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Robust means healthy, strong, durable, and often adaptable, innovative, flexible.

Contents 1 Computer Engineering 2 Control Theory 2.1 Robust control system 3 Statistics 4 Genetics 5 Engineering Design 6 Economics

In computing terms, robustness is the resilience of the system under stress or when confronted with invalid input. It is the ability of the software system to maintain function even with the changes in internal structure or external environment. For example, an operating system is considered robust if it operates correctly when it is starved of memory or storage space, or when confronted with an application that has bugs or is behaving in an illegal fashion such as trying to access memory or storage belonging to other tasks in a multitasking system.

Main article: Robust control

Central to the development of feedback control theory has been the notion of uncertainty. This arises in two forms: (a) discrepancy between the physical plant and the mathematical model used for controller design, and (b) unmeasured noises and disturbances that act on the physical plant. Feedback is used to desensitise the control system to the effect of both these types of uncertainty. Care must be exercised, however, as feedback in the presence of an uncertain plant can easily lead to instability if due consideration is not given to the way in which this uncertainty modifies the system behaviour. This is the essence of robust control theory.

See also control theory.

A robust statistical test is one that performs well even if its assumptions are violated by the true model from which the data were generated.

Mutational robustness describes the extent to which an organism's phenotype remains constant in spite of mutation.

Robust Design generally means that the design is capable of functioning correctly, (or at the very minimum, not failing catastrophically) under a great many conditions. Also, it means that tolerances can be looser because "it can only be built one way."

Additionally, a robust design usually has a high signal-to-noise ratio.

In Economics, "robustness" defines the ability of a financial trading system to remain effective under different markets and different market conditions.