From Large-Scale Systems to System of Systems – Control Challenges for the 21st Century1

This Paper builds a case that large-scale systems (LSS) are the building blocks of system of systems (SoS). LSS have high dimensions, nonlinear interconnections, time delays and stochastic plant parameters, that can be decomposed into subsystems or their constituencies are not centrally together. LSS can be integrated to form a SoS. This new class of systems has created new challenges for systems engineering (SE) to extend theoretical foundations to SoS Engineering. A key issue control will be discussed here.