我牵头搞的那期杂志已完成全部编辑工作。出版社让我写个社论。我就提笔写出了个人对所从事方向的理解。这种比较虚的内容是难写的。

忽然回忆起十几年前刚刚走进学术之门的自己。那时候听报告、读专著文献都是两眼一抹黑。时隔多年，感觉自己好像没什么变化，知识其实并没有增加多少，基础还是本科打的那些。但是现在却能很随意地写出这种框架性的文字来。时间真的很神奇，不知不觉使人成熟，使人变老。下面是社论的主体内容。

Distributed dynamic systems are large-scale systems constituted by numerous sub-systems deployed in distributed manner. In many cases, there are three fundamental characteristics for these sub-systems. The first characteristic is autonomy.The sub-systems are usually autonomous or semi-autonomous, and can often exist and operate independently. The second characteristic is homogeneity. The sub-systems often share similarity and play relatively equal roles. The last and most important characteristic is interactivity. The sub-systems should connect to a network topology collectively, such that they are able to communicate by exchanging information or substance and cooperate with each other.

Since the beginning of the current century, studies on the modeling, simulation,analysis, and synthesis about distributed dynamic systems have gradually formed a highlighted direction in the area of control and systems science, meanwhile receiving more and more attention from increasing number of scientific and application disciplines. Relevant research includes time and frequency domain methods,state space analysis, filtering, prediction, optimization, system identification, robust control and stochastic control, just to mention a few. This new trend can be attributed to the joint advancements of scientific methodology,engineering technology, and control theory. Along with the development of modern computing technique, there appear signs for the scientific methodology in systems science to return back to reductionism from holism, especially for modeling and analysis. In the meantime, mankind is rapidly stepping into a networked world. The notion of complex and dynamical networks keeps on penetrating nearly all kinds of domains, ranging from communication networks, power networks, manufacturing networks, biological networks, and even social networks. For the networked distributed systems, the set of essential theoretical concepts of systems analysis and synthesis which are already fully developed on isolated systems such as stability, equilibrium, controllability/observability, and tracking control acquire new connotations and contents, which need to be extended profoundly.Moreover, methodologies based on networked configurations could also facilitate offering solutions to various difficult tasks. Nonetheless, extra complexity usually accompanies these systems due to the nonlinearities, distributed parameters & states, and high order. It is responsible and challenging for the control community to promote the advancement of both theories and technologies for modeling, analyzing, and controlling of networked distributed systems.

This special issue is composed of seven research articles, representing some of the recent advances around the theme of decentralized modeling, analysis, or synthesis on either directly controlling various distributed dynamic systems or utilizing these systems to solve other problems. Most of these articles seek solutions for engineering tasks with different backgrounds. For instance, among them, two papers deal with control strategies for maneuvering vehicles, two address the process control of steel plate manufacturing, one builds neuron circuits, and one paper concerns the control of brushless DC motors. A brief description of the papers follows.