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 book studies how autonomous aerial robots physically interact with the surrounding environment. Intended to promote the advancement of aerial physical interaction, it analyzes a particular class of aerial robots: tethered aerial vehicles. By examining specific systems, while still considering the challenges of the general problem, it will help readers acquire the knowledge and expertise needed for the subsequent development of more general methods applicable to aerial physical interaction. The formal analysis covers topics ranging from control, state estimation, and motion planning, to experimental validation. Addressing both theoretical and technical aspects, the book is intended for a broad academic and industrial readership, including undergraduate students, researchers and engineers. It can be used as a teaching reference, or as the basis for product development.

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.

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 innovative ideas on achieving sustainable development and using green technologies to conserve our ecosystem. Innovation is the successful exploitation of a new idea. Through innovation, we can achieve MORE while using LESS. Innovations in science & technology will not only help mankind as a whole, but also contribute to the economic growth of individual countries. It is essential that the global problem of environmental degradation be addressed immediately, and thus, we need to rethink the concept of sustainable development. Indeed, new environmentally friendly technologies are fundamental to attaining sustainable development. The book shares a wealth of innovative green technological ideas on how to preserve and improve the quality of the environment, and how to establish a more resource-efficient and sustainable society. The book provides an interdisciplinary approach to addressing various technical issues and capitalizing on advances in computing & optimization for scientific & technological development, smart information, communication, bio-monitoring, smart cities, food quality assessment, waste management, environmental aspects, alternative energies, sustainable infrastructure development, etc. In short, it offers valuable information and insights for budding engineers, researchers, upcoming young minds and industry professionals, promoting awareness for recent advances in the various fields mentioned above.

This book presents a collection of state-of-the-art approaches for deep-learning-based biomedical and health-related applications. The aim of healthcare informatics is to ensure high-quality, efficient health care, and better treatment and quality of life by efficiently analyzing abundant biomedical and healthcare data, including patient data and electronic health records (EHRs), as well as lifestyle problems. In the past, it was common to have a domain expert to develop a model for biomedical or health care applications; however, recent advances in the representation of learning algorithms (deep learning techniques) make it possible to automatically recognize the patterns and represent the given data for the development of such model. This book allows new researchers and practitioners working in the field to quickly understand the best-performing methods. It also enables them to compare different approaches and carry forward their research in an important area that has a direct impact on improving the human life and health. It is intended for researchers, academics, industry professionals, and those at technical institutes and R&D organizations, as well as students working in the fields of machine learning, deep learning, biomedical engineering, health informatics, and related fields.

This book presents state-of-the-art research advances in the field of biologically inspired cooperative control theories and their applications. It describes various biologically inspired cooperative control and optimization approaches and highlights real-world examples in complex industrial processes. Multidisciplinary in nature and closely integrating theory and practice, the book will be of interest to all university researchers, control engineers and graduate students in intelligent systems and control who wish to learn the core principles, methods, algorithms, and applications.

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.

Due to increasing potential in real-world applications such as visual communications, computer assisted biomedical imaging, and video surveillance, image and video interpretations have become an area of growing interest. Intelligent Image and Video Interpretation: Algorithms and Applications covers all aspects of image and video analysis from low-level early visions to high-level recognition. This publication highlights how these techniques have become applicable and will prove to be a valuable tool for researchers, professionals, and graduate students working or studying the fields of imaging and video processing.

Complex problems usually cannot be solved by individual methods or techniques and require the synergism of more than one of them to be solved. This book presents a number of current efforts that use combinations of methods or techniques to solve complex problems in the areas of sentiment analysis, search in GIS, graph-based social networking, intelligent e-learning systems, data mining and recommendation systems. Most of them are connected with specific applications, whereas the rest are combinations based on principles. Most of the chapters are extended versions of the corresponding papers presented in CIMA-15 Workshop, which took place in conjunction with IEEE ICTAI-15, in November 2015. The rest are invited papers that responded to special call for papers for the book. The book is addressed to researchers and practitioners from academia or industry, who are interested in using combined methods in solving complex problems in the above areas.

This book features research related to computational intelligence and energy and thermal aware management of computing resources. The authors publish original and timely research in current areas of power, energy, temperature, and environmental engineering as and advances in computational intelligence that are benefiting the fields. Topics include signal processing architectures, algorithms, and applications; biomedical informatics and computation; artificial intelligence and machine learning; green technologies in information; and more. The book includes contributions from a wide range of researchers, academicians, and industry professionals. The book is made up both of extended papers presented at the International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Sustainable System (ICICSS 2018), September 20-21, 2018, and other accepted papers on R&D and original research work related to the practice and theory of technologies to enable and support Intelligent Computing applications.

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.

Music recommendation systems are becoming more and more popular. The increasing amount of personal data left by users on social media contributes to more accurate inference of the user's musical preferences and the same to quality of personalized systems. Health recommendation systems have become indispensable tools in decision making processes in the healthcare sector. Their main objective is to ensure the availability of valuable information at the right time by ensuring information quality, trustworthiness, authentication, and privacy concerns. Medical doctors deal with various kinds of diseases in which the music therapy helps to improve symptoms. Listening to music may improve heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure in people with heart disease. Sound healing therapy uses aspects of music to improve physical and emotional health and well-being. The book presents a variety of approaches useful to create recommendation systems in healthcare, music, and in music therapy.

The primary aim of this volume is to provide researchers and engineers from both academia and industry with up-to-date coverage of recent advances in the fields of robotic welding, intelligent systems and automation. It gathers selected papers from the 2018 International Conference on Robotic Welding, Intelligence and Automation (RWIA 2018), held Oct 20-22, 2018 in Guangzhou, China. The contributions reveal how intelligentized welding manufacturing (IWM) is becoming an inescapable trend, just as intelligentized robotic welding is becoming a key technology. The volume is divided into four main parts: Intelligent Techniques for Robotic Welding, Sensing in Arc Welding Processing, Modeling and Intelligent Control of Welding Processing, and Intelligent Control and its Applications in Engineering.

This book is a collection of several contributions which show the state of the art in specific areas of Computational Intelligence. This carefully edited book honors the 65th birthday of Rudolf Kruse. The main focus of these contributions lies on treating vague data as well as uncertain and imprecise information with automated procedures, which use techniques from statistics, control theory, clustering, neural networks etc. to extract useful and employable knowledge.

This book offers a comprehensive treatise on the recent pursuits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) - Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) by casting the crucial features of interpretability and explainability in the original framework of Granular Computing. The innovative perspective established with the aid of information granules provides a high level of human centricity and transparency central to the development of AI constructs. The chapters reflect the breadth of the area and cover recent developments in the methodology, advanced algorithms and applications of XAI to visual analytics, knowledge representation, learning and interpretation. The book appeals to a broad audience including researchers and practitioners interested in gaining exposure to the rapidly growing body of knowledge in AI and intelligent systems.

This book presents an authoritative collection of contributions reporting on fuzzy logic and decision theory, together with applications and case studies in economics and management science. Dedicated to Professor Jaume Gil Aluja in recognition of his pioneering work, the book reports on theories, methods and new challenges, thus offering not only a timely reference guide but also a source of new ideas and inspirations for graduate students and researchers alike.

This book offers an overview of state-of-the-art econometric techniques, with a special emphasis on financial econometrics. There is a major need for such techniques, since the traditional way of designing mathematical models - based on researchers' insights - can no longer keep pace with the ever-increasing data flow. To catch up, many application areas have begun relying on data science, i.e., on techniques for extracting models from data, such as data mining, machine learning, and innovative statistics. In terms of capitalizing on data science, many application areas are way ahead of economics. To close this gap, the book provides examples of how data science techniques can be used in economics. Corresponding techniques range from almost traditional statistics to promising novel ideas such as quantum econometrics. Given its scope, the book will appeal to students and researchers interested in state-of-the-art developments, and to practitioners interested in using data science techniques.

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.

In the modern age of the 4th Industrial Revolution, advancements in communication and connectivity are transforming the professional world as new technologies are being embedded into society. These innovations have triggered the development of a digitally driven world where adaptation is necessary. This is no different in the architectural field, where the changing paradigm has opened new methods and advancements that have yet to be researched. Impact of Industry 4.0 on Architecture and Cultural Heritage is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the application of new technological tools, such as digital modeling, within architectural design, and improves the understanding of the strategic role of Industry 4.0 as a tool to empower the role of architecture and cultural heritage in society. Moreover, the book provides insights and support concerned with advances in communication and connectivity among digital environments in different types of research and industry communities. While highlighting topics such as semantic processing, crowdsourcing, and interactive environments, this publication is ideally designed for architects, engineers, construction professionals, cultural researchers, academicians, and students.

This book offers readers a comprehensive guide to the evolution of the database field from its earliest stages up to the present-and from classical relational database management systems to the current Big Data metaphor. In particular, it gathers the most significant research from the Italian database community that had relevant intersections with international projects. Big Data technology is currently dominating both the market and research. The book provides readers with a broad overview of key research efforts in modelling, querying and analysing data, which, over the last few decades, have became massive and heterogeneous areas.

This book is the fifth volume in the successful book series Robot Operating System: The Complete Reference. The objective of the book is to provide the reader with comprehensive coverage on the Robot Operating System (ROS), which is currently considered to be the primary development framework for robotics applications, and the latest trends and contributing systems. The content is divided into six parts. Pat I presents for the first time the emerging ROS 2.0 framework, while Part II focuses on multi-robot systems, namely on SLAM and Swarm coordination. Part III provides two chapters on autonomous systems, namely self-driving cars and unmanned aerial systems. In turn, Part IV addresses the contributions of simulation frameworks for ROS. In Part V, two chapters explore robotic manipulators and legged robots. Finally, Part VI presents emerging topics in monocular SLAM and a chapter on fault tolerance systems for ROS. Given its scope, the book will offer a valuable companion for ROS users and developers, helping them deepen their knowledge of ROS capabilities and features.