This book develops a crowdsourced sensor-cloud service composition framework taking into account spatio-temporal aspects. This book also unfolds new horizons to service-oriented computing towards the direction of crowdsourced sensor data based applications, in the broader context of Internet of Things (IoT). It is a massive challenge for the IoT research field how to effectively and efficiently capture, manage and deliver sensed data as user-desired services. The outcome of this research will contribute to solving this very important question, by designing a novel service framework and a set of unique service selection and composition frameworks. Delivering a novel service framework to manage crowdsourced sensor data provides high-level abstraction (i.e., sensor-cloud service) to model crowdsourced sensor data from functional and non-functional perspectives, seamlessly turning the raw data into "ready to go" services. A creative indexing model is developed to capture and manage the spatio-temporal dynamism of crowdsourced service providers. Delivering novel frameworks to compose crowdsourced sensor-cloud services is vital. These frameworks focuses on spatio-temporal composition of crowdsourced sensor-cloud services, which is a new territory for existing service oriented computing research. A creative failure-proof model is also designed to prevent composition failure caused by fluctuating QoS. Delivering an incentive model to drive the coverage of crowdsourced service providers is also vital. A new spatio-temporal incentive model targets changing coverage of the crowdsourced providers to achieve demanded coverage of crowdsourced sensor-cloud services within a region. The outcome of this research is expected to potentially create a sensor services crowdsourcing market and new commercial opportunities focusing on crowdsourced data based applications. The crowdsourced community based approach adds significant value to journey planning and map services thus creating a competitive edge for a technologically-minded companies incentivizing new start-ups, thus enabling higher market innovation. This book primarily targets researchers and practitioners, who conduct research work in service oriented computing, Internet of Things (IoT), smart city and spatio-temporal travel planning, as well as advanced-level students studying this field. Small and Medium Entrepreneurs, who invest in crowdsourced IoT services and journey planning infrastructures, will also want to purchase this book.

This textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to the control of marine vehicles, from fundamental to advanced concepts, including robust control techniques for handling model uncertainty, environmental disturbances, and actuator limitations. Starting with an introductory chapter that extensively reviews automatic control and dynamic modeling techniques for ocean vehicles, the first part of the book presents in-depth information on the analysis and control of linear time invariant systems. The concepts discussed are developed progressively, providing a basis for understanding more complex techniques and stimulating readers' intuition. In addition, selected examples illustrating the main concepts, the corresponding MATLAB (R) code, and problems are included in each chapter. In turn, the second part of the book offers comprehensive coverage on the stability and control of nonlinear systems. Following the same intuitive approach, it guides readers from the fundamentals to more advanced techniques, which culminate in integrator backstepping, adaptive and sliding mode control. Leveraging the author's considerable teaching and research experience, the book offers a good balance of theory and stimulating questions. Not only does it provide a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students; it will also benefit practitioners who want to review the foundational concepts underpinning some of the latest advanced marine vehicle control techniques, for use in their own applications.

Information visualization is not only about creating graphical displays of complex and latent information structures; it contributes to a broader range of cognitive, social, and collaborative activities. This is the first book to examine information visualization from this perspective.

This 2nd edition continues the unique and ambitious quest for setting information visualization and virtual environments in a unifying framework. Information Visualization: Beyond the Horizon pays special attention to the advances made over the last 5 years and potentially fruitful directions to pursue. It is particularly updated to meet the need for practitioners. The book is a valuable source for researchers and graduate students. This new edition is forwarded by Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland.

Key features:

• Latest advances in information visualization.
• Applications of information visualization, including knowledge domain visualization, knowledge diffusion, and social networks.
• Detecting topics, emergent trends, and abrupt changes.
• Empirical findings concerning information visualization.
• Virtual environments and collaborative virtual environments.

Chaomei Chen is an Associate Professor in the College of Information Science and Technology at Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA. He is the author of Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization (Springer, 2003).

Since the beginning of the computer age, researchers from many disciplines have sought to facilitate people's use of computers and to provide ways for scientists to make sense of the immense quantities of data coming out of them. One gainful result of these efforts has been the field of information visualization, whose technology is increasingly applied in scientific research, digital libraries, data mining, financial data analysis, market studies, manufacturing production control, and data discovery.
This book collects 38 of the key papers on information visualization from a leading and prominent research lab, the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). Celebrating HCIL's 20th anniversary, this book presents a coherent body of work from a respected community that has had many success stories with its research and commercial spin-offs.
Each chapter contains an introduction specifically written for this volume by two leading HCI researchers, to describe the connections among those papers and reveal HCIL's individual approach to developing innovations.
*Presents key ideas, novel interfaces, and major applications of information visualization tools, embedded in inspirational prototypes.
*Techniques can be widely applied in scientific research, digital libraries, data mining, financial data analysis, business market studies, manufacturing production control, drug discovery, and genomic studies.
*Provides an "insider" view to the scientific process and evolution of innovation, as told by the researchers themselves.
*This work comes from the prominent and high profile University of Maryland's Human Computer Interaction Lab

The Social Web (including services such as MySpace, Flickr, last.fm, and WordPress) has captured the attention of millions of users as well as billions of dollars in investment and acquisition. Social websites, evolving around the connections between people and their objects of interest, are encountering boundaries in the areas of information integration, dissemination, reuse, portability, searchability, automation and demanding tasks like querying. The Semantic Web is an ideal platform for interlinking and performing operations on diverse person- and object-related data available from the Social Web, and has produced a variety of approaches to overcome the boundaries being experienced in Social Web application areas.

After a short overview of both the Social Web and the Semantic Web, Breslin et al. describe some popular social media and social networking applications, list their strengths and limitations, and describe some applications of Semantic Web technology to address their current shortcomings by enhancing them with semantics. Across these social websites, they demonstrate a twofold approach for interconnecting the islands that are social websites with semantic technologies, and for powering semantic applications with rich community-created content. They conclude with observations on how the application of Semantic Web technologies to the Social Web is leading towards the "Social Semantic Web" (sometimes also called "Web 3.0"), forming a network of interlinked and semantically-rich content and knowledge.

The book is intended for computer science professionals, researchers, and graduates interested in understanding the technologies and research issues involved in applying Semantic Web technologies to social software. Practitioners and developers interested in applications such as blogs, social networks or wikis will also learn about methods for increasing the levels of automation in these forms of Web communication.

This is the first book to describe how Autonomous Virtual Humans and Social Robots can interact with real people, be aware of the environment around them, and react to various situations. Researchers from around the world present the main techniques for tracking and analysing humans and their behaviour and contemplate the potential for these virtual humans and robots to replace or stand in for their human counterparts, tackling areas such as awareness and reactions to real world stimuli and using the same modalities as humans do: verbal and body gestures, facial expressions and gaze to aid seamless human-computer interaction (HCI). The research presented in this volume is split into three sections: *User Understanding through Multisensory Perception: deals with the analysis and recognition of a given situation or stimuli, addressing issues of facial recognition, body gestures and sound localization. *Facial and Body Modelling Animation: presents the methods used in modelling and animating faces and bodies to generate realistic motion. *Modelling Human Behaviours: presents the behavioural aspects of virtual humans and social robots when interacting and reacting to real humans and each other. Context Aware Human-Robot and Human-Agent Interaction would be of great use to students, academics and industry specialists in areas like Robotics, HCI, and Computer Graphics.

Brain Inspired Cognitive Systems - BICS 2010 aims to bring together leading scientists and engineers who use analytic and synthetic methods both to understand the astonishing processing properties of biological systems and specifically of the brain, and to exploit such knowledge to advance engineering methods to build artificial systems with higher levels of cognitive competence.

BICS is a meeting point of brain scientists and cognitive systems engineers where cross-domain ideas are fostered in the hope of getting emerging insights on the nature, operation and extractable capabilities of brains. This multiple approach is necessary because the progressively more accurate data about the brain is producing a growing need of a quantitative understanding and an associated capacity to manipulate this data and translate it into engineering applications rooted in sound theories.

BICS 2010 is intended for both researchers that aim to build brain inspired systems with higher cognitive competences, and for life scientists who use and develop mathematical and engineering approaches for a better understanding of complex biological systems like the brain.

Four major interlaced focal symposia are planned for this conference and these are organized into patterns that encourage cross-fertilization across the symposia topics. This emphasizes the role of BICS as a major meeting point for researchers and practitioners in the areas of biological and artificial cognitive systems. Debates across disciplines will enrich researchers with complementary perspectives from diverse scientific fields.

BICS 2010 will take place July 14-16, 2010, in Madrid, Spain.

This book applies a new analytical framework to the study of the evolution of large Internet companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon and Samsung. It sheds light on the dynamics of business groups, which are approached as 'business ecosystems,' and introduces the concept of Epigenetic Economic Dynamics (EED), which is defined as the study of the epigenetic dynamics generated as a result of the adaptation of organizations to major changes in their respective environments. The book augments the existing literature on evolutionary economic thinking with findings from epigenetics, which are proving increasingly useful in analyzing the workings of large organizations. It also details the theoretical and conceptual nature of recent work based on evolutionary economics, mainly from the perspective of generalized Darwinism, resilience and related variety, and complements the work conducted on evolutionary economics by applying the analytical framework of EED. It makes it easier to forecast future dynamics on the Internet by proving that a sizable number of big business groups are veering from their initial paths to take unprecedented new directions as a result of competition pressure, and as such is a valuable resource for postgraduates and researchers as well as those involved in economics and innovation studies.

Over the next few decades, millions of people, with varying backgrounds and levels of technical expertise, will have to effectively interact with robotic technologies on a daily basis. This means it will have to be possible to modify robot behavior without explicitly writing code, but instead via a small number of wearable devices or visual demonstrations. At the same time, robots will need to infer and predict humans' intentions and internal objectives on the basis of past interactions in order to provide assistance before it is explicitly requested; this is the basis of imitation learning for robotics. This book introduces readers to robotic imitation learning based on human demonstration with wearable devices. It presents an advanced calibration method for wearable sensors and fusion approaches under the Kalman filter framework, as well as a novel wearable device for capturing gestures and other motions. Furthermore it describes the wearable-device-based and vision-based imitation learning method for robotic manipulation, making it a valuable reference guide for graduate students with a basic knowledge of machine learning, and for researchers interested in wearable computing and robotic learning.

This edited book adopts a cognitive perspective to provide breadth and depth to state-of-the-art research related to understanding, analyzing, predicting and improving one of the most prominent and important classes of behavior of modern humans, information search. It is timely as the broader research area of cognitive computing and cognitive technology have recently attracted much attention, and there has been a surge in interest to develop systems and technology that are more compatible with human cognitive abilities. Divided into three interlocking sections, the first introduces the foundational concepts of information search from a cognitive computing perspective to highlight the research questions and approaches that are shared among the contributing authors. Relevant concepts from psychology, information and computing sciences are addressed. The second section discusses methods and tools that are used to understand and predict information search behavior and how the cognitive perspective can provide unique insights into the complexities of the behavior in various contexts. The final part highlights a number of areas of applications of which education and training, collaboration and conversational search interfaces are important ones. Understanding and Improving Information Search - A Cognitive Approach includes contributions from cognitive psychologists, information and computing scientists around the globe, including researchers from Europe (France, Netherlands, Germany), the US, and Asia (India, Japan), providing their unique but coherent perspectives to the core issues and questions most relevant to our current understanding of information search behavior and improving information search.

Ever since its inception, the Web has changed the landscape of human experiences on how we interact with one another and data through service infrastructures via various computing devices. This interweaving environment is now becoming ever more embedded into devices and systems that integrate seamlessly on how we live, both in our working or leisure time. For this volume, King and Baeza-Yates selected some pioneering and cutting-edge research work that is pointing to the future of the Web. Based on the Workshop Track of the 17th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2008) in Beijing, they selected the top contributions and asked the authors to resubmit their work with a minimum of one third of additional material from their original workshop manuscripts to be considered for this volume. After a second-round of reviews and selection, 16 contributions were finally accepted. The work within this volume represents the tip of an iceberg of the many exciting advancements on the WWW. It covers topics like semantic web services, location-based and mobile applications, personalized and context-dependent user interfaces, social networks, and folksonomies. The presentations aim at researchers in academia and industry by showcasing latest research findings. Overall they deliver an excellent picture of the current state-of-the-art, and will also serve as the basis for ongoing research discussions and point to new directions.

This book presents works detailing the application of processing and visualization techniques for analyzing the Earth's subsurface. The topic of the book is interactive data processing and interactive 3D visualization techniques used on subsurface data. Interactive processing of data together with interactive visualization is a powerful combination which has in the recent years become possible due to hardware and algorithm advances in. The combination enables the user to perform interactive exploration and filtering of datasets while simultaneously visualizing the results so that insights can be made immediately. This makes it possible to quickly form hypotheses and draw conclusions. Case studies from the geosciences are not as often presented in the scientific visualization and computer graphics community as e.g., studies on medical, biological or chemical data. This book will give researchers in the field of visualization and computer graphics valuable insight into the open visualization challenges in the geosciences, and how certain problems are currently solved using domain specific processing and visualization techniques. Conversely, readers from the geosciences will gain valuable insight into relevant visualization and interactive processing techniques. Subsurface data has interesting characteristics such as its solid nature, large range of scales and high degree of uncertainty, which makes it challenging to visualize with standard methods. It is also noteworthy that parallel fields of research have taken place in geosciences and in computer graphics, with different terminology when it comes to representing geometry, describing terrains, interpolating data and (example-based) synthesis of data. The domains covered in this book are geology, digital terrains, seismic data, reservoir visualization and CO2 storage. The technologies covered are 3D visualization, visualization of large datasets, 3D modelling, machine learning, virtual reality, seismic interpretation and multidisciplinary collaboration. People within any of these domains and technologies are potential readers of the book.

The combination of high-resolution visual and depth sensing, supported by machine learning, opens up new opportunities to solve real-world problems in computer vision.

This authoritative text/reference presents an interdisciplinary selection of important, cutting-edge research on RGB-D based computer vision. Divided into four sections, the book opens with a detailed survey of the field, followed by a focused examination of RGB-D based 3D reconstruction, mapping and synthesis. The work continues with a section devoted to novel techniques that employ depth data for object detection, segmentation and tracking, and concludes with examples of accurate human action interpretation aided by depth sensors.

Topics and features: discusses the calibration of color and depth cameras, the reduction of noise on depth maps, and methods for capturing human performance in 3D; reviews a selection of applications which use RGB-D information to reconstruct human figures, evaluate energy consumption, and obtain accurate action classification; presents an innovative approach for 3D object retrieval, and for the reconstruction of gas flow from multiple Kinect cameras; describes an RGB-D computer vision system designed to assist the visually impaired, and another for smart-environment sensing to assist elderly and disabled people; examines the effective features that characterize static hand poses, and introduces a unified framework to enforce both temporal and spatial constraints for hand parsing; proposes a new classifier architecture for real-time hand pose recognition, and a novel hand segmentation and gesture recognition system.

Researchers and practitioners working in computer vision, HCI and machine learning will find this to be a must-read text. The book also serves as a useful reference for graduate students studying computer vision, pattern recognition or multimedia.

Achieving enterprise success necessitates addressing enterprises in ways that match the complexity and dynamics of the modern enterprise environment. However, since the majority of enterprise strategic initiatives appear to fail - among which those regarding information technology - the currently often practiced approaches to strategy development and implementation seem more an obstacle than an enabler for strategic enterprise success.

Two themes underpin the fundamentally different views outlined in this book. First, the competence-based perspective on governance, whereby employees are viewed as the crucial core for effectively addressing the complex, dynamic and uncertain enterprise reality, as well as for successfully defining and operationalizing strategic choices. Second, enterprise engineering as the formal conceptual framework and methodology for arranging a unified and integrated enterprise design, which is a necessary condition for enterprise success.

Jan Hoogervorst's presentation, which is based on both research and his professional background at Sogeti B.V., aims at professionals in management and consulting as well as students in management science and business information systems.

The book provides readers with a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in the field of gait and balance rehabilitation. It describes technologies and devices together with the requirements and factors to be considered during their application in clinical settings. The book covers physiological and pathophysiological basis of locomotion and posture control, describes integrated approaches for the treatment of neurological diseases and spinal cord injury, as well as important principles for designing appropriate clinical studies. It presents computer and robotic technologies currently used in rehabilitation, such as exoskeleton devices, functional electrical stimulation, virtual reality and many more, highlighting the main advantages and challenges both from the clinical and engineering perspective. Written in an easy-to-understand style, the book is intended for people with different background and expertise, including medical and engineering students, clinicians and physiotherapists, as well as technical developers of rehabilitation systems and their corresponding human-compute interfaces. It aims at fostering an increased awareness of available technologies for balance and gait rehabilitation, as well as a better communication and collaboration between their users and developers.

Collaborative Networks A Tool for Promoting Co-creation and Innovation The collaborative networks paradigm offers powerful socio-organizational mec- nisms, supported by advanced information and communication technologies for p- moting innovation. This, in turn, leads to new products and services, growth of better customer relationships, establishing better project and process management, and building higher-performing consortia. By putting diverse entities that bring different perspectives, competencies, practices, and cultures, to work together, collaborative networks develop the right environment for the emergence of new ideas and more efficient, yet practical, solutions. This aspect is particularly important for small and medium enterprises which typically lack critical mass and can greatly benefit from participation in co-innovation networks. However, larger organizations also benefit from the challenges and the diversity found in collaborative ecosystems. In terms of research, in addition to the trend identified in previous years toward a sounder consolidation of the theoretical foundation in this discipline, there is now a direction of developments more focused on modeling and reasoning about new c- laboration patterns and their contribution to value creation. "Soft issues," including social capital, cultural aspects, ethics and value systems, trust, emotions, behavior, etc. continue to deserve particular attention in terms of modeling and reasoning. Exploi- tion of new application domains such as health care, education, and active aging for retired professionals also help identify new research challenges, both in terms of m- eling and ICT support development.

You don't need to be convinced. You know that usability is key to the success of any interactive system-from commercial software to B2B Web sites to handheld devices. But you need skills to make usability part of your product development equation. How will you assess your users' needs and preferences? How will you design effective solutions that are grounded in users' current practices? How will you evaluate and refine these designs to ensure a quality product?

"Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction" is a radical departure from traditional books that emphasize theory and address experts. This book focuses on the realities of product development, showing how user interaction scenarios can make usability practices an integral part of interactive system development. As you'll learn, usability engineering is not the application of inflexible rules; it's a process of analysis, prototyping, and problem solving in which you evaluate tradeoffs, make reasoned decisions, and maximize the overall value of your product.
* Written by prominent HCI educators who understand how to teach usability practices to students and professional developers.
* Interleaves HCI theory and concepts with a running case study demonstrating their application.
* Gradually elaborates the case study to introduce increasingly sophisticated usability engineering techniques.
* Analyzes usability issues in realistic scenarios that describe existing or envisioned systems from the perspective of one or more users.
* Emphasizes the real world of usability engineering-a world in which tradeoffs must be weighed and difficult decisions made to achieve desired results.
* Includes a companion Web site which provides additional case studies in a multimedia format, along with a Java application for creating and editing scenarios. This site also provides instructors with sample syllabi, lecture slides and notes, in-class exercises, solutions to textbook exercises, additional project ideas, and links to other HCI resources.

In more ways than one, assistive technologies can have a profound impact on humans and their operations within society. Understanding these emerging technologies is crucial to their effective use in improving human lives. Human-Computer Interfaces and Interactivity: Emergent Research and Applications aims to address the main issues of interest within the culture and design of interactive systems for individuals living with disabilities. This premier reference work addresses a range of approaches including, but not limited to, the conceptual, technological, and design issues related to human-computer interaction, issues of interest to a range of individuals including academics, university teachers, researchers, post-graduate students, public and private institutions, and HCI developers and researchers.

This book highlights the methods and applications for roadside video data analysis, with a particular focus on the use of deep learning to solve roadside video data segmentation and classification problems. It describes system architectures and methodologies that are specifically built upon learning concepts for roadside video data processing, and offers a detailed analysis of the segmentation, feature extraction and classification processes. Lastly, it demonstrates the applications of roadside video data analysis including scene labelling, roadside vegetation classification and vegetation biomass estimation in fire risk assessment.

Artificial Intelligence and Industry 4.0 explores recent advancements in blockchain technology and artificial intelligence (AI) as well as their crucial impacts on realizing Industry 4.0 goals. The book explores AI applications in industry including Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology. Chapters explore how AI (machine learning, smart cities, healthcare, Society 5.0, etc.) have numerous potential applications in the Industry 4.0 era. This book is a useful resource for researchers and graduate students in computer science researching and developing AI and the IIoT.

This book introduces the latest progress in six degrees of freedom (6-DoF) haptic rendering with the focus on a new approach for simulating force/torque feedback in performing tasks that require dexterous manipulation skills. One of the major challenges in 6-DoF haptic rendering is to resolve the conflict between high speed and high fidelity requirements, especially in simulating a tool interacting with both rigid and deformable objects in a narrow space and with fine features. The book presents a configuration-based optimization approach to tackle this challenge. Addressing a key issue in many VR-based simulation systems, the book will be of particular interest to researchers and professionals in the areas of surgical simulation, rehabilitation, virtual assembly, and inspection and maintenance.

Designing Inclusive Interactions contains the proceedings of the fifth Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT), incorporating the 8th Cambridge Workshop on Rehabilitation Robotics, held in Cambridge, England, in March 2010. It contains contributions from an international group of leading researchers in the fields of Universal Access and Assistive Technology. This conference will mainly focus on the following principal topics: 1. Designing assistive and rehabilitation technology for working and daily living environments 2. Measuring inclusion for the design of products for work and daily living 3. Inclusive interaction design and new technologies for inclusive design 4. Assembling new user data for inclusive design 5. The design of accessible and inclusive contexts: work and daily living environments 6. Business advantages and applications of inclusive design 7. Legislation, standards and government awareness of inclusive design

Cultural forces govern a synergistic relationship among information institutions that shapes their roles collectively and individually. Cultural synergy is the combination of perception- and behavior-shaping knowledge within, between, and among groups. Our hyperlinked era makes information-sharing among institutions critically important for scholarship as well as for the advancement of humankind. Information institutions are those that have, or share in, the mission to preserve, conserve, and disseminate information objects and their informative content. A central idea is the notion of social epistemology that information institutions arise culturally from social forces of the cultures they inhabit, and that their purpose is to disseminate that culture. All information institutions are alike in critical ways. Intersecting lines of cultural mission are trajectories for synergy for allowing us to perceive the universe of information institutions as interconnected and evolving and moving forward in distinct ways for the improvement of the condition of humankind through the building up of its knowledge base and of its information-sharing processes. This book is an exploration of the cultural synergy that can be realized by seeing commonalities among information institutions (sometimes also called cultural heritage institutions): museums, libraries, and archives. The hyperlinked era of the Semantic Web makes information sharing among institutions critically important for scholarship as well as the advancement of mankind. The book addresses the origins of cultural information institutions, the history of the professions that run them, and the social imperative of information organization as a catalyst for semantic synergy.

This book consists of a series of essays which addresses the essentials of the development processes in user-experience design (UX design) planning, research, analysis, evaluation, training and implementation, and deals with the essential components (metaphors, mental models, navigation, and appearance) of user-interfaces and user-experiences during the period of 2002-2007. These essays grew from the authors own column entitled 'Fast Forward' which appeared in Interaction Magazine - the flagship publication of the ACM Special Interest Group on Human-Computing Interaction (SIGCHI). Written in such a way as to ensure longevity, these essays have not been edited or updated, however a short Postscripts has been added to provide some comments on each topic from a current perspective. HCI and User-Experience Design provides a fascinating historical review of the professional and research world of UX and HCI during a period of significant growth and development and would be of interest to students, researchers, and designers who are interested in recent developments within the field.