This book presents the most recent research advances in the theory, design, control and application of robotic systems, which are intended for a variety of purposes such as manipulation, manufacturing, automation, surgery, locomotion and biomechanics. The issues addressed are fundamentally kinematic in nature, including synthesis, calibration, redundancy, force control, dexterity, inverse and forward kinematics, kinematic singularities, as well as over-constrained systems. Methods used include line geometry, quaternion algebra, screw algebra, and linear algebra. These methods are applied to both parallel and serial multi-degree-of-freedom systems. The results should interest researchers, teachers and students, in fields of engineering and mathematics related to robot theory, design, control and application. All articles in the book were reported at the seventh international symposium on Advances in Robot Kinematics that was organised in June 2000 in the beautiful ancient Mediterranean town of Piran in Slovenia. The preceding symposia of the series took place in Ljubljana (1988), Linz (1990), Ferrara (1992), Ljubljana (1994), and Piran (1996), and Salzburg (1998).

Time series with mixed spectra are characterized by hidden periodic components buried in random noise. Despite strong interest in the statistical and signal processing communities, no book offers a comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the subject. Filling this void, Time Series with Mixed Spectra focuses on the methods and theory for the statistical analysis of time series with mixed spectra. It presents detailed theoretical and empirical analyses of important methods and algorithms. Using both simulated and real-world data to illustrate the analyses, the book discusses periodogram analysis, autoregression, maximum likelihood, and covariance analysis. It considers real- and complex-valued time series, with and without the Gaussian assumption. The author also includes the most recent results on the Laplace and quantile periodograms as extensions of the traditional periodogram. Complete in breadth and depth, this book explains how to perform the spectral analysis of time series data to detect and estimate the hidden periodicities represented by the sinusoidal functions. The book not only extends results from the existing literature but also contains original material, including the asymptotic theory for closely spaced frequencies and the proof of asymptotic normality of the nonlinear least-absolute-deviations frequency estimator.

Random Vibration in Spacecraft Structures Design is based on the lecture notes "Spacecraft structures" and "Special topics concerning vibration in spacecraft structures" from courses given at Delft University of Technology. The monograph, which deals with low and high frequency mechanical, acoustic random vibrations is of interest to graduate students and engineers working in aerospace engineering, particularly in spacecraft and launch vehicle structures design.

Modal analysis is a discipline that has developed considerably during the last 30 years. Theoretical and Experimental Modal Analysis is a new book on modal analysis aimed at a wide range of readers, from academics such as post-graduate students and researchers, to engineers in many industries who use modal analysis tools and need to improve their knowledge of the subject. Divided into eight chapters, the book ranges from the basics of vibration theory and signal processing to more advanced topics, including identification techniques, substructural coupling, structural modification, updating of finite element models and nonlinear modal analysis. There is also an entire chapter dedicated to vibration testing techniques. It has been written with a diversity of potential readers in mind, so that all will be able to follow the book easily and assimilate the concepts involved.

This book considers signal processing and physical modeling meth ods for sound synthesis. Such methods are useful for example in mu sic synthesizers, computer sound cards, and computer games. Physical modeling synthesis has been commercialized for the first time about 10 years ago. Recently, it has been one of the most active research topics in musical acoustics and computer music. The authors of this book, Dr. Lutz Trautmann and Dr. Rudolf Rabenstein, are active researchers and inventors in the field of sound synthesis. Together they have developed a new synthesis technique, called the functional transformation method, which can be used for pro ducing musical sound in real time. Before this book, they have published over 20 papers on the topic in journals and conference proceedings. In this excellent textbook, the results are combined in a single volume. I believe that this will be considered an important step forward for the whole community.

How is free will possible in the light of the physical and chemical underpinnings of brain activity and recent neurobiological experiments? How can the emergence of complexity in hierarchical systems such as the brain, based at the lower levels in physical interactions, lead to something like genuine free will? The nature of our understanding of free will in the light of present-day neuroscience is becoming increasingly important because of remarkable discoveries on the topic being made by neuroscientists at the present time, on the one hand, and its crucial importance for the way we view ourselves as human beings, on the other. A key tool in understanding how free will may arise in this context is the idea of downward causation in complex systems, happening coterminously with bottom up causation, to form an integral whole. Top-down causation is usually neglected, and is therefore emphasized in the other part of the book's title. The concept is explored in depth, as are the ethical and legal implications of our understanding of free will. This book arises out of a workshop held in California in April of 2007, which was chaired by Dr. Christof Koch. It was unusual in terms of the breadth of people involved: they included physicists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, philosophers, and theologians. This enabled the meeting, and hence the resulting book, to attain a rather broader perspective on the issue than is often attained at academic symposia. The book includes contributions by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, George F. R. Ellis , Christopher D. Frith, Mark Hallett, David Hodgson, Owen D. Jones, Alicia Juarrero, J. A. Scott Kelso, Christof Koch, Hans Kung, Hakwan C. Lau, Dean Mobbs, Nancey Murphy, William Newsome, Timothy O'Connor, Sean A.. Spence, and Evan Thompson.

The paradigm of complexity is pervading both science and engineering, le- ing to the emergence of novel approaches oriented at the development of a systemic view of the phenomena under study; the de?nition of powerful tools for modelling, estimation, and control; and the cross-fertilization of di?erent disciplines and approaches. One of the most promising paradigms to cope with complexity is that of networked systems. Complex, dynamical networks are powerful tools to model, estimate, and control many interesting phenomena, like agent coordination, synch- nization, social and economics events, networks of critical infrastructures, resourcesallocation, informationprocessing, controlovercommunicationn- works, etc. Advances in this ?eld are highlighting approaches that are more and more oftenbasedondynamicalandtime-varyingnetworks, i.e.networksconsisting of dynamical nodes with links that can change over time. Moreover, recent technological advances in wireless communication and decreasing cost and size of electronic devices are promoting the appearance of large inexpensive interconnected systems, each with computational, sensing and mobile ca- bilities. This is fostering the development of many engineering applications, which exploit the availability of these systems of systems to monitor and control very large-scale phenomena with ?ne resoluti

Performance-based Earthquake Engineering has emerged before the turn of the century as the most important development in the field of Earthquake Engineering during the last three decades. It has since then started penetrating codes and standards on seismic assessment and retrofitting and making headway towards seismic design standards for new structures as well. The US have been a leader in Performance-based Earthquake Engineering, but also Europe is a major contributor. Two Workshops on Performance-based Earthquake Engineering, held in Bled (Slovenia) in 1997 and 2004 are considered as milestones. The ACES Workshop in Corfu (Greece) of July 2009 builds on them, attracting as contributors world-leaders in Performance-based Earthquake Engineering from North America, Europe and the Pacific rim (Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan, China). It covers the entire scope of Performance-based Earthquake Engineering: Ground motions for performance-based earthquake engineering; Methodologies for Performance-based seismic design and retrofitting; Implementation of Performance-based seismic design and retrofitting; and Advanced seismic testing for performance-based earthquake engineering. Audience: This volume will be of interest to scientists and advanced practitioners in structural earthquake engineering, geotechnical earthquake engineering, engineering seismology, and experimental dynamics.

The papers in this volume address advanced nonlinear topics in the general areas of vibration mitigation and system identification, such as, methods of analysis of strongly nonlinear dyanmical systems; techniques and methodologies for interpreting complex, multi-frequency transitions in damped nonlinear responses; new approaches for passive vibration mitigation based on nonlinear targeted energy transfer (TET) and the associated concept of nonlinear energy sink (NES); and an overview and assessment of current nonlinear system identification techniques.

This book presents 53 independently reviewed papers which embody the latest advances in the theory, design, control and application of robotic systems, which are intended for a variety of purposes such as manipulation, manufacturing, automation, surgery, locomotion and biomechanics. Methods used include line geometry, quaternion algebra, screw algebra, and linear algebra. These methods are applied to both parallel and serial multi-degree-of-freedom systems. The contributors are recognised authorities in robot kinematics.

A very complete survey of different approaches adopted by Eastern and Western countries for the disposal of surplus ammunition. Incineration and other techniques for the disposal of high explosives, gun and rocket propellants are introduced and discussed in relation to environmental and safety requirements. Proposals for and examples of the re-use of military explosives in commercial applications are given. Topics discussed range from the conversion of energetic systems into chemical raw materials to the new development of energetic systems with special features for commercial use (such as producing artificial diamonds by detonation, self-propagating high-temperature synthesis, fire extinguishing, etc.).

It is well known that noise control at the source is the most cost-effective. Designing for quietness is therefore the most important concept in Engineering Acoustics or Technical Acoustics. The IUTAM Symposium on Designing for Quietness held at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore in December 2000, was probably the first on this topic anywhere in the world. Papers were invited from reputed researchers and professionals spread over several countries. 18 of the 21 papers presented in the Symposium are included in these proceedings after rigorous review, revision and editing. This volume covers a large number of applications, such as silencers, lined ducts, acoustic materials, source characterization, acoustical design of vehicle cabs, ships, space antennas, MEMS pressure transducer etc., active control of structure-borne noise and cavities, SEA for engine noise and structural acoustic modelling with application to design of quieter panels.
A list of references at the end of every paper will provide sources for further reading.

Intended for engineers who deal with vibrations of rods and shells in their everyday practice but who also wish to understand the subject from the mathematical point-of-view, the results contained here concerning high-frequency vibrations may be new to many. The book serves equally well as an advanced textbook, while remaining of interest to mathematicians who seek applications of the variational and asymptotic methods in elasticity and piezoelectricity. Only a minimum knowledge in advanced calculus and continuum mechanics is assumed on the part of the reader.

This short but complicated book is very demanding of any reader. The scope and style employed preserve the nature of its subject: the turbulence phe nomena in gas and liquid flows which are believed to occur at sufficiently high Reynolds numbers. Since at first glance the field of interest is chaotic, time-dependent and three-dimensional, spread over a wide range of scales, sta tistical treatment is convenient rather than a description of fine details which are not of importance in the first place. When coupled to the basic conserva tion laws of fluid flow, such treatment, however, leads to an unclosed system of equations: a consequence termed, in the scientific community, the closure problem. This is the central and still unresolved issue of turbulence which emphasizes its chief peculiarity: our inability to do reliable predictions even on the global flow behavior. The book attempts to cope with this difficult task by introducing promising mathematical tools which permit an insight into the basic mechanisms involved. The prime objective is to shed enough light, but not necessarily the entire truth, on the turbulence closure problem. For many applications it is sufficient to know the direction in which to go and what to do in order to arrive at a fast and practical solution at minimum cost. The book is not written for easy and attractive reading."

The nonlinear normal modes of a parametrically excited cantilever beam are constructed by directly applying the method of multiple scales to the governing integral-partial differential equation and associated boundary conditions. The effect of the inertia and curvature nonlin earities and the parametric excitation on the spatial distribution of the deflection is examined. The results are compared with those obtained by using a single-mode discretization. In the absence of linear viscous and quadratic damping, it is shown that there are nonlinear normal modes, as defined by Rosenberg, even in the presence of a principal parametric excitation. Furthermore, the nonlinear mode shape obtained with the direct approach is compared with that obtained with the discretization approach for some values of the excitation frequency. In the single-mode discretization, the spatial distribution of the deflection is assumed a priori to be given by the linear mode shape centsn, which is parametrically excited, as Equation (41). Thus, the mode shape is not influenced by the nonlinear curvature and nonlinear damping. On the other hand, in the direct approach, the mode shape is not assumed a priori; the nonlinear effects modify the linear mode shape centsn. Therefore, in the case of large-amplitude oscillations, the single-mode discretization may yield inaccurate mode shapes. References 1. Vakakis, A. F., Manevitch, L. I., Mikhlin, Y. v., Pilipchuk, V. N., and Zevin A. A., Nonnal Modes and Localization in Nonlinear Systems, Wiley, New York, 1

The subject of random vibrations of elastic systems has gained, over the past decades, great importance, specifically due to its relevance to technical problems in hydro- and aero-mechanics. Such problems involve aircraft, rockets and oil-drilling platforms; elastic vibrations of structures caused by acoustic radiation of a jet stream and by seismic disturbances must also be included. Appli cations of the theory of random vibrations are indeed numerous and the development of this theory poses a challenge to mathematicians, mechanicists and engineers. Therefore, a book on random vibrations by a leading authority such as Dr. V.V. Bolotin must be very welcome to anybody working in this field. It is not surprising that efforts were soon made to have the book translated into English. With pleasure I acknowledge the co-operation of the very competent translater, I Shenkman; of Mrs. C. Jones, who typeJ the first draft; and of Th. Brunsting, P. Keskikiikonen and R. Piche, who read it and suggested where required, corrections and changes. I express my gratitude to Martinus Nijhoff Publishers BV for entrust ing me with the task of editing the English translation, and to F.J. van Drunen, publishers of N. Nijhoff Publishers BV, who so kindly supported my endeavours. Special acknowledgement is due to Mrs. L. Strouth, Solid Mechanics Division, University of Waterloo, for her competent and efficient preparation of the final manuscript."

As robots are becoming more and more sophisticated the interest in robot dynamics is increasing. Within this field, contact problems are among the most interesting, since contacts are present in almost any robot task and introduce serious complexity to system dynamics, strongly influencing robot behavior. The book formulates dynamic models of robot interaction with different kinds of environment, from pure geometrical constraints to complex dynamic environments. It provides a number of examples. Dynamic modeling is the primary interest of the book but control issues are treated as well. Because dynamics and contact control tasks are strongly related the authors also provide a brief description of relevant control issues.
The book will be of interest to engineers working in research and development in robotics and automation and to both graduate and postgraduate students. The work will also be valuable to readers involved in manufacturing, robotics, automation, computer and control engineering.

This volume contains 44 papers presented at the Third Contact Mechanics International Symposium (CMIS 2001) held in Praia da Consola9ao, Peniche (portugal), June 17-21,2001. This Symposium was the direct continuation of the first two CMIS held in Lausanne (1992) and in Carry-Le-Rouet (1994). Other related meetings, in what concerns scientific topics and participants, took place in the nineties at La Grande Motte (1990), Vadstena (1996), Ferrara (1997), Munich (1998) and Grenoble (1999). The Symposium aimed at gathering researchers with interests in a wide range of topics in theoretical, computational and experimental contact mechanics. The call for papers mentioned topics in tribology, mathematical formulations and analysis, numerical methods in non-smooth mechanics, impact problems, instabilities and technological problems. The total number of participants was 102, from Universities and Research Institutes of 19 countries. The Scientific Committee reviewed 102 submitted abstracts, and the final program consisted of 6 main lectures, 43 oral communications and 36 poster presentations (see Appendix A). The papers in this book correspond to almost all the main lectures and oral communications, and they are assembled in 5 chapters: * Dynamics and Impact * Instabilities, Oscillations and Waves * Contact Models, Results and Applications * Mathematical Analysis * Numerical Methods. We thank all the authors for their valuable contributions to this volume. We are indebted to the members of the Scientific Committee for their help in refereeing the submitted abstracts and manuscripts. We also thank the Series editor, Prof. Graham Gladwell, for his assistance in the revision process.

0.1 The partial differential equation (1) (Au)(x) = L aa(x)(Dau)(x) = f(x) m lal9 is called elliptic on a set G, provided that the principal symbol a2m(X, ) = L aa(x) a lal=2m of the operator A is invertible on G X (~n \ 0); A is called elliptic on G, too. This definition works for systems of equations, for classical pseudo differential operators ("pdo), and for operators on a manifold n. Let us recall some facts concerning elliptic operators. 1 If n is closed, then for any s E ~ , is Fredholm and the following a priori estimate holds (2) 1 2 Introduction If m > 0 and A : C=(O; C') -+ L (0; C') is formally self - adjoint 2 with respect to a smooth positive density, then the closure Ao of A is a self - adjoint operator with discrete spectrum and for the distribu- tion functions of the positive and negative eigenvalues (counted with multiplicity) of Ao one has the following Weyl formula: as t -+ 00, (3) n 2m = t / II N+-(1,a2m(x,e))dxde T*O\O (on the right hand side, N+-(t,a2m(x,e))are the distribution functions of the matrix a2m(X,e) : C' -+ CU).

Optical Microscanners and Microspectrometers using Thermal Bimorph Actuators shows how to design and fabricate optical microsystems using innovative technologies and and original architectures. A barcode scanner, laser projection mirror and a microspectrometer are explained in detail, starting from the system conception, discussing simulations, choice of cleanroom technologies, design, fabrication, device test, packaging all the way to the system assembly.

An advanced microscanning device capable of one- and two-dimensional scanning can be integrated in a compact barcode scanning system composed of a laser diode and adapted optics. The original design of the microscanner combines efficiently the miniaturized thermal mechanical actuator and the reflecting mirror, providing a one-dimensional scanning or an unique combination of two movements, depending on the geometry. The simplicity of the device makes it a competitive component.

The authors rethink the design of a miniaturized optical device and find a compact solution for a microspectrometer, based on a tunable filter and a single pixel detector. A porous silicon technology combines efficiently the optical filter function with a thermal mechanical actuator on chip. The methodology for design and process calibration are discussed in detail. The device is the core component of an infrared gas spectrometer.

This book explores two important aspects of the optimal control of oscillatory systems: the initiation of optimal oscillatory regimes and control possibilities for random disturbances. The main content of the book is based upon assertions of the optimal control theory and the disturbance theory. All theoretical propositions are illustrated by examples with exact mechanical context. An appendix covers the necessary mathematical prerequisites.

At the end of the twentieth century, nonlinear dynamics turned out to be one of the most challenging and stimulating ideas. Notions like bifurcations, attractors, chaos, fractals, etc. have proved to be useful in explaining the world around us, be it natural or artificial. However, much of our everyday understanding is still based on linearity, i. e. on the additivity and the proportionality. The larger the excitation, the larger the response-this seems to be carved in a stone tablet. The real world is not always reacting this way and the additivity is simply lost. The most convenient way to describe such a phenomenon is to use a mathematical term-nonlinearity. The importance of this notion, i. e. the importance of being nonlinear is nowadays more and more accepted not only by the scientific community but also globally. The recent success of nonlinear dynamics is heavily biased towards temporal characterization widely using nonlinear ordinary differential equations. Nonlinear spatio-temporal processes, i. e. nonlinear waves are seemingly much more complicated because they are described by nonlinear partial differential equations. The richness of the world may lead in this case to coherent structures like solitons, kinks, breathers, etc. which have been studied in detail. Their chaotic counterparts, however, are not so explicitly analysed yet. The wavebearing physical systems cover a wide range of phenomena involving physics, solid mechanics, hydrodynamics, biological structures, chemistry, etc.

A number of optimization problems of the mechanics of space flight and the motion of walking robots and manipulators, and of quantum physics, eco momics and biology, have an irregular structure: classical variational proce dures do not formally make it possible to find optimal controls that, as we explain, have an impulse character. This and other well-known facts lead to the necessity for constructing dynamical models using the concept of a gener alized function (Schwartz distribution). The problem ofthe systematization of such models is very important. In particular, the problem of the construction of the general form of linear and nonlinear operator equations in distributions is timely. Another problem is related to the proper determination of solutions of equations that have nonlinear operations over generalized functions in their description. It is well-known that "the value of a distribution at a point" has no meaning. As a result the problem to construct the concept of stability for generalized processes arises. Finally, optimization problems for dynamic systems in distributions need finding optimality conditions. This book contains results that we have obtained in the above-mentioned directions. The aim of the book is to provide for electrical and mechanical engineers or mathematicians working in applications, a general and systematic treat ment of dynamic systems based on up-to-date mathematical methods and to demonstrate the power of these methods in solving dynamics of systems and applied control problems."