This is the fourth volume of the successful series Robot Operating Systems: The Complete Reference, providing a comprehensive overview of robot operating systems (ROS), which is currently the main development framework for robotics applications, as well as the latest trends and contributed systems. The book is divided into four parts: Part 1 features two papers on navigation, discussing SLAM and path planning. Part 2 focuses on the integration of ROS into quadcopters and their control. Part 3 then discusses two emerging applications for robotics: cloud robotics, and video stabilization. Part 4 presents tools developed for ROS; the first is a practical alternative to the roslaunch system, and the second is related to penetration testing. This book is a valuable resource for ROS users and wanting to learn more about ROS capabilities and features.

What are the physical mechanisms that underlie the efficient generation and transfer of energy at the nanoscale? Nature seems to know the answer to this question, having optimised the process of photosynthesis in plants over millions of years of evolution. It is conceivable that humans could mimic this process using synthetic materials, and organic semiconductors have attracted a lot of attention in this respect. Once an organic semiconductor absorbs light, bound pairs of electrons with positively charged holes, termed `excitons', are formed. Excitons behave as fundamental energy carriers, hence understanding the physics behind their efficient generation and transfer is critical to realising the potential of organic semiconductors for light-harvesting and other applications, such as LEDs and transistors. However, this problem is extremely challenging since excitons can interact very strongly with photons. Moreover, simultaneously with the exciton motion, organic molecules can vibrate in hundreds of possible ways, having a very strong effect on energy transfer. The description of these complex phenomena is often beyond the reach of standard quantum mechanical methods which rely on the assumption of weak interactions between excitons, photons and vibrations. In this thesis, Antonios Alvertis addresses this problem through the development and application of a variety of different theoretical methods to the description of these strong interactions, providing pedagogical explanations of the underlying physics. A comprehensive introduction to organic semiconductors is followed by a review of the background theory that is employed to approach the relevant research questions, and the theoretical results are presented in close connection with experiment, yielding valuable insights for experimentalists and theoreticians alike.

This book presents a variety of perspectives on vision-based applications. These contributions are focused on optoelectronic sensors, 3D & 2D machine vision technologies, robot navigation, control schemes, motion controllers, intelligent algorithms and vision systems. The authors focus on applications of unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous and mobile robots, industrial inspection applications and structural health monitoring. Recent advanced research in measurement and others areas where 3D & 2D machine vision and machine control play an important role, as well as surveys and reviews about vision-based applications. These topics are of interest to readers from diverse areas, including electrical, electronics and computer engineering, technologists, students and non-specialist readers. * Presents current research in image and signal sensors, methods, and 3D & 2D technologies in vision-based theories and applications; * Discusses applications such as daily use devices including robotics, detection, tracking and stereoscopic vision systems, pose estimation, avoidance of objects, control and data exchange for navigation, and aerial imagery processing; * Includes research contributions in scientific, industrial, and civil applications.

This book studies the fundamental aspects of many-body physics in quantum systems open to an external world. Recent remarkable developments in the observation and manipulation of quantum matter at the single-quantum level point to a new research area of open many-body systems, where interactions with an external observer and the environment play a major role. The first part of the book elucidates the influence of measurement backaction from an external observer, revealing new types of quantum critical phenomena and out-of-equilibrium dynamics beyond the conventional paradigm of closed systems. In turn, the second part develops a powerful theoretical approach to study the in- and out-of-equilibrium physics of an open quantum system strongly correlated with an external environment, where the entanglement between the system and the environment plays an essential role. The results obtained here offer essential theoretical results for understanding the many-body physics of quantum systems open to an external world, and can be applied to experimental systems in atomic, molecular and optical physics, quantum information science and condensed matter physics.

This book gathers the proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Advancement in Communication Circuits and Systems (ICCACCS 2018), which was organized by Narula Institute of Technology under the patronage of the JIS group, affiliated with West Bengal University of Technology. The book presents peer-reviewed papers that highlight new theoretical and experimental findings in the fields of electronics and communication engineering, including interdisciplinary areas like Advanced Computing, Pattern Recognition and Analysis, and Signal and Image Processing. The respective papers cover a broad range of principles, techniques and applications in microwave devices, communication and networking, signal and image processing, computations and mathematics, and control. The proceedings reflect the conference's strong emphasis on methodological approaches, and focus on applications within the domain of Computational Advancement in Communication Circuits and Systems. They also address emerging technologies in electronics and communication, together with the latest practices, issues and trends.

This book describes approaches for integrating more automation to the early stages of EDA design flows. Readers will learn how natural language processing techniques can be utilized during early design stages, in order to automate the requirements engineering process and the translation of natural language specifications into formal descriptions. This book brings together leading experts to explain the state-of-the-art in natural language processing, enabling designers to integrate these techniques into algorithms, through existing frameworks.

The Microchip PIC family of microcontrollers is the most popular series of microcontrollers in the world. However, no microcontroller is of any use without software to make it perform useful functions. This comprehensive reference focuses on designing with Microchip s mid-range PIC line using MBASIC, a powerful but easy to learn programming language. It illustrates MBASIC s abilities through a series of design examples, beginning with simple PIC-based projects and proceeding through more advanced designs. Unlike other references however, it also covers essential hardware and software design fundamentals of the PIC microcontroller series, including programming in assembly language when needed to supplement the capabilities of MBASIC. Details of hardware/software interfacing to the PIC are also provided.
BENEFIT TO THE READER: This book provides one of the most thorough introductions available to the world s most popular microcontroller, with numerous hardware and software working design examples which engineers, students and hobbyists can directly apply to their design work and studies. Using MBASIC, it is possible to develop working programs for the PIC in a much shorter time frame than when using assembly language.
* Offers a complete introduction to programming the most popular microcontroller in the world, using the MBASIC compiler from a company that is committed to supporting the book both through purchases and promotion
* Provides numerous real-world design examples, all carefully tested
* Companion website contains the source code files and executables, and will include a demo version of the MBASIC compiler, allowing engineers to work out the design exercises in the book"

Advances in photonics and nanotechnology have the potential to revolutionize humanity's ability to communicate and compute. To pursue these advances, it is mandatory to understand and properly model interactions of light with materials such as silicon and gold at the nanoscale, i.e., the span of a few tens of atoms laid side by side. These interactions are governed by the fundamental Maxwell's equations of classical electrodynamics, supplemented by quantum electrodynamics. This book presents the current state-of-the-art in formulating and implementing computational models of these interactions. Maxwell's equations are solved using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) technique, pioneered by the senior editor, whose prior Artech House books in this area are among the top ten most-cited in the history of engineering. This cutting-edge resource helps readers understand the latest developments in computational modeling of nanoscale optical microscopy and microchip lithography, as well as nanoscale plasmonics and biophotonics.

This book shows in a comprehensive presentation how Bond Graph methodology can support model-based control, model-based fault diagnosis, fault accommodation, and failure prognosis by reviewing the state-of-the-art, presenting a hybrid integrated approach to Bond Graph model-based fault diagnosis and failure prognosis, and by providing a review of software that can be used for these tasks. The structured text illustrates on numerous small examples how the computational structure superimposed on an acausal bond graph can be exploited to check for control properties such as structural observability and control lability, perform parameter estimation and fault detection and isolation, provide discrete values of an unknown degradation trend at sample points, and develop an inverse model for fault accommodation. The comprehensive presentation also covers failure prognosis based on continuous state estimation by means of filters or time series forecasting. This book has been written for students specializing in the overlap of engineering and computer science as well as for researchers, and for engineers in industry working with modelling, simulation, control, fault diagnosis, and failure prognosis in various application fields and who might be interested to see how bond graph modelling can support their work. Presents a hybrid model-based, data-driven approach to failure prognosis Highlights synergies and relations between fault diagnosis and failure prognostic Discusses the importance of fault diagnosis and failure prognostic in various fields

Micro-Raman Spectroscopy introduces readers to the theory and application of Raman microscopy. Raman microscopy is used to study the chemical signature of samples with little preperation in a non-destructive manner. An easy to use technique with ever increasing technological advances, Micro-Raman has significant application for researchers in the fields of materials science, medicine, pharmaceuticals, and chemistry.

This book has been written to help digital engineers who need a few basic analog tools in their toolbox. For practicing digital engineers, students, educators and hands-on managers who are looking for the analog foundation they need to handle their daily engineering problems, this will serve as a valuable reference to the nuts-and-bolts of system analog design in a digital world.
This book is a hands-on designer's guide to the most important topics in analog electronics-such as Analog-to-Digital and Digital-to-Analog conversion, operational amplifiers, filters, and integrating analog and digital systems. The presentation is tailored for engineers who are primarily experienced and/or educated in digital circuit design. This book will teach such readers how to "think analog" when it is the best solution to their problem. Special attention is also given to fundamental topics, such as noise and how to use analog test and measurement equipment, that are often ignored in other analog titles aimed at professional engineers.
* Extensive use of case-histories and real design examples.
* Offers digital designers the right analog "tool" for the job at hand.
* Conversational, annecdotal "tone" is very easily accessible by students and practitioners alike.

Risk detection and cyber security play a vital role in the use and success of contemporary computing. By utilizing the latest technological advances, more effective prevention techniques can be developed to protect against cyber threats. Detecting and Mitigating Robotic Cyber Security Risks is an essential reference publication for the latest research on new methodologies and applications in the areas of robotic and digital security. Featuring extensive coverage on a broad range of topics, such as authentication techniques, cloud security, and mobile robotics, this book is ideally designed for students, researchers, scientists, and engineers seeking current research on methods, models, and implementations of optimized security in digital contexts.

This book proposes some novel approaches for finding unmanned aerial vehicle trajectories to reach targets with unknown location in minimum time. At first, it reviews probabilistic search algorithms that have been used for dealing with the minimum time search (MTS) problem, and discusses how metaheuristics, and in particular the ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO), can help to find high-quality solutions with low computational time. Then, it describes two ACO-based approaches to solve the discrete MTS problem and the continuous MTS problem, respectively. In turn, it reports on the evaluation of the ACO-based discrete and continuous approaches to the MTS problem in different simulated scenarios, showing that the methods outperform in most all the cases over other state-of-the-art approaches. In the last part of the thesis, the work of integration of the proposed techniques in the ground control station developed by Airbus to control ATLANTE UAV is reported in detail, providing practical insights into the implementation of these methods for real UAVs.

This book presents high-quality contributions in the subject area of Aerospace System Science and Engineering, including topics such as: Trans-space vehicle systems design and integration, Air vehicle systems, Space vehicle systems, Near-space vehicle systems, Opto-electronic system, Aerospace robotics and unmanned system, Aerospace robotics and unmanned system, Communication, navigation, and surveillance, Dynamics and control, Intelligent sensing and information fusion, Aerodynamics and aircraft design, Aerospace propulsion, Avionics system, Air traffic management, Earth observation, Deep space exploration, and Bionic micro-aircraft/spacecraft. The book collects selected papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Aerospace System Science and Engineering (ICASSE 2020), organized by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, held on 14-16 July 2020 as virtual event due to COVID-19. It provides a forum for experts in aeronautics and astronautics to share new ideas and findings. ICASSE conferences have been organized annually since 2017 and hosted in Shanghai, Moscow, and Toronto in turn, where the three regional editors of the journal Aerospace Systems are located.

Automation techniques are meant to facilitate the delivery of flexible, agile, customized connectivity services regardless of the nature of the networking environment. New architectures combine advanced forwarding and routing schemes, mobility features, and customer-adapted resource facilities used for operation and delivery of services. Emerging Automation Techniques for the Future Internet is a collection of innovative research on the methods and applications of new architectures for the planning, dynamic delivery, and operation of services with a particular focus on automated detection and mitigation of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. While highlighting topics including policy enforcement, self-architectures, and automated networks, this book is ideally designed for engineers, IT consultants, professionals, researchers, academicians, and students seeking current research on techniques and structures used to enhance experience and services rendered.

This book provides an insight into ways of inculcating the need for applying mobile edge data analytics in bioinformatics and medicine. The book is a comprehensive reference that provides an overview of the current state of medical treatments and systems and offers emerging solutions for a more personalized approach to the healthcare field. Topics include deep learning methods for applications in object detection and identification, object tracking, human action recognition, and cross-modal and multimodal data analysis. High performance computing systems for applications in healthcare are also discussed. The contributors also include information on microarray data analysis, sequence analysis, genomics based analytics, disease network analysis, and techniques for big data Analytics and health information technology.

Approximation Methods in Engineering and Science covers fundamental and advanced topics in three areas: Dimensional Analysis, Continued Fractions, and Stability Analysis of the Mathieu Differential Equation. Throughout the book, a strong emphasis is given to concepts and methods used in everyday calculations. Dimensional analysis is a crucial need for every engineer and scientist to be able to do experiments on scaled models and use the results in real world applications. Knowing that most nonlinear equations have no analytic solution, the power series solution is assumed to be the first approach to derive an approximate solution. However, this book will show the advantages of continued fractions and provides a systematic method to develop better approximate solutions in continued fractions. It also shows the importance of determining stability chart of the Mathieu equation and reviews and compares several approximate methods for that. The book provides the energy-rate method to study the stability of parametric differential equations that generates much better approximate solutions.

This book discusses methods and algorithms for the near-optimal adaptive control of nonlinear systems, including the corresponding theoretical analysis and simulative examples, and presents two innovative methods for the redundancy resolution of redundant manipulators with consideration of parameter uncertainty and periodic disturbances. It also reports on a series of systematic investigations on a near-optimal adaptive control method based on the Taylor expansion, neural networks, estimator design approaches, and the idea of sliding mode control, focusing on the tracking control problem of nonlinear systems under different scenarios. The book culminates with a presentation of two new redundancy resolution methods; one addresses adaptive kinematic control of redundant manipulators, and the other centers on the effect of periodic input disturbance on redundancy resolution. Each self-contained chapter is clearly written, making the book accessible to graduate students as well as academic and industrial researchers in the fields of adaptive and optimal control, robotics, and dynamic neural networks.

This volume presents peer reviewed and selected papers of the International Youth Conference on Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technologies (YETI-2020), held in Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, St. Petersburg on July 10-11, 2020. It discusses current trends and major advances in electronics, telecommunications, optical and information technologies, focusing, in particular, on theoretical and practical aspects of developing novel devices and materials, improving data processing methods and technologies. The conference brings together young researchers and early-career scientists participating in a series of lectures and presentations, establishing contacts with potential partners, sharing new project ideas and starting new collaborations.

The book is logically divided into 5 main categories with each category representing a major skill set required by most security professionals:
1. Coding The ability to program and script is quickly becoming a mainstream requirement for just about everyone in the security industry. This section covers the basics in coding complemented with a slue of programming tips and tricks in C/C++, Java, Perl and NASL.
2. Sockets The technology that allows programs and scripts to communicate over a network is sockets. Even though the theory remains the same communication over TCP and UDP, sockets are implemented differently in nearly ever language.
3. Shellcode Shellcode, commonly defined as bytecode converted from Assembly, is utilized to execute commands on remote systems via direct memory access.
4. Porting Due to the differences between operating platforms and language implementations on those platforms, it is a common practice to modify an original body of code to work on a different platforms. This technique is known as porting and is incredible useful in the real world environments since it allows you to not recreate the wheel.
5. Coding Tools The culmination of the previous four sections, coding tools brings all of the techniques that you have learned to the forefront. With the background technologies and techniques you will now be able to code quick utilities that will not only make you more productive, they will arm you with an extremely valuable skill that will remain with you as long as you make the proper time and effort dedications.
*Contains never before seen chapters on writing and automating exploits on windows systems with all-new exploits.
*Perform zero-day exploit forensics by reverse engineering malicious code.
*Provides working code and scripts in all of the most common programming languages for readers to use TODAY to defend their networks."

This book highlights the prevention of possible accidents and crashes of aircrafts by analyzing the many factors that affect such events. It includes the theoretical study of known ideas and concepts, as well as a set of new methods and mathematical models. It contains factual information to investigate famous disasters and aviation accidents with aircrafts. The book proposes methods and models that can be the basis in developing guidance material for decision-making by the flight crew and experts in air traffic control. Some of the contents presented in this book are also useful in the design and operation of data transmission systems of aircraft. The book is intended for engineering and technical specialists engaged in the development, manufacturing and operations of onboard radio electronic systems of aircraft and ground-based radio engineering support for flights, as well as graduate students and senior students of radio engineering specialties. It is useful to researchers and managers whose activities are related to air traffic control.

In "A Digital Liberia, " Darren Wilkins, an accomplished ICT Professional with more than twelve years of experience in the field of ICT, describes the impact of information and communications technology on the future of Liberia. Emerging from a fourteen-year civil war and more than 150 years of underdevelopment, poverty, and illiteracy, Liberia is presently behind the curve with respect to modern and emerging technologies. Even so, "A Digital Liberia" addresses six critical sectors in which ICT can play an important role: education, government, finance, agriculture, security, and healthcare. Wilkins delineates technologies that will bring a shift in the paradigm in the Liberian society and identifies broadband through submarine fiber optic cables located in and around Africa, along with pointing out open source, green IT, cloud computing, and mobile technologies as those technologies that enable Liberia to enter the Digital Economy. "A Digital Liberia, " one of the most optimistic approaches to a developing country's technology, represents an unprecedented effort by an African-born author to outline plan for technological development in Liberia.