Building a robot that learns to perform a task has been acknowledged as one of the major challenges facing artificial intelligence. Self-improving robots would relieve humans from much of the drudgery of programming and would potentially allow operation in environments that were changeable or only partially known. Progress towards this goal would also make fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence by furthering our understanding of how to successfully integrate disparate abilities such as perception, planning, learning and action. Although its roots can be traced back to the late fifties, the area of robot learning has lately seen a resurgence of interest. The flurry of interest in robot learning has partly been fueled by exciting new work in the areas of reinforcement earning, behavior-based architectures, genetic algorithms, neural networks and the study of artificial life. Robot Learning gives an overview of some of the current research projects in robot learning being carried out at leading universities and research laboratories in the United States. The main research directions in robot learning covered in this book include: reinforcement learning, behavior-based architectures, neural networks, map learning, action models, navigation and guided exploration.

This book aims at reporting some of the most challenging open problems of control theoretic nature raised by robotics applications. Topics covered in the book represent many of the most innovative areas in contemporary robotics research, with special emphasis on vision, sensory-feedback control, human-centered robotics, manipulation, planning, flexible and cooperative robots, or assembly systems. The basic idea behind the book is to present the variety of innovative applications and related technology demands that arise from robotics and automation to a larger community, including in particular, researchers in automatic control, applied mathematics, mechanical engineering, or computer science. The book is intended for an audience of researchers and graduate students in those disciplines and in robotics. It is the outcome of a workshop held in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 14, 2002 jointly sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.

In the last decade, we have seen an extraordinary progress in the the ory and applications of robot kinematics. This has been motivated espe cially by the development of complex parallel and humanoid robots. The present book reports the most recent research advances in the theory, design, control and application of robotic systems, which are intended for a variety of purposes such as manipulation, manufacturing, automa tion, surgery, locomotion and biomechanics. The issues addressed are fundamentally kinematic in nature, including synthesis, calibration, re dundancy, force control, dexterity, inverse and forward kinematics, kine matic singularities, as well as over-constrained systems. Methods used include line geometry, quaternion algebra, screw algebra, and linear alge bra. These methods are applied to both parallel and serial multi-degree of-freedom systems. The results should interest researchers, teachers and students, in fields of engineering and mathematics related to robot theory, design, control and application. This is the sixth book of the series Advances in Robot Kinematics published by Kluwer. The contributions in this book had been rigorously reviewed by in dependent reviewers and fifty one articles had been recommended for publication. They were introduced in seven chapters. These articles were also reported and discussed at the ninth international symposium on Advances in Robot Kinematics which was held in June 2004 in Sestri Levante in Italy. Indexed in Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science (CPCI-S)

This book presents a collection of papers from the International Symposium in Robotics Research (ISRR01). The goal of the symposium was to bring together active, leading robotics researchers from academia, government, and industry, to define the state of the art in robotics and its future direction.

Relay feedback has attracted considerable research attention for more than a century but there has been no recent summary of the many newly-developed tools and results now available for this important area as a whole, those that have been published tending to focus on one process or controller type only. Relay Feedback is divided into three parts, the first of which is devoted to the analysis of relay feedback systems within a general setting with information on: existence of solutions; existence of limit cycles; local and global stability of limit cycles; limit cycles with more than two switchings per period; plants with time delay; relays with asymmetric hysteresis. The second part, on the improvement of process identification shows the reader how to: modify a standard relay to provide better excitation of a process at a number of important frequencies; devise new algorithms designed to make better use of information from relay feedback tests. The book's third part is a presentation of recent developments in control design providing: a unified framework for the design of internal-model, proportional-integral-derivative or general-single-loop controllers for SISO or MIMO systems with or without time delays; characterisation of time delays and non-minimum phase zeros for closed-loop systems. Relay Feedback presents a comprehensive, up-to-date and detailed treatment of relay feedback theory, the use of relay feedback for process identification and the use of identified models for general control design in a single volume. The work assumes only knowledge of linear system theory on the part of the reader and should therefore be of use to graduate students and practising engineers as well as to researchers.

This volume contains the Proceedings of the 3rd IFToMM Symposium on Mechanism Design for Robotics, held in Aalborg, Denmark, 2-4 June, 2015. The book contains papers on recent advances in the design of mechanisms and their robotic applications. It treats the following topics: mechanism design, mechanics of robots, parallel manipulators, actuators and their control, linkage and industrial manipulators, innovative mechanisms/robots and their applications, among others. The book can be used by researchers and engineers in the relevant areas of mechanisms, machines and robotics.

A leading artificial intelligence researcher lays out a new approach to AI that will enable us to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machines In the popular imagination, superhuman artificial intelligence is an approaching tidal wave that threatens not just jobs and human relationships, but civilization itself. Conflict between humans and machines is seen as inevitable and its outcome all too predictable. In this groundbreaking book, distinguished AI researcher Stuart Russell argues that this scenario can be avoided, but only if we rethink AI from the ground up. Russell begins by exploring the idea of intelligence in humans and in machines. He describes the near-term benefits we can expect, from intelligent personal assistants to vastly accelerated scientific research, and outlines the AI breakthroughs that still have to happen before we reach superhuman AI. He also spells out the ways humans are already finding to misuse AI, from lethal autonomous weapons to viral sabotage. If the predicted breakthroughs occur and superhuman AI emerges, we will have created entities far more powerful than ourselves. How can we ensure they never, ever, have power over us? Russell suggests that we can rebuild AI on a new foundation, according to which machines are designed to be inherently uncertain about the human preferences they are required to satisfy. Such machines would be humble, altruistic, and committed to pursue our objectives, not theirs. This new foundation would allow us to create machines that are provably deferential and provably beneficial.

During the 90s robust control theory has seen major advances and achieved a new maturity, centered around the notion of convexity. The goal of this book is to give a graduate-level course on this theory that emphasizes these new developments, but at the same time conveys the main principles and ubiquitous tools at the heart of the subject. Its pedagogical objectives are to introduce a coherent and unified framework for studying the theory, to provide students with the control-theoretic background required to read and contribute to the research literature, and to present the main ideas and demonstrations of the major results. The book will be of value to mathematical researchers and computer scientists, graduate students planning to do research in the area, and engineering practitioners requiring advanced control techniques.

This interdisciplinary thesis involves the design and analysis of coordination algorithms on networks, identification of dynamic networks and estimation on networks with random geometries with implications for networks that support the operation of dynamic systems, e.g., formations of robotic vehicles, distributed estimation via sensor networks. The results have ramifications for fault detection and isolation of large-scale networked systems and optimization models and algorithms for next generation aircraft power systems. The author finds novel applications of the methodology in energy systems, such as residential and industrial smart energy management systems.

Robotic technology offers two potential benefits for future space exploration. One benefit is minimizing the risk that astronauts face. The other benefit is increasing their productivity. Realizing the benefits of robotic technology in space will require solving several problems which are unique and now becoming active research topics. One of the most important research areas is dynamics, control, motion and planning for space robots by considering the dynamic interaction between the robot and the base (space station, space shuttle, or satellite). Any inefficiency in the planning and control can considerably risk by success of the space mission. Space Robotics: Dynamics and Control presents a collection of papers concerning fundamental problems in dynamics and control of space robots, focussing on issues relevant to dynamic base/robot interaction. The authors are all pioneers in theoretical analysis and experimental systems development of space robot technology. The chapters are organized within three problem areas: dynamics problems, nonholonomic nature problems, and control problems. This collection provides a solid reference for researchers in robotics, mechanics, control, and astronautical science.

Tele operation systems, in which robots are controlled remotely, are a potential solution to performing tasks in remote, small, and hazardous environments. However, there is a big disadvantage to these systems; as the direct connection between the human and the environment is lost and operators are deprived of their sense of touch. The recreation of touch feedback through haptic devices is a possible solution, however haptic devices are far from perfect and improving their design is usually a slow trial-and-error process. This book describes 7 scientific studies that try to break this slow loop by using a deductive approach. Through investigating fundamental properties of human haptic perception using psychophysical paradigms, general knowledge on haptic perception of force, position, movement and hardness was gained. The resulting information can be applied to many different haptic devices. Consequently haptic systems can be more easily designed in an intuitive, human-centered way.

Mixed-Signal Embedded Microcontrollers are commonly used in integrating analog components needed to control non-digital electronic systems. They are used in automatically controlled devices and products, such as automobile engine control systems, wireless remote controllers, office machines, home appliances, power tools, and toys. Microcontrollers make it economical to digitally control even more devices and processes by reducing the size and cost, compared to a design that uses a separate microprocessor, memory, and input/output devices. In many undergraduate and post-graduate courses, teaching of mixed-signal microcontrollers and their use for project work has become compulsory. Students face a lot of difficulties when they have to interface a microcontroller with the electronics they deal with. This book addresses some issues of interfacing the microcontrollers and describes some project implementations with the Silicon Lab C8051F020 mixed-signal microcontroller. The intended readers are college and university students specializing in electronics, computer systems engineering, electrical and electronics engineering; researchers involved with electronics based system, practitioners, technicians and in general anybody interested in microcontrollers based projects.

Aerial Robotic Workers: Design, Modeling, Control, Vision and Their Applications provides an in-depth look at both theory and practical applications surrounding the Aerial Robotic Worker (ARW). Emerging ARWs are fully autonomous flying robots that can assist human operations through their agile performance of aerial inspections and interaction with the surrounding infrastructure. This book addresses all the fundamental components of ARWs, starting with the hardware and software components and then addressing aspects of modeling, control, perception of the environment, and the concept of aerial manipulators, cooperative ARWs, and direct applications. The book includes sample codes and ROS-based tutorials, enabling the direct application of the chapters and real-life examples with platforms already existing in the market.

This book presents the recently introduced and already widely referred semi-discretization method for the stability analysis of delayed dynamical systems. Delay differential equations often come up in different fields of engineering, like feedback control systems, machine tool vibrations, balancing/stabilization with reflex delay. The behavior of such systems is often counter-intuitive and closed form analytical formulas can rarely be given even for the linear stability conditions. If parametric excitation is coupled with the delay effect, then the governing equation is a delay differential equation with time periodic coefficients, and the stability properties are even more intriguing. The semi-discretization method is a simple but efficient method that is based on the discretization with respect to the delayed term and the periodic coefficients only. The method can effectively be used to construct stability diagrams in the space of system parameters.

Stochastic programming is the study of procedures for decision making under the presence of uncertainties and risks. Stochastic programming approaches have been successfully used in a number of areas such as energy and production planning, telecommunications, and transportation. Recently, the practical experience gained in stochastic programming has been expanded to a much larger spectrum of applications including financial modeling, risk management, and probabilistic risk analysis. Major topics in this volume include: (1) advances in theory and implementation of stochastic programming algorithms; (2) sensitivity analysis of stochastic systems; (3) stochastic programming applications and other related topics. Audience: Researchers and academies working in optimization, computer modeling, operations research and financial engineering. The book is appropriate as supplementary reading in courses on optimization and financial engineering.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft that is equipped with necessary data processing units, sensors, automatic control and communications systems, and is capable of performing autonomously flight missions without a human pilot. Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems provides a complete treatment of the design of fully autonomous miniature rotorcraft UAVs. It is an integration of advanced technologies developed in communications, computing and control areas. In particular, it focuses on:

the systematic hardware construction;

software systems integration;

aerodynamic modeling; and

automatic flight control system design.

Emphasis is extended to the cooperative control and flight formation of multiple UAVs, and vision-based ground target tracking and landing on moving platforms. Other issues such as the development of GPSless indoor micro aerial vehicles and vision-based navigation are also highlighted.

The proposed monograph aims to explore the research and development of fully functional miniature UAV (unmanned-aerial-vehicle) rotorcraft. This consists of a small-scale basic rotorcraft with all necessary accessories onboard, and a ground station. The unmanned system is an integration of advanced technologies developed in communications, computing and control areas. It is an excellent testing ground for trialing and implementing modern control techniques. It is however a highly challenging process. The aerodynamics of a small-scale rotorcraft such as a hobby helicopter are similar to its full-scale counterpart but has some unique characteristics, such as the utilization of stabilizer bar and higher main/tail rotors rotation speed. Besides these, the strict limitation on payload also increases the difficulty on upgrading a small-scale rotorcraft to a UAV with full capacities. Based on its various characteristics and limitations, a light-weight but effective onboard computer system with corresponding onboard/ground software should be carefully designed to realize the system identification and automatic flight requirements. These issues will be addressed in detail in this monograph. Research on the following will be detailed:

utilizing the vision-based system for accomplishing ground target tracking;

attacking and landing;

cooperative control and flight formation of muitiple unmanned rotorcraft;

future research directions on the related areas.

The book will be a good reference for researchers and students working on the related subjects. Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems will be of great value to practicing engineers in rotorcraft industries and to researchers in areas related to the development of unmanned systems in general. It may be used as a reference for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in aeronautics and astrinautics, electrical and mechanical engineering."

The great majority of books on artificial intelligence are written by AI experts who understandably focus on its achievements and potential transformative effects on society. In contrast, AI vs Humans is written by two psychologists (Michael and Christine Eysenck) whose perspective on AI (including robotics) is based on their knowledge and understanding of human cognition. This book evaluates the strengths and limitations of people and AI. The authors' expertise equips them well to consider this by seeing how well (or badly) AI compares to human intelligence. They accept that AI matches or exceeds human ability in many spheres such as mathematical calculations, complex games (e.g., chess, Go, and poker), diagnosis from medical images, and robotic surgery. However, the human tendency to anthropomorphise has led many people to claim mistakenly that AI systems can think, infer, reason, and understand while engaging in information processing. In fact, such systems lack all those cognitive skills and are also deficient in the quintessentially human abilities of flexibility of thinking and general intelligence. At a time when human commitment to AI appears unstoppable, this up-to-date book advocates a symbiotic and co-operative relationship between humans and AI. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in AI and human cognition.

This is an edited collection by world-class experts, from diverse fields, focusing on integrating smart in-vehicle systems with human factors to enhance safety in automobiles. The book presents developments on road safety, in-vehicle technologies and state-of-the art systems. Includes coverage of DSP technologies in adaptive automobiles, algorithms and evaluation of in-car communication systems, driver-status monitoring and stress detection, in-vehicle dialogue systems and human-machine interfaces, challenges in video and audio processing for in-vehicle products, multi-sensor fusion for driver identification and vehicle to infrastructure wireless technologies.

Microsystem technology (MST) integrates very small (up to a few nanometers) mechanical, electronic, optical, and other components on a substrate to construct functional devices. These devices are used as intelligent sensors, actuators, and controllers for medical, automotive, household and many other purposes. This book is a basic introduction to MST for students, engineers, and scientists. It is the first of its kind to cover MST in its entirety. It gives a comprehensive treatment of all important parts of MST such as microfabrication technologies, microactuators, microsensors, development and testing of microsystems, and information processing in microsystems. It surveys products built to date and experimental products and gives a comprehensive view of all developments leading to MST devices and robots.

The vast majority of control systems built today are embedded; that is, they rely on built-in, special-purpose digital computers to close their feedback loops. Embedded systems are common in aircraft, factories, chemical processing plants, and even in carsa "a single high-end automobile may contain over eighty different computers. In such settings, controllers often use shared networks to communicate with each other and with large numbers of sensors and actuators scattered throughout the system. The design of embedded controllers and of the intricate, automated communication networks that support them raises many new questionsa "practical, as well as theoreticala "about network protocols, compatibility of operating systems, and ways to maximize the effectiveness of the embedded hardware.

The Handbook of Networked and Embedded Control Systems, the first of its kind, provides engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, and students a broad, comprehensive source of information and technology to address many questions and aspects of embedded and networked control. A carefully organized collection of important results, tools, software, and technology, this work unifies into a single reference many scattered articles, websites, and specification sheetsa "information that might otherwise be difficult to find.

Key topics and features include:

* Self-contained, sharply-focused articles; readers have easy access to specific answers to questions without having to read hundreds of pages

* Clear structure and presentation of concepts in intuitive order

* Separation of material into six main sectionsa "Fundamentals, Hardware, Software, Theory, Networking, andApplications

* Case studies, experiments, and examples that provide a multifaceted view of the subject, encompassing computation and communication considerations

* Information about commercially available tools and hardware

* Comprehensive bibliographies and index

This is an indispensable text for anyone interested in knowing more about embedded and networked control systems. Researchers will appreciate the handbooka (TM)s up-to-date results in the theory of embedded control; developers and users will value its information on special-purpose computer hardware and operating systems modifications that support real-time control; students will find the systematic organization and wide coverage useful for learning and reference.

The fully automated estimation of the 6 degrees of freedom camera motion and the imaged 3D scenario using as the only input the pictures taken by the camera has been a long term aim in the computer vision community. The associated line of research has been known as Structure from Motion (SfM). An intense research effort during the latest decades has produced spectacular advances; the topic has reached a consistent state of maturity and most of its aspects are well known nowadays. 3D vision has immediate applications in many and diverse fields like robotics, videogames and augmented reality; and technological transfer is starting to be a reality. This book describes one of the first systems for sparse point-based 3D reconstruction and egomotion estimation from an image sequence; able to run in real-time at video frame rate and assuming quite weak prior knowledge about camera calibration, motion or scene. Its chapters unify the current perspectives of the robotics and computer vision communities on the 3D vision topic: As usual in robotics sensing, the explicit estimation and propagation of the uncertainty hold a central role in the sequential video processing and is shown to boost the efficiency and performance of the 3D estimation. On the other hand, some of the most relevant topics discussed in SfM by the computer vision scientists are addressed under this probabilistic filtering scheme; namely projective models, spurious rejection, model selection and self-calibration.

Intelligent engineering systems try to replicate fundamental abilities of humans and nature in order to achieve sufficient progress in solving complex problems. In an ideal case multi-disciplinary applications of different modern engineering fields can result in synergistic effects. Information technology and computer modeling are the underlying tools that play a major role at any stages of developing intelligent systems. Chapters in the present volume have been written by eminent scientists from different parts of the world, dealing with challenging problems for efficient modeling of intelligent systems. The reader can find different characteristics and methodologies of computational intelligence with real life applications. Various facets of intelligent engineering and information technology are addressed. Starting with theoretical issues from pseudo-analysis to parametric classes of digital fuzzy conjunctions for hardware implementation of fuzzy systems, diverse aspects of control including quantum as well as fuzzy control and hybrid approaches, intelligent robotics dealing with mobile and autonomous robots and new trends, approaches and results on information technology, machines, materials and manufacturing, and issues of intelligent systems and complex processes are covered.

This book joins the multitude of Control Systems books now available, but is neither a textbook nor a monograph. Rather it may be described as a resource book or survey of the elements/essentials of feedback control systems. The material included is a result of my development, over a period of several years, of summaries written to supplement a number of standard textbooks for undergraduate and early post-graduate courses. Those notes, plus more work than I care right now to contemplate, are intended to be helpful both to students and to professional engineers. Too often, standard textbooks seem to overlook some of the engineering realities of (roughly) how much things cost or how big of hardware for computer programs for simple algorithms are, sensing and actuation, of special systems such as PLCs and PID controllers, of the engineering of real systems from coverage of SISO theories, and of the special characteristics of computers, their programming, and their potential interactions into systems. In particular, students with specializations other than control systems are not being exposed to the breadth of the considerations needed in control systems engineering, perhaps because it is assumed that they are always to be part of a multicourse sequence taken by specialists. The lectures given to introduce at least some of these aspects were more effective when supported by written material: hence, the need for my notes which preceded this book.

Control of Linear Parameter Varying Systems compiles state-of-the-art contributions on novel analytical and computational methods for addressing system identification, model reduction, performance analysis and feedback control design and addresses address theoretical developments, novel computational approaches and illustrative applications to various fields. Part I discusses modeling and system identification of linear parameter varying systems, Part II covers the importance of analysis and control design when working with linear parameter varying systems (LPVS) , Finally, Part III presents an applications based approach to linear parameter varying systems, including modeling of a turbocharged diesel engines, Multivariable control of wind turbines, modeling and control of aircraft engines, control of an autonomous underwater vehicles and analysis and synthesis of re-entry vehicles.