This thesis focuses on rate-induced critical transitions or tipping points (R-tipping points), where the system undergoes a critical transition if the time-varying external conditions vary faster than some critical rate. Such a critical transition is usually a sudden and unexpected change of the system state. The change can be either irreversible: a permanent tipping point with no return to the original state, or reversible: a temporary tipping point with self-recovery back to the original state, both of which may cause significant consequences in applications. Indeed, R-tipping is an ubiquitous nonlinear phenomenon in nature that remains largely unexplored by the scientists. From a mathematical viewpoint, it is a genuine nonautonomous instability that cannot be explained by the classical (autonomous) bifurcation theory and requires an alternative approach. The first part of the thesis focuses on a mathematical framework for R-tipping in systems of nonautonomous differential equations, where the nonautonomous terms representing time-varying external conditions decay asymptotically. In particular, special compactification techniques for asymptotically autonomous systems are developed to simplify analysis of R-tipping. In the second part of the thesis, the main concepts of edge states and thresholds are introduced to define the R-tipping phenomenon. Then, simple testable criteria for the occurrence of reversible and irreversible R-tipping in arbitrary dimension are given. This part extends the previous results on irreversible R-tipping in one dimension. The third part of the thesis identifies canonical examples of R-tipping based on the system dimension, timescales and the threshold type. These examples are relatively simple low-dimensional nonlinear systems that capture different R-tipping mechanisms. R-tipping analysis of canonical examples, which is underpinned by the compactification framework developed in the second part, reveals intricate R-tipping diagrams with multiple critical rates and transitions between different types of R-tipping.