Is it possible to guide the process of self-organisation towards specific patterns and outcomes? Wouldn’t this be self-contradictory? After all, a self-organising process assumes a transition into a more organised form, or towards a more structured functionality, in the absence of centralised control. Then how can we place the guiding elements so that they do not override rich choices potentially discoverable by an uncontrolled process? This book presents different approaches to resolving this paradox. In doing so, the presented studies address a broad range of phenomena, ranging from autopoietic systems to morphological computation, and from small-world networks to information cascades in swarms. A large variety of methods is employed, from spontaneous symmetry breaking to information dynamics to evolutionary algorithms, creating a rich spectrum reflecting this emerging field. Demonstrating several foundational theories and frameworks, as well as innovative practical implementations, Guided Self-Organisation: Inception, will be an invaluable tool for advanced students and researchers in a multiplicity of fields across computer science, physics and biology, including information theory, robotics, dynamical systems, graph theory, artificial life, multi-agent systems, theory of computation and machine learning.

An emerging trend in the automobile industry is its convergence with information technology (IT). Indeed, it has been estimated that almost 90% of new automobile technologies involve IT in some form. Smart driving technologies that improve safety as well as green fuel technologies are quite representative of the convergence between IT and automobiles. The smart driving technologies include three key elements: sensing of driving environments, detection of objects and potential hazards and the generation of driving control signals including warning signals. Although radar-based systems are primarily used for sensing the driving environments, the camera has gained importance in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). This book covers system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs—including both algorithms and hardware—related with image sensing and object detection by using the camera for smart driving systems. It introduces a variety of algorithms such as lens correction, super resolution, image enhancement and object detections from the images captured by low-cost vehicle camera. This is followed by implementation issues such as SoC architecture, hardware accelerator, software development environment and reliability techniques for automobile vision systems. This book is aimed for the new and practicing engineers in automotive and chip-design industries to provide some overall guidelines for the development of automotive vision systems. It will also help graduate students understand and get started for the research work in this field.

Neuro-robotics is one of the most multidisciplinary fields of the last decades, fusing information and knowledge from neuroscience, engineering and computer science. This book focuses on the results from the strategic alliance between Neuroscience and Robotics that help the scientific community to better understand the brain as well as design robotic devices and algorithms for interfacing humans and robots. The first part of the book introduces the idea of neuro-robotics, by presenting state-of-the-art bio-inspired devices. The second part of the book focuses on human-machine interfaces for performance augmentation, which can seen as augmentation of abilities of healthy subjects or assistance in case of the mobility impaired. The third part of the book focuses on the inverse problem, i.e. how we can use robotic devices that physically interact with the human body, in order (a) to understand human motor control and (b) to provide therapy to neurologically impaired people or people with disabilities.

Founded in 2004, the Games for Health Project supports community, knowledge and business development efforts to use cutting-edge games and game technologies to improve health and health care. The Games for Health Conference brings together researchers, medical professionals and game developers to share information about the impact of games, playful interaction and game technologies on health, health care and policy. Over two days, more than 400 attendees participate in over 60 sessions provided by an international array of 80+ speakers, cutting across a wide range of activities in health and health care. Topics include exergaming, physical therapy, disease management, health behavior change, biofeedback, rehab, epidemiology, training, cognitive health, nutrition and health education.

This book covers diverse aspects of advanced computer and communication engineering, focusing specifically on industrial and manufacturing theory and applications of electronics, communications, computing and information technology. Experts in research, industry, and academia present the latest developments in technology, describe applications involving cutting-edge communication and computer systems and explore likely future directions. In addition, access is offered to numerous new algorithms that assist in solving computer and communication engineering problems. The book is based on presentations delivered at ICOCOE 2014, the 1st International Conference on Communication and Computer Engineering. It will appeal to a wide range of professionals in the field, including telecommunication engineers, computer engineers and scientists, researchers, academics and students.

The overwhelming data produced everyday and the increasing performance and cost requirements of applications are transversal to a wide range of activities in society, from science to industry. In particular, the magnitude and complexity of the tasks that Machine Learning (ML) algorithms have to solve are driving the need to devise adaptive many-core machines that scale well with the volume of data, or in other words, can handle Big Data. This book gives a concise view on how to extend the applicability of well-known ML algorithms in Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) with data scalability in mind. It presents a series of new techniques to enhance, scale and distribute data in a Big Learning framework. It is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of the state of the art of the whole field of machine learning for Big Data. Its purpose is less ambitious and more practical: to explain and illustrate existing and novel GPU-based ML algorithms, not viewed as a universal solution for the Big Data challenges but rather as part of the answer, which may require the use of different strategies coupled together.

Florian Neukart describes methods for interpreting signals in the human brain in combination with state of the art AI, allowing for the creation of artificial conscious entities (ACE). Key methods are to establish a symbiotic relationship between a biological brain, sensors, AI and quantum hard- and software, resulting in solutions for the continuous consciousness-problem as well as other state of the art problems. The research conducted by the author attracts considerable attention, as there is a deep urge for people to understand what advanced technology means in terms of the future of mankind. This work marks the beginning of a journey – the journey towards machines with conscious action and artificially accelerated human evolution.

This book presents effective ways to partition mobile devices such that the enterprise system access and its information are completely separated from the personal information. For those using mobile devices for personal and business purposes, the ability to keep the data secure and separate is critical. The applications for security in smart platforms range from personal email accounts to global enterprise systems. Several approaches for mobile virtualization are described, all creating secure and secluded environments for enterprise information. The authors present a reference architecture that allows for integration with existing enterprise mobile device management systems and provides a lightweight solution for containerizing mobile applications. This solution is then benchmarked with several of the existing mobile virtualization solutions across a range of mobile devices. Virtualization Techniques for Mobile Systems is an excellent resource for researchers and professionals working in mobile systems. Advanced-level students studying computer science and electrical engineering will also find the content helpful.

The rapid evolution of computer science, communication, and information technology has enabled the application of control techniques to systems beyond the possibilities of control theory just a decade ago. Critical infrastructures such as electricity, water, traffic and intermodal transport networks are now in the scope of control engineers. The sheer size of such large-scale systems requires the adoption of advanced distributed control approaches. Distributed model predictive control (MPC) is one of the promising control methodologies for control of such systems. This book provides a state-of-the-art overview of distributed MPC approaches, while at the same time making clear directions of research that deserve more attention. The core and rationale of 35 approaches are carefully explained. Moreover, detailed step-by-step algorithmic descriptions of each approach are provided. These features make the book a comprehensive guide both for those seeking an introduction to distributed MPC as well as for those who want to gain a deeper insight in the wide range of distributed MPC techniques available.

This book presents and discusses mathematical models, numerical methods and computational techniques used for solving coupled problems in science and engineering. It takes a step forward in the formulation and solution of real-life problems with a multidisciplinary vision, accounting for all of the complex couplings involved in the physical description. Simulation of multifaceted physics problems is a common task in applied research and industry. Often a suitable solver is built by connecting together several single-aspect solvers into a network. In this book, research in various fields was selected for consideration: adaptive methodology for multi-physics solvers, multi-physics phenomena and coupled-field solutions, leading to computationally intensive structural analysis. The strategies which are used to keep these problems computationally affordable are of special interest, and make this an essential book.

This monograph addresses the state of the art of reduced order methods for modeling and computational reduction of complex parametrized systems, governed by ordinary and/or partial differential equations, with a special emphasis on real time computing techniques and applications in computational mechanics, bioengineering and computer graphics. Several topics are covered, including: design, optimization, and control theory in real-time with applications in engineering; data assimilation, geometry registration, and parameter estimation with special attention to real-time computing in biomedical engineering and computational physics; real-time visualization of physics-based simulations in computer science; the treatment of high-dimensional problems in state space, physical space, or parameter space; the interactions between different model reduction and dimensionality reduction approaches; the development of general error estimation frameworks which take into account both model and discretization effects. This book is primarily addressed to computational scientists interested in computational reduction techniques for large scale differential problems.

Mashups have emerged as an innovative software trend that re-interprets existing Web building blocks and leverages the composition of individual components in novel, value-adding ways. Additional appeal also derives from their potential to turn non-programmers into developers. Daniel and Matera have written the first comprehensive reference work for mashups. They systematically cover the main concepts and techniques underlying mashup design and development, the synergies among the models involved at different levels of abstraction and the way models materialize into composition paradigms and architectures of corresponding development tools. The book deliberately takes a balanced approach, combining a scientific perspective on the topic with an in-depth view on relevant technologies. To this end, the first part of the book introduces the theoretical and technological foundations for designing and developing mashups, as well as for designing tools that can aid mashup development. The second part then focuses more specifically on various aspects of mashups. It discusses a set of core component technologies, core approaches and architectural patterns, with a particular emphasis on tool-aided mashup development exploiting model-driven architectures. Development processes for mashups are also discussed and special attention is paid to composition paradigms for the end-user development of mashups and quality issues. Overall, the book is of interest to a wide range of readers. Students, lecturers, and researchers will find a comprehensive overview of core concepts and technological foundations for mashup implementation and composition. Even without low-level coding details, practitioners like software architects will find guidance on key implementation concepts, architectural patterns and development tools and approaches. A related website provides additional teaching material which can be used either as part of a course or for self study.

Cyberwarfare has become an important concern for governmental agencies as well businesses of various types.  This timely volume, with contributions from some of the internationally recognized, leaders in the field, gives readers a glimpse of the new and emerging ways that Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning methods can be applied to address problems related to cyberwarfare. The book includes a number of chapters that can be conceptually divided into three topics: chapters describing different data analysis methodologies with their applications to cyberwarfare, chapters presenting a number of intrusion detection approaches, and chapters dedicated to analysis of possible cyber attacks and their impact. The book provides the readers with a variety of methods and techniques, based on computational intelligence, which can be applied to the broad domain of cyberwarfare.

This book is devoted to the Metacognition arena. It highlights works that show relevant analysis, reviews, theoretical, and methodological proposals, as well as studies, approaches, applications, and tools that shape current state, define trends and inspire future research. As a result of the revision process fourteen manuscripts were accepted and organized into five parts as follows: · Conceptual: contains conceptual works oriented to: (1) review models of strategy instruction and tailor a hybrid strategy; (2) unveil second-order judgments and define a method to assess metacognitive judgments; (3) introduces a conceptual model to describe the metacognitive activity as an autopoietic system. · Framework: offers three works concerned with: (4) stimulate metacognitive skills and self-regulatory functions; (5) evaluate metacognitive skills and self-regulated learning at problem solving; (6) deal with executive management metacognition and strategic knowledge metacognition. · Studies: reports research related to: (7) uncover how metacognitive awareness of listening strategies bias listening proficiency; (8) unveil how metacognitive skills and motivation are achieved in science informal learning; (9) tackle stress at learning by means of coping strategies. · Approaches: focus on the following targets: (10) social metacognition to support collaborative problem solving; (11) metacognitive skills to be stimulated in computer supported collaborative learning; (12) metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive experiences are essential for teaching practices. · Tools: promotes the use of intelligent tutoring systems such as: (13) BioWorld allows learners to practice medical diagnostic by providing virtual patient cases; (14) MetaHistoReasoning provides examples to learners and inquiries about the causes of historical events. This volume will be a source of interest for researchers, practitioners, professors, and postgraduate students aimed at updating their knowledge and finding targets for future work in the metacognition arena.

In the fields of data mining and control, the huge amount of unstructured data and the presence of uncertainty in system descriptions have always been critical issues. The book Randomized Algorithms in Automatic Control and Data Mining introduces the readers to the fundamentals of randomized algorithm applications in data mining (especially clustering) and in automatic control synthesis. The methods proposed in this book guarantee that the computational complexity of classical algorithms and the conservativeness of standard robust control techniques will be reduced. It is shown that when a problem requires "brute force" in selecting among options, algorithms based on random selection of alternatives offer good results with certain probability for a restricted time and significantly reduce the volume of operations.

Legged robots are a promising locomotion system, capable of performing tasks that conventional vehicles cannot. Even more exciting is the fact that this is a rapidly developing field of study for researchers from a variety of disciplines. However, only a few books have been published on the subject of multi-legged robots. The main objective of this book is to describe some of the major control issues concerning walking robots that the authors have faced over the past 10 years. A second objective is to focus especially on very large hydraulically driven hexapod robot locomotion weighing more than 2,000 kg, making this the first specialized book on this topic. The 10 chapters of the book touch on diverse relevant topics such as design aspects, implementation issues, modeling for control, navigation and control, force and impedance control-based walking, fully autonomous walking, walking and working tasks of hexapod robots, and the future of walking robots. The construction machines of the future will very likely resemble hydraulically driven hexapod robots like the ones described in this book – no longer science fiction but now a reality.

Information architecture has changed dramatically since the mid-1990s and earlier conceptions of the world and the internet being different and separate have given way to a much more complex scenario in the present day. In the post-digital world that we now inhabit the digital and the physical blend easily and our activities and usage of information takes place through multiple contexts and via multiple devices and unstable, emergent choreographies. Information architecture now is steadily growing into a channel- or medium-specific multi-disciplinary framework, with contributions coming from architecture, urban planning, design and systems thinking, cognitive science, new media, anthropology. All these have been heavily reshaping the practice: conversations about labelling, websites, and hierarchies are replaced by conversations about sense-making, place-making, design, architecture, cross media, complexity, embodied cognition and their application to the architecture of information spaces as places we live in in an increasingly large part of our lives. Via narratives, frameworks, references, approaches and case-studies this book explores these changes and offers a way to reconceptualize the shifting role and nature of information architecture where information permeates digital and physical space, users are producers and products are increasingly becoming complex cross-channel or multi-channel services.

This book covers original research and the latest advances in symbolic, algebraic and geometric computation; computational methods for differential and difference equations, symbolic-numerical computation; mathematics software design and implementation; and scientific and engineering applications based on features, invited talks, special sessions and contributed papers presented at the 9th (in Fukuoka, Japan in 2009) and 10th (in Beijing China in 2012) Asian Symposium on Computer Mathematics (ASCM). Thirty selected and refereed articles in the book present the conference participants’ ideas and views on researching mathematics using computers.

Distributed robotics is a rapidly growing and maturing interdisciplinary research area lying at the intersection of computer science, network science, control theory, and electrical and mechanical engineering. The goal of the Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS) is to exchange and stimulate research ideas to realize advanced distributed robotic systems. This volume of proceedings includes 31 original contributions presented at the 2012 International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2012) held in November 2012 at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD USA. The selected papers in this volume are authored by leading researchers from Asia, Europa, and the Americas, thereby providing a broad coverage and perspective of the state-of-the-art technologies, algorithms, system architectures, and applications in distributed robotic systems. The book is organized into five parts, representative of critical long-term and emerging research thrusts in the multi-robot community: Coordination for Perception, Coverage, and Tracking; Task Allocation and Coordination Strategies; Modular Robots and Novel Mechanisms and Sensors; Formation Control and Planning for Robot Teams; and Learning, Adaptation, and Cognition for Robot Teams.

Offers a unique multidisciplinary overview of how humans interact with soft objects and how multiple sensory signals are used to perceive material properties, with an emphasis on object deformability. The authors describe a range of setups that have been employed to study and exploit sensory signals involved in interactions with compliant objects as well as techniques to simulate and modulate softness – including a psychophysical perspective of the field. Multisensory Softness focuses on the cognitive mechanisms underlying the use of multiple sources of information in softness perception. Divided into three sections, the first Perceptual Softness deals with the sensory components and computational requirements of softness perception, the second Sensorimotor Softness looks at the motor components of the interaction with soft objects and the final part Artificial Softness focuses on the identification of exploitable guidelines to help replicate softness in artificial environments.

Most of the research efforts dealing with airline scheduling have been done on off-line plan optimization. However, nowadays, with the increasingly complex and huge traffic at airports, the real challenge is how to react to unexpected events that may cause plan-disruptions, leading to flight delays. Moreover these disruptive events usually affect at least three different dimensions of the situation: the aircraft assigned to the flight, the crew assignment and often forgotten, the passengers’ journey and satisfaction. This book includes answers to this challenge and proposes the use of the Multi-agent System paradigm to rapidly compose a multi-faceted solution to the disruptive event taking into consideration possible preferences of those three key aspects of the problem. Negotiation protocols taking place between agents that are experts in solving the different problem dimensions, combination of different utility functions and not less important, the inclusion of the human in the automatic decision-making loop make MASDIMA, the system described in this book, well suited for real-life plan-disruption management applications.

This contributed volume is a result of discussions held at ABICT’13(4th International Workshop on Advances in Business ICT) in Krakow, September 8-11, 2013. The book focuses on Advances in Business ICT approached from a multidisciplinary perspective and demonstrates different ideas and tools for developing and supporting organizational creativity, as well as advances in decision support systems.This book is an interesting resource for researchers, analysts and IT professionals including software designers. The book comprises eleven chapters presenting research results on business analytics in organization, business processes modeling, problems with processing big data, nonlinear time structures and nonlinear time ontology application, simulation profiling, signal processing (including change detection problems), text processing and risk analysis.

This research monograph presents selected areas of applications in the field of control systems engineering using computational intelligence methodologies. A number of applications and case studies are introduced. These methodologies are increasing used in many applications of our daily lives. Approaches include, fuzzy-neural multi model for decentralized identification, model predictive control based on time dependent recurrent neural network development of cognitive systems, developments in the field of Intelligent Multiple Models based Adaptive Switching Control, designing military training simulators using modelling, simulation, and analysis for operational analyses and training, methods for modelling of systems  based on the application of Gaussian processes, computational intelligence techniques for process control and image segmentation technique based on modified particle swarm optimized-fuzzy entropy.

Presenting the first definitive study of the subject, this Handbook of Biometric Anti-Spoofing reviews the state of the art in covert attacks against biometric systems and in deriving countermeasures to these attacks. Topics and features: provides a detailed introduction to the field of biometric anti-spoofing and a thorough review of the associated literature; examines spoofing attacks against five biometric modalities, namely, fingerprints, face, iris, speaker and gait; discusses anti-spoofing measures for multi-model biometric systems; reviews evaluation methodologies, international standards and legal and ethical issues; describes current challenges and suggests directions for future research; presents the latest work from a global selection of experts in the field, including members of the TABULA RASA project.

How does one determine how similar two maps are? This book aims at the theory of spatial similarity relations and its application in automated map generalization, including the definitions, classification and features of spatial similarity relations. Included also are calculation models of spatial similarity relations between arbitrary individual objects and between arbitrary object groups, and the application of the theory in the automation of the algorithms and procedures in map generalization.