Stable periodic motion of a system using echo for position control (Q1418869)

In this long (about 80 pages) but very interesting paper, the author investigates a system of differential equations based on Newton's law of the form \[ \ddot{u}(t)=-r\dot{u}(t)+A\left( \displaystyle\frac{u(t-s)+u(t)}{2}\right),\quad cs=u(t-s)+u(t)+2w, \] describing an object on a line which controls its position by echo. The existence of a stable, exponentially attracting periodic orbit is proved for \(r>0\) sufficiently large and for a suitable continuously differentiable function \(A: \mathbb{R}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\). The approaches involve rewriting the system as a delay differential equation with state-dependent delay and then making use of the recent results developed by the author for differential equations with state-dependent delays. The proofs also involve very careful analysis and very beautiful estimates.