The CONTROLO 2016 – 12^th Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control, Guimarães, Portugal, September 14^th to 16^th, was organized by Algoritmi, School of Engineering, University of Minho, in partnership with INESC TEC, and promoted by the Portuguese Association for Automatic Control – APCA, national member organization of the International Federation of Automatic Control – IFAC.

The seventy-five papers published in this volume cover a wide range of topics. Thirty-one of them, of a more theoretical nature, are distributed among the first five parts: Control Theory; Optimal and Predictive Control; Fuzzy, Neural and Genetic Control; Modeling and Identification; Sensing and Estimation.

The papers go from cutting-edge theoretical research to innovative control applications and show expressively how Automatic Control can be used to increase the well being of people.

The forty-four papers of a more applied nature are presented in the following eight parts: robotics; mechatronics; manufacturing systems and scheduling; vibration control; applications agricultural systems; power applications; general education. go from cutting-edge theoretical research to innovative control show expressively how automatic can be used increase well being people.