Fieldbus Systems and Their Applications 2001

This volume contains some 50 papers from the 4th IFAC conference on Fieldbus Systems and Their Applications (FeT'2001) held in Nancy, France, 15 - 16 November 2001. This conference was, for the first time, sponsored by IFAC with previous conferences being held in Vienna (Austria) in 1995 and 1997 and Magdeburg (Germany) in 1999. The programme covered a variety of research topics, which are of current interest, such as: performances; dependability of fieldbus based systems; definition of devices profiles and architectures problems; conformance testing and interoperability; scheduling and new technologies and wireless systems. Many papers related to the validation and to the evaluation of application, using formal methods and techniques. These papers came from academic and industrial authors from many countries and the diversity of the points of view expressed led to an interesting conference, rich in debates. Four plenary papers, written by well-known specialists, provide tutorial material, as well as some history and background, and introduce more specialised content.