This book collects some recent developments in stochastic control theory with applications to financial mathematics. We first address standard stochastic control problems from the viewpoint of the recently developed weak dynamic programming principle. A special emphasis is put on the regularity issues and, in particular, on the behavior of the value function near the boundary. We then provide a quick review of the main tools from viscosity solutions which allow to overcome all regularity problems. We next address the class of stochastic target problems which extends in a nontrivial way the standard stochastic control problems. Here the theory of viscosity solutions plays a crucial role in the derivation of the dynamic programming equation as the infinitesimal counterpart of the corresponding geometric dynamic programming equation. The various developments of this theory have been stimulated by applications in finance and by relevant connections with geometric flows. Namely, the second order extension was motivated by illiquidity modeling, and the controlled loss version was introduced following the problem of quantile hedging. The third part specializes to an overview of Backward stochastic differential equations, and their extensions to the quadratic case. "

This book provides readers with up-to-date research of emerging cyber threats and defensive mechanisms, which are timely and essential. It covers cyber threat intelligence concepts against a range of threat actors and threat tools (i.e. ransomware) in cutting-edge technologies, i.e., Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud computing and mobile devices. This book also provides the technical information on cyber-threat detection methods required for the researcher and digital forensics experts, in order to build intelligent automated systems to fight against advanced cybercrimes. The ever increasing number of cyber-attacks requires the cyber security and forensic specialists to detect, analyze and defend against the cyber threats in almost real-time, and with such a large number of attacks is not possible without deeply perusing the attack features and taking corresponding intelligent defensive actions - this in essence defines cyber threat intelligence notion. However, such intelligence would not be possible without the aid of artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced data mining techniques to collect, analyze, and interpret cyber-attack campaigns which is covered in this book. This book will focus on cutting-edge research from both academia and industry, with a particular emphasis on providing wider knowledge of the field, novelty of approaches, combination of tools and so forth to perceive reason, learn and act on a wide range of data collected from different cyber security and forensics solutions. This book introduces the notion of cyber threat intelligence and analytics and presents different attempts in utilizing machine learning and data mining techniques to create threat feeds for a range of consumers. Moreover, this book sheds light on existing and emerging trends in the field which could pave the way for future works. The inter-disciplinary nature of this book, makes it suitable for a wide range of audiences with backgrounds in artificial intelligence, cyber security, forensics, big data and data mining, distributed systems and computer networks. This would include industry professionals, advanced-level students and researchers that work within these related fields.

The Chemical Batch Reactor is aimed at tackling the above problems from a blending of academic and industrial perspectives. Advanced solutions (i.e., those based on recent research results) to the four fundamental problems of modeling, identification, control and fault diagnosis for batch processes are developed in detail in four distinct chapters. In each chapter, a general overview of foundational concepts is also given, together with a review of recent and classical literature on the various subjects.

To provide a unitary treatment of the different topics and give a firm link to the underlying practical applications, a single case study is developed as the book progresses; a batch process of industrial interest, i.e., the phenol-formaldehyde reaction for the production of phenolic resins, is adopted to test the various techniques developed. In this way, a roadmap of the solutions to fundamental problems, ranging from the early stages of the production process to the complete design of control and diagnosis systems, is provided for both industrial practitioners and academic researchers.

This book describes the advances and applications in Sliding mode control (SMC) which is widely used as a powerful method to tackle uncertain nonlinear systems. The book is organized into 21 chapters which have been organised by the editors to reflect the various themes of sliding mode control. The book provides the reader with a broad range of material from first principles up to the current state of the art in the area of SMC and observation presented in a clear, matter-of-fact style. As such it is appropriate for graduate students with a basic knowledge of classical control theory and some knowledge of state-space methods and nonlinear systems. The resulting design procedures are emphasized using Matlab/Simulink software.

This book explores and analyzes emerging innovations within today's most cutting-edge science and technology (S&T) areas, which are cited as carrying the potential to revolutionize governmental structures, economies, and international security. Some have argued that such technologies will yield doomsday scenarios and that military applications of such technologies have even greater potential than nuclear weapons to radically change the balance of power. As the United States looks to the future - whether dominated by extremist groups co-opting advanced weapons in the world of globalized non-state actors or states engaged in persistent regional conflicts in areas of strategic interest - new adversaries and new science and technology will emerge. Choices made today that affect science and technology will impact how ably the US can and will respond. Chapters within the book look at the changing strategic environment in which security operations are planned and conducted; how these impact science and technology policy choices made today; and predictions of how science and technology may play a beneficial or deleterious role in the future. Some game changing technologies have received global attention, while others may be less well known; the new technologies discussed within this proposal, as well as future discoveries, may significantly alter military capabilities and may generate new threats against military and civilian sectors.

This book provides a complete picture of several decision support tools for predictive maintenance. These include embedding early anomaly/fault detection, diagnosis and reasoning, remaining useful life prediction (fault prognostics), quality prediction and self-reaction, as well as optimization, control and self-healing techniques. It shows recent applications of these techniques within various types of industrial (production/utilities/equipment/plants/smart devices, etc.) systems addressing several challenges in Industry 4.0 and different tasks dealing with Big Data Streams, Internet of Things, specific infrastructures and tools, high system dynamics and non-stationary environments . Applications discussed include production and manufacturing systems, renewable energy production and management, maritime systems, power plants and turbines, conditioning systems, compressor valves, induction motors, flight simulators, railway infrastructures, mobile robots, cyber security and Internet of Things. The contributors go beyond state of the art by placing a specific focus on dynamic systems, where it is of utmost importance to update system and maintenance models on the fly to maintain their predictive power.

This volume in the newly established series Advances in Delays and Dynamics (ADD@S) provides a collection of recent results on the design and analysis of Low Complexity Controllers for Time Delay Systems. A widely used indirect method to obtain low order controllers for time delay systems is to design a controller for the reduced order model of the plant. In the dual indirect approach, an infinite dimensional controller is designed first for the original plant model; then, the controller is approximated by keeping track of the degradation in performance and stability robustness measures. The present volume includes new techniques used at different stages of the indirect approach. It also includes new direct design methods for fixed structure and low order controllers. On the other hand, what is meant by low complexity controller is not necessarily low order controller. For example, Smith predictor or similar type of controllers include a copy of the plant internally in the controller, so they are technically infinite dimensional. However, they have very nice numerical properties from the point of reliable implementation. Therefore, such predictor-based controllers are considered as low complexity. This book includes new predictor-based design techniques, with several application examples.

A guide on the use of SVMs in pattern classification, including a rigorous performance comparison of classifiers and regressors. The book presents architectures for multiclass classification and function approximation problems, as well as evaluation criteria for classifiers and regressors. Features: Clarifies the characteristics of two-class SVMs; Discusses kernel methods for improving the generalization ability of neural networks and fuzzy systems; Contains ample illustrations and examples; Includes performance evaluation using publicly available data sets; Examines Mahalanobis kernels, empirical feature space, and the effect of model selection by cross-validation; Covers sparse SVMs, learning using privileged information, semi-supervised learning, multiple classifier systems, and multiple kernel learning; Explores incremental training based batch training and active-set training methods, and decomposition techniques for linear programming SVMs; Discusses variable selection for support vector regressors.

"Advanced Mechatronics and MEMS Devices"describes state-of-the-art MEMS devices and introduces the latest technology in electrical and mechanical microsystems. The evolution of design in microfabrication, as well as emerging issues in nanomaterials, micromachining, micromanufacturing and microassembly are all discussed at length in this volume. Advanced Mechatronics also provides a reader with knowledge of MEMS sensors array, MEMS multidimensional accelerometer, artificial skin with imbedded tactile components, as well as other topics in MEMS sensors and transducers. The book also presents a number of topics in advanced robotics and an abundance of applications of MEMS in robotics, like reconfigurable modular snake robots, magnetic MEMS robots for drug delivery and flying robots with adjustable wings, to name a few.

This book comprises four chapters that address some of the latest research in clouds robotics and sensor clouds. The first part of the book includes two chapters on cloud robotics. The first chapter introduces a novel resource allocation framework for cloud robotics and proposes a Stackelberg game model and the corresponding task oriented pricing mechanism for resource allocation. In the second chapter, the authors apply Cloud Computing for building a Cloud-Based 3D Point Cloud extractor for stereo images. Their objective is to have a dynamically scalable and applicable to near real-time scenarios.

This volume presents a collection of papers presented at the 15th International Symposium of Robotic Research (ISRR). ISRR is the biennial meeting of the International Foundation of Robotic Research (IFRR) and its 15th edition took place in Flagstaff, Arizona on December 9 to December 12, 2011. As for the previous symposia, ISRR 2011 followed up on the successful concept of a mixture of invited contributions and open submissions. Therefore approximately half of the 37 contributions were invited contributions from outstanding researchers selected by the IFRR officers and the program committee, and the other half were chosen among the open submissions after peer review. This selection process resulted in a truly excellent technical program which featured some of the very best of robotic research. The program was organized around oral presentation in a single-track format and included for the first time a small number of interactive presentations. The symposium contributions contained in this volume report on a variety of new robotics research results covering a broad spectrum including perception, manipulation, grasping, vehicles and design, navigation, control and integration, estimation and SLAM.

Robotic sailing offers the potential of wind propelled vehicles which are sufficiently autonomous to remain at sea for months at a time. These could replace or augment existing oceanographic sampling systems, be used in border surveillance and security or offer a means of carbon neutral transportation. To achieve this represents a complex, multi-disciplinary challenge to boat designers and naval architects, systems/electrical engineers and computer scientists.

Since 2004 a series of competitions in the form of the Sailbot, World Robotic Sailing Championship and Microtransat competitions have sparked an explosion in the number of groups working on autonomous sailing robots. Despite this interest the longest distance sailed autonomously remains only a few hundred miles. Many of the challenges in building truly autonomous sailing robots still remain unsolved.

These proceedings present the cutting edge of work in a variety of fields related to robotic sailing. They will be presented during the 5th International Robtoic Sailing Conference, which is taking place as part of the 2012 World Robotic Sailing Championships.

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The monograph written by John Mullane, Ba-Ngu Vo, Martin Adams and Ba-Tuong Vo is devoted to the field of autonomous robot systems, which have been receiving a great deal of attention by the research community in the latest few years. The contents are focused on the problem of representing the environment and its uncertainty in terms of feature based maps. Random Finite Sets are adopted as the fundamental tool to represent a map, and a general framework is proposed for feature management, data association and state estimation. The approaches are tested in a number of experiments on both ground based and marine based facilities.

This authored monograph presents a study on fundamental limits and robustness of stability and stabilization of time-delay systems, with an emphasis on time-varying delay, robust stabilization, and newly emerged areas such as networked control and multi-agent systems. The authors systematically develop an operator-theoretic approach that departs from both the traditional algebraic approach and the currently pervasive LMI solution methods. This approach is built on the classical small-gain theorem, which enables the author to draw upon powerful tools and techniques from robust control theory. The book contains motivating examples and presents mathematical key facts that are required in the subsequent sections. The target audience primarily comprises researchers and professionals in the field of control theory, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students alike.

Recent advances in wireless technology have led to the emergence of industry standards such as WirelessHART. These strategies minimise the need for cumbersome cabling, thereby reducing costs. However, applying them involves the challenge of handling stochastic network delays, which can degrade control performance. To address this problem, commonly used simple PID could be employed. However, PID suffers from gain range limitations when used in a delayed environment. Furthermore, model-based controllers are complex and require exact models of the process and systematic system identification for implementation. Therefore, to address these issues, the book proposes control strategies that retain the simplicity of PID in terms of ease of tuning and structure, while improving on the performance of the closed-loop system with regard to stochastic network delays and mismatches. Concretely, it proposes and discusses three strategies, namely: Setpoint Weighting (SW), Filtered Predictive PI (FPPI) and Optimal Fuzzy PID. In order to optimise some of these controllers, two novel hybrid optimisation algorithms combining the dynamism of the Bacterial Foraging Algorithm (BFA) and advantages of both the Spiral Dynamic Algorithm (SDA) and the Accelerated Particle Swarm Optimisation (APSO) have been used. The strategies proposed here can also be applied in stochastic control scenarios (not necessarily wireless) characterised by uncertainties. This book will be useful to engineers and researchers in both industry and academia. In industry, it will be particularly useful to research and development efforts where PID controllers and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) involving both short and long term stochastic network delay are employed. Thus, it can be used for real-time control design in these areas. In the academic setting, the book will be useful for researchers, undergraduate and graduate students of instrumentation and control. It can also be used as reference material for teaching courses on predictive and adaptive controls and their application.

This book is an introduction to the mathematical theory of design for articulated mechanical systems known as linkages. The focus is on sizing mechanical constraints that guide the movement of a work piece, or end-effector, of the system. The function of the device is prescribed as a set of positions to be reachable by the end-effector; and the mechanical constraints are formed by joints that limit relative movement. The goal is to find all the devices that can achieve a specific task. Formulated in this way the design problem is purely geometric in character. Robot manipulators, walking machines, and mechanical hands are examples of articulated mechanical systems that rely on simple mechanical constraints to provide a complex workspace for the end- effector. The principles presented in this book form the foundation for a design theory for these devices. The emphasis, however, is on articulated systems with fewer degrees of freedom than that of the typical robotic system, and therefore, less complexity. This book will be useful to mathematics, engineering and computer science departments teaching courses on mathematical modeling of robotics and other articulated mechanical systems.

This new edition includes research results of the past decade on the synthesis of multi loop planar and spherical linkages, and the use of homotopy methods and Clifford algebras in the synthesis of spatial serial chains. One new chapter on the synthesis of spatial serial chains introduces numerical homotopy and the linear product decomposition of polynomial systems. The second new chapter introduces the Clifford algebra formulation of the kinematics equations of serial chain robots. Examples are use throughout to demonstrate the theory."

This book proposes a consistent methodology for building intelligent systems. It puts forward several formal models for designing and implementing rules-based systems, and presents illustrative case studies of their applications. These include software engineering, business process systems, Semantic Web, and context-aware systems on mobile devices. Rules offer an intuitive yet powerful method for representing human knowledge, and intelligent systems based on rules have many important applications. However, their practical development requires proper techniques and models - a gap that this book effectively addresses.

This book offers a comprehensive, timely snapshot of current research, technologies and applications of soft robotics. The different chapters, written by international experts across multiple fields of soft robotics, cover innovative systems and technologies for soft robot legged locomotion, soft robot manipulation, underwater soft robotics, biomimetic soft robotic platforms, plant-inspired soft robots, flying soft robots, soft robotics in surgery, as well as methods for their modeling and control. Based on the results of the second edition of the Soft Robotics Week, held on April 25 - 30, 2016, in Livorno, Italy, the book reports on the major research lines and novel technologies presented and discussed during the event.

The book 'BiLBIQ: A biologically inspired Robot with walking and rolling locomotion' deals with implementing a locomotion behavior observed in the biological archetype Cebrennus villosus to a robot prototype whose structural design needs to be developed. The biological sample is investigated as far as possible and compared to other evolutional solutions within the framework of nature's inventions. Current achievements in robotics are examined and evaluated for their relation and relevance to the robot prototype in question. An overview of what is state of the art in actuation ensures the choice of the hardware available and most suitable for this project. Through a constant consideration of the achievement of two fundamentally different ways of locomotion with one and the same structure, a robot design is developed and constructed taking hardware constraints into account. The development of a special leg structure that needs to resemble and replace body elements of the biological archetype is a special challenge to be dealt with. Finally a robot prototype was achieved, which is able to walk and roll - inspired by the spider Cebrennus villosus.

This essential textbook concerns analysis and control of engineering mechanisms, which includes almost any apparatus with moving parts used in daily life, from musical instruments to robots. A particular characteristic of this book is that it presents with considerable breadth and rigor both vibrations and controls. Many contemporary texts combine both of these topics in a single, one term course. This text supports the more favorable circumstance where the material is covered in a one year sequence contains enough material for a two semester sequence, but it can also be used in a single semester course combining two topics. "Mechanical Systems: A Unified Approach to Vibrations and Controls" presents a common notation and approach to these closely related areas. Examples from the both vibrations and controls components are integrated throughout this text.

This book gathers the peer-reviewed papers presented at the seventh edition of the international workshop "Service Orientation in Holonic and Multi-Agent Manufacturing - SOHOMA'17", held on October 19-20, 2017 and organized by the University of Nantes, France in collaboration with the CIMR Research Centre in Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Robotics at the University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania, the LAMIH Laboratory of Industrial and Human Automation Control, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Valenciennes and Hainaut-Cambresis, France and the CRAN Research Centre for Automatic Control, Nancy at the University of Lorraine, France. The main objective of SOHOMA'17 was to foster innovation in smart and sustainable manufacturing and logistics systems and in this context to promote concepts, methods and solutions addressing trends in service orientation of agent-based control technologies with distributed intelligence. The book is organized in eight parts, each with a number of chapters describing research in current domains of the digital transformation in manufacturing and trends in future service and computing oriented manufacturing control: Part 1: Advanced Manufacturing Control, Part 2: Big Data Management, Part 3: Cyber-Physical Production Systems, Part 4: Cloud- and Cyber-Physical Systems for Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing, Part 5: Simulation for Physical Internet and Intelligent & Sustainable Logistics Systems, Part 6: Formal Methods and Advanced Scheduling for Future Industrial Systems, Part 7: Applications and Demonstrators, Part 8: Production and Logistic Control Systems. The contributions focus on how the digital transformation, such as the one advocated by "Industry 4.0" or "Industry of the future" concepts, can improve the maintainability and the sustainability of manufacturing processes, products, and logistics. Digital transformation relates to the interaction between the physical and informational worlds and is realized by virtualization of products, processes and resources managed as services.

Power quality describes a set of parameters of electric power and the load's ability to function properly under specific conditions. It is estimated that problems relating to power quality costs the European industry hundreds of billions of Euros annually. In contrast, financing for the prevention of these problems amount to fragments of these costs. Power Theories for Improved Power Quality addresses this imbalance by presenting and assessing a range of methods and problems related to improving the quality of electric power supply.
Focusing particularly on active compensators and the DSP based control algorithms, Power Theories for Improved Power Quality introduces the fundamental problems of electrical power. This introduction is followed by chapters which discuss:

'Power theories' including their historical development and application to practical problems,

operational principles of active compensator's DSP control based algorithms using examples and results from laboratory research, and

the key areas of application for these methods and suggested practical solutions.

Power Theories for Improved Power Quality is a key study resource for students in engineering and technical degrees as well as a reference for professional and practitioners in the electrical energy sector working with power quality.
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The book is the proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR 2014), held 24th-26th June 2014 in Aalborg, Denmark. The conference featured the latest highlights in the emerging and interdisciplinary field of neural rehabilitation engineering and identified important healthcare challenges the scientific community will be faced with in the coming years. Edited and written by leading experts in the field, the book includes keynote papers, regular conference papers, and contributions to special and innovation sessions, covering the following main topics: neuro-rehabilitation applications and solutions for restoring impaired neurological functions; cutting-edge technologies and methods in neuro-rehabilitation; and translational challenges in neuro-rehabilitation. Thanks to its highly interdisciplinary approach, the book will not only be a highly relevant reference guide for academic researchers, engineers, neurophysiologists, neuroscientists, physicians and physiotherapists working at the forefront of their field, but will also help to act as bridge between the scientific, engineering and medical communities.