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 novel approaches to formulate, analyze, and solve problems in the area of distributed service networks, notably based on AI-related methods (parallel/cloud computing, declarative modeling, fuzzy methods). Distributed service networks are an important area of research and applications. The methods presented are meant to integrate both emerging and existing concepts and approaches for different types of production flows through synchronizations. An integration of logistics services (e.g., supply chains and projects portfolios), public and multimodal transport, traffic flow congestion management in ad hoc networks, design of high-performance cloud data centers, and milk-run distribution networks are shown as illustrations for the methods proposed. The book is of interest to researchers and practitioners in computer science, operations management, production control, and related fields.

This book offers a comprehensive reference guide for modeling humanoid robots using intelligent and fuzzy systems. It provides readers with the necessary intelligent and fuzzy tools for controlling humanoid robots by incomplete, vague, and imprecise information or insufficient data, where classical modeling approaches cannot be applied. The respective chapters, written by prominent researchers, explain a wealth of both basic and advanced concepts including fuzzy control, metaheuristic-based control, neutrosophic control, etc. To foster reader comprehension, all chapters include relevant numerical examples or case studies. Taken together, they form an excellent reference guide for researchers, lecturers, and postgraduate students pursuing research on humanoid robots. Moreover, by extending all the main aspects of humanoid robots to its intelligent and fuzzy counterparts, the book presents a dynamic snapshot of the field that is expected to stimulate new directions, ideas, and developments.

This book presents a collection of the most recent hybrid methods for image processing. The algorithms included consider evolutionary, swarm, machine learning and deep learning. The respective chapters explore different areas of image processing, from image segmentation to the recognition of objects using complex approaches and medical applications. The book also discusses the theory of the methodologies used to provide an overview of the applications of these tools in image processing. The book is primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students of science, engineering and computational mathematics, and can also be used for courses on artificial intelligence, advanced image processing, and computational intelligence. Further, it is a valuable resource for researchers from the evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence and image processing communities.

This research monograph brings AI to the field of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to make a customer experience with a product or service smart and enjoyable. AI is here to help customers to get a refund for a canceled flight, unfreeze a banking account or get a health test result. Today, CRM has evolved from storing and analyzing customers' data to predicting and understanding their behavior by putting a CRM system in a customers' shoes. Hence advanced reasoning with learning from small data, about customers' attitudes, introspection, reading between the lines of customer communication and explainability need to come into play. Artificial Intelligence for Customer Relationship Management leverages a number of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), simulation and reasoning techniques to enable CRM with intelligence. An effective and robust CRM needs to be able to chat with customers, providing desired information, completing their transactions and resolving their problems. It introduces a systematic means of ascertaining a customers' frame of mind, their intents and attitudes to determine when to provide a thorough answer, a recommendation, an explanation, a proper argument, timely advice and promotion or compensation. The author employs a spectrum of ML methods, from deterministic to statistical to deep, to predict customer behavior and anticipate possible complaints, assuring customer retention efficiently. Providing a forum for the exchange of ideas in AI, this book provides a concise yet comprehensive coverage of methodologies, tools, issues, applications, and future trends for professionals, managers, and researchers in the CRM field together with AI and IT professionals.

This book proposes a number of promising models and methods for adaptive segmentation, swarm partition, permissible segmentation, and transform properties, as well as techniques for spatio-temporal video segmentation and interpretation, online fuzzy clustering of data streams, and fuzzy systems for information retrieval. The main focus is on the spatio-temporal segmentation of visual information. Sets of meaningful and manageable image or video parts, defined by visual interest or attention to higher-level semantic issues, are often vital to the efficient and effective processing and interpretation of viewable information. Developing robust methods for spatial and temporal partition represents a key challenge in computer vision and computational intelligence as a whole. This book is intended for students and researchers in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence, especially those whose work involves image processing and recognition, video parsing, and content-based image/video retrieval.

This book shows how a conventional multi-layered approach can be used to control a snake robot on a desired path while moving on a flat surface. To achieve robustness to unknown variations in surface conditions, it explores various adaptive robust control methods. The authors propose a sliding-mode control approach designed to achieve robust maneuvering for bounded uncertainty with a known upper bound. The control is modified by addition of an adaptation law to alleviate the overestimation problem of the switching gain as well as to circumvent the requirement for knowledge regarding the bounds of uncertainty. The book works toward non-conservativeness, achieving efficient tracking in the presence of slowly varying uncertainties with a specially designed framework for time-delayed control. It shows readers how to extract superior performance from their snake robots with an approach that allows robustness toward bounded time-delayed estimation errors. The book also demonstrates how the multi-layered control framework can be simplified by employing differential flatness for such a system. Finally, the mathematical model of a snake robot moving inside a uniform channel using only side-wall contact is discussed. The model has further been employed to demonstrate adaptive robust control design for such a motion. Using numerous illustrations and tables, Adaptive Robust Control for Planar Snake Robots will interest researchers, practicing engineers and postgraduate students working in the field of robotics and control systems.

This book presents the latest trends and developments in multimodal optimization and niching techniques. Most existing optimization methods are designed for locating a single global solution. However, in real-world settings, many problems are "multimodal" by nature, i.e., multiple satisfactory solutions exist. It may be desirable to locate several such solutions before deciding which one to use. Multimodal optimization has been the subject of intense study in the field of population-based meta-heuristic algorithms, e.g., evolutionary algorithms (EAs), for the past few decades. These multimodal optimization techniques are commonly referred to as "niching" methods, because of the nature-inspired "niching" effect that is induced to the solution population targeting at multiple optima. Many niching methods have been developed in the EA community. Some classic examples include crowding, fitness sharing, clearing, derating, restricted tournament selection, speciation, etc. Nevertheless, applying these niching methods to real-world multimodal problems often encounters significant challenges. To facilitate the advance of niching methods in facing these challenges, this edited book highlights the latest developments in niching methods. The included chapters touch on algorithmic improvements and developments, representation, and visualization issues, as well as new research directions, such as preference incorporation in decision making and new application areas. This edited book is a first of this kind specifically on the topic of niching techniques. This book will serve as a valuable reference book both for researchers and practitioners. Although chapters are written in a mutually independent way, Chapter 1 will help novice readers get an overview of the field. It describes the development of the field and its current state and provides a comparative analysis of the IEEE CEC and ACM GECCO niching competitions of recent years, followed by a collection of open research questions and possible research directions that may be tackled in the future.

This book discusses systematic designs of stable adaptive fuzzy logic controllers employing hybridizations of Lyapunov strategy-based approaches/H theory-based approaches and contemporary stochastic optimization techniques. The text demonstrates how candidate stochastic optimization techniques like Particle swarm optimization (PSO), harmony search (HS) algorithms, covariance matrix adaptation (CMA) etc. can be utilized in conjunction with the Lyapunov theory/H theory to develop such hybrid control strategies. The goal of developing a series of such hybridization processes is to combine the strengths of both Lyapunov theory/H theory-based local search methods and stochastic optimization-based global search methods, so as to attain superior control algorithms that can simultaneously achieve desired asymptotic performance and provide improved transient responses. The book also demonstrates how these intelligent adaptive control algorithms can be effectively utilized in real-life applications such as in temperature control for air heater systems with transportation delay, vision-based navigation of mobile robots, intelligent control of robot manipulators etc.

This book discusses the parametric modeling, performance evaluation, design optimization and comparative study of the high-speed, parallel pick-and-place robots. It collects the modeling methodology, evaluation criteria and design guidelines for parallel PnP robots to provide a systematic analysis method for robotic developers. Furthermore, it gathers the research results previously scattered in many prestigious international journals and conference proceedings and methodically edits them and presents them in a unified form. The book is of interest to researchers, R&D engineers and graduate students in industrial parallel robotics who wish to learn the core principles, methods, algorithms, and applications.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the Third IFIP TC 12 International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Data Science, ICCIDS 2020, held in Chennai, India, in February 2020.The 19 revised full papers and 8 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 94 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: computational intelligence for text analysis; computational intelligence for image and video analysis; and data science.

This book gathers the proceedings of the Multidisciplinary International Conference of Research Applied to Defense and Security (MICRADS), held at the Eloy Alfaro Military Academy (ESMIL) in Quito, Ecuador, on May 13-15,2020. It covers a broad range of topics in systems, communication, and defense; strategy and political-administrative vision in defense; and engineering and technologies applied to defense. Given its scope, it offers a valuable resource for practitioners, researchers, and students alike.

This book is based on the authors' research on the stabilization and fault-tolerant control of batch processes, which are flourishing topics in the field of control system engineering. It introduces iterative learning control for linear/nonlinear single/multi-phase batch processes; iterative learning optimal guaranteed cost control; delay-dependent iterative learning control; and iterative learning fault-tolerant control for linear/nonlinear single/multi-phase batch processes. Providing important insights and useful methods and practical algorithms that can potentially be applied in batch process control and optimization, it is a valuable resource for researchers, scientists, and engineers in the field of process system engineering and control engineering.

This book contains selected papers from SEB-18, the Tenth International Conference on Sustainability in Energy and Buildings, which was organised by KES International and Griffith University and held in Gold Coast, Australia in June 2018. SEB-18 invited contributions on a range of topics related to sustainable buildings and renewable energy, and explored innovative topics regarding intelligent buildings and cities. Applicable areas included the sustainable design and of buildings, neighbourhoods and cities (built and natural environment); optimisation and modelling techniques; smart energy systems for smart cities; green information communications technology; and a broad range of solar, wind, wave and other renewable energy topics. The aim of the conference was to bring together researchers and government and industry professionals to discuss the future of energy in buildings, neighbourhoods and cities from a theoretical, practical, implementation and simulation perspective. In addition, SEB-18 offered an exciting opportunity to present, interact, and learn about the latest research in Sustainability in Energy and Buildings.

This book highlights the emerging field of intelligent computing and developing smart systems. It includes chapters discussing the outcome of challenging research related to distributed computing, smart machines and their security related research, and also covers next-generation communication techniques and the networking technologies that have the potential to build the future communication infrastructure. Bringing together computing, communications and other aspects of intelligent and smart computing, it contributes to developing a roadmap for future research on intelligent systems.

Computational intelligence is rapidly becoming an essential part of reliability engineering. This book offers a wide spectrum of viewpoints on the merger of technologies. Leading scientists share their insights and progress on reliability engineering techniques, suitable mathematical methods, and practical applications. Thought-provoking ideas are embedded in a solid scientific basis that contribute to the development the emerging field. This book is for anyone working on the most fundamental paradigm-shift in resilience engineering in decades. Scientists benefit from this book by gaining insight in the latest in the merger of reliability engineering and computational intelligence. Businesses and (IT) suppliers can find inspiration for the future, and reliability engineers can use the book to move closer to the cutting edge of technology.

This Festschrift is a tribute to Susan Stepney's ideas and achievements in the areas of computer science, formal specifications and proofs, complex systems, unconventional computing, artificial chemistry, and artificial life. All chapters were written by internationally recognised leaders in computer science, physics, mathematics, and engineering. The book shares fascinating ideas, algorithms and implementations related to the formal specification of programming languages and applications, behavioural inheritance, modelling and analysis of complex systems, parallel computing and non-universality, growing cities, artificial life, evolving artificial neural networks, and unconventional computing. Accordingly, it offers an insightful and enjoyable work for readers from all walks of life, from undergraduate students to university professors, from mathematicians, computers scientists and engineers to physicists, chemists and biologists.

This book presents a collection of mathematical models that deals with the real scenario in the industries. The primary objective of this book is to explore various effective methods for inventory control and management using soft computing techniques. Inventory control and management is a very tedious task faced by all the organizations in any sector of the economy. It makes decisions for policies, activities, and procedures in order to make sure that the right amount of each item is held in stock at any time. Many industries suffer from indiscipline while ordering and production mismatch. It is essential to provide best ordering policy to control such kind of mismatch in the industries. All the mathematical model solutions are provided with the help of various soft computing optimization techniques to determine optimal ordering policy. This book is beneficial for practitioners, educators, and researchers. It is also helpful for retailers/managers for improving business functions and making more accurate and realistic decisions.

This book discusses the use of efficient metaheuristic algorithms to solve diverse power system problems, providing an overview of the various aspects of metaheuristic methods to enable readers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the field and of conducting studies on specific metaheuristic algorithms related to power-system applications. By bridging the gap between recent metaheuristic techniques and novel power system methods that benefit from the convenience of metaheuristic methods, it offers power system practitioners who are not metaheuristic computation researchers insights into the techniques, which go beyond simple theoretical tools and have been adapted to solve important problems that commonly arise. On the other hand, members of the metaheuristic computation community learn how power engineering problems can be translated into optimization tasks, and it is also of interest to engineers and application developers. Further, since each chapter can be read independently, the relevant information can be quickly found. Power systems is a multidisciplinary field that addresses the multiple approaches used for design and analysis in areas ranging from signal processing, and electronics to computational intelligence, including the current trend of metaheuristic computation.

The author presents Probatio, a toolkit for building functional DMI (digital musical instruments) prototypes, artifacts in which gestural control and sound production are physically decoupled but digitally mapped. He uses the concept of instrumental inheritance, the application of gestural and/or structural components of existing instruments to generate ideas for new instruments. To support analysis and combination, he then leverages a traditional design method, the morphological chart, in which existing artifacts are split into parts, presented in a visual form and then recombined to produce new ideas. And finally he integrates the concept and the method in a concrete object, a physical prototyping toolkit for building functional DMI prototypes: Probatio. The author's evaluation of this modular system shows it reduces the time required to develop functional prototypes. The book is useful for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students in the areas of musical creativity and human-computer interaction, in particular those engaged in generating, communicating, and testing ideas in complex design spaces.

This book proposes neural networks algorithms and advanced machine learning techniques for processing nonlinear dynamic signals such as audio, speech, financial signals, feedback loops, waveform generation, filtering, equalization, signals from arrays of sensors, and perturbations in the automatic control of industrial production processes. It also discusses the drastic changes in financial, economic, and work processes that are currently being experienced by the computational and engineering sciences community. Addresses key aspects, such as the integration of neural algorithms and procedures for the recognition, the analysis and detection of dynamic complex structures and the implementation of systems for discovering patterns in data, the book highlights the commonalities between computational intelligence (CI) and information and communications technologies (ICT) to promote transversal skills and sophisticated processing techniques. This book is a valuable resource for a. The academic research community b. The ICT market c. PhD students and early stage researchers d. Companies, research institutes e. Representatives from industry and standardization bodies

This textbook covers the broader field of artificial intelligence. The chapters for this textbook span within three categories: Deductive reasoning methods: These methods start with pre-defined hypotheses and reason with them in order to arrive at logically sound conclusions. The underlying methods include search and logic-based methods. These methods are discussed in Chapters 1through 5. Inductive Learning Methods: These methods start with examples and use statistical methods in order to arrive at hypotheses. Examples include regression modeling, support vector machines, neural networks, reinforcement learning, unsupervised learning, and probabilistic graphical models. These methods are discussed in Chapters~6 through 11. Integrating Reasoning and Learning: Chapters~11 and 12 discuss techniques for integrating reasoning and learning. Examples include the use of knowledge graphs and neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence. The primary audience for this textbook are professors and advanced-level students in computer science. It is also possible to use this textbook for the mathematics requirements for an undergraduate data science course. Professionals working in this related field many also find this textbook useful as a reference.

Big data and data science are transforming our world today in ways we could not have imagined at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The accompanying wave of innovation has sparked advances in healthcare, engineering, business, science, and human perception, among others. The tremendous advances in computing power and intelligent techniques have opened many opportunities for managing data and investigating data in virtually every field, and the scope of data science is expected to grow over the next decade. These future research achievements will solve old challenges and create new opportunities for growth and development. Thus, the research presented in this book is interdisciplinary and covers themes embracing emotions, artificial intelligence, robotics applications, sentiment analysis, smart city problems, assistive technologies, speech melody, and fall and abnormal behavior detection. The book is directed to the researchers, practitioners, professors and students interested in recent advances in methodologies and applications of data science. An introduction to the topic is provided, and research challenges and future research opportunities are highlighted throughout.

Investigative Data Mining for Security and Criminal Detection is the first book to outline how data mining technologies can be used to combat crime in the 21st century. It introduces security managers, law enforcement investigators, counter-intelligence agents, fraud specialists, and information security analysts to the latest data mining techniques and shows how they can be used as investigative tools. Readers will learn how to search public and private databases and networks to flag potential security threats and root out criminal activities even before they occur.
The groundbreaking book reviews the latest data mining technologies including intelligent agents, link analysis, text mining, decision trees, self-organizing maps, machine learning, and neural networks. Using clear, understandable language, it explains the application of these technologies in such areas as computer and network security, fraud prevention, law enforcement, and national defense. International case studies throughout the book further illustrate how these technologies can be used to aid in crime prevention.
Investigative Data Mining for Security and Criminal Detection will also serve as an indispensable resource for software developers and vendors as they design new products for the law enforcement and intelligence communities.

Key Features:
* Covers cutting-edge data mining technologies available to use in evidence gathering and collection
* Includes numerous case studies, diagrams, and screen captures to illustrate real-world applications of data mining
* Easy-to-read format illustrates current and future data mining uses in preventative law enforcement, criminal profiling, counter-terrorist initiatives, and forensic science
* Introduces cutting-edge technologies in evidence gathering and collection, using clear non-technical language
* Illustrates current and future applications of data mining tools in preventative law enforcement, homeland security, and other areas of crime detection and prevention
* Shows how to construct predictive models for detecting criminal activity and for behavioral profiling of perpetrators
* Features numerous Web links, vendor resources, case studies, and screen captures illustrating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies

This book includes high-quality papers presented at the International Conference on Data Science and Management (ICDSM 2019), organised by the Gandhi Institute for Education and Technology, Bhubaneswar, from 22 to 23 February 2019. It features research in which data science is used to facilitate the decision-making process in various application areas, and also covers a wide range of learning methods and their applications in a number of learning problems. The empirical studies, theoretical analyses and comparisons to psychological phenomena described contribute to the development of products to meet market demands.