Collaboration in highly distributed organizations of people, robots, and autonomous systems is and must be revolutionized by engineering augmentation. The aim is to augment humans' abilities at work and, through this augmentation, improve organizations' abilities to accomplish their missions. This book establishes the theoretical foundations and design principles of collaborative e-Work, e-Business and e-Service, their models and applications, design and implementation techniques. The fundamental premise is that without effective e-Work and e-Services, the potential of emerging activities, such as e-Commerce, virtual manufacturing, tele-robotic medicine, automated construction, smart energy grid, cyber-supported agriculture, and intelligent transportation cannot be fully materialized. Typically, workers and managers of such value networks are frustrated with complex information systems, originally designed and built to simplify and improve performance. Even if the human-computer interface for such systems is well designed, the information and task overloads can be overwhelming. Effective delivery of expected outcomes may not occur. Challenges and emerging solutions in the context of the recently developed CCT, Collaborative Control Theory, are described, with emphasis on issues of computer-supported and communication-enabled integration, coordination and augmented collaboration. Research results and analyses of engineering design methods and complex systems management techniques are explained and illustrated.

Whereas power systems have traditionally been designed with a focus on protecting them from routine component failures and atypical user demand, we now also confront the fact that deliberate attack intended to cause maximum disruption is a real possibility. In response to this changing environment, new concepts and tools have emerged that address many of the issues facing power system operation today. This book is aimed at introducing these ideas to practicing power systems engineers, control systems engineers interested in power systems, and graduate students in these areas. The ideas are examined with an emphasis on how they can be applied to improve our understanding of power system behavior and help design better control systems. The book is supplemented by a Mathematica package enabling readers to work out nontrivial examples and problems. Also included is a set of Mathematica tutorial notebooks providing detailed solutions of the worked examples in the text. In addition to Mathematica, simulations are carried out using Simulink with Stateflow.

An increasing complexity of models used to predict real-world systems leads to the need for algorithms to replace complex models with far simpler ones, while preserving the accuracy of the predictions. This two-volume handbook covers methods as well as applications. This second volume focuses on applications in engineering, biomedical engineering, computational physics and computer science.

This edited monograph contains research contributions on a wide range of topics such as stochastic control systems, adaptive control, sliding mode control and parameter identification methods. The book also covers applications of robust and adaptice control to chemical and biotechnological systems. This collection of papers commemorates the 70th birthday of Dr. Alexander S. Poznyak.

Data-Based Controller Design presents a comprehensive analysis of data-based control design. It brings together the different data-based design methods that have been presented in the literature since the late 1990's. To the best knowledge of the author, these data-based design methods have never been collected in a single text, analyzed in depth or compared to each other, and this severely limits their widespread application. In this book these methods will be presented under a common theoretical framework, which fits also a large family of adaptive control methods: the MRAC (Model Reference Adaptive Control) methods. This common theoretical framework has been developed and presented very recently.

The book is primarily intended for PhD students and researchers - senior or junior - in control systems. It should serve as teaching material for data-based and adaptive control courses at the graduate level, as well as for reference material for PhD theses. It should also be useful for advanced engineers willing to apply data-based design. As a matter of fact, the concepts in this book are being used, under the author's supervision, for developing new software products in a automation company. The book will present simulation examples along the text. Practical applications of the concepts and methodologies will be presented in a specific chapter.

Snake Robots is a novel treatment of theoretical and practical topics related to snake robots: robotic mechanisms designed to move like biological snakes and able to operate in challenging environments in which human presence is either undesirable or impossible. Future applications of such robots include search and rescue, inspection and maintenance, and subsea operations. Locomotion in unstructured environments is a focus for this book. The text targets the disparate muddle of approaches to modelling, development and control of snake robots in current literature, giving a unified presentation of recent research results on snake robot locomotion to increase the reader's basic understanding of these mechanisms and their motion dynamics and clarify the state of the art in the field. The book is a complete treatment of snake robotics, with topics ranging from mathematical modelling techniques, through mechatronic design and implementation, to control design strategies. The development of two snake robots is described and both are used to provide experimental validation of many of the theoretical results. Snake Robots is written in a clear and easily understandable manner which makes the material accessible by specialists in the field and non-experts alike. Numerous illustrative figures and images help readers to visualize the material. The book is particularly useful to new researchers taking on a topic related to snake robots because it provides an extensive overview of the snake robot literature and also represents a suitable starting point for research in this area.

This book focuses on advanced optical finishing techniques and design for high-performance manufacturing systems. It provides numerous detailed examples of how advanced automation techniques have been applied to optical fabrication processes. The simulations, removal rate and accurate experimental results offer useful resources for engineering practice. Researchers, engineers and graduate students working in optical engineering and precision manufacture engineering will benefit from this book.

The book presents a coherent description of distributed manufacturing, providing a solid base for further research on the subject as well as smart implementations in companies. It provides a guide for those researching and working in a range of fields, such as smart manufacturing, cloud computing, RFID tracking, distributed automation, cyber physical production and global design anywhere, manufacture anywhere solutions. Foundations & Principles of Distributed Manufacturing anticipates future advances in the fields of embedded systems, the Internet of Things and cyber physical systems, outlining how adopting these innovations could rapidly bring about improvements in key performance indicators, which could in turn generate competition pressure by rendering successful business models obsolete. In laying the groundwork for powerful theoretical models, high standards for the homogeneity and soundness of the suggested setups are applied. The book especially elaborates on the upcoming competition in online manufacturing operations and respective control procedures. By outlining encapsulation and evolving decision-making principles, Foundations & Principles of Distributed Manufacturing fully conceptualizes the view of manufacturing networks as sets of loosely coupled interacting smart factory objects. Moreover, the book provides concrete approaches to a number of future fields, where distributed manufacturing might be applied. Both researchers and professionals will profit from the authors' broad experience in Distributed Manufacturing and Fractal Enterprise implementations, where they initiated and completed a number of successful research projects: within the global Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) scheme, within the European Research Area frameworks as well as national contexts, and both in industry and at leading research institutions. This background ensures well-founded theory on one hand and valuable practical results on the other in a fascinating area that is still under intensive research. Readers will acquire essential insights as well as useful guidance for categorizing and specifying extended distributed manufacturing solutions and their professional implementations.

Micro/Nano Robotics and Automation technologies have rapidly grown associated with the growth of Micro and Nanotechnologies. This book presents a summary of fundamentals in micro-nano scale engineering and the current state of the art of these technologies. "Micro-Nanorobotic Manipulation Systems and their Applications" introduces these advanced technologies from the basics and applications aspects of Micro/Nano-Robotics and Automation from the prospective micro/nano-scale manipulation. The book is organized in 9 chapters including an overview chapter of Micro/Nanorobotics and Automation technology from the historical view and important related research works. Further chapters are devoted to the physics of micro-nano fields as well as to material and science, microscopes, fabrication technology, importance of biological cell, and control techniques. Furthermore important examples, applications and a concise summary of Micro-Nanorobotics and Automation technologies are given.

This book focuses on the design of decentralized optimization methods applied to charging strategies for large-scale PEVs in electrical power systems. It studies several classes of charging coordination problems in large-scale PEVs by considering the distinct characteristics of PEV populations and electrical power systems, and subsequently designs decentralized methods based on distinct optimization schemes - such as non-cooperative games, mean-field games, and auction games - to achieve optimal/nearly optimal charging strategies. In closing, several performance aspects of the proposed algorithms, such as their convergence, computational complexity and optimality etc., are rigorously verified and demonstrated in numerical simulations. Given its scope, the book will benefit researchers, engineers, and graduate students in the fields of optimization, game theory, auction games, electrical power systems, etc., and help them design decentralized methods to implement optimal charging strategies in large-scale PEVs.

In recent years, there has been growing interest in industrial systems, especially in robotic manipulators and mobile robot systems. As the cost of robots goes down and become more compact, the number of industrial applications of robotic systems increases. Moreover, there is need to design industrial systems with intelligence, autonomous decision making capabilities, and self-diagnosing properties. Intelligent Industrial Systems: Modeling, Automation and Adaptive Behavior analyzes current trends in industrial systems design, such as intelligent, industrial, and mobile robotics, complex electromechanical systems, fault diagnosis and avoidance of critical conditions, optimization, and adaptive behavior. This book discusses examples from major areas of research for engineers and researchers, providing an extensive background on robotics and industrial systems with intelligence, autonomy, and adaptive behavior giving emphasis to industrial systems design.

This book presents mathematical models of mob control with threshold (conformity) collective decision-making of the agents. Based on the results of analysis of the interconnection between the micro- and macromodels of active network structures, it considers the static (deterministic, stochastic and game-theoretic) and dynamic (discrete- and continuous-time) models of mob control, and highlights models of informational confrontation. Many of the results are applicable not only to mob control problems, but also to control problems arising in social groups, online social networks, etc. Aimed at researchers and practitioners, it is also a valuable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as doctoral candidates specializing in the field of collective behavior modeling.

This book presents an Intelligent Control Architecture (ICA) to enable multiple collaborating marine vehicles to autonomously carry out underwater intervention missions. The presented ICA is generic in nature but aimed at a case study where a marine surface craft and an underwater vehicle are required to work cooperatively. It is shown that they are capable of cooperating autonomously towards the execution of complex activities since they have different but complementary capabilities. The ICA implementation is verified in simulation, and validated in trials by means of a team of autonomous marine robots. This book also presents architectural details and evaluation scenarios of the ICA, results of simulations and trials from different maritime operations, and future research directions.

This book highlights the latest research advances in the planning and management of electric distribution networks. It addresses various aspects of distribution network management including planning, operation, customer engagement, and technology accommodation. Given the importance of electric distribution networks in power delivery systems, effectively planning and managing them are vital to satisfying technical, economic, and customer requirements. A new planning and management philosophy, techniques, and methods are essential to handling uncertainties associated with the integration of renewable-based distributed generation, demand forecast, and customer needs. This book covers topics on managing the capacity of distribution networks, while also addressing the future needs of electric systems. The efficient and economical operation of distribution networks is an essential aspect of ensuring the effective use of resources. Accordingly, this book addresses operation and control approaches and techniques suitable for future distribution networks.

This book contains fifty-eight revised and extended research articles written by prominent researchers participating in the Advances in Engineering Technologies and Physical Science conference, held in London, U.K., 4-6 July, 2012. Topics covered include Applied and Engineering Mathematics, Computational Statistics, Mechanical Engineering, Bioengineering, Internet Engineering, Wireless Networks, Knowledge Engineering, Computational Intelligence, High Performance Computing, Manufacturing Engineering, and industrial applications. The book offers the state of art of tremendous advances in engineering technologies and physical science and applications, and also serves as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working on engineering technologies and physical science and applications.

Vision-based control of wheeled mobile robots is an interesting field of research from a scientific and even social point of view due to its potential applicability. This book presents a formal treatment of some aspects of control theory applied to the problem of vision-based pose regulation of wheeled mobile robots. In this problem, the robot has to reach a desired position and orientation, which are specified by a target image. It is faced in such a way that vision and control are unified to achieve stability of the closed loop, a large region of convergence, without local minima and good robustness against parametric uncertainty. Three different control schemes that rely on monocular vision as unique sensor are presented and evaluated experimentally. A common benefit of these approaches is that they are valid for imaging systems obeying approximately a central projection model, e.g., conventional cameras, catadioptric systems and some fisheye cameras. Thus, the presented control schemes are generic approaches. A minimum set of visual measurements, integrated in adequate task functions, are taken from a geometric constraint imposed between corresponding image features. Particularly, the epipolar geometry and the trifocal tensor are exploited since they can be used for generic scenes. A detailed experimental evaluation is presented for each control scheme.

This paper collection is the second volume of the LNMOB series on Road Vehicle Automation. The book contains a comprehensive review of current technical, socio-economic, and legal perspectives written by experts coming from public authorities, companies and universities in the U.S., Europe and Japan. It originates from the Automated Vehicle Symposium 2014, which was jointly organized by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in Burlingame, CA, in July 2014. The contributions discuss the challenges arising from the integration of highly automated and self-driving vehicles into the transportation system, with a focus on human factors and different deployment scenarios. This book is an indispensable source of information for academic researchers, industrial engineers, and policy makers interested in the topic of road vehicle automation.

This book presents the latest findings in the field of brain-inspired intelligence and visual perception (BIVP), and discusses novel research assumptions, including an introduction to brain science and the brain vision hypotheses. Moreover, it introduces readers to the theory and algorithms of BIVP - such as pheromone accumulation and iteration, neural cognitive computing mechanisms, the integration and scheduling of core modules, and brain-inspired perception, motion and control - in a step-by-step manner. Accordingly, it will appeal to university researchers, R&D engineers, undergraduate and graduate students; to anyone interested in robots, brain cognition or computer vision; and to all those wishing to learn about the core theory, principles, methods, algorithms, and applications of BIVP.

FSR, the International Conference on Field and Service Robotics, is the leading single track conference of robotics for field and service applications. This book presents the results of FSR2012, the eighth conference of Field and Service Robotics, which was originally planned for 2011 with the venue of Matsushima in Tohoku region of Japan. However, on March 11, 2011, a magnitude M9.0 earthquake occurred off the Pacific coast of Tohoku, and a large-scale disaster was caused by the Tsunami which resulted, therefore the conference was postponed by one year to July, 2012. In fact, this earthquake raised issues concerning the contribution of field and service robotics technology to emergency scenarios. A number of precious lessons were learned from operation of robots in the resulting, very real and challenging, disaster environments. Up-to-date study on disaster response, relief and recovery was then featured in the conference. This book offers 43 papers on a broad range of topics including: Disaster Response, Service/Entertainment Robots, Inspection/Maintenance Robots, Mobile Robot Navigation, Agricultural Robots, Robots for Excavation, Planetary Exploration, Large Area Mapping, SLAM for Outdoor Robots, and Elemental Technology for Mobile Robots.

"Robust Control of Robots" bridges the gap between robust control theory and applications, with a special focus on robotic manipulators. It is divided into three parts: robust control of regular, fully-actuated robotic manipulators;robust post-failure control of robotic manipulators; androbust control of cooperative robotic manipulators.

In each chapter the mathematical concepts are illustrated with experimental results obtained with a two-manipulator system. They are presented in enough detail to allow readers to implement the concepts in their own systems, or in Control Environment for Robots, a MATLAB(r)-based simulation program freely available from the authors.

The target audience for "Robust Control of Robots" includes researchers, practicing engineers, and graduate students interested in implementing robust and fault tolerant control methodologies to robotic manipulators.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to intelligent control system design, using MATLAB simulation to verify typical intelligent controller designs. It also uses real-world case studies that present the results of intelligent controller implementations to illustrate the successful application of the theory. Addressing the need for systematic design approaches to intelligent control system design using neural network and fuzzy-based techniques, the book introduces the concrete design method and MATLAB simulation of intelligent control strategies; offers a catalog of implementable intelligent control design methods for engineering applications; provides advanced intelligent controller design methods and their stability analysis methods; and presents a sample simulation and Matlab program for each intelligent control algorithm. The main topics addressed are expert control, fuzzy logic control, adaptive fuzzy control, neural network control, adaptive neural control and intelligent optimization algorithms, providing several engineering application examples for each method.

Advances in research have led to the use of robotics in a range of surgical applications. Medical robotics: Minimally invasive surgery provides authoritative coverage of the core principles, applications and future potential of this enabling technology.
Beginning with an introduction to robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (MIS), the core technologies of the field are discussed, including localization and tracking technologies for medical robotics. Key applications of robotics in laparoscopy, neurology, cardiovascular interventions, urology and orthopaedics are considered, as well as applications for ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgery, vitreoretinal surgery and natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES). Microscale mobile robots for the circulatory system and mesoscale robots for the gastrointestinal tract are investigated, as is MRI-based navigation for in vivo magnetic microrobots. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of ethical issues related to the use of robotics in surgery.
With its distinguished editor and international team of expert contributors, Medical robotics: Minimally invasive surgery is a comprehensive guide for all those working in the research, design, development and application of medical robotics for surgery. It also provides an authoritative introduction for academics and medical practitioners working in this field.
Provides authoritative coverage of the core principles, applications and future potential of medical roboticsIntroduces robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (MIS), including the core technologies of the field and localization and tracking technologies for medical roboticsConsiders key applications of robotics in laparoscopy, neurology, cardiovascular interventions, urology and orthopaedics

The volume contains 19 contributions by international experts in the field of multibody system dynamics, robotics and control. The book aims to bridge the gap between the modeling of mechanical systems by means of multibody dynamics formulations and robotics. In the classical approach, a multibody dynamics model contains a very high level of detail, however, the application of such models to robotics or control is usually limited. The papers aim to connect the different scientific communities in multibody dynamics, robotics and control. Main topics are flexible multibody systems, humanoid robots, elastic robots, nonlinear control, optimal path planning, and identification.

This book addresses recent technological progress that has led to an increased complexity in many natural and artificial systems. The resulting complexity research due to the emergence of new properties and spatio-temporal interactions among a large number of system elements - and between the system and its environment - is the primary focus of this text. This volume is divided into three parts: Part one focuses on societal and ecological systems, Part two deals with approaches for understanding, modeling, predicting and mastering socio-technical systems, and Part three includes real-life examples. Each chapter has its own special features; it is a self-contained contribution of distinguished experts working on different fields of science and technology relevant to the study of complex systems. Advances in Complex Systems of Contemporary Reality: Societal, Environmental and Engineered Systems will provide postgraduate students, researchers and managers with qualitative and quantitative methods for handling the many features of complex contemporary reality.

Session 1 includes 109 papers selected from 2011 3rd International Asia Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics (CAR 2011), held on December 24-25, 2011, Shenzhen, China. This session will act as an international forum for researchers and practitioners interested in the advances in and applications of Intelligent Control Systems. It is an opportunity to present and observe the latest research, results, and ideas in these areas. Intelligent control is a rapidly developing, complex, and challenging field of increasing practical importance and still greater potential. Its applications have a solid core in robotics and mechatronics but branch out into areas as diverse as process control, automotive industry, medical equipment, renewable energy and air conditioning. So, this session will aim to strengthen relationships between industry, research laboratories and universities. All papers published in session 1 will be peer evaluated by at least two conference reviewers. Acceptance will be based primarily on originality and contribution.