Computational intelligence techniques have enjoyed growing interest in recent decades among the earth and environmental science research communities for their powerful ability to solve and understand various complex problems and develop novel approaches toward a sustainable earth. This book compiles a collection of recent developments and rigorous applications of computational intelligence in these disciplines. Techniques covered include artificial neural networks, support vector machines, fuzzy logic, decision-making algorithms, supervised and unsupervised classification algorithms, probabilistic computing, hybrid methods and morphic computing. Further topics given treatment in this volume include remote sensing, meteorology, atmospheric and oceanic modeling, climate change, environmental engineering and management, catastrophic natural hazards, air and environmental pollution and water quality. By linking computational intelligence techniques with earth and environmental science oriented problems, this book promotes synergistic activities among scientists and technicians working in areas such as data mining and machine learning. We believe that a diverse group of academics, scientists, environmentalists, meteorologists and computing experts with a common interest in computational intelligence techniques within the earth and environmental sciences will find this book to be of great value.

The present book includes extended and revised versions of a set of selected papers from the Fourth International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence (IJCCI 2012)., held in Barcelona, Spain, from 5 to 7 October, 2012. The conference was sponsored by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication (INSTICC) and was organized in cooperation with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). The conference brought together researchers, engineers and practitioners in computational technologies, especially those related to the areas of fuzzy computation, evolutionary computation and neural computation. It is composed of three co-located conferences, each one specialized in one of the aforementioned -knowledge areas. Namely: - International Conference on Evolutionary Computation Theory and Applications (ECTA) - International Conference on Fuzzy Computation Theory and Applications (FCTA) - International Conference on Neural Computation Theory and Applications (NCTA) Recent progresses in scientific developments and applications in these three areas are reported in this book This book includes revised and extended versions of a strict selection of the best papers presented at the conference.

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.

Cognitive Science is a discipline that brings together research in natural and artificial systems and this is clearly reflected in the diverse contributions to From Animals to Robots and Back. In tribute to Aaron Sloman and his pioneering work in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, the editors have collected a unique collection of cross-disciplinary papers that include work on: ·        intelligent robotics; ·        philosophy of cognitive science; ·        emotional research ·        computational vision; ·        comparative psychology; and ·        human-computer interaction. Key themes such as the importance of taking an architectural view in approaching cognition, run through the text. Drawing on the expertize of leading international researchers, contemporary debates in the study of natural and artificial cognition are addressed from complementary and contrasting perspectives with key issues being outlined at various levels of abstraction. From Animals to Robots and Back, will give readers with backgrounds in the study of both natural and artificial cognition an important window on the state of the art in cognitive systems research.

This book studies how technological solutions can be used to alleviate the current state of legal systems, with their clogged up courtrooms and inefficient conflict resolution methods. It reviews the shortcomings and disadvantages of traditional and alternative conflict resolution methods and turns to Artificial Intelligence for problem-solving techniques and solutions. The book is divided into four parts. The first part presents a general and systematic analysis of the current state of the legal systems, identifying the main problems and their causes. It then moves on to present UM Court: a framework for testing and prototyping conflict resolution services. This framework was developed with the objective of using Artificial Intelligence techniques to build a service environment for conflict resolution. The third part of the book takes a step into the future by analyzing the use of Intelligent Environments in the support of conflict management and resolution. It describes the approach taken and the experiments performed in the Intelligent Systems Lab of the University of Minho. The final part of the book contains the conclusions and shows the potential advantages of the use of Intelligent Environments as a way to implement better conflict resolution procedures (virtual or real), in which all the participants have access to more and better information and are able to take better informed decisions.

Hacking Europe traces the user practices of chopping games in Warsaw, hacking software in Athens, creating chaos in Hamburg, producing demos in Turku, and partying with computing in Zagreb and Amsterdam. Focusing on several European countries at the end of the Cold War, the book shows the digital development was not an exclusively American affair. Local hacker communities appropriated the computer and forged new cultures around it like the hackers in Yugoslavia, Poland and Finland, who showed off their tricks and creating distinct “demoscenes.� Together the essays reflect a diverse palette of cultural practices by which European users domesticated computer technologies. Each chapter explores the mediating actors instrumental in introducing and spreading the cultures of computing around Europe. More generally, the “ludological� element--the role of mischief, humor, and play--discussed here as crucial for analysis of hacker culture, opens new vistas for the study of the history of technology.

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.

This book is for researchers, engineers, and students who are willing to understand how humanoid robots move and be controlled. The book starts with an overview of the humanoid robotics research history and state of the art. Then it explains the required mathematics and physics such as kinematics of multi-body system, Zero-Moment Point (ZMP) and its relationship with body motion. Biped walking control is discussed in depth, since it is one of the main interests of humanoid robotics. Various topics of the whole body motion generation are also discussed. Finally multi-body dynamics is presented to simulate the complete dynamic behavior of a humanoid robot. Throughout the book, Matlab codes are shown to test the algorithms and to help the reader´s understanding.

This volume contains revised and extended research articles written by prominent researchers participating in the international conference on Advances in Engineering Technologies and Physical Science was held in Hong Kong, 13-15 March, 2013. Topics covered include engineering physics, engineering mathematics, scientific computing, control theory, automation, artificial intelligence, electrical engineering, and industrial applications. The book offers the state of art of tremendous advances in engineering technologies and physical science and applications, and also serves as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working with/on engineering technologies and physical science and applications.

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.

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 brings together research on numerical methods adapted for Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). It explains recent efforts to adapt classic numerical methods, including solution of linear equations and FFT, for massively parallel GPU architectures. This volume consolidates recent research and adaptations, covering widely used methods that are at the core of many scientific and engineering computations. Each chapter is written by authors working on a specific group of methods; these leading experts provide mathematical background, parallel algorithms and implementation details leading to reusable, adaptable and scalable code fragments. This book also serves as a GPU implementation manual for many numerical algorithms, sharing tips on GPUs that can increase application efficiency. The valuable insights into parallelization strategies for GPUs are supplemented by ready-to-use code fragments. Numerical Computations with GPUs targets professionals and researchers working in high performance computing and GPU programming. Advanced-level students focused on computer science and mathematics will also find this book useful as secondary text book or reference.

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 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.

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.

This book is an accessible guide to adaptive signal processing methods that equips the reader with advanced theoretical and practical tools for the study and development of circuit structures and provides robust algorithms relevant to a wide variety of application scenarios. Examples include multimodal and multimedia communications, the biological and biomedical fields, economic models, environmental sciences, acoustics, telecommunications, remote sensing, monitoring and in general, the modeling and prediction of complex physical phenomena. The reader will learn not only how to design and implement the algorithms but also how to evaluate their performance for specific applications utilizing the tools provided. While using a simple mathematical language, the employed approach is very rigorous. The text will be of value both for research purposes and for courses of study.

This book presents the cutting edge developments within a broad field related to robotic sailing. The contributions were presented during the 8th International Robotic Sailing Conference, which has taken place as a part of the 2015 World Robotic Sailing Championships in Mariehamn, Åland (Finland), August 31st – September 4th 2015. Since more than a decade, a series of competitions such as the World Robotic Sailing Championship have stimulated a variety of groups to work on research and development around autonomous sailing robots, which involves boat designers, naval architects, electrical engineers and computer scientists. While many of the challenges in building a truly autonomous sailboat are still unsolved, the books presents the state of the art of research and development within platform optimization, route and stability planning, collision avoidance, power management and boat control.

Discrete Mathematics and theoretical computer science are closely linked research areas with strong impacts on applications and various other scientific disciplines. Both fields deeply cross fertilize each other. One of the persons who particularly contributed to building bridges between these and many other areas is László Lovász, whose outstanding scientific work has defined and shaped many research directions in the past 40 years. A number of friends and colleagues, all top authorities in their fields of expertise gathered at the two conferences in August 2008 in Hungary, celebrating Lovász' 60th birthday. It was a real fete of combinatorics and computer science. Some of these plenary speakers submitted their research or survey papers prior to the conferences. These are included in the volume "Building Bridges". The other speakers were able to finish their contribution only later, these are collected in the present volume.

This book presents up-to-date research developments and novel methodologies on fuzzy control systems. It presents solutions to a series of problems with new approaches for the analysis and synthesis of fuzzy time-delay systems and fuzzy stochastic systems, including stability analysis and stabilization, dynamic output feedback control, robust filter design, and model approximation. A set of newly developed techniques such as fuzzy Lyapunov function approach, delay-partitioning, reciprocally convex, cone complementary linearization approach are presented. Fuzzy Control Systems with Time-Delay and Stochastic Perturbation: Analysis and Synthesis is a comprehensive reference for researcher and practitioners working in control engineering, system sciences and applied mathematics, and is also a useful source of information for senior undergraduates and graduates in these areas. The readers will benefit from some new concepts, new models and new methodologies with practical significance in control engineering and signal processing.    

This book offers comprehensive coverage of all the core topics of bioinformatics, and includes practical examples completed using the MATLAB bioinformatics toolbox™. It is primarily intended as a textbook for engineering and computer science students attending advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in bioinformatics and computational biology. The book develops bioinformatics concepts from the ground up, starting with an introductory chapter on molecular biology and genetics. This chapter will enable physical science students to fully understand and appreciate the ultimate goals of applying the principles of information technology to challenges in biological data management, sequence analysis, and systems biology. The first part of the book also includes a survey of existing biological databases, tools that have become essential in today’s biotechnology research. The second part of the book covers methodologies for retrieving biological information, including fundamental algorithms for sequence comparison, scoring, and determining evolutionary distance. The main focus of the third part is on modeling biological sequences and patterns as Markov chains. It presents key principles for analyzing and searching for sequences of significant motifs and biomarkers. The last part of the book, dedicated to systems biology, covers phylogenetic analysis and evolutionary tree computations, as well as gene expression analysis with microarrays. In brief, the book offers the ideal hands-on reference guide to the field of bioinformatics and computational biology.

An autonomous sailboat robot is a boat that only uses the wind on its sail as the propelling force, without remote control or human assistance to achieve its mission. Robotic sailing offers the potential of long range and long term autonomous wind propelled, solar or wave-powered carbon neutral devices. Robotic sailing devices could contribute to monitoring of environmental, ecological, meteorological, hydrographic and oceanographic data. These devices can also be used in traffic monitoring, border surveillance, security, assistance and rescue. The dependency on changing winds and sea conditions presents a considerable challenge for short and long term route and stability planning, collision avoidance and boat control. Building a robust and seaworthy sailing robot presents a truly complex and multi-disciplinary challenge for boat designers, naval architects, systems/electrical engineers and computer scientists. Over the last decade, several events such as Sailbot, World Robotic Sailing Championship and the International Robotic Sailing Conference (WRSC/IRSC) and Microtransat have sparked an explosion in the number of groups working on autonomous sailing robots. Many of the challenges in building truly autonomous sailing robots still remain unsolved. These proceedings present the work of researchers on current and future challenges in autonomous sailboat development, presented at the WRSC/IRSC 2014 in Galway, Ireland, 8th – 12th September 2014.

This book presents the very concept of an index matrix and its related augmented matrix calculus in a comprehensive form. It mostly illustrates the exposition with examples related to the generalized nets and intuitionistic fuzzy sets which are examples of an extremely wide array of possible application areas. The present book contains the basic results of the author over index matrices and some of its open problems with the aim to stimulating more researchers to start working in this area.

Vehicular communication is a key technology in intelligent transportation systems. For many years now, the academic and industrial research communities have been investigating these communications in order to improve efficiency and safety of future transportation. Vehicular networking offers a wide variety of applications, including safety applications as well as infotainment applications. This book highlights the recent developments in vehicular networking technologies and their interaction with future smart cities in order to promote further research activities and challenges. SAADI BOUDJIT, University of Paris 13, France  HAKIMA CHAOUCHI, Telecom SudParis, France  YACINE GHAMRI, University La Rochelle, France HALABI HASBULLAH, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia ANIS LAOUITI, Telecom SudParis, France  SAOUCENE MAHFOUDH, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia  PAUL MUHLETHALER, INRIA, France AMIR QAYYUM, Mohamad Ali Jinnah University, Pakistan NAUFAL SAAD, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia AHMED SOUA, NIST, USA HAJIME TAZAKI, University of Tokyo, Japan APINUN TUNPAN, Aintec, Thailand WEI WEI, Xi'an University, China RACHID ZAGROUBA, ENSI, Tunisia.

The success of a BCI system depends as much on the system itself as on the user’s ability to produce distinctive EEG activity. BCI systems can be divided into two groups according to the placement of the electrodes used to detect and measure neurons firing in the brain. These groups are: invasive systems, electrodes are inserted directly into the cortex are used for single cell or multi unit recording, and electrocorticography (EcoG), electrodes are placed on the surface of the cortex (or dura); noninvasive systems, they are placed on the scalp and use electroencephalography (EEG) or magnetoencephalography (MEG) to detect neuron activity. The book is basically divided into three parts. The first part of the book covers the basic concepts and overviews of Brain Computer Interface. The second part describes new theoretical developments of BCI systems. The third part covers views on real applications of BCI systems.