This collection represents the primary reference work for researchers and students in the area of Temporal Reasoning in Artificial Intelligence. Temporal reasoning has a vital role to play in many areas, particularly Artificial Intelligence. Yet, until now, there has been no single volume collecting together the breadth of work in this area. This collection brings together the leading researchers in a range of relevant areas and provides an coherent description of the breadth of activity concerning temporal reasoning in the filed of Artificial Intelligence.
Key Features:
- Broad range: foundations; techniques and applications
- Leading researchers around the world have written the chapters
- Covers many vital applications
- Source book for Artificial Intelligence, temporal reasoning
- Approaches provide foundation for many future software systems
- Broad range: foundations; techniques and applications
- Leading researchers around the world have written the chapters
- Covers many vital applications
- Source book for Artificial Intelligence, temporal reasoning
- Approaches provide foundation for many future software systems

In this book, differential evolution and its modified variants are applied to the clustering of data and images. Metaheuristics have emerged as potential algorithms for dealing with complex optimization problems, which are otherwise difficult to solve using traditional methods. In this regard, differential evolution is considered to be a highly promising technique for optimization and is being used to solve various real-time problems. The book studies the algorithms in detail, tests them on a range of test images, and carefully analyzes their performance. Accordingly, it offers a valuable reference guide for all researchers, students and practitioners working in the fields of artificial intelligence, optimization and data analytics.

This book highlights the latest advancements in the use of automated systems in the design, construction, operation and future of the built environment and its occupants. It considers how the use of automated decision-making frameworks, artificial intelligence and other technologies of automation are presently impacting the practice of architects, engineers, project managers and contractors, and articulates the near future changes to workflows, legal frameworks and the wider AEC industry. This book surveys and compiles the use of city apps, robots that operate buildings and fabricate structural elements, 3D printing, drones, sensors, algorithms, and advanced prefabricated modules. The book also contributes to the growing literature on smart cities, and explores the impacts on data privacy and data sovereignty that arise through the use of sensors, digital twins and intelligent transport systems. It provides a useful reference for further research and development in the area of automation in design and construction to architects, engineers, project managers, superintendents and construction lawyers, contractors, policy makers, and students.

This book presents the latest developments concerning techniques, tools, and methodologies in supply chain ecosystems. It gathers contributions from a variety of experts, who analyze a range of case studies and industrial sectors such as manufacturing, energy, agricultural, healthcare, humanitarian logistics, and urban goods distribution, to name but a few. The book is chiefly intended to meet the needs of two sectors: firstly, the academic sector, so as to familiarize students, professors, and researchers with the tools that are now being used to optimize supply chains; and secondly, the industrial and managerial sector, so that supply chain management practitioners can benefit from methods and tools that are yielding valuable results in other contexts.

Over the last few years, the area of Natural Language Processing has drastically grown in recognition, not only within the research and development community, but also with industry professionals. As NLP continues to be discussed and researched, certain areas continue to grow and mature. As a result, the need for advanced research and information is in high demand. Emerging Applications of Natural Language Processing: Concepts and New Research provides pertinent and vital information that researchers, postgraduate, doctoral students, and practitioners are seeking. This book compiles the latest discoveries and advances in NLP methodologies and applications while expanding upon various topics regarding the future of NLP.

Mobile agents are software nomads that act as your personal representative, working autonomously through networks. They are able to visit network nodes directly using available computing power and are not limited by platform. This emerging field is now poised to become a cornerstone for new Web-based ubiquitous computing environments. Mobile Agents provides a practical introduction to mobile agent technology and surveys the state of the art in mobile agent research. Students and researchers can use the book as an introduction to the concepts and possibilities of this field and as an overview of ongoing research. Developers can use it to identify the capabilities of the technology to decide if mobile agents are the right solution for them. Practioners can also gain hands-on experience in programming mobile agents through exploration of the source code for a complete mobile agent environment available through the companion website.
*Summarizes the state of the art in mobile agent research
*Identifies the benefits and limitations of current mobile agent technology to help developers understand the possibilities of this new field
*Extensive mobile agents web portal ("www.mobile-agents.org") with the Java source code for a complete industrial-quality environment for mobile agents, with significant parts of the system open source

This book provides the reader with the most up-to-date knowledge of blockchain in mainstream areas of security, trust, and privacy in the decentralized domain, which is timely and essential (this is due to the fact that the distributed and P2P applications is increasing day-by-day, and the attackers adopt new mechanisms to threaten the security and privacy of the users in those environments). This book also provides the technical information regarding blockchain-oriented software, applications, and tools required for the researcher and developer experts in both computing and software engineering to provide solutions and automated systems against current security, trust and privacy issues in the cyberspace. Cybersecurity, trust and privacy (CTP) are pressing needs for governments, businesses, and individuals, receiving the utmost priority for enforcement and improvement in almost any societies around the globe. Rapid advances, on the other hand, are being made in emerging blockchain technology with broadly diverse applications that promise to better meet business and individual needs. Blockchain as a promising infrastructural technology seems to have the potential to be leveraged in different aspects of cybersecurity promoting decentralized cyberinfrastructure. Blockchain characteristics such as decentralization, verifiability and immutability may revolve current cybersecurity mechanisms for ensuring the authenticity, reliability, and integrity of data. Almost any article on the blockchain points out that the cybersecurity (and its derivatives) could be revitalized if it is supported by blockchain technology. Yet, little is known about factors related to decisions to adopt this technology, and how it can systemically be put into use to remedy current CTP's issues in the digital world. Topics of interest for this book include but not limited to: Blockchain-based authentication, authorization and accounting mechanisms Applications of blockchain technologies in digital forensic and threat hunting Blockchain-based threat intelligence and threat analytics techniques Formal specification of smart contracts Automated tools for outsmarting smart contracts Security and privacy aspects of blockchain technologies Vulnerabilities of smart contracts Blockchain for securing cyber infrastructure and internet of things networks Blockchain-based cybersecurity education systems This book provides information for security and privacy experts in all the areas of blockchain, cryptocurrency, cybersecurity, forensics, smart contracts, computer systems, computer networks, software engineering, applied artificial intelligence for computer security experts, big data analysts, and decentralized systems. Researchers, scientists and advanced level students working in computer systems, computer networks, artificial intelligence, big data will find this book useful as well.

This book is of interest to researchers wanting to know more about the latest topics and methods in the fields of the kinematics, control and design of robotic systems. The papers cover the full range of robotic systems, including serial, parallel and cable-driven manipulators. The systems range from being less than fully mobile, to kinematically redundant, to over-constrained. The book brings together 43 peer-reviewed papers. They report on the latest scientific and applied achievements. The main theme that connects them is the movement of robots in the most diverse areas of application.

The proceedings publishes new research results of scholars from the First International Conference on Agriculture and Information (ICAIT2019) organized by IRNet International Academic Communication Center, held during November 22-24, 2019. The book covers works from active researchers who are working on collaboration of agriculture and various information technologies such as ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) applicable/applied to agricultural produce, manufacturing preservation and distribution of agricultural products, etc. The book focuses on theory, design, development, testing and evaluation of all information technologies applicable/applied to various parts of agriculture and its infrastructure. The topics included are information technologies applicable to smart agriculture, intelligent information systems for smart farm systems, web-based intelligent information systems on agriculture, ICT-based marketing of agricultural products, agricultural product consumption network systems, IoT for agricultural produce and products, soft computing theories, intelligent management for agriculture, data science techniques for agriculture.

This book gravitates on the prominent theories and recent developments of swarm intelligence methods, and their application in both synthetic and real-world optimization problems. The special interest will be placed in those algorithmic variants where biological processes observed in nature have underpinned the core operators underlying their search mechanisms. In other words, the book centers its attention on swarm intelligence and nature-inspired methods for efficient optimization and problem solving. The content of this book unleashes a great opportunity for researchers, lecturers and practitioners interested in swarm intelligence, optimization problems and artificial intelligence.

This handbook covers a wide range of topics related to the collection, processing, analysis, and use of geospatial data in their various forms. This handbook provides an overview of how spatial computing technologies for big data can be organized and implemented to solve real-world problems. Diverse subdomains ranging from indoor mapping and navigation over trajectory computing to earth observation from space, are also present in this handbook. It combines fundamental contributions focusing on spatio-textual analysis, uncertain databases, and spatial statistics with application examples such as road network detection or colocation detection using GPUs. In summary, this handbook gives an essential introduction and overview of the rich field of spatial information science and big geospatial data. It introduces three different perspectives, which together define the field of big geospatial data: a societal, governmental, and governance perspective. It discusses questions of how the acquisition, distribution and exploitation of big geospatial data must be organized both on the scale of companies and countries. A second perspective is a theory-oriented set of contributions on arbitrary spatial data with contributions introducing into the exciting field of spatial statistics or into uncertain databases. A third perspective is taking a very practical perspective to big geospatial data, ranging from chapters that describe how big geospatial data infrastructures can be implemented and how specific applications can be implemented on top of big geospatial data. This would include for example, research in historic map data, road network extraction, damage estimation from remote sensing imagery, or the analysis of spatio-textual collections and social media. This multi-disciplinary approach makes the book unique. This handbook can be used as a reference for undergraduate students, graduate students and researchers focused on big geospatial data. Professionals can use this book, as well as practitioners facing big collections of geospatial data.

This edited book presents scientific results of the International Semi-Virtual Workshop on Data Science and Digital Transformation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (DSDT 2020) which was held on October 15, 2020, at Soongsil University, Seoul, Korea. The aim of this workshop was to bring together researchers and scientists, businessmen and entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, computer users, and students to discuss the numerous fields of computer science and to share their experiences and exchange new ideas and information in a meaningful way. Research results about all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of computer and information science, and to discuss the practical challenges encountered along the way and the solutions adopted to solve them. The workshop organizers selected the best papers from those papers accepted for presentation at the workshop. The papers were chosen based on review scores submitted by members of the program committee and underwent further rigorous rounds of review. From this second round of review, 17 of the conference's most promising papers are then published in this Springer (SCI) book and not the conference proceedings. We impatiently await the important contributions that we know these authors will bring to the field of computer and information science.

This book systematically presents the operating principles and technical characteristics of the main radio navigating systems (RNSs) that make it possible to adequately evaluate the corresponding scratch indexes and levels of air safety for air vehicles, the chief concern of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The book discusses how RNS systems substantially determine navigation accuracy and reliability, and therefore air safety; in addition, it presents practical solutions to problems arising in the operation and development of RNS systems.

This book explores a range of important theoretical and practical issues in the field of computational network application tools, while also presenting the latest advances and innovations using intelligent technology approaches. The main focus is on detecting and diagnosing complex application performance problems so that an optimal and expected level of system service can be attained and maintained. The book discusses challenging issues like enhancing system efficiency, performance, and assurance management, and blends the concept of system modeling and optimization techniques with soft computing, neural network, and sensor network approaches. In addition, it presents certain metrics and measurements that can be translated into business value. These metrics and measurements can also help to establish an empirical performance baseline for various applications, which can be used to identify changes in system performance. By presenting various intelligent technologies, the book provides readers with compact but insightful information on several broad and rapidly growing areas in the computation network application domain. The book's twenty-two chapters examine and address current and future research topics in areas like neural networks, soft computing, nature-inspired computing, fuzzy logic and evolutionary computation, machine learning, smart security, and wireless networking, and cover a wide range of applications from pattern recognition and system modeling, to intelligent control problems and biomedical applications. The book was written to serve a broad readership, including engineers, computer scientists, management professionals, and mathematicians interested in studying tools and techniques for computational intelligence and applications for performance analysis. Featuring theoretical concepts and best practices in computational network applications, it will also be helpful for researchers, graduate and undergraduate students with an interest in the fields of soft computing, neural networks, machine learning, sensor networks, smart security, etc.

The book introduces some challenging methods and solutions to solve the human activity recognition challenge. This book highlights the challenge that will lead the researchers in academia and industry to move further related to human activity recognition and behavior analysis, concentrating on cooking challenge. Current activity recognition systems focus on recognizing either the complex label (macro-activity) or the small steps (micro-activities) but their combined recognition is critical for analysis like the challenge proposed in this book. It has 10 chapters from 13 institutes and 8 countries (Japan, USA, Switzerland, France, Slovenia, China, Bangladesh, and Columbia).

This is the fourth volume of the successful series Robot Operating Systems: The Complete Reference, providing a comprehensive overview of robot operating systems (ROS), which is currently the main development framework for robotics applications, as well as the latest trends and contributed systems. The book is divided into four parts: Part 1 features two papers on navigation, discussing SLAM and path planning. Part 2 focuses on the integration of ROS into quadcopters and their control. Part 3 then discusses two emerging applications for robotics: cloud robotics, and video stabilization. Part 4 presents tools developed for ROS; the first is a practical alternative to the roslaunch system, and the second is related to penetration testing. This book is a valuable resource for ROS users and wanting to learn more about ROS capabilities and features.

This book presents a variety of perspectives on vision-based applications. These contributions are focused on optoelectronic sensors, 3D & 2D machine vision technologies, robot navigation, control schemes, motion controllers, intelligent algorithms and vision systems. The authors focus on applications of unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous and mobile robots, industrial inspection applications and structural health monitoring. Recent advanced research in measurement and others areas where 3D & 2D machine vision and machine control play an important role, as well as surveys and reviews about vision-based applications. These topics are of interest to readers from diverse areas, including electrical, electronics and computer engineering, technologists, students and non-specialist readers. * Presents current research in image and signal sensors, methods, and 3D & 2D technologies in vision-based theories and applications; * Discusses applications such as daily use devices including robotics, detection, tracking and stereoscopic vision systems, pose estimation, avoidance of objects, control and data exchange for navigation, and aerial imagery processing; * Includes research contributions in scientific, industrial, and civil applications.

The book focuses the latest endeavours relating researches and developments conducted in fields of Control, Robotics and Automation. Through more than twenty revised and extended articles, the present book aims to provide the most up-to-date state-of-art of the aforementioned fields allowing researcher, PhD students and engineers not only updating their knowledge but also benefiting from the source of inspiration that represents the set of selected articles of the book. The deliberate intention of editors to cover as well theoretical facets of those fields as their practical accomplishments and implementations offers the benefit of gathering in a same volume a factual and well-balanced prospect of nowadays research in those topics. A special attention toward "Intelligent Robots and Control" may characterize another benefit of this book.

This book addresses and disseminates state-of-the-art research and development in the applications of intelligent techniques for smart grids and renewable energy systems. This helps the readers to grasp the extensive point of view and the essence of the recent advances in this field. The book solicits contributions from active researchers which include theory, case studies and intelligent paradigms pertaining to the smart grid and renewable energy systems. The prospective audience would be researchers, professionals, practitioners and students from academia and industry who work in this field.

This book demonstrates an original concept for implementing the rough set theory in the construction of decision-making systems. It addresses three types of decisions, including those in which the information or input data is insufficient. Though decision-making and classification in cases with missing or inaccurate data is a common task, classical decision-making systems are not naturally adapted to it. One solution is to apply the rough set theory proposed by Prof. Pawlak. The proposed classifiers are applied and tested in two configurations: The first is an iterative mode in which a single classification system requests completion of the input data until an unequivocal decision (classification) is obtained. It allows us to start classification processes using very limited input data and supplementing it only as needed, which limits the cost of obtaining data. The second configuration is an ensemble mode in which several rough set-based classification systems achieve the unequivocal decision collectively, even though the systems cannot separately deliver such results.

This book is a collection of essays exploring adaptive systems from many perspectives, ranging from computational applications to models of adaptation in living and social systems. The essays on computation discuss history, theory, applications, and possible threats of adaptive and evolving computations systems. The modeling chapters cover topics such as evolution in microbial populations, the evolution of cooperation, and how ideas about evolution relate to economics.
The title Perspectives on Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems honors John Holland, whose 1975 Book, Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems has become a classic text for many disciplines in which adaptation play a central role. The essays brought together here were originally written to honor John Holland, and span most of the different areas touched by his wide-ranging and influential research career. The authors include some of the most prominent scientists in the fields of artificial intelligence evolutionary computation, and complex adaptive systems. Taken together, these essays present a broad modern picture of current research on adaptation as it relates to computers, living systems, society, and their complex interactions.

This book presents a complete and accurate study of arithmetic and algebraic circuits. The first part offers a review of all important basic concepts: it describes simple circuits for the implementation of some basic arithmetic operations; it introduces theoretical basis for residue number systems; and describes some fundamental circuits for implementing the main modular operations that will be used in the text. Moreover, the book discusses floating-point representation of real numbers and the IEEE 754 standard. The second and core part of the book offers a deep study of arithmetic circuits and specific algorithms for their implementation. It covers the CORDIC algorithm, and optimized arithmetic circuits recently developed by the authors for adders and subtractors, as well as multipliers, dividers and special functions. It describes the implementation of basic algebraic circuits, such as LFSRs and cellular automata. Finally, it offers a complete study of Galois fields, showing some exemplary applications and discussing the advantages in comparison to other methods. This dense, self-contained text provides students, researchers and engineers, with extensive knowledge on and a deep understanding of arithmetic and algebraic circuits and their implementation.

[FIRST EDITION] This accessible textbook presents an introduction to computer vision algorithms for industrially-relevant applications of X-ray testing. Features: introduces the mathematical background for monocular and multiple view geometry; describes the main techniques for image processing used in X-ray testing; presents a range of different representations for X-ray images, explaining how these enable new features to be extracted from the original image; examines a range of known X-ray image classifiers and classification strategies; discusses some basic concepts for the simulation of X-ray images and presents simple geometric and imaging models that can be used in the simulation; reviews a variety of applications for X-ray testing, from industrial inspection and baggage screening to the quality control of natural products; provides supporting material at an associated website, including a database of X-ray images and a Matlab toolbox for use with the book's many examples.

This book addresses the principles and applications of metaheuristic approaches in engineering and related fields. The first part covers metaheuristics tools and techniques such as ant colony optimization and Tabu search, and their applications to several classes of optimization problems. In turn, the book's second part focuses on a wide variety of metaheuristics applications in engineering and/or the applied sciences, e.g. in smart grids and renewable energy. In addition, the simulation codes for the problems discussed are included in an appendix for ready reference. Intended for researchers aspiring to learn and apply metaheuristic techniques, and gathering contributions by prominent experts in the field, the book offers readers an essential introduction to metaheuristics, its theoretical aspects and applications.

This book analyzes new electricity pricing models that consider uncertainties in the power market due to the changing behavior of market players and the implementation of renewable distributed generation and responsive loads. In-depth chapters examine the different types of market players including the generation, transmission, and distribution companies, virtual power plants, demand response aggregators, and energy hubs and microgrids. Expert authors propose optimal operational models for short-term performance and scheduling and present readers with solutions for pricing challenges in uncertain environments. This book is useful for engineers, researchers and students involved in integrating demand response programs into smart grids and for electricity market operation and planning. Proposes optimal operation models; Discusses the various players in today's electricity markets; Describes the effects of demand response programs in smart grids.