This book addresses two of the most difficult and computationally intractable classes of problems: discrete resource constrained scheduling, and discrete-continuous scheduling. The first part of the book discusses problems belonging to the first class, while the second part deals with problems belonging to the second class. Both parts together offer valuable insights into the possibility of implementing modern techniques and tools with a view to obtaining high-quality solutions to practical and, at the same time, computationally difficult problems. It offers a valuable source of information for practitioners dealing with the real-world scheduling problems in industry, management and administration. The authors have been working on the respective problems for the last decade, gaining scientific recognition through publications and active participation in the international scientific conferences, and their results are obtained using population-based methods. Dr E. Ratajczk-Ropel explores multiple agent and A-Team concepts, while Dr A. Skakovski focuses on evolutionary algorithms with a particular focus on the population learning paradigm.

Intelligent agent and distributed AI (DAI) approaches attach specific conditions to cooperative exchanges between intelligent systems, that go far beyond simple functional interoperability. Ideally, systems that pursue local or global goals, coordinate their actions, share knowledge, and resolve conflicts during their interactions within groups of similar or dissimilar agents can be viewed as cooperative coarse-grained systems. The infrastructure of telecommunications is a world in transition. There are a number of trends that contribute to this: convergence of traditional telephony and data network worlds, blurring of boundaries between public and private networks, complementary evolution of wireline, wireless, and cable network infrastructures, the emergence of integrated broadband multimedia networks and, of course, the information superhighway. Up to now, despite the effort that has gone into this area, the field of intelligent agents research has not yet led to many fielded systems. Telecommunications applications pose strong requirements to agents such as: reliability, real-time performance, openness, security management and other integrated management, and mobility. In order to fulfil their promise, intelligent agents need to be fully dependable and typically require an integrated set of capabilities. This is the challenge that exists for intelligent agents technology in this application domain.

This book serves as an introductory text to optimization theory in normed spaces and covers all areas of nonlinear optimization. It presents fundamentals with particular emphasis on the application to problems in the calculus of variations, approximation and optimal control theory. The reader is expected to have a basic knowledge of linear functional analysis.

This book introduces readers to the novel concept of spherical fuzzy sets, showing how these sets can be applied in practice to solve various decision-making problems. It also demonstrates that these sets provide a larger preference volume in 3D space for decision-makers. Written by authoritative researchers, the various chapters cover a large amount of theoretical and practical information, allowing readers to gain an extensive understanding of both the fundamentals and applications of spherical fuzzy sets in intelligent decision-making and mathematical programming.

This book gathers selected papers presented at 3rd International Conference on Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCCT 2021), jointly organized in virtual format by Rajasthan Institute of Engineering and Technology, Jaipur and Rajasthan Technical University Kota in association with Soft Computing Research Society, during 27-28 February 2021. The volume is a collection of state-of-the-art research work in the cutting-edge technologies related to communication and intelligent systems. The topics covered are algorithms and applications of intelligent systems, informatics and applications, and communication and control systems.

This book describes computational problems related to kernel density estimation (KDE) - one of the most important and widely used data smoothing techniques. A very detailed description of novel FFT-based algorithms for both KDE computations and bandwidth selection are presented. The theory of KDE appears to have matured and is now well developed and understood. However, there is not much progress observed in terms of performance improvements. This book is an attempt to remedy this. The book primarily addresses researchers and advanced graduate or postgraduate students who are interested in KDE and its computational aspects. The book contains both some background and much more sophisticated material, hence also more experienced researchers in the KDE area may find it interesting. The presented material is richly illustrated with many numerical examples using both artificial and real datasets. Also, a number of practical applications related to KDE are presented.

This book addresses the topic of fractional-order modeling of nuclear reactors. Approaching neutron transport in the reactor core as anomalous diffusion, specifically subdiffusion, it starts with the development of fractional-order neutron telegraph equations. Using a systematic approach, the book then examines the development and analysis of various fractional-order models representing nuclear reactor dynamics, ultimately leading to the fractional-order linear and nonlinear control-oriented models. The book utilizes the mathematical tool of fractional calculus, the calculus of derivatives and integrals with arbitrary non-integer orders (real or complex), which has recently been found to provide a more compact and realistic representation to the dynamics of diverse physical systems. Including extensive simulation results and discussing important issues related to the fractional-order modeling of nuclear reactors, the book offers a valuable resource for students and researchers working in the areas of fractional-order modeling and control and nuclear reactor modeling.

This book presents selected papers from the 2021 International Conference on Electrical and Electronics Engineering (ICEEE 2020), held on January 2-3, 2021. The book focuses on the current developments in various fields of electrical and electronics engineering, such as power generation, transmission and distribution; renewable energy sources and technologies; power electronics and applications; robotics; artificial intelligence and IoT; control, automation and instrumentation; electronics devices, circuits and systems; wireless and optical communication; RF and microwaves; VLSI; and signal processing. The book is a valuable resource for academics and industry professionals alike.

This book covers connectivity and edge computing solutions for representative Internet of Things (IoT) use cases, including industrial IoT, rural IoT, Internet of Vehicles (IoV), and mobile virtual reality (VR). Based on their unique characteristics and requirements, customized solutions are designed with targets such as supporting massive connections or seamless mobility and achieving low latency or high energy efficiency. Meanwhile, the book highlights the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in future IoT networks and showcases AI-based connectivity and edge computing solutions. The solutions presented in this book serve the overall purpose of facilitating an increasingly connected and intelligent world. The potential benefits of the solutions include increased productivity in factories, improved connectivity in rural areas, enhanced safety for vehicles, and enriched entertainment experiences for mobile users. Featuring state-of-the-art research in the IoT field, this book can help answer the question of how to connect billions of diverse devices and enable seamless data collection and processing in future IoT. The content also provides insights regarding the significance of customizing use case-specific solutions as well as approaches of using various AI methods to empower IoT. This book targets researchers and graduate students working in the areas of electrical engineering, computing engineering, and computer science as a secondary textbook or reference. Professionals in industry who work in the field of IoT will also find this book useful.

This book studies selected discrete-time flight control schemes for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems in the presence of system uncertainties, external disturbances and input saturation. The main contributions of this book for UAV systems are as follows: (i) the proposed integer-order discrete-time control schemes are based on the designed discrete-time disturbance observers (DTDOs) and the neural network (NN); and (ii) the fractional-order discrete-time control schemes are developed by using the fractional-order calculus theory, the NN and the DTDOs. The book offers readers a good understanding of how to establish discrete-time tracking control schemes for fixed-wing UAV systems subject to system uncertainties, external wind disturbances and input saturation. It represents a valuable reference guide for academic research on uncertain UAV systems, and can also support advanced / Ph.D. studies on control theory and engineering.

This self-contained book presents a framework for solving a general class of linear systems with coefficients being continuous functions of parameters varying within prescribed intervals. It also provides a comprehensive overview of the theory related to solving parametric interval linear systems and the basic properties of parametric interval matrices. In particular, it develops several new algorithms delivering sharp rigorous bounds for the solutions of such systems with full mathematical rigor. The framework employs the arithmetic of revised affine forms that enables the readers to handle dependent data. The book is intended not only for researchers interested in developing rigorous methods of numerical linear algebra, but also for engineers dealing with problems involving uncertain data. The theory discussed is also useful in various other fields of numerical analysis, in computer graphics, economics, computational geometry, computer-aided design, computer-assisted proofs, computer graphics, control theory, solving constraint satisfaction problems, and global optimization.

Since its initial development, particle swarm optimization has gained wide recognition due to its ability to provide solutions efficiently, requiring only minimal implementation effort. Particle Swarm Optimization and Intelligence: Advances and Applications examines modern intelligent optimization algorithms proven as very efficient in applications from various scientific and technological fields. Providing distinguished and unique research, this innovative publication offers a compendium of leading field experiences as well as theoretical analyses and complementary techniques useful to academicians and practitioners.

This book presents recent advances in control and filter design for Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy systems with switched parameters. Thanks to its powerful ability in transforming complicated nonlinear systems into a set of linear subsystems, the T-S fuzzy model has received considerable attention from those the field of control science and engineering. Typical applications of T-S fuzzy systems include communication networks, and mechanical and power electronics systems. Practical systems often experience abrupt variations in their parameters or structures due to outside disturbances or component failures, and random switching mechanisms have been used to model these stochastic changes, such as the Markov jump principle. There are three general types of controller/filter for fuzzy Markov jump systems: mode-independent, mode-dependent and asynchronous. Mode-independence does not focus on whether modes are accessible and ignores partially useful mode information, which results in some conservatism. The mode-dependent design approach relies on timely, complete and correct information regarding the mode of the studied plant. Factors like component failures and data dropouts often make it difficult to obtain exact mode messages, which further make the mode-dependent controllers/filters less useful. Recently, to overcome these issues, researchers have focused on asynchronous techniques. Asynchronous modes are accessed by observing the original systems based on certain probabilities. The book investigates the problems associated with controller/filter design for all three types. It also considers various networked constraints, such as data dropouts and time delays, and analyzes the performances of the systems based on Lyapunov function and matrix inequality techniques, including the stochastic stability, dissipativity, and $H_\infty$. The book not only shows how these approaches solve the control and filtering problems effectively, but also offers potential meaningful research directions and ideas. Covering a variety of fields, including continuous-time and discrete-time Markov processes, fuzzy systems, robust control, and filter design problems, the book is primarily intended for researchers in system and control theory, and is also a valuable reference resource for graduate and undergraduate students. Further, it provides cases of fuzzy control problems that are of interest to scientists, engineers and researchers in the field of intelligent control. Lastly it is useful for advanced courses focusing on fuzzy modeling, analysis, and control.

This book includes recent research works on how business around the world affected by the time of COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of recent technological developments has had a tremendous impact on how we manage disasters. These developments have changed how countries and governments collect information. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced online service companies to maintain and build relationships with consumers when their world turns. Businesses are now facing tension between generating sales during a period of severe economic hardship and respect for threats to life and livelihoods that have changed consumer preferences.

This unique book discusses machine understanding (MU). This new branch of classic machine perception research focuses on perception that leads to understanding and is based on the categories of sensory objects. In this approach the visual and non-visual knowledge, in the form of visual and non-visual concepts, is used in the complex reasoning process that leads to understanding. The book presents selected new concepts, such as perceptual transformations, within the machine understanding framework, and uses perceptual transformations to solve perceptual problems (visual intelligence tests) during understanding, where understanding is regarded as an ability to solve complex visual problems described in the authors' previous books. Thanks to the uniqueness of the research topics covered, the book appeals to researchers from a wide range of disciplines, especially computer science, cognitive science and philosophy.

This book reflects the latest research trends, methods and experimental results in the field of electrical and information technologies for rail transportation, which covers abundant state-of-the-art research theories and ideas. As a vital field of research that is highly relevant to current developments in a number of technological domains, the subjects it covered include intelligent computing, information processing, Communication Technology, Automatic Control, etc. The objective of the proceedings is to provide a major interdisciplinary forum for researchers, engineers, academicians as well as industrial professionals to present the most innovative research and development in the field of rail transportation electrical and information technologies. Engineers and researchers in academia, industry, and the government will also explore an insight view of the solutions that combine ideas from multiple disciplines in this field. The volumes serve as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working on rail transportation, electrical and information technologies.

This 2 volume-set of IFIP AICT 583 and 584 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th IFIP WG 12.5 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations, AIAI 2020, held in Neos Marmaras, Greece, in June 2020.* The 70 full papers and 5 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 149 submissions. They cover a broad range of topics related to technical, legal, and ethical aspects of artificial intelligence systems and their applications and are organized in the following sections: Part I: classification; clustering - unsupervised learning -analytics; image processing; learning algorithms; neural network modeling; object tracking - object detection systems; ontologies - AI; and sentiment analysis - recommender systems. Part II: AI ethics - law; AI constraints; deep learning - LSTM; fuzzy algebra - fuzzy systems; machine learning; medical - health systems; and natural language. *The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This book is the volume of the proceedings for the 17th Edition of ISER. The goal of ISER (International Symposium on Experimental Robotics) symposia is to provide a single-track forum on the current developments and new directions of experimental robotics. The series has traditionally attracted a wide readership of researchers and practitioners interested to the advances and innovations of robotics technology. The 54 contributions cover a wide range of topics in robotics and are organized in 9 chapters: aerial robots, design and prototyping, field robotics, human-robot interaction, machine learning, mapping and localization, multi-robots, perception, planning and control. Experimental validation of algorithms, concepts, or techniques is the common thread running through this large research collection. Chapter "A New Conversion Method to Evaluate the Hazard Potential of Collaborative Robots in Free Collisions" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This volume consists of 52 peer-reviewed papers, presented at the International Conference on Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (SDM-19) held in Budapest, Hungary in July 2019. Leading-edge research into sustainable design and manufacturing aims to enable the manufacturing industry to grow by adopting more advanced technologies, and at the same time improve its sustainability by reducing its environmental impact. The topic includes the sustainable design of products and services; the sustainable manufacturing of all products; energy efficiency in manufacturing; innovation for eco-design; circular economy; industry 4.0; industrial metabolism; automotive and transportation systems. Application areas are wide and varied. The book will provide an excellent overview of the latest developments in the Sustainable Design and Manufacturing Area.

This volume highlights new trends and challenges in research on agents and the new digital and knowledge economy, and includes 23 papers classified into the following categories: business process management, agent-based modeling and simulation, and anthropic-oriented computing. All papers were originally presented at the 11th International KES Conference on Agents and Multi-Agent Systems - Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2017) held June 21-23, 2017 in Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal. Today's economy is driven by technologies and knowledge. Digital technologies can free, shift and multiply choices, and often intrude on the territory of other industries by providing new ways of conducting business operations and creating value for customers and companies. The topics covered in this volume include software agents, multi-agent systems, agent modeling, mobile and cloud computing, big data analysis, business intelligence, artificial intelligence, social systems, computer embedded systems and nature inspired manufacturing, etc., all of which contribute to the modern Digital Economy. The results presented here will be of theoretical and practical value to researchers and industrial practitioners working in the fields of artificial intelligence, collective computational intelligence, innovative business models, the new digital and knowledge economy and, in particular, agent and multi-agent systems, technologies, tools and applications.

This book features a selection of extended papers presented at the 8th IFIP WG 12.6 International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Knowledge Management, AI4KM 2021, held in Yokohama, Japan, in January 2021, in the framework of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IJCAI 2020.*The 14 revised and extended papers presented together with an invited talk were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this volume. They present new research and innovative aspects in the field of knowledge management and discuss methodological, technical and organizational aspects of artificial intelligence used for knowledge management. *The workshop was held virtually.

This book presents recent research on the hybridization of intelligent methods, which refers to combining methods to solve complex problems. It discusses hybrid approaches covering different areas of intelligent methods and technologies, such as neural networks, swarm intelligence, machine learning, reinforcement learning, deep learning, agent-based approaches, knowledge-based system and image processing. The book includes extended and revised versions of invited papers presented at the 6th International Workshop on Combinations of Intelligent Methods and Applications (CIMA 2016), held in The Hague, Holland, in August 2016. The book is intended for researchers and practitioners from academia and industry interested in using hybrid methods for solving complex problems.

This book features selected research papers presented at the International Conference on Evolutionary Computing and Mobile Sustainable Networks (ICECMSN 2020), held at the Sir M. Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology on 20-21 February 2020. Discussing advances in evolutionary computing technologies, including swarm intelligence algorithms and other evolutionary algorithm paradigms which are emerging as widely accepted descriptors for mobile sustainable networks virtualization, optimization and automation, this book is a valuable resource for researchers in the field of evolutionary computing and mobile sustainable networks.

This book reports on the latest advances in the study of motion control in biomimetic swimming robots with high speed and high manoeuvrability. It presents state-of-the-art studies on various swimming robots including robotic fish, dolphins and jellyfish in a unified framework, and discusses the potential benefits of applying biomimetic underwater propulsion to autonomous underwater vehicle design, such as: speed, energy economy, enhanced manoeuvrability, and reduced detectability. Given its scope, the book will be of interest to researchers, engineers and graduate students in robotics and ocean engineering who wish to learn about the core principles, methods, algorithms, and applications of biomimetic underwater robots.

This book provides insights into the First International Conference on Communication, Devices and Computing (ICCDC 2017), which was held in Haldia, India on November 2-3, 2017. It covers new ideas, applications and the experiences of research engineers, scientists, industrialists, scholars and students from around the globe. The proceedings highlight cutting-edge research on communication, electronic devices and computing, and address diverse areas such as 5G communication, spread spectrum systems, wireless sensor networks, signal processing for secure communication, error control coding, printed antennas, analysis of wireless networks, antenna array systems, analog and digital signal processing for communication systems, frequency selective surfaces, radar communication, and substrate integrated waveguide and microwave passive components, which are key to state-of-the-art innovations in communication technologies.