This book presents the cutting edge developments within a broad field related to robotic sailing. The contributions were presented during the 8th International Robotic Sailing Conference, which has taken place as a part of the 2015 World Robotic Sailing Championships in Mariehamn, Aland (Finland), August 31st - September 4th 2015. Since more than a decade, a series of competitions such as the World Robotic Sailing Championship have stimulated a variety of groups to work on research and development around autonomous sailing robots, which involves boat designers, naval architects, electrical engineers and computer scientists. While many of the challenges in building a truly autonomous sailboat are still unsolved, the books presents the state of the art of research and development within platform optimization, route and stability planning, collision avoidance, power management and boat control.

This book gives a unified treatment of classical input-output stability theory and recent developments in nonlinear robust and passivity-based control. The synthesis between these areas is provided by the theory of dissipative systems. Specifically, the small-gain and passivity theorems and their implications for nonlinear stability and stabilization are discussed from this vantage-ground. The connection between L2-gain and passivity via scattering is detailed.The passivity concepts are enriched by a generalised Hamiltonian formalism, emphasizing the close relations with modeling and control by interconnection. Feedback equivalence to a passive system and resulting stabilization strategies are discussed.The potential of L2-gain techniques in nonlinear control is demonstrated, including a compact treatment of the nonlinear H optimal control problem. This book supplies the reader with a succinct, informative summary of a fundamental and rapidly developing area of nonlinear control theory.

This book provides a unified collection of important, recent results for the design of robust controllers for uncertain systems. Most of the results presented are based on H? control theory, or its stochastic counterpart, risk sensitive control theory.Central to the philosophy of the book is the notion of an uncertain system. Uncertain systems are considered using several different uncertainty modeling schemes. These include norm bounded uncertainty, integral quadratic constraint (IQC) uncertainty and a number of stochastic uncertainty descriptions. In particular, the authors examine stochastic uncertain systems in which the uncertainty is outlined by a stochastic version of the IQC uncertainty description.For each class of uncertain systems covered in the book, corresponding robust control problems are defined and solutions discussed.

System Modeling and Optimization XX deals with new developments in the areas of optimization, optimal control and system modeling. The themes range across various areas of optimization: continuous and discrete, numerical and analytical, finite and infinite dimensional, deterministic and stochastic, static and dynamic, theory and applications, foundations and case studies. Besides some classical topics, modern areas are also presented in the contributions, including robust optimization, filter methods, optimization of power networks, data mining and risk control.
This volume contains invited and selected papers from presentations at the 20th IFIP TC7 Conference on System Modeling and Optimization, which took place at the University of Trier, Germany from July 23 to 27, 2001, and which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP).

The International Workshop on Human-Friendly Robotics (HFR) is an annual meeting that brings together academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results on all aspects related to the introduction of robots into everyday life. HFR collects contributions on current developments of a new generation of human-friendly robots, i.e., safe and dependable machines, operating in the close vicinity to humans or directly interacting with them in a wide range of domains. The papers contained in the book describe the newest and most original achievements in the field of human-robot-interaction coming from the work and ideas of young researchers. The contributions cover a wide range of topics related to human-robot interaction, both physical and cognitive, including theories, methodologies, technologies, empirical and experimental studies.

The book discusses the recent research trends in various sub-domains of computing, communication and control. It includes research papers presented at the First International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering and Science. Focusing on areas such as optimization techniques, game theory, supply chain, green computing, 5g networks, Internet of Things, social networks, power electronics and robotics, it is a useful resource for academics and researchers alike.

Efficient Dynamic Simulation of Robotic Mechanisms presents computationally efficient algorithms for the dynamic simulation of closed-chain robotic systems. In particular, the simulation of single closed chains and simple closed-chain mechanisms is investigated in detail. Single closed chains are common in many applications, including industrial assembly operations, hazardous remediation, and space exploration. Simple closed-chain mechanisms include such familiar configurations as multiple manipulators moving a common load, dexterous hands, and multi-legged vehicles. The efficient dynamics simulation of these systems is often required for testing an advanced control scheme prior to its implementation, to aid a human operator during remote teleoperation, or to improve system performance. In conjunction with the dynamic simulation algorithms, efficient algorithms are also derived for the computation of the joint space and operational space inertia matrices of a manipulator. The manipulator inertia matrix is a significant component of any robot dynamics formulation and plays an important role in both simulation and control. The efficient computation of the inertia matrix is highly desirable for real-time implementation of robot dynamics algorithms. Several alternate formulations are provided for each inertia matrix. Computational efficiency in the algorithm is achieved by several means, including the development of recursive formulations and the use of efficient spatial transformations and mathematics. All algorithms are derived and presented in a convenient tabular format using a modified form of spatial notation, a six-dimensional vector notation which greatly simplifies the presentation and analysis of multibody dynamics. Basic definitions and fundamental principles required to use and understand this notation are provided. The implementation of the efficient spatial transformations is also discussed in some detail. As a means of evaluating efficiency, the number of scalar operations (multiplications and additions) required for each algorithm is tabulated after its derivation. Specification of the computational complexity of each algorithm in this manner makes comparison with other algorithms both easy and convenient. The algorithms presented in Efficient Dynamic Simulation of Robotic Mechanisms are among the most efficient robot dynamics algorithms available at this time. In addition to computational efficiency, special emphasis is also placed on retaining as much physical insight as possible during algorithm derivation. The algorithms are easy to follow and understand, whether the reader is a robotics novice or a seasoned specialist.

This book provides new insight on the problem of closed-loop performance and oscillations in discontinuous control systems, covering the class of systems that do not necessarily have low-pass filtering properties. The author provides a practical, yet rigorous and exact approach to analysis and design of discontinuous control systems via application of a novel frequency-domain tool: the locus of a perturbed relay system. Presented are a number of practical examples applying the theory to analysis and design of discontinuous control systems from various branches of engineering, including electro-mechanical systems, process control, and electronics.

Discontinuous Control Systems is intended for readers who have knowledge of linear control theory and will be of interest to graduate students, researchers, and practicing engineers involved in systems analysis and design.

Recently, research in robot kinematics has attracted researchers with different theoretical profiles and backgrounds, such as mechanical and electrica! engineering, computer science, and mathematics. It includes topics and problems that are typical for this area and cannot easily be met elsewhere. As a result, a specialised scientific community has developed concentrating its interest in a broad class of problems in this area and representing a conglomeration of disciplines including mechanics, theory of systems, algebra, and others. Usually, kinematics is referred to as the branch of mechanics which treats motion of a body without regard to the forces and moments that cause it. In robotics, kinematics studies the motion of robots for programming, control and design purposes. It deals with the spatial positions, orientations, velocities and accelerations of the robotic mechanisms and objects to be manipulated in a robot workspace. The objective is to find the most effective mathematical forms for mapping between various types of coordinate systems, methods to minimise the numerical complexity of algorithms for real-time control schemes, and to discover and visualise analytical tools for understanding and evaluation of motion properties ofvarious mechanisms used in a robotic system.

'Et moi ..... si j'avait su comment en revenir, One service mathematics has rendered the je n'y serais point aIle.' human race. It has put common sense back Jules Verne where it belongs. on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled 'discarded non. The series is divergent; therefore we may be sense'. able to do something with it. Eric T. Bell O. Heaviside Mathematics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non linearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other parts and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics .. .'; 'One service logic has rendered com puter science .. .'; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics .. .'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'etre of this series."

Signal Measurement and Estimation Techniques for Micro and Nanotechnology discusses micro, nano and robotic cells and gives a state-of-the-art presentation of the different techniques and solutions to measure and estimate signals at the micro and nano scale. New technologies and applications such as micromanipulation (artificial components, biological objects), micro-assembly (MEMS, MOEMS, NEMS) and material and surface force characterization are covered. The importance of sensing at the micro and nano scale is presented as a key issue in control systems, as well as for understanding the physical phenomena of these systems. The book also:
Explains issues that make signal measurement and estimation techniques difficult at the micro-nano-scale and offers solutions
Discusses automated micro-assembly, and control of micro-nano roboticdevices
Presents and links signal measurement and estimation techniques for micro-nano scale systems with microfabrication methods, sensors integration and control schemes
Signal Measurement and Estimation Techniques for Micro and Nanotechnology is a must-read for researchers and engineers working in MEMS and control systems."

Increasing complexity in engineering projects raises difficult challenges in industry and requires effective tools for correct-by-construction design or design verification. This book addresses the design of such tools for correct-by-construction synthesis of supervisors for systems and specifications represented in the discrete-event framework. The approach employed uses Petri nets as discrete-event models and structural methods for the synthesis of supervisors, and may lead to significant computational benefits.Highlighting recent progress in the design of supervisors by structural methods, the book represents a novel contribution to the field. One of the main features of the presentation is the demonstration that structural methods can address a variety of supervisor specifications under diverse supervision settings. Applications of the methods presented are emphasized by considering various concurrency assumptions and types of system uncontrollability and unobservability. Also considered is the supervision problem for decentralized settings and hybrid dynamical systems. All proposed methods are fully worked-out, ready to use, and formally proven in a sound setting. design are also given. The work is self-contained and includes necessary background on Petri nets and supervision. Requiring only basic knowledge of undergraduate-level discrete mathematics, the text is accessible to a broad audience. Researchers and developers from various engineering fields may find effective means to reduce the complexity of design problems in the discrete-event setting. Graduate students may use the work as a self-study reference, and portions of the text may be used in advanced courses on discrete-event systems.

This book presents applications of Newton-like and other similar methods to solve abstract functional equations involving fractional derivatives. It focuses on Banach space-valued functions of a real domain - studied for the first time in the literature. Various issues related to the modeling and analysis of fractional order systems continue to grow in popularity, and the book provides a deeper and more formal analysis of selected issues that are relevant to many areas - including decision-making, complex processes, systems modeling and control - and deeply embedded in the fields of engineering, computer science, physics, economics, and the social and life sciences. The book offers a valuable resource for researchers and graduate students, and can also be used as a textbook for seminars on the above-mentioned subjects. All chapters are self-contained and can be read independently. Further, each chapter includes an extensive list of references.

This book focuses on solving different types of time-varying problems. It presents various Zhang dynamics (ZD) models by defining various Zhang functions (ZFs) in real and complex domains. It then provides theoretical analyses of such ZD models and illustrates their results. It also uses simulations to substantiate their efficacy and show the feasibility of the presented ZD approach (i.e., different ZFs leading to different ZD models), which is further applied to the repetitive motion planning (RMP) of redundant robots, showing its application potential.

This monograph is framed within the context of off-road mobile robotics. In particular, it discusses issues related to modelling, localization, and motion control of tracked mobile robots working in planar slippery conditions. Tracked locomotion constitutes a well-known solution for mobile platforms operating over diverse challenging terrains, for that reason, tracked robotics constitutes an important research field with many applications (e.g. agriculture, mining, search and rescue operations, military activities). The specific topics of this monograph are: historical perspective of tracked vehicles and tracked robots; trajectory-tracking model taking into account slip effect; visual-odometry-based localization strategies; and advanced slip-compensation motion controllers ensuring efficient real-time execution. Physical experiments with a real tracked robot are presented showing the better performance of the suggested novel approaches to known techniques.

Keywords: longitudinal slip, visual odometry, slip-compensation control, robust predictive control, trajectory tracking.

Related subjects: Robotics Mechanical Engineering Mechanics Computer Science Artificial Intelligence - Applications

"

This book presents comprehensive information on the relay auto-tuning method for unstable systems in process control industries, and introduces a new, refined Ziegler-Nichols method for designing controllers for unstable systems. The relay auto-tuning method is intended to assist graduate students in chemical, electrical, electronics and instrumentation engineering who are engaged in advanced process control. The book's main focus is on developing a controller tuning method for scalar and multivariable systems, particularly for unstable processes. It proposes a much simpler technique, avoiding the shortcomings of the popular relay-tuning method. The effects of higher-order harmonics are incorporated, owing to the shape of output waveforms. In turn, the book demonstrates the applicability and effectiveness of the Ziegler-Nichols method through simulations on a number of linear and non-linear unstable systems, confirming that it delivers better performance and robust stability in the presence of uncertainty. The proposed method can also be easily implemented across industries with the help of various auto-tuners available on the market. Offering a professional and modern perspective on profitably and efficiently automating controller tuning, the book will be of interest to graduate students, researchers, and industry professionals alike.

Robot manipulation is a great challenge; it encompasses versatility -adaptation to different situations-, autonomy -independent robot operation-, and dependability -for success under modeling or sensing errors. A complete manipulation task involves, first, a suitable grasp or contact configuration, and the subsequent motion required by the task. This monograph presents a unified framework by introducing task-related aspects into the knowledge-based grasp concept, leading to task-oriented grasps. Similarly, grasp-related issues are also considered during the execution of a task, leading to grasp-oriented tasks which is called framework for physical interaction (FPI). The book presents the theoretical framework for the versatile specification of physical interaction tasks, as well as the problem of autonomous planning of these tasks. A further focus is on sensor-based dependable execution combining three different types of sensors: force, vision and tactile. The FPI approach allows to perform a wide range of robot manipulation tasks. All contributions are validated with several experiments using different real robots placed on household environments; for instance, a high-DoF humanoid robot can successfully operate unmodeled mechanisms with widely varying structure in a general way with natural motions. This research was recipient of the European Georges Giralt Award and the Robotdalen Scientific Award Honorary Mention.

The impact of control system design on ship performance has been significant in different applications of ship motion control: course keeping, station keeping, roll stabilisation and vertical motion/riding control, diving, path following, etc. This monograph introduces ship motion control by studying the particular problems of control system design for course autopilots with rudder roll stabilisation and combined ruddera "fin stabilisers. Ship Motion Control revisits the ingredients that make these control designs challenging and proposes a contemporary control system design approach to meet that challenge.

The key ingredients for a successful ship motion control system design are:

• appropriate mathematical models of the ship and the disturbances;
• understanding of how performance will be assessed;
• knowledge of fundamental limitations that may prevent designs from achieving the desired performance.

The book is organised in four parts, the first three dealing with each of these and the fourth part addressing control system design.

Specific topics covered include:

• modelling and simulation of ocean waves;
• ship dynamics;
• models of actuators;
• ship roll stabilisation devices;
• ship motion performance;
• analysis of fundamental limitations for stabiliser control system design;
• constrained control design via optimisation;
• autopilot design using optimal control;
• wave filtering;
• control system design for autopilots with rudder roll stabilisation;
• control system design for integrated rudder-fin stabiliser.

Ship Motion Control willbe of interest not only to the practising marine engineer but to the academic engaged in research into this important control problem, even if new to the area. It will also be an ideal source of reference for students and tutors involved with marine and control engineering courses.

Loosely speaking, adaptive systems are designed to deal with, to adapt to, chang ing environmental conditions whilst maintaining performance objectives. Over the years, the theory of adaptive systems evolved from relatively simple and intuitive concepts to a complex multifaceted theory dealing with stochastic, nonlinear and infinite dimensional systems. This book provides a first introduction to the theory of adaptive systems. The book grew out of a graduate course that the authors taught several times in Australia, Belgium, and The Netherlands for students with an engineering and/or mathemat ics background. When we taught the course for the first time, we felt that there was a need for a textbook that would introduce the reader to the main aspects of adaptation with emphasis on clarity of presentation and precision rather than on comprehensiveness. The present book tries to serve this need. We expect that the reader will have taken a basic course in linear algebra and mul tivariable calculus. Apart from the basic concepts borrowed from these areas of mathematics, the book is intended to be self contained."

System Modeling and Optimization is an indispensable reference for anyone interested in the recent advances in these two disciplines. The book collects, for the first time, selected articles from the 21st and most recent IFIP TC 7 conference in Sophia Antipolis, France.

Applied mathematicians and computer scientists can attest to the ever-growing influence of these two subjects. The practical applications of system modeling and optimization can be seen in a number of fields: environmental science, transport and telecommunications, image analysis, free boundary problems, bioscience, and non-cylindrical evolution control, to name just a few.

New developments in each of these fields have contributed to a more complex understanding of both system modeling and optimization. Editors John Cagnol and Jean-Paul Zolesio, chairs of the conference, have assembled System Modeling and Optimization to present the most up-to-date developments to professionals and academics alike.

This monograph by Florian Rohrbein, Germano Veiga and Ciro Natale is an edited collection of 15 authoritative contributions in the area of robot technology transfer between academia and industry. It comprises three parts on "Future Industrial Robotics," "Robotic Grasping" as well as "Human-Centered Robots." The book chapters cover almost all the topics nowadays considered hot within the robotics community, from reliable object recognition to dexterous grasping, from speech recognition to intuitive robot programming, from mobile robot navigation to aerial robotics, from safe physical human-robot interaction to body extenders. All contributions stem from the results of ECHORD the European Clearing House for Open Robotics Development, a large-scale integrating project funded by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme from 2009 to 2013. ECHORD s two main pillars were the so-called experiments, 51 small-sized industry-driven research projects and the structured dialog a powerful interaction instrument between the stakeholders. The results described in this volume are expected to shed new light on innovation and technology transfer from academia to industry in the field of robotics."

This book moves toward the realization of domestic robots by presenting an integrated view of computer vision and robotics, covering fundamental topics including optimal sensor design, visual servo-ing, 3D object modelling and recognition, and multi-cue tracking, emphasizing robustness throughout. Covering theory and implementation, experimental results and comprehensive multimedia support including video clips, VRML data, C++ code and lecture slides, this book is a practical reference for roboticists and a valuable teaching resource.

We live in an ever complex, dynamic and technological-based world. A world where industries, businesses and agencies rely ever increasingly on automated systems to maintain efficiency, increase productivity, minimize human error or gain a competitive edge. Moreover, automation is now seen by many organizations as the solution to human performance problems. These organizations continue to invest significant resources to implement automated systems wherever possible and there is no doubt that automation has helped such organizations manage their sophisticated, information-rich environments, where humans have limited capabilities. Therefore, automation has helped to improve industrial and commercial progress to the extent that organizations now depend upon it for their own benefit. However, new and unresolved problems have arisen as more individuals, groups and teams interact with automated systems. Hence, the need and motivation of this volume. The chapters contained in this volume explore some of the key human performance issues facing organizations as they implement or manage automated systems. Dealing with a range of topics, from how to design optional use, avoiding misuse, to creating training strategies for automated systems, this volume also explores which theories may help us understand automation better and what research needs to be conducted. This publication attempts to illustrate how human performance research on automation can help organizations design better systems and also hopes to motivate more theoretically-based but practically-relevant research in the technological-based world of the 21st century.

Can psychoanalysis offer a new computer model? Can computer designers help psychoanalysts to understand their theory better?In contemporary publications human psyche is often related to neural networks. Why? The wiring in computers can also be related to application software. But does this really make sense?

Artificial Intelligence has tried to implement functions of human psyche. The reached achievements are remarkable; however, the goal to get a functional model of the mental apparatus was not reached. Was the selected direction incorrect?The editors are convinced: yes, and they try to give answers here. If one accepts that the brain is an information processing system, then one also has to accept that computer theories can be applied to the brain s functions, the human mental apparatus.

The contributors of this book - Solms, Panksepp, Sloman and many others who are all experts in computer design, psychoanalysis and neurology are united in one goal: finding synergy in their interdisciplinary fields."