This book contains papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Real-time Object and Environment Measurement and Classification" held in Maratea, Italy, August 31 - September 3, 1987. This workshop was organized within the activities of the NATO Special Programme on Sensory Systems for Robotic Control. Four major themes were discussed at this workshop: Real-time Requirements, Feature Measurement, Object Representation and Recognition, and Architecture for Measurement and Classification. A total of twenty-five technical presentations, contained in this book, cover a wide spectrum of topics including hardware implementation of specific vision algorithms, a complete vision system for object tracking and inspection, using three cameras (trinocular stereo) for feature measurement, neural network for object recognition, integration of CAD (Computer Aided Design) and vision systems, and the use of pyramid architectures for solving various computer vision problems. These papers are written by some of the very well-known researchers in the computer vision and pattern recognition community, and represent both industrial and academic viewpoints. The authors come from thirteen different countries from Europe and North America. Therefore, readers will get a first hand and current information about the status of computer vision research in various western countries. Further, this book will also be useful in understanding the current research issues in computer vision and the difficulties in designing real-time vision systems.

A Practitioner's Handbook for Real-Time Analysis: Guide to Rate Monotonic Analysis for Real-Time Systems contains an invaluable collection of quantitative methods that enable real-time system developers to understand, analyze, and predict the timing behavior of many real-time systems. The methods are practical and theoretically sound, and can be used to assess design tradeoffs and to troubleshoot system timing behavior. This collection of methods is called rate monotonic analysis (RMA). The Handbook includes a framework for describing and categorizing the timing aspects of real-time systems, step-by-step techniques for performing timing analysis, numerous examples of real-time situations to which the techniques can be applied, and two case studies. A Practitioner's Handbook for Real-Time Analysis: Guide to Rate Monotonic Analysis for Real-Time Systems has been created to serve as a definitive source of information and a guide for developers as they analyze and design real-time systems using RMA. The Handbook is an excellent reference, and may be used as the text for advanced courses on the subject.

This volume contains a selection of papers that focus on the state-of the-art in formal specification and verification of real-time computing systems. Preliminary versions of these papers were presented at a workshop on the foundations of real-time computing sponsored by the Office of Naval Research in October, 1990 in Washington, D. C. A companion volume by the title Foundations of Real-Time Computing: Scheduling and Resource Management complements this hook by addressing many of the recently devised techniques and approaches for scheduling tasks and managing resources in real-time systems. Together, these two texts provide a comprehensive snapshot of current insights into the process of designing and building real time computing systems on a scientific basis. The notion of real-time system has alternative interpretations, not all of which are intended usages in this collection of papers. Different communities of researchers variously use the term real-time to refer to either very fast computing, or immediate on-line data acquisition, or deadline-driven computing. This text is concerned with the formal specification and verification of computer software and systems whose correct performance is dependent on carefully orchestrated interactions with time, e. g., meeting deadlines and synchronizing with clocks. Such systems have been enabled for a rapidly increasing set of diverse end-uses by the unremitting advances in computing power per constant-dollar cost and per constant-unit-volume of space. End use applications of real-time computers span a spectrum that includes transportation systems, robotics and manufacturing, aerospace and defense, industrial process control, and telecommunications."

Numerical linear algebra, digital signal processing, and parallel algorithms are three disciplines with a great deal of activity in the last few years. The interaction between them has been growing to a level that merits an Advanced Study Institute dedicated to the three areas together. This volume gives an account of the main results in this interdisciplinary field. The following topics emerged as major themes of the meeting: - Singular value and eigenvalue decompositions, including applications, - Toeplitz matrices, including special algorithms and architectures, - Recursive least squares in linear algebra, digital signal processing and control, - Updating and downdating techniques in linear algebra and signal processing, - Stability and sensitivity analysis of special recursive least squares problems, - Special architectures for linear algebra and signal processing. This book contains tutorials on these topics given by leading scientists in each of the three areas. A consider- able number of new research results are presented in contributed papers. The tutorials and papers will be of value to anyone interested in the three disciplines.

This volume contains the complete proceedings of a NATO Advanced Study Institute on various aspects of the reliability of electronic and other systems. The aim of the Insti~ute was to bring together specialists in this subject. An important outcome of this Conference, as many of the delegates have pointed out to me, was complementing theoretical concepts and practical applications in both software and hardware. The reader will find papers on the mathematical background, on reliability problems in establishments where system failure may be hazardous, on reliability assessment in mechanical systems, and also on life cycle cost models and spares allocation. The proceedings contain the texts of all the lectures delivered and also verbatim accounts of panel discussions on subjects chosen from a wide range of important issues. In this introduction I will give a short account of each contribution, stressing what I feel are the most interesting topics introduced by a lecturer or a panel member. To visualise better the extent and structure. of the Institute, I present a tree-like diagram showing the subjects which my co-directors and I would have wished to include in our deliberations (Figures 1 and 2). The names of our lecturers appear underlined under suitable headings. It can be seen that we have managed to cover most of the issues which seemed important to us. VI SYSTEM EFFECTIVENESS _---~-I~--_- Performance Safety Reliability ~intenance ~istic Lethality Hazards Support S.N.R. JARDINE Max. Vel. etc.

The NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Signal Processing and Pattern Recognition in Nondestructive Evaluation (NOE) of Materials was held August 19-22, 1987 at the Manoir St-Castin, Lac Beauport, Quebec, Canada. Modern signal processing, pattern recognition and artificial intelligence have been playing an increasingly important role in improving nondestructive evaluation and testing techniques. The cross fertilization of the two major areas can lead to major advances in NOE as well as presenting a new research area in signal processing. With this in mind, the Workshop provided a good review of progress and comparison of potential techniques, as well as constructive discussions and suggestions for effective use of modern signal processing to improve flaw detection, classification and prediction, as well as material characterization. This Proceedings volume includes most presentations given at the Workshop. This publication, like the meeting itself, is unique in the sense that it provides extensive interactions among the interrelated areas of NOE. The book starts with research advances on inverse problems and then covers different aspects of digital waveform processing in NOE and eddy current signal analysis. These are followed by four papers of pattern recognition and AI in NOE, and five papers of image processing and reconstruction in NOE. The last two papers deal with parameter estimation problems. Though the list of papers is not extensive, as the field of NOE signal processing is very new, the book has an excellent collection of both tutorial and research papers in this exciting new field.

Cellular automata are fully discrete dynamical systems with dynamical variables defined at the nodes of a lattice and taking values in a finite set. Application of a local transition rule at each lattice site generates the dynamics. The interpretation of systems with a large number of degrees of freedom in terms of lattice gases has received considerable attention recently due to the many applications of this approach, e.g. for simulating fluid flows under nearly realistic conditions, for modeling complex microscopic natural phenomena such as diffusion-reaction or catalysis, and for analysis of pattern-forming systems. The discussion in this book covers aspects of cellular automata theory related to general problems of information theory and statistical physics, lattice gas theory, direct applications, problems arising in the modeling of microscopic physical processes, complex macroscopic behavior (mostly in connection with turbulence), and the design of special-purpose computers.

The book provides an in-depth understanding of the fundamentals of superconducting electronics and the practical considerations for the fabrication of superconducting electronic structures. Additionally, it covers in detail the opportunities afforded by superconductivity for uniquely sensitive electronic devices and illustrates how these devices (in some cases employing high-temperature, ceramic superconductors) can be applied in analog and digital signal processing, laboratory instruments, biomagnetism, geophysics, nondestructive evaluation and radioastronomy. Improvements in cryocooler technology for application to cryoelectronics are also covered. This is the first book in several years to treat the fundamentals and applications of superconducting electronics in a comprehensive manner, and it is the very first book to consider the implications of high-temperature, ceramic superconductors for superconducting electronic devices. Not only does this new class of superconductors create new opportunities, but recently impressive milestones have been reached in superconducting analog and digital signal processing which promise to lead to a new generation of sensing, processing and computational systems. The 15 chapters are authored by acknowledged leaders in the fundamental science and in the applications of this increasingly active field, and many of the authors provide a timely assessment of the potential for devices and applications based upon ceramic-oxide superconductors or hybrid structures incorporating these new superconductors with other materials. The book takes the reader from a basic discussion of applicable (BCS and Ginzburg-Landau) theories and tunneling phenomena, through the structure and characteristics of Josephson devices and circuits, to applications that utilize the world's most sensitive magnetometer, most sensitive microwave detector, and fastest arithmetic logic unit.

Visualization in scientific computing is getting more and more attention from many people. Especially in relation with the fast increase of com puting power, graphic tools are required in many cases for interpreting and presenting the results of various simulations, or for analyzing physical phenomena. The Eurographics Working Group on Visualization in Scientific Com puting has therefore organized a first workshop at Electricite de France (Clamart) in cooperation with ONERA (Chatillon). A wide range of pa pers were selected in order to cover most of the topics of interest for the members of the group, for this first edition, and 26 of them were presented in two days. Subsequently 18 papers were selected for this volume. 1'he presentations were organized in eight small sessions, in addition to discussions in small subgroups. The first two sessions were dedicated to the specific needs for visualization in computational sciences: the need for graphics support in large computing centres and high performance net works, needs of research and education in universities and academic cen tres, and the need for effective and efficient ways of integrating numerical computations or experimental data and graphics. Three of those papers are in Part I of this book. The third session discussed the importance and difficulties of using stan dards in visualization software, and was related to the fourth session where some reference models and distributed graphics systems were discussed. Part II has five papers from these sessions.

It is almost six years since the inauguration of the TRON project, a con cept first proposed by Dr. K. Sakamura of the University of Tokyo, and it is almost 2 years since the foundation of the TRON Association on March 1988. The number of regular member companies registered in the TRON Association as of November 1988 is 145 which is a new re cord for the Association. Some of this year's major activities that I would particularly like to mention are: - Over 50 TRON project-related products have been or are about to be introduced to the marketplace, according to a preliminary report from the Future Study Committee of the TRON Association. In par ticular, I am happy to say that the ITRON subproject, which is ahead of the other subprojects, has progressed so far that several papers on ITRON applications will be presented at this conference, which means that the ITRON specifications are now ready for application to em bedded commercial and industrial products."

Sir Isaac Newton's philosophi Naturalis Principia Mathematica'(the Principia) contains a prose-style mixture of geometric and limit reasoning that has often been viewed as logically vague. In A Combination of Geometry Theorem Proving and Nonstandard Analysis, Jacques Fleuriot presents a formalization of Lemmas and Propositions from the Principia using a combination of methods from geometry and nonstandard analysis. The mechanization of the procedures, which respects much of Newton's original reasoning, is developed within the theorem prover Isabelle. The application of this framework to the mechanization of elementary real analysis using nonstandard techniques is also discussed.

It has been almost 5 years since the inauguration of the TRON project, a concept first proposed by Dr. K. Sakamura of the University of Tokyo. The TRON Association, which was founded as an independent organization in March 1988, has been taking over the activities of the earlier TRON Association, which was a division of Japan Electronic Industry Development Association (JEIDA). It has been expanding various operations to globalize the organizations activities. The number of member companies already exceeds 100, with increasing participation from overseas companies. It is truly an awaring historical event that so many members with the same qualifications and aims engaged in the research and development of the computer environment could be gathered together. The TRON concept aims at the creation of a new and complete environment beneficial to both computer and mankind. It has a very wide scope and great diversity. As it includes the open architecture concept and as the TRON machine should be able to work with various foreign languages, the TRON is targetted to be used internationally. In order for us to create a complete TRON world, at though there are several TRON products already on the market, continuous and aggressive participation from as members together with concentration as further development are indispensable. We, the TRON promoters, are much encouraged by such a driving force.

This book is about time-domain modelling, stability, stabilization, control design and filtering for JTDS. It gives readers a thorough understanding of the basic mathematical analysis and fundamentals, offers a straightforward treatment of the different topics and provides broad coverage of the recent methodologies.

CAD (Computer Aided Design) technology is now crucial for every division of modern industry, from a viewpoint of higher productivity and better products. As technologies advance, the amount of information and knowledge that engineers have to deal with is constantly increasing. This results in seeking more advanced computer technology to achieve higher functionalities, flexibility, and efficient performance of the CAD systems. Knowledge engineering, or more broadly artificial intelligence, is considered a primary candidate technology to build a new generation of CAD systems. Since design is a very intellectual human activity, this approach seems to make sense. The ideas of intelligent CAD systems (ICAD) are now increasingly discussed everywhere. We can observe many conferences and workshops reporting a number of research efforts on this particular subject. Researchers are coming from computer science, artificial intelligence, mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, civil engineering, architectural science, control engineering, etc. But, still we cannot see the direction of this concept, or at least, there is no widely accepted concept of ICAD. What can designers expect from these future generation CAD systems? In which direction must developers proceed? The situation is somewhat confusing.

The origin of the development of integrated circuits up to VLSI is found in the invention of the transistor, which made it possible to achieve the ac- tion of a vacuum tube in a semiconducting solid. The structure of the tran- sistor can be constructed by a manufacturing technique such as the intro- duction of a small amount of an impurity into a semiconductor and, in ad- dition, most transistor characteristics can be improved by a reduction of dimensions. These are all important factors in the development. Actually, the microfabrication of the integrated circuit can be used for two purposes, namely to increase the integration density and to obtain an improved perfor- mance, e. g. a high speed. When one of these two aims is pursued, the result generally satisfies both. We use the Engl ish translation "very large scale integration (VLSIl" for "Cho LSI" in Japanese. In the United States of America, however, similar technology is bei ng developed under the name "very hi gh speed integrated circuits (VHSIl". This also originated from the nature of the integrated circuit which satisfies both purposes. Fortunately, the Japanese word "Cho LSI" has a wider meani ng than VLSI, so it can be used ina broader area. However, VLSI has a larger industrial effect than VHSI.

The first ESPRIT Basic Research Project on Predictably Dependable Computing Systems (No. 3092, PDCS) commenced in May 1989, and ran until March 1992. The institutions and principal investigators that were involved in PDCS were: City University, London, UK (Bev Littlewood), lEI del CNR, Pisa, Italy (Lorenzo Strigini), Universitiit Karlsruhe, Germany (Tom Beth), LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France (Jean-Claude Laprie), University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (Brian Randell), LRI-CNRS/Universite Paris-Sud, France (Marie-Claude Gaudel), Technische Universitiit Wien, Austria (Hermann Kopetz), and University of York, UK (John McDermid). The work continued after March 1992, and a three-year successor project (No. 6362, PDCS2) officially started in August 1992, with a slightly changed membership: Chalmers University of Technology, Goteborg, Sweden (Erland Jonsson), City University, London, UK (Bev Littlewood), CNR, Pisa, Italy (Lorenzo Strigini), LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France (Jean-Claude Laprie), Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium (Pierre-Jacques Courtois), University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (Brian Randell), LRI-CNRS/Universite Paris-Sud, France (Marie-Claude Gaudel), Technische Universitiit Wien, Austria (Hermann Kopetz), and University of York, UK (John McDermid). The summary objective of both projects has been "to contribute to making the process of designing and constructing dependable computing systems much more predictable and cost-effective." In the case of PDCS2, the concentration has been on the problems of producing dependable distributed real-time systems and especially those where the dependability requirements centre on issues of safety and/or security.

W.J.Quirk 1.1 Real-time software and the real world Real-time software and the real world are inseparably related. Real time cannot be turned back and the real world will not always forget its history. The consequences of previous influences may last for a long time and the undesired effects may range from being inconvenient to disastrous in both economic and human terms. As a result, there is much pressure to develop and apply techniques to improve the reliability of real-time software so that the frequency and consequences of failure are reduced to a level that is as low as reasonably achievable. This report is about such techniques. After a detailed description of the software life cycle, a chapter is devoted to each of the four principle categories of technique available at present. These cover all stages of the software development process and each chapter identifies relevant techniques, the stages to which they are applicable and their effectiveness in improving real-time software reliability. 1.2 The characteristics of real-time software As well as the enhanced reliability requirement discussed above, real-time software has a number of other distinguishing characteristics. First, the sequencing and timing of inputs are determined by the real world and not by the programmer. Thus the program needs to be prepared for the unexpected and the demands made on the system may be conflicting. Second, the demands on the system may occur in parallel rather than in sequence.

Artificial Intelligence and expert systems research, development, and demonstration have rapidly expanded over the past several years; as a result, new terminology is appearing at a phenomenal rate. This sourcebook provides an introduction to artificial intelligence and expert systems, it provides brief definitions, it includes brief descriptions of software products, and vendors, and notes leaders in the field. Extensive support material is provided by delineating points of contact for receiving additional information, acronyms, a detailed bibliography, and other reference data. The terminology includes artificial intelligence and expert system elements for: * Artificial Intelligence * Expert Systems * Natural language Processing * Smart Robots * Machine Vision * Speech Synthesis The Artificial Intelligence and Expert System Sourcebook is compiled from informa tion acquired from numerous books, journals, and authorities in the field of artificial intelligence and expert systems. I hope this compilation of information will help clarify the terminology for artificial intelligence and expert systems' activities. Your comments, revisions, or questions are welcome. V. Daniel Hunt Springfield, Virginia May, 1986 ix Acknowledgments The information in Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems Sourcebook has been compiled from a wide variety of authorities who are specialists in their respective fields. The following publications were used as the basic technical resources for this book. Portions of these publications may have been used in the book. Those definitions or artwork used have been reproduced with the permission to reprint of the respective publisher.

The LNCS journal Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems focuses on data management, knowledge discovery, and knowledge processing, which are core and hot topics in computer science. Since the 1990s, the Internet has become the main driving force behind application development in all domains. An increase in the demand for resource sharing across different sites connected through networks has led to an evolution of data- and knowledge-management systems from centralized systems to decentralized systems enabling large-scale distributed applications providing high scalability. Current decentralized systems still focus on data and knowledge as their main resource. Feasibility of these systems relies basically on P2P (peer-to-peer) techniques and the support of agent systems with scaling and decentralized control. Synergy between Grids, P2P systems, and agent technologies is the key to data- and knowledge-centered systems in large-scale environments. This special issue of Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems highlights some of the major challenges emerging from the biomedical applications that are currently inspiring and promoting database research. These include the management, organization, and integration of massive amounts of heterogeneous data; the semantic gap between high-level research questions and low-level data; and privacy and efficiency. The contributions cover a large variety of biological and medical applications, including genome-wide association studies, epidemic research, and neuroscience.

Computers are currently used in a variety of critical applications, including systems for nuclear reactor control, flight control (both aircraft and spacecraft), and air traffic control. Moreover, experience has shown that the dependability of such systems is particularly sensitive to that of its software components, both the system software of the embedded computers and the application software they support. Software Performability: From Concepts to Applications addresses the construction and solution of analytic performability models for critical-application software. The book includes a review of general performability concepts along with notions which are peculiar to software performability. Since fault tolerance is widely recognized as a viable means for improving the dependability of computer system (beyond what can be achieved by fault prevention), the examples considered are fault-tolerant software systems that incorporate particular methods of design diversity and fault recovery. Software Performability: From Concepts to Applications will be of direct benefit to both practitioners and researchers in the area of performance and dependability evaluation, fault-tolerant computing, and dependable systems for critical applications. For practitioners, it supplies a basis for defining combined performance-dependability criteria (in the form of objective functions) that can be used to enhance the performability (performance/dependability) of existing software designs. For those with research interests in model-based evaluation, the book provides an analytic framework and a variety of performability modeling examples in an application context of recognized importance. The material contained in this book will both stimulate future research on related topics and, for teaching purposes, serve as a reference text in courses on computer system evaluation, fault-tolerant computing, and dependable high-performance computer systems.

Transaction processing is an established technique for the concurrent and fault tolerant access of persistent data. While this technique has been successful in standard database systems, factors such as time-critical applications, emerg ing technologies, and a re-examination of existing systems suggest that the performance, functionality and applicability of transactions may be substan tially enhanced if temporal considerations are taken into account. That is, transactions should not only execute in a "legal" (i.e., logically correct) man ner, but they should meet certain constraints with regard to their invocation and completion times. Typically, these logical and temporal constraints are application-dependent, and we address some fundamental issues for the man agement of transactions in the presence of such constraints. Our model for transaction-processing is based on extensions to established mod els, and we briefly outline how logical and temporal constraints may be ex pressed in it. For scheduling the transactions, we describe how legal schedules differ from one another in terms of meeting the temporal constraints. Exist ing scheduling mechanisms do not differentiate among legal schedules, and are thereby inadequate with regard to meeting temporal constraints. This provides the basis for seeking scheduling strategies that attempt to meet the temporal constraints while continuing to produce legal schedules."

This book reviews current state of the art methods for building intelligent systems using type-2 fuzzy logic and bio-inspired optimization techniques. Combining type-2 fuzzy logic with optimization algorithms, powerful hybrid intelligent systems have been built using the advantages that each technique offers. This book is intended to be a reference for scientists and engineers interested in applying type-2 fuzzy logic for solving problems in pattern recognition, intelligent control, intelligent manufacturing, robotics and automation. This book can also be used as a reference for graduate courses like the following: soft computing, intelligent pattern recognition, computer vision, applied artificial intelligence, and similar ones. We consider that this book can also be used to get novel ideas for new lines of re-search, or to continue the lines of research proposed by the authors.

Real World Speech Processing brings together in one place important contributions and up-to-date research results in this fast-moving area. The contributors to this work were selected from the leading researchers and practitioners in this field.
The work, originally published as Volume 36, Numbers 2-3 of the Journal of VLSI Signal Processing Systems for Signal, Image, and Video Technology, will be valuable to anyone working or researching in the field of speech processing. It serves as an excellent reference, providing insight into some of the most challenging issues being examined today.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems, FMICS 2011, held in Trento, Italy, in August 2011. The 16 papers presented together with 2 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 39 submissions. The aim of the FMICS workshop series is to provide a forum for researchers who are interested in the development and application of formal methods in industry. It also strives to promote research and development for the improvement of formal methods and tools for industrial applications.

Architecture-independent programming and automatic parallelisation have long been regarded as two different means of alleviating the prohibitive costs of parallel software development. Building on recent advances in both areas, Architecture-Independent Loop Parallelisation proposes a unified approach to the parallelisation of scientific computing code. This novel approach is based on the bulk-synchronous parallel model of computation, and succeeds in automatically generating parallel code that is architecture-independent, scalable, and of analytically predictable performance.