  In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing a linear functional
subject to uncertain linear and bilinear matrix inequalities, which depend in a
possibly nonlinear way on a vector of uncertain parameters. Motivated by recent
results in statistical learning theory, we show that probabilistic guaranteed
solutions can be obtained by means of randomized algorithms. In particular, we
show that the Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension (VC-dimension) of the two problems
is finite, and we compute upper bounds on it. In turn, these bounds allow us to
derive explicitly the sample complexity of these problems. Using these bounds,
in the second part of the paper, we derive a sequential scheme, based on a
sequence of optimization and validation steps. The algorithm is on the same
lines of recent schemes proposed for similar problems, but improves both in
terms of complexity and generality. The effectiveness of this approach is shown
using a linear model of a robot manipulator subject to uncertain parameters.
