This book primarily illustrates the rationale, design and technical realization/verification for the cooperative guidance and control systems (CGCSs) of missile autonomous formation (MAF). From the seven functions to the five major compositions of CGCS, the book systematically explains the theory and modeling, analysis, synthesis and design of CGCSs for MAF, including bionics-based theories. Further, the book addresses how to create corresponding digital simulation analysis systems, as well as hardware in the loop (HIL) simulation test systems and flight test systems, to evaluate the combat effectiveness of MAF. Lastly, it provides detailed information on digital simulation analysis for a large range of wind tunnel test data, as well as test results of HIL system simulations and embedded systems testing.

This book describes the advances and applications in Sliding mode control (SMC) which is widely used as a powerful method to tackle uncertain nonlinear systems. The book is organized into 21 chapters which have been organised by the editors to reflect the various themes of sliding mode control. The book provides the reader with a broad range of material from first principles up to the current state of the art in the area of SMC and observation presented in a clear, matter-of-fact style. As such it is appropriate for graduate students with a basic knowledge of classical control theory and some knowledge of state-space methods and nonlinear systems. The resulting design procedures are emphasized using Matlab/Simulink software.

This book provides a complete picture of several decision support tools for predictive maintenance. These include embedding early anomaly/fault detection, diagnosis and reasoning, remaining useful life prediction (fault prognostics), quality prediction and self-reaction, as well as optimization, control and self-healing techniques. It shows recent applications of these techniques within various types of industrial (production/utilities/equipment/plants/smart devices, etc.) systems addressing several challenges in Industry 4.0 and different tasks dealing with Big Data Streams, Internet of Things, specific infrastructures and tools, high system dynamics and non-stationary environments . Applications discussed include production and manufacturing systems, renewable energy production and management, maritime systems, power plants and turbines, conditioning systems, compressor valves, induction motors, flight simulators, railway infrastructures, mobile robots, cyber security and Internet of Things. The contributors go beyond state of the art by placing a specific focus on dynamic systems, where it is of utmost importance to update system and maintenance models on the fly to maintain their predictive power.

The book "Paradigm Shift for Future Tennis" starts with revelations that make obvious the limitations of today's tennis, which does not use the laws of modern Biomechanics and Neurophysiology. The second part of the book includes a new approach to the quantum mind of a champion. It will reveal the secret weapon of Roger Federer and the blueprint of a future tennis champion. This book will expose the new tennis shot emerging from the field of sports science. It is a real weapon, which can generate a ball-speed similar to that of the first serve: the Power High-Forehand. Its aim is to generate maximal possible racket-head speed while players do not wait for the ball to bounce. This is both a tactical and psychological basis for the future tennis game. This aggressive interceptive psychology will shape the minds of future tennis champions. High racket-head speed can be achieved using the stretch-reflex, without big loops and swings. Weapons of a future tennis game will comprise of whip-like tennis serves and ground strokes, based on the stretch-reflex, and using the whole body in a fluid and integrated manner, thus manifesting a superb combination of speed and strength. Restructure your brain and apply the power of state of the art biomechanical, mathematical, medical, neural, cognitive, and quantum computational intelligence to understand the tennis of today and the future

Intelligent Information Access techniques attempt to overcome the limi- tions of current search devices by providing personalized information items and product/service recommendations. They normally utilize direct or in- rect user input and facilitate the information search and decision processes, according to user needs, preferences and usage patterns. Recent devel- ments at the intersection of Information Retrieval, Information Filtering, MachineLearning,UserModelling,NaturalLanguageProcessingandHuman- Computer Interaction o?er novel solutions that empower users to go beyond single-sessionlookuptasksandthataimatservingthemorecomplexrequi- ment: "Tell me what I don't know that I need to know". Information?ltering systems,speci?callyrecommendersystems,havebeenrevolutionizingtheway information seekers?nd what they want, becausethey e?ectively prune large informationspacesandhelpusersinselectingitemsthatbestmeettheirneeds and preferences. Recommender systems rely strongly on the use of various machine learning tools and algorithms for learning how to rank, or predict user evaluation, of items. Information Retrieval systems, on the other hand, also attempt to address similar ?ltering and ranking problems for pieces of information such as links, pages, and documents. But they generally focus on the development of global retrieval techniques, often neglecting individual user needs and preferences. The book aims to investigate current developments and new insights into methods, techniques and technologies for intelligent information access from a multidisciplinary perspective. It comprises six chapters authored by part- ipants in the research event Intelligent Information Access,heldinCagliari (Italy) in December 2008.

Multi-Agent System (MAS) is an exciting, emerging paradigm expected to play a key role in many society-changing practices. The International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems (PRIMA) is a leading scientific conference for research on intelligent agent systems and multi-agent systems, attracting high quality, state-of-the-art research from all over the world. PRIMA'09 was the 12th in the series of PRIMA conferences and was held in Nagoya, Japan. Beside a single-track main conference, PRIMA'09 also included a number of workshops which were designed to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to present and exchange the latest developments at the MAS frontier. This book constitutes the post-proceedings of workshops under PRIMA'09. Readers will be able to explore a diverse range of topics and detailed discussions related to a number of important themes in our ever changing world. This collection plays an important role in bridging the gap between MAS theory and practice. It emphasizes the importance of MAS in the research and development of smart power grid systems, decision support systems, optimization and analysis systems for road traffic and markets, environmental monitoring and simulation, and in many other real-world applications and publicizes and extends MAS technology to many domains in this fast moving information age.

The human capacity to abstract complex systems and phenomena into simplified models has played a critical role in the rapid evolution of our modern industrial processes and scienti c research. As a science and an art, Modelling and Simulation have been one of the core enablers of this remarkable human trace, and have become a topic of great importance for researchers and practitioners.

This book was created to compile some of the most recent concepts, advances, challenges and ideas associated with Intelligent Modelling and Simulation frameworks, tools and applications. The rst chapter discusses the important aspects of a human interaction and the correct interpretation of results during simulations. The second chapter gets to the heart of the analysis of entrepreneurship by means of agent-based modelling and simulations.

The following three chapters bring together the central theme of simulation frameworks, rst describing an agent-based simulation framework, then a simulator for electrical machines, and nally an airborne network emulation environment. The two subsequent chapters discuss power distribution networks from different points of view-anticipation and optimization of multi-echelon inventory policy. After that, the book includes also a group of chapters discussing the mathematical modelling supported by veri cation simulations, and a set of chapters with models synthesised by means of arti cial intelligence tools and complex automata framework. Lastly, the book includes a chapter introducing the use of graph-grammar model for generation of threedimensional computational meshes and a chapter focused on the experimental and computational results regarding simulation of aero engine vortexes. Authors believe, that this book is a valuable reference to researchers and practitioners in the eld, as well as an inspiration to those interested in the area of Intelligent Modelling and Simulation.

This volume includes papers presented at IIH-MSP 2017, the 13th International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing, held on 12-15 August 2017 in Matsue, Shimane, Japan. The conference covered topics ranging from information hiding and security, and multimedia signal processing and networking, to bio-inspired multimedia technologies and systems. This volume focuses on subjects related to multimedia security and applications, wearable computing, Internet of Things (IoT) privacy and information security, biomedical system design and applications, emerging techniques and applications, soft computing and applications, applications of image encoding and rendering, and information hiding and its criteria. Updated with the latest research outcomes and findings, the papers presented appeal to researchers and students in the corresponding fields.

This book introduces three key issues: (i) development of a gradient-free method to enable multi-objective self-optimization; (ii) development of a reinforcement learning strategy to carry out self-learning and finally, (iii) experimental evaluation and validation in two micromachining processes (i.e., micro-milling and micro-drilling). The computational architecture (modular, network and reconfigurable for real-time monitoring and control) takes into account the analysis of different types of sensors, processing strategies and methodologies for extracting behavior patterns from representative process' signals. The reconfiguration capability and portability of this architecture are supported by two major levels: the cognitive level (core) and the executive level (direct data exchange with the process). At the same time, the architecture includes different operating modes that interact with the process to be monitored and/or controlled. The cognitive level includes three fundamental modes such as modeling, optimization and learning, which are necessary for decision-making (in the form of control signals) and for the real-time experimental characterization of complex processes. In the specific case of the micromachining processes, a series of models based on linear regression, nonlinear regression and artificial intelligence techniques were obtained. On the other hand, the executive level has a constant interaction with the process to be monitored and/or controlled. This level receives the configuration and parameterization from the cognitive level to perform the desired monitoring and control tasks.

This book presents the latest findings in the field of brain-inspired intelligence and visual perception (BIVP), and discusses novel research assumptions, including an introduction to brain science and the brain vision hypotheses. Moreover, it introduces readers to the theory and algorithms of BIVP - such as pheromone accumulation and iteration, neural cognitive computing mechanisms, the integration and scheduling of core modules, and brain-inspired perception, motion and control - in a step-by-step manner. Accordingly, it will appeal to university researchers, R&D engineers, undergraduate and graduate students; to anyone interested in robots, brain cognition or computer vision; and to all those wishing to learn about the core theory, principles, methods, algorithms, and applications of BIVP.

This book is a continuation of the previous volumes of our series on Advanced Computational Intelligence Paradigms in Healthcare. The recent advances in computational intelligence paradigms have highlighted the need of intelligent systems in healthcare. This volume provides the reader a glimpse of the current state of the art in intelligent support system design in the field of healthcare. The book reports a sample of recent advances in: * Clinical Decision Support Systems * Rehabilitation Decision Support Systems * Technology Acceptance in Medical Decision Support Systems The book is directed to the researchers, professors, practitioner and students interested to design and develop intelligent decision support systems.

Vast amounts of data are nowadays collected, stored and processed, in an effort to assist in making a variety of administrative and governmental decisions. These innovative steps considerably improve the speed, effectiveness and quality of decisions. Analyses are increasingly performed by data mining and profiling technologies that statistically and automatically determine patterns and trends. However, when such practices lead to unwanted or unjustified selections, they may result in unacceptable forms of discrimination. Processing vast amounts of data may lead to situations in which data controllers know many of the characteristics, behaviors and whereabouts of people. In some cases, analysts might know more about individuals than these individuals know about themselves. Judging people by their digital identities sheds a different light on our views of privacy and data protection. This book discusses discrimination and privacy issues related to data mining and profiling practices. It provides technological and regulatory solutions, to problems which arise in these innovative contexts. The book explains that common measures for mitigating privacy and discrimination, such as access controls and anonymity, fail to properly resolve privacy and discrimination concerns. Therefore, new solutions, focusing on technology design, transparency and accountability are called for and set forth.

KES International (KES) is a worldwide organisation that provides a professional community and association for researchers, originally in the discipline of Knowledge Based and Intelligent Engineering Systems, but now extending into other related areas. Through this, KES provides its members with opportunities for publication and beneficial interaction. The focus of KES is research and technology transfer in the area of Intelligent S- tems, i.e. computer-based software systems that operate in a manner analogous to the human brain, in order to perform advanced tasks. Recently KES has started to extend its area of interest to encompass the contribution that intelligent systems can make to sustainability and renewable energy, and also the knowledge transfer, innovation and enterprise agenda. Involving several thousand researchers, managers and engineers drawn from u- versities and companies world-wide, KES is in an excellent position to facilitate - ternational research co-operation and generate synergy in the area of artificial intel- gence applied to real-world 'Smart' systems and the underlying related theory. The KES annual conference covers a broad spectrum of intelligent systems topics and attracts several hundred delegates from a range of countries round the world. KES also organises symposia on specific technical topics, for example, Agent and Multi Agent Systems, Intelligent Decision Technologies, Intelligent Interactive M- timedia Systems and Services, Sustainability in Energy and Buildings and Innovations through Knowledge Transfer. KES is responsible for two peer-reviewed journals, the International Journal of Knowledge based and Intelligent Engineering Systems, and Intelligent Decision Technologies: an International Journal.

This book comprises four chapters that address some of the latest research in clouds robotics and sensor clouds. The first part of the book includes two chapters on cloud robotics. The first chapter introduces a novel resource allocation framework for cloud robotics and proposes a Stackelberg game model and the corresponding task oriented pricing mechanism for resource allocation. In the second chapter, the authors apply Cloud Computing for building a Cloud-Based 3D Point Cloud extractor for stereo images. Their objective is to have a dynamically scalable and applicable to near real-time scenarios.

This book addresses the impacts of various types of services such as infrastructure, platforms, software, and business processes that cloud computing and Big Data have introduced into business. Featuring chapters which discuss effective and efficient approaches in dealing with the inherent complexity and increasing demands in data science, a variety of application domains are covered. Various case studies by data management and analysis experts are presented in these chapters. Covered applications include banking, social networks, bioinformatics, healthcare, transportation and criminology. Highlighting the Importance of Big Data Management and Analysis for Various Applications will provide the reader with an understanding of how data management and analysis are adapted to these applications. This book will appeal to researchers and professionals in the field.

"Introducing Spoken Dialogue Systems into Intelligent Environments "outlines the formalisms of a novel knowledge-driven framework for spoken dialogue management and presents the implementation ofa model-based Adaptive Spoken Dialogue Manager(ASDM) called OwlSpeak. The authors have identified three stakeholders thatpotentially influence the behavior of the ASDM: the user, the SDS, and a complex Intelligent Environment (IE) consisting of various devices, services, and task descriptions.
The theoretical foundation of a working ontology-based spoken dialogue description framework, the prototype implementation of the ASDM, and the evaluation activities that are presented as part of this book contribute to the ongoing spoken dialogue research by establishing the fertile ground of model-based adaptive spoken dialogue management.
Thismonograph is ideal for advanced undergraduate students, PhD students, and postdocs as well as academic and industrial researchers and developers in speech and multimodal interactive systems."

In the last decade we have seen the emergence of a new inter-disciplinary field concentrating on the understanding large networks which are dynamic, large, open, and have a structure that borders order and randomness. The field of Complex Networks has helped us better understand many complex phenomena such as spread of decease, protein interaction, social relationships, to name but a few.

The field of Complex Networks has received a major boost caused by the widespread availability of huge network data resources in the last years. One of the most surprising findings is that real networks behave very distinct from traditional assumptions of network theory. Traditionally, real networks were supposed to have a majority of nodes of about the same number of connections around an average. This is typically modeled by random graphs. But modern network research could show that the majority of nodes of real networks is very low connected, and, by contrast, there exists some nodes of very extreme connectivity (hubs).

The current theories coupled with the availability of data makes the field of Complex Networks (sometimes called Network Sciences) one of the most promising interdisciplinary disciplines of today. This sample of works in this book gives as a taste of what is in the horizon such controlling the dynamics of a network and in the network, using social interactions to improve urban planning, ranking in music, and the understanding knowledge transfer in influence networks."

This book presents emerging trends in the evolution of service-oriented and enterprise architectures. New architectures and methods of both business and IT are integrating services to support mobility systems, Internet of Things, Ubiquitous Computing, collaborative and adaptive business processes, Big Data, and Cloud ecosystems. They inspire current and future digital strategies and create new opportunities for the digital transformation of next digital products and services. Services Oriented Architectures (SOA) and Enterprise Architectures (EA) have emerged as a useful framework for developing interoperable, large-scale systems, typically implementing various standards, like Web Services, REST, and Microservices. Managing the adaptation and evolution of such systems presents a great challenge. Service-Oriented Architecture enables flexibility through loose coupling, both between the services themselves and between the IT organizations that manage them. Enterprises evolve continuously by transforming and extending their services, processes and information systems. Enterprise Architectures provide a holistic blueprint to help define the structure and operation of an organization with the goal of determining how an organization can most effectively achieve its objectives. The book proposes several approaches to address the challenges of the service-oriented evolution of digital enterprise and software architectures.

This book presents modeling methods and algorithms for data-driven prediction and forecasting of practical industrial process by employing machine learning and statistics methodologies. Related case studies, especially on energy systems in the steel industry are also addressed and analyzed. The case studies in this volume are entirely rooted in both classical data-driven prediction problems and industrial practice requirements. Detailed figures and tables demonstrate the effectiveness and generalization of the methods addressed, and the classifications of the addressed prediction problems come from practical industrial demands, rather than from academic categories. As such, readers will learn the corresponding approaches for resolving their industrial technical problems. Although the contents of this book and its case studies come from the steel industry, these techniques can be also used for other process industries. This book appeals to students, researchers, and professionals within the machine learning and data analysis and mining communities.

To deal with the flexible architectures and evolving functionalities of complex modern systems, the agent metaphor and agent-based computing are often the most appropriate software design approach. As a result, a broad range of special-purpose design processes has been developed in the last several years to tackle the challenges of these specific application domains. In this context, in early 2012 the IEEE-FIPA Design Process Documentation Template SC0097B was defined, which facilitates the representation of design processes and method fragments through the use of standardized templates, thus supporting the creation of easily sharable repositories and facilitating the composition of new design processes.

Following this standardization approach, this book gathers the documentations of some of the best-known agent-oriented design processes. After an introductory section, describing the goal of the book and the existing IEEE FIPA standard for design process documentation, thirteen processes (including the widely known Open UP, the de facto standard in object-oriented software engineering) are documented by their original creators or other well-known scientists working in the field. As a result, this is the first work to adopt a standard, unified descriptive approach for documenting different processes, making it much easier to study the individual processes, to rigorously compare them, and to apply them in industrial projects.While there are a few books on the market describing the individual agent-oriented design processes, none of them presents all the processes, let alone in the same format. With this handbook, for the first time, researchers as well as professional software developers looking for an overview as well as for detailed and standardized descriptions of design processes will find a comprehensive presentation of the most important agent-oriented design processes, which will be an invaluable resource when developing solutions in various application areas.

This book presents the methodology and techniques of thermographic applications with focus primarily on medical thermography implemented for parametrizing the diagnostics of the human body. The first part of the book describes the basics of infrared thermography, the possibilities of thermographic diagnostics and the physical nature of thermography. The second half includes tools of intelligent engineering applied for the solving of selected applications and projects. Thermographic diagnostics was applied to problematics of paraplegia and tetraplegia and carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). The results of the research activities were created with the cooperation of the four projects within the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic entitled Digital control of complex systems with two degrees of freedom, Progressive methods of education in the area of control and modeling of complex object oriented systems on aircraft turbocompressor engines, Center for research of control of technical, environmental and human risks for permanent development of production and products in mechanical engineering and Research of new diagnostic methods in invasive implantology.

What are the key channels to change in blended instructional practice as they relate to the use of a learning management system (LMS)? What role LMS users' profiles play in facilitating change in practice? Can we model users' quality of interaction (QoI) with LMS? How inclusiveness and affectiveness could lead to a personalized intelligent LMS (iLMS)? If these questions sound intrinsic to you and to your own experience and circumstance, then this book fits absolutely to you. Here, the term Blended - viewed as a fuzzy concept - is understood as a stepping-stone on the way to the future, to explain the multiple ways human beings think/act/feel of society in the 21st century and to embrace the opportunity of humans to re/co-construct new knowledge through the intermediation role of the technology. Initially, based on an online learning environment' theoretical framework, some current issues of the educational processes in the digital age of Web 2.0 are analyzed. Then, after exploring the main methodological procedures, characteristic examples of research case studies follow, including LMS users' trends and profiles and modeling of their QoI using fuzzy logic. This book offers useful information that evokes initiatives towards rethinking of the value, efficiency, inclusiveness, affectiveness and personalization of the iLMS-based b-learning environment, both by the educators, the LMS designers and educational policy decision makers.

There have been significant developments in the design and application of algorithms for both one-dimensional signal processing and multidimensional signal processing, namely image and video processing, with the recent focus changing from a step-by-step procedure of designing the algorithm first and following up with in-depth analysis and performance improvement to instead applying heuristic-based methods to solve signal-processing problems.

In this book the contributing authors demonstrate both general-purpose algorithms and those aimed at solving specialized application problems, with a special emphasis on heuristic iterative optimization methods employing modern evolutionary and swarm intelligence based techniques. The applications considered are in domains such as communications engineering, estimation and tracking, digital filter design, wireless sensor networks, bioelectric signal classification, image denoising, and image feature tracking.

The book presents interesting, state-of-the-art methodologies for solving real-world problems and it is a suitable reference for researchers and engineers in the areas of heuristics and signal processing."