This graduate-level text focuses on the stability of adaptive systems, and offers a thorough understanding of the global stability properties essential to designing adaptive systems. Its self-contained, unified presentation includes results in stability theory that emphasize incidents directly relevant to the study of adaptive systems; the stability properties of adaptive observers and controllers; the important concept of persistent excitation; the use of error models in systems analysis; areas of intense research activity; and five detailed case studies of systems in which adaptive control has proved successful. Problems ranging in complexity from relatively easy to quite difficult appear throughout the text. 1989 ed. Appendixes. Index. 140 figures.