Vidyasagar, M., "Randomized algorithms for robust controller synthesis using statistical learning theory"(Theory/Methodology), Automatica 37(10), 1515-1528, October 2001. Citation: This paper presents the statistical learning theory and new results of its use for randomized controller design.

• Fossen, T.I., J.P. Strand, "Nonlinear passive weather optimal positioning control (WOPC) system for ships and rigs: experimental results"(Applications), Automatica 37(5), 701-715, May 2001. Citation: A new concept for marine vessels control is developed, and its use on a model ship is presented. 

In the last, as the chairman of the selection subcommittee, I appreciate all cooperations of the editors and the subcommittee members.

Katsuhisa Furuta,
Chairman, Automatica Paper Prize Selection Committee,
School of Science and Engineering,
Tokyo Denki University,
Hatoyama, Hikigun, Saitama, 350-0394, Japan
E-mail address: furuta@k.dendai.ac.jp