This book focuses on the design of a multi-criteria automated vehicle longitudinal control system as an enhancement of the adaptive cruise control system. It analyses the effects of various parameters on the average traffic speed and the traction force of the vehicles in mixed traffic from a macroscopic point of view, and also demonstrates why research and development in speed control and predictive cruise control is important. The book also summarises the main steps of the system's robust control design, from the modelling to its synthesis, and discusses both the theoretical background and the practical computation method of the control invariant sets. The book presents the analysis and verification of the system both in a simulation environment and under real-world conditions. By including the systematic design of the predictive cruise control using road and traffic information, it shows how optimization criteria can lead to multiobjective solutions, and the advanced optimization and control design methods required. The book focuses on a particular method by which the unfavourable effect of the traffic flow consideration can be reduced. It also includes simulation examples in which the speed design is performed, while the analysis is carried out in simulation and visualization environments. This book is a valuable reference for researchers and control engineers working on traffic control, vehicle control and control theory. It is also of interest to students and academics as it provides an overview of the strong interaction between the traffic flow and an individual vehicle cruising from both a microscopic and a macroscopic point of view.

Most practical processes such as chemical reactor, industrial furnace, heat exchanger, etc., are nonlinear stochastic systems, which makes their con trol in general a hard problem. Currently, there is no successful design method for this class of systems in the literature. One common alterna tive consists of linearizing the nonlinear dynamical stochastic system in the neighborhood of an operating point and then using the techniques for linear systems to design the controller. The resulting model is in general an approximation of the real behavior of a dynamical system. The inclusion of the uncertainties in the model is therefore necessary and will certainly improve the performance of the dynamical system we want to control. The control of uncertain systems has attracted a lot of researchers from the control community. This topic has in fact dominated the research effort of the control community during the last two decades, and many contributions have been reported in the literature. Some practical dynamical systems have time delay in their dynamics, which makes their control a complicated task even in the deterministic case. Recently, the class ofuncertain dynamical deterministic systems with time delay has attracted some researchers, and some interesting results have been reported in both deterministic and stochastic cases. But wecan't claim that the control problem ofthis class ofsystems is completely solved; more work must be done for this class of systems."

Fuzzy Control of Industrial Systems: Theory and Applications presents the basic theoretical framework of crisp and fuzzy set theory, relating these concepts to control engineering based on the analogy between the Laplace transfer function of linear systems and the fuzzy relation of a nonlinear fuzzy system. Included are generic aspects of fuzzy systems with an emphasis on the many degrees of freedom and its practical design implications, modeling and systems identification techniques based on fuzzy rules, parametrized rules and relational equations, and the principles of adaptive fuzzy and neurofuzzy systems. Practical design aspects of fuzzy controllers are covered by the detailed treatment of fuzzy and neurofuzzy software design tools with an emphasis on iterative fuzzy tuning, while novel stability limit testing methods and the definition and practical examples of the new concept of collaborative control systems are also given. In addition, case studies of successful applications in industrial automation, process control, electric power technology, electric traction, traffic engineering, wastewater treatment, manufacturing, mineral processing and automotive engineering are also presented, in order to assist industrial control systems engineers in recognizing situations when fuzzy and neurofuzzy would offer certain advantages over traditional methods, particularly in controlling highly nonlinear and time-variant plants and processes.

In many computer vision applications, objects have to be learned and recognized in images or image sequences. This book presents new probabilistic hierarchical models that allow an efficient representation of multiple objects of different categories, scales, rotations, and views. The idea is to exploit similarities between objects and object parts in order to share calculations and avoid redundant information. Furthermore inference approaches for fast and robust detection are presented. These new approaches combine the idea of compositional and similarity hierarchies and overcome limitations of previous methods. Besides classical object recognition the book shows the use for detection of human poses in a project for gait analysis. The use of activity detection is presented for the design of environments for ageing, to identify activities and behavior patterns in smart homes. In a presented project for parking spot detection using an intelligent vehicle, the proposed approaches are used to hierarchically model the environment of the vehicle for an efficient and robust interpretation of the scene in real-time.

Theory of mechanisms is an applied science of mechanics that studies the relationship between geometry, mobility, topology, and relative motion between rigid bodies connected by geometric forms. Recently, knowledge in kinematics and mechanisms has considerably increased, causing a renovation in the methods of kinematic analysis. With the progress of the algebras of kinematics and the mathematical methods used in the optimal solution of polynomial equations, it has become possible to formulate and elegantly solve problems. Mechanisms: Kinematic Analysis and Applications in Robotics provides an updated approach to kinematic analysis methods and a review of the mobility criteria most used in planar and spatial mechanisms. Applications in the kinematic analysis of robot manipulators complement the material presented in the book, growing in importance when one recognizes that kinematics is a basic area in the control and modeling of robot manipulators.

The present book includes a set of selected papers from the fourth "International Conference on Informatics in Control Automation and Robotics" (ICINCO 2009), held in Milan, Italy, from 2 to 5 July 2009. The conference was organized in three simultaneous tracks: "Intelligent Control Systems and Optimization", "Robotics and Automation" and "Systems Modeling, Signal Processing and Control". The book is based on the same structure. ICINCO received 365 paper submissions, not including those of workshops, from 55 countries, in all continents. After a double blind paper review performed by the Program Committee only 34 submissions were accepted as full papers and thus selected for oral presentation, leading to a full paper acceptance ratio of 9%. Additional papers were accepted as short papers and posters. A further refinement was made after the conference, based also on the assessment of presentation quality, so that this book includes the extended and revised versions of the very best papers of ICINCO 2009. Commitment to high quality standards is a major concern of ICINCO that will be maintained in the next editions of this conference, including not only the stringent paper acceptance ratios but also the quality of the program committee, keynote lectures, workshops and logistics.

This is a book about how management and control decisions are made by persons who collaborate and possibly use the support of an information system. The decision is the result of human conscious activities aiming at choosing a course of action for attaining a certain objective (or a set of objectives). The act of collaboration implies that several entities who work together and share responsibilities to jointly plan, implement and evaluate a program of activities to achieve the common goals. The book is intended to present a balanced view of the domain to include both well-established concepts and a selection of new results in the domains of methods and key technologies. It is meant to answer several questions, such as: a) "How are evolving the business models towards the ever more collaborative schemes?"; b) "What is the role of the decision-maker in the new context?" c) "What are the basic attributes and trends in the domain of decision-supporting information systems?"; d) "Which are the basic methods to aggregate the individual preferences?" e)"What is the impact of modern information and communication technologies on the design and usage of decision support systems for groups of people?".

"In other words, the invention of a mechanism will be to the scientific kinematist a synthetic problem, - which he can solve by the use of systematic, if also difficult, methods." Reuleaux, F., Theoretische Kinematik, Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1875 Reuleaux, F., The Kinematics of Machinery, London: Macmillan, 1876 and New York: Dover, 1963 (translated by A.B.W. Kennedy) This book represents the third part of a larger work dedicated to the structural synthesis of parallel robots. Part 1 (Gogu 2008a) presented the methodology of structural synthesis and the systematisation of structural solutions of simple and complex limbs with two to six degrees of connectivity systematically generated by the structural synthesis approach. Part 2 (Gogu 2009a) presented structural solutions of translational parallel robotic manipulators with two and three degrees of mobility. This book focuses on various topologies of parallel robotic manipulators with planar motion of the moving platform systematically generated by using the structural synthesis approach proposed in Part 1. The originality of this work resides in the fact that it combines the new formulae for mobility connectivity, redundancy and overconstraints, and the evolutionary morphology in a unified approach of structural synthesis giving interesting innovative solutions for parallel mechanisms.

System-Level Synthesis deals with the concurrent design of electronic applications, including both hardware and software. The issue has become the bottleneck in the design of electronic systems, including both hardware and software, in several major industrial fields, including telecommunications, automotive and aerospace engineering. The major difficulty with the subject is that it demands contributions from several research fields, including system specification, system architecture, hardware design, and software design. Most existing book cover well only a few aspects of system-level synthesis. The present volume presents a comprehensive discussion of all the aspects of system-level synthesis. Each topic is covered by a contribution written by an international authority on the subject.

This book presents the most significant contributions to the DINAME 2017 conference, covering a range of dynamic problems to provide insights into recent trends and advances in a broad variety of fields seldom found in other proceedings volumes. DINAME has been held every two years since 1986 and is internationally recognized as a central forum for discussing scientific achievements related to dynamic problems in mechanics. Unlike many other conferences, it employs a single-session format for the oral presentations of all papers, which limits the number of accepted papers to roughly 100 and makes the evaluation process extremely rigorous. The papers gathered here will be of interest to all researchers, graduate students and engineering professionals working in the fields of mechanical and mechatronics engineering and related areas around the globe.

"Sense of Touch and its Rendering" presents a unique and interdisciplinary approach highlighting the field of haptic research from a neuropsychological as well as a technological point of view. This edited book is the outcome of the TOUCH-HapSys European research project and provides an important contribution towards a new generation of high-fidelity haptic display technologies. The book is structured in two parts: A. Fundamental Psychophysical and Neuropsychological Research and B. Technology and Applications. The two parts are not however separated, and the many connections and synergies between the two complementary domains of research are highlighted in the text. The eleven chapters discuss the recent advances in the study of human haptic (kinaesthetic, tactile, temperature) and multimodal (visual, auditory, haptic) perception mechanisms. Besides the theoretical advancement, the contributions survey the state of the art in the field, report a number of practical applications to real systems, and discuss possible future developments.

This book provides insight and enhanced appreciation of analysis, modeling and control of dynamic systems. The reader is assumed to be familiar with calculus, physics and some programming skills. It might develop the reader's ability to interpret physical significance of mathematical results in system analysis. The book also prepares the reader for more advanced treatment of subsequent knowledge in the automatic control field. Learning objectives are performance-oriented, using for this purpose interactive MATLAB and SIMULINK software tools. It presents realistic problems in order to analyze, design and develop automatic control systems. Learning with computing tools can aid theory and help students to think, analyze and reason in meaningful ways. The book is also complemented with classroom slides and MATLAB and SIMULINK exercise files to aid students to focus on fundamental concepts treated.

This book presents some of the latest applications of new theories based on the concept of paraconsistency and correlated topics in informatics, such as pattern recognition (bioinformatics), robotics, decision-making themes, and sample size. Each chapter is self-contained, and an introductory chapter covering the logic theoretical basis is also included. The aim of the text is twofold: to serve as an introductory text on the theories and applications of new logic, and as a textbook for undergraduate or graduate-level courses in AI. Today AI frequently has to cope with problems of vagueness, incomplete and conflicting (inconsistent) information. One of the most notable formal theories for addressing them is paraconsistent (paracomplete and non-alethic) logic.

Deep Learning for Robot Perception and Cognition introduces a broad range of topics and methods in deep learning for robot perception and cognition together with end-to-end methodologies. The book provides the conceptual and mathematical background needed for approaching a large number of robot perception and cognition tasks from an end-to-end learning point-of-view. The book is suitable for students, university and industry researchers and practitioners in Robotic Vision, Intelligent Control, Mechatronics, Deep Learning, Robotic Perception and Cognition tasks.

The book gives a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art research and engineering in theory and application of Lattice Automata in design and control of autonomous Robots. Automata and robots share the same notional meaning. Automata (originated from the latinization of the Greek word " ") as self-operating autonomous machines invented from ancient years can be easily considered the first steps of robotic-like efforts. Automata are mathematical models of Robots and also they are integral parts of robotic control systems. A Lattice Automaton is a regular array or a collective of finite state machines, or automata. The Automata update their states by the same rules depending on states of their immediate neighbours. In the context of this book, Lattice Automata are used in developing modular reconfigurable robotic systems, path planning and map exploration for robots, as robot controllers, synchronisation of robot collectives, robot vision, parallel robotic actuators. All chapters are written in an accessible manner and lavishly illustrated. The book will help computer and robotic scientists and engineers to understand mechanisms of decentralised functioning of robotic collectives and to design future and emergent reconfigurable, parallel and distributed robotic systems.

Soft computing, as a collection of techniques exploiting approximation and tolerance for imprecision and uncertainty in traditionally intractable problems, has become very effective and popular especially because of the synergy derived from its components. The integration of constituent technologies provides complementary methods that allow developing flexible computing tools and solving complex problems. A wide area of natural applications of soft computing techniques consists of the control of dynamic systems, including robots. Loosely speaking, control can be understood as driving a process to attain a desired goal. Intelligent control can be seen as an extension of this concept, to include autonomous human-like interactions of a machine with the environment. Intelligent robots can be characterized by the ability to operate in an uncertain, changing environment with the help of appropriate sensing. They have the power to autonomously plan and execute motion sequences to achieve a goal specified by a human user without detailed instructions. In this volume leading specialists address various theoretical and practical aspects in soft computing, intelligent robotics and control. The problems discussed are taken from fuzzy systems, neural networks, interactive evolutionary computation, intelligent mobile robotics, and intelligent control of linear and nonlinear dynamic systems.

This book presents the singular configurations associated with a robot mechanism, together with robust methods for their computation, interpretation, and avoidance path planning. Having such methods is essential as singularities generally pose problems to the normal operation of a robot, but also determine the workspaces and motion impediments of its underlying mechanical structure. A distinctive feature of this volume is that the methods are applicable to nonredundant mechanisms of general architecture, defined by planar or spatial kinematic chains interconnected in an arbitrary way. Moreover, singularities are interpreted as silhouettes of the configuration space when seen from the input or output spaces. This leads to a powerful image that explains the consequences of traversing singular configurations, and all the rich information that can be extracted from them. The problems are solved by means of effective branch-and-prune and numerical continuation methods that are of independent interest in themselves. The theory can be put into practice as well: a companion web page gives open access to implementations of the algorithms and the corresponding input files. Using them, the reader can gain hands-on experience on the topic, or analyse new mechanisms beyond those examined in the text. Overall, the book contributes new tools for robot design, and constitutes a single reference source of knowledge that is otherwise dispersed in the literature.

This book collects a number of important contributions presented during the Second Conference on Interdisciplinary Applications of Kinematics (IAK 2013) held in Lima, Peru. The conference brought together scientists from several research fields, such as computational kinematics, multibody systems, industrial machines, robotics, biomechanics, mechatronics, computational chemistry, and vibration analysis, and embraced all key aspects of kinematics, namely, theoretical methods, modeling, optimization, experimental validation, industrial applications, and design. Kinematics is an exciting area of computational mechanics and plays a central role in a great variety of fields and industrial applications nowadays. Apart from research in pure kinematics, the field deals with problems of practical relevance that need to be solved in an interdisciplinary manner in order for new technologies to develop. The results presented in this book should be of interest for practicing and research engineers as well as Ph.D. students from the fields of mechanical and electrical engineering, computer science, and computer graphics.

The book is concerned with contemporary methodologies used for automatic text summarization. It proposes interesting approaches to solve well-known problems on text-summarization using computational intelligence (CI) techniques including cognitive approaches. A better understanding of the cognitive basis of the summarization task is still an open research issue, an extent of its use in text summarization is highlighted for further exploration. With the ever-growing text and people on research has little time to spare for extensive reading, where, summarized information helps for a better understanding of the context at a shorter time. This book helps students and researchers to automatically summarize the text documents in an efficient and effective way. The computational approaches and the research techniques presented guides to achieve text summarization at ease. The summarized text generated supports readers to learn the context or the domain at a quicker pace. The book is presented with reasonable amount of illustrations and examples convenient for the readers to understand and implement for their use. The book is not to make readers understand what text summarization is, but for people to perform text summarization using various approaches. This also describes measures that can help to evaluate, determine and explore the best possibilities for text summarization to analyse and use for any specific purpose. The illustration is based on social media and healthcare domain, which shows the possibilities to work with any domain for summarization. The new approach for text summarization based on cognitive intelligence is presented for further exploration in the field.

Anyone seeking a gentle introduction to the methods of modern control theory and engineering, written at the level of a first-year graduate course, should consider this book seriously. It contains: A generous historical overview of automatic control, from Ancient Greece to the 1970s, when this discipline matured into an essential field for electrical, mechanical, aerospace, chemical, and biomedical engineers, as well as mathematicians, and more recently, computer scientists; A balanced presentation of the relevant theory: the main state-space methods for description, analysis, and design of linear control systems are derived, without overwhelming theoretical arguments; Over 250 solved and exercise problems for both continuous- and discrete-time systems, often including MATLAB simulations; and Appendixes on MATLAB, advanced matrix theory, and the history of mathematical tools such as differential calculus, transform methods, and linear algebra. Another noteworthy feature is the frequent use of an inverted pendulum on a cart to illustrate the most important concepts of automatic control, such as: Linearization and discretization; Stability, controllability, and observability; State feedback, controller design, and optimal control; and Observer design, reduced order observers, and Kalman filtering. Most of the problems are given with solutions or MATLAB simulations. All MATLAB programs from the book are available on the enclosed CD. Whether the book is used as a textbook or as a self-study guide, the knowledge gained from it will be an excellent platform for students and practising engineers to explore further the recent developments and applications of control theory.

Recognising the benefits of improved control, the second edition of Autotuning of PID Controllers provides simple yet effective methods for improving PID controller performance. The practical issues of controller tuning are examined using numerous worked examples and case studies in association with specially written autotuning MATLABA(R) programs to bridge the gap between conventional tuning practice and novel autotuning methods.

The extensively revised second edition expands and refines on important work in the ubiquitous PID form of control with material covering:

• Derivation of analytical expressions for relay feedback responses with tabulated results for easy reference.
• The use of shapes of relay responses to generate information for improved closed-loop control and performance assessment.
• The applications of autotuning to multiple-model-based cases for handling process nonlinearity.
• The use of feedback shapes to generate information for performance assessment.
• The impact of imperfect actuators on controller performance.

Autotuning of PID Controllers is more than just a monograph, it is an independent learning tool applicable to the work of academic control engineers and of their counterparts in industry looking for more effective process control and automation.

Comments on the first edition:

This book is written in a way which not only makes it easy to understand but is also useful to those interested in or working with PID controllers.
Assembly Automation

The book will be useful to manufacturers and users of control equipment, and also to researchers in the field of automatic tuning.
Automatica

Artificial neural networks are used to model systems that receive inputs and produce outputs. The relationships between the inputs and outputs and the representation parameters are critical issues in the design of related engineering systems, and sensitivity analysis concerns methods for analyzing these relationships. Perturbations of neural networks are caused by machine imprecision, and they can be simulated by embedding disturbances in the original inputs or connection weights, allowing us to study the characteristics of a function under small perturbations of its parameters.

This is the first book to present a systematic description of sensitivity analysis methods for artificial neural networks. It covers sensitivity analysis of multilayer perceptron neural networks and radial basis function neural networks, two widely used models in the machine learning field. The authors examine the applications of such analysis in tasks such as feature selection, sample reduction, and network optimization. The book will be useful for engineers applying neural network sensitivity analysis to solve practical problems, and for researchers interested in foundational problems in neural networks.

This book presents the proceedings of the Third International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Control (ICEECA2017). It covers new control system models and troubleshooting tips, and also addresses complex system requirements, such as increased speed, precision and remote capabilities, bridging the gap between the complex, math-heavy controls theory taught in formal courses, and the efficient implementation required in real-world industry settings. Further, it considers both the engineering aspects of signal processing and the practical issues in the broad field of information transmission and novel technologies for communication networks and modern antenna design. This book is intended for researchers, engineers, and advanced postgraduate students in control and electrical engineering, computer science, signal processing, as well as mechanical and chemical engineering.

This book has been motivated by an urgent need for designing and implementation of innovative control algorithms and systems for tracked vehicles. Nowadays the unmanned vehicles are becoming more and more common. Therefore there is a need for innovative mechanical constructions capable of adapting to various applications regardless the ground, air or water/underwater environment. There are multiple various activities connected with tracked vehicles. They can be distributed among three main groups: design and control algorithms, sensoric and vision based in-formation, construction and testing mechanical parts of unmanned vehicles. Scientists and researchers involved in mechanics, control algorithms, image processing, computer vision, data fusion, or IC will find this book useful.

Rapid Tooling Guidelines for Sand Casting describes the guidelines for the sand casting industry in using rapid tooling processes. Topics in the seven chapters include sand casting processes, tool design and construction, fast freeform fabrication processes, rapid tooling processes, sand casting dimension control, rapid tooling evaluation methods and decision making processes. Twelve case studies will also be examined in the book.