This book describes the design, mathematical modeling, control system development and experimental validation of a versatile mobile pipe inspection robot. It also discusses a versatile robotic system for pipeline inspection, together with an original, adaptable tracked mobile robot featuring a patented motion unit. Pipeline inspection is a common field of application for mobile robots because the monitoring of inaccessible, long and narrow pipelines is a very difficult task for humans. The main design objective is to minimize the number of robots needed to inspect different types of horizontal and vertical pipelines, with both smooth and rough surfaces. The book includes extensive information on the various design phases, mathematical modeling, simulations and control system development. In closing, the prototype construction process and testing procedures are presented and supplemented with laboratory and field experiments.

As robots are used more and more to perform a variety of tasks in a range of fields, it is imperative to make the robots as reliable and safe as possible. Yet no book currently covers robot reliability and safety within one framework. Robot System Reliability and Safety: A Modern Approach presents up-to-date information on robot reliability, safety, and related areas in a single volume, eliminating the need to consult diverse sources. After introducing historical, mathematical, and introductory aspects, the book presents methods for analyzing robot system reliability and safety. It next focuses on topics related to robot reliability, including classifications of robot failures and their causes and hydraulic and electric robots' reliability analysis. The book then explains the analysis of robot-related safety and accidents, covers key elements of robot maintenance and robotics applications in maintenance and repair, and addresses human factors and safety considerations in robotics workplaces. The book concludes with chapters on robot testing, costing, and failure data as well as six mathematical models for reliability and safety analysis. Written by a well-known expert in reliability engineering, this book will be useful to system, design, reliability, and safety engineers along with other engineering professionals working in the area of robotics. It can also be used in courses on system engineering, reliability engineering, and safety engineering.

Design of Observer-based Compensators facilitates and adds transparency to design in the frequency domain which is not as well-established among control engineers as time domain design. The presentation of the design procedures starts with a review of the time domain results; therefore, the book also provides quick access to state space methods for control system design.

Frequency domain design of observer-based compensators of all orders is covered. The design of decoupling and disturbance rejecting controllers is presented, and solutions are given to the linear quadratic and the model matching problems. The pole assignment design is facilitated by a new parametric approach in the frequency domain. Anti-windup control is also investigated in the framework of the polynomial approach. The discrete-time results for disturbance rejection and linear quadratic control are also presented.

The book contains worked examples that can easily be reproduced by the reader, and the results are illustrated by simulations.

Robot Hands and Multi-Fingered Haptic Interfaces is a monograph focusing on the comparison of human hands with robot hands, the fundamentals behind designing and creating the latter, and robotics' latest advancements in haptic technology.This work discusses the design of robot hands; contact models at grasping; kinematic models of constraint; dynamic models of the multi-fingered hand; the stability theorem of non-linear control systems; robot hand control; design and control of multi-fingered haptic interfaces; application systems using multi-fingered haptic interfaces; and telecontrol of robot hands using a multi-fingered haptic interface.Robot Hands and Multi-Fingered Haptic Interfaces is intended mainly for readers who have a foundation in basic robot arm engineering. To understand robot hand manipulation, readers must study kinematic constraint models of fingers, hand dynamics with constraints, stability theorems of non-linear control, and multi-fingered hand control - this book will benefit readers' understanding of this full range of issues regarding robot hand manipulation.

Interested in cutting costs and improving the quality of your manufacturing processes to stay competitive?

Unsure about what others have done, what s possible or how best to integrate robots into what you do?

Worried about making costly errors in trying to implement new technology?

Based on the author s wide-ranging experience as a robot user, supplier and consultant, Implementation of Robot Systems will enable you to approach the use of robots in your plant or facility armed with the right base knowledge and awareness of critical factors to take into account.

Written to assist engineers and managers across various industries in applying robot solutions to real-world manufacturing problems, the book starts with the basics of typical applications and robot capabilities before covering all stages of successful robot integration. Potential problems and pitfalls are flagged and worked through so that you can learn from others mistakes and plan proactively with possible issues in mind.

Taking in content from the author s graduate level teaching of automation and robotics for engineering in business and his consultancy as part of a UK Government program to help companies advance their technologies and practices in the area, Implementation of Robot Systems blends technical information with critical financial and business considerations to help you stay ahead of the competition.
Introduces the key technologies in use and their benefits, focusing on the knowledge needed to enable application to your manufacturing problems

Includes case studies of typical robot capabilities and use across a range of industries, with real-world installation examples and problems encountered

Provides step-by-step coverage of the various stages required to achieve successful implementation, including system design, financial justification, working with suppliers and project management

Offers no-nonsense advice on the pitfalls and issues to anticipate, along with guidance on how to avoid or resolve them for a cost- and time-effective solution "

Telexistence is a fundamental concept which refers to the general technology that enables a human being to have the real-time sensation of being at a place other than where he or she actually exists, while being able to interact with the remote environment, which may be real, virtual, or a combination of both. It also refers to an advanced type of teleoperation system that enables an operator at the control to perform remote tasks dexterously with the feeling of existing in a surrogate robot working in a remote environment. Telexistence in the real remote environment through a virtual environment is also possible.This book is the second edition of the original Telexistence; new contents cover recent advancements of the technology in areas such as human augmentation, autostereoscopy, tangible visuo-haptic 3D display, face-to-face communication, and haptic sensations and technologies. Case studies of the mobile mutual telexistence system TELESAR IV and haptic telexistence avatar system TELESAR V are also included. Written by the inventor of the concept of this emerging technology, it introduces the concept of telexistence, explains how this concept can be realized, illustrates precisely real examples of the realization of the concept, and determines its future advancement. Readers will be inspired by the concept, and acquire appropriate knowledge on this emerging technology and the fundamental skills to contribute in further development of telexistence.

This book reveals that the way we perceive sex robots is how we perceive ourselves, overcoming the false human/non-human binary. From Greek myths, to the film Ex Machina, to Japanese technology, non-human sexuality has been at the heart of culture. In Sex Robots, the history of this culture is explored. This text sheds new light on what the sex robot represents and signifies, examining its philosophical implications within the context of today's society. This volume will be of interest to scholars of technology, cultural studies, the social sciences and philosophy.

The demand for safety in modern industrial processes has come to involve an increasing demand for teleoperated devices in order to avoid the exposure of humans to hazardous conditions during the operation, maintenance under normal or abnormal conditions and decommissioning of equipment after its useful lifetime has terminated. An important for teleoperations has been reached in the 1990s as the first commercial nuclear power stations reach the end of their useful life. Simultaneously, progress in the work on controlled thermonuclear fusion demonstrates the importance of teleoperation in the assembly of future reactors as well as in their maintenance and decommissioning. "Teleoperation: Numerical Simulation and Experimental Validation" presents the fundamentals and the advances in simulation and experimentation in the teleoperations field, dealing with such matters as path planning, calibration, autonomy, safety, and radiation hardening. The book addresses users working in the field of engineering R&D and plant operation management. Students in schools of engineeering, too, should find the book of value, as it addresses topics of acute practical interest in an area that can only grow in importance.

For Fans of Mary Roach, a Sweetly Nostalgic and Enlightening Exploration of Futures Past, Present, and Still to Come Generation Robot covers a century of science fiction, fact, and speculation-from the 1950 publication of Isaac Asimov's seminal robot masterpiece, I, Robot, to the 2050 Singularity when artificial and human intelligence are predicted to merge. Beginning with a childhood informed by pop-culture robots in movies, in comic books, and on TV in the 1960s, to adulthood where the possibilities of self-driving cars and virtual reality are daily conversation, Terri Favro offers a unique perspective on how our relationship with robotics and futuristic technologies has shifted over time. Peppered with pop-culture fun-facts about Superman's kryptonite, the human-machine relationships in the cult TV show Firefly, and the sexual and moral implications of the film Ex Machina, Generation Robot explores how the techno-triumphs and resulting anxieties of reality bleed into the fantasies of our collective culture. Clever and accessible, Generation Robot isn't just for the serious, scientific reader-it's for everyone interested in robotics and technology since their science-fiction origins. By looking back at the future she once imagined, analyzing the plugged-in present, and speculating on what is on the horizon, Terri Favro allows readers the chance to consider what was, what is, and what could be. This is a captivating book that looks at the pop-culture of our society to explain how the world works-now and tomorrow.

This is a comprehensive volume on robot teams that will be the standard reference on multi-robot systems. The volume provides not only the essentials of multi-agent robotics theory but also descriptions of exemplary implemented systems demonstrating the key concepts of multi-robot research. Information is presented in a descriptive manner and augmented with detailed mathematical formulations, photos, diagrams, and source code examples.

The great majority of books on artificial intelligence are written by AI experts who understandably focus on its achievements and potential transformative effects on society. In contrast, AI vs Humans is written by two psychologists (Michael and Christine Eysenck) whose perspective on AI (including robotics) is based on their knowledge and understanding of human cognition. This book evaluates the strengths and limitations of people and AI. The authors' expertise equips them well to consider this by seeing how well (or badly) AI compares to human intelligence. They accept that AI matches or exceeds human ability in many spheres such as mathematical calculations, complex games (e.g., chess, Go, and poker), diagnosis from medical images, and robotic surgery. However, the human tendency to anthropomorphise has led many people to claim mistakenly that AI systems can think, infer, reason, and understand while engaging in information processing. In fact, such systems lack all those cognitive skills and are also deficient in the quintessentially human abilities of flexibility of thinking and general intelligence. At a time when human commitment to AI appears unstoppable, this up-to-date book advocates a symbiotic and co-operative relationship between humans and AI. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in AI and human cognition.

Interest in control of climbing and walking robots has remarkably increased over the years. Novel solutions of complex mechanical systems such as climbing, walking, flying and running robots with different kinds of locomotion and the technologies that support them and their applications are the evidence of significant progress in the area of robotics. Supporting technologies include the means by which robots use to sense, model, and navigate through their environments and, of course, actuation and control technologies. Human interaction including exoskeletons, prostheses and orthoses, as well as service robots, are increasingly active important pertinent areas of research. In addition, legged machines and tracked platforms with software architecture seem to be currently the research idea of most interest to the robotics community.

This volume of the SPAR series brings the proceedings of the fourteen edition of the DARS symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems, whose proceedings have been published within SPAR since the past edition. This symposium took place in Boulder, CO from October 15th to 17th, 2018. The volume edited by Nikolaus Correll and Mac Schwager contains 36 scientific contributions cutting across planning, control, design, perception, networking, and optimization, all united through the common thread of distributed robotic systems.

This book presents a study on the novel concept of "event-triggered control of nonlinear systems subject to disturbances", discussing the theory and practical applications. Richly illustrated, it is a valuable resource for researchers, engineers and graduate students in automation engineering who wish to learn the theories, technologies, and applications of event-triggered control of nonlinear systems.

This book includes extended and revised versions of a set of selected papers from the Ninth International Conference on Informatics in Control Automation and Robotics (ICINCO 2012), held in Rome, Italy, from 28 to 31 July 2012. The conference was organized in four simultaneous tracks: Intelligent Control Systems and Optimization, Robotics and Automation, Systems Modeling, Signal Processing and Control and Industrial Engineering, Production and Management. ICINCO 2012 received 360 paper submissions, from 58 countries in all continents. From these, after a blind review process, only 40 were accepted as full papers, of which 20 were selected for inclusion in this book, based on the classifications provided by the Program Committee. The selected papers reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the conference as well as the logic equilibrium between the four abovementioned tracks. The diversity of topics is an important feature of this conference, enabling an overall perception of several important scientific and technological trends.

This book explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI), by leading to an increase in the autonomy of machines and robots, is offering opportunities for an expanded but uncertain impact on society by humans, machines, and robots. To help readers better understand the relationships between AI, autonomy, humans and machines that will help society reduce human errors in the use of advanced technologies (e.g., airplanes, trains, cars), this edited volume presents a wide selection of the underlying theories, computational models, experimental methods, and field applications. While other literature deals with these topics individually, this book unifies the fields of autonomy and AI, framing them in the broader context of effective integration for human-autonomous machine and robotic systems. The contributions, written by world-class researchers and scientists, elaborate on key research topics at the heart of effective human-machine-robot-systems integration. These topics include, for example, computational support for intelligence analyses; the challenge of verifying today's and future autonomous systems; comparisons between today's machines and autism; implications of human information interaction on artificial intelligence and errors; systems that reason; the autonomy of machines, robots, buildings; and hybrid teams, where hybrid reflects arbitrary combinations of humans, machines and robots. The contributors span the field of autonomous systems research, ranging from industry and academia to government. Given the broad diversity of the research in this book, the editors strove to thoroughly examine the challenges and trends of systems that implement and exhibit AI; the social implications of present and future systems made autonomous with AI; systems with AI seeking to develop trusted relationships among humans, machines, and robots; and the effective human systems integration that must result for trust in these new systems and their applications to increase and to be sustained.

The proceedings provide state-of-the-art scientific and engineering research findings and developments in the area of mobile robotics and assistive technologies. The proceedings collected together peer reviewed articles presented at the CLAWAR 2013 conference. It contains a strong showing of articles on legged locomotion with numbers of legs from two onwards. There is also a good collection of articles on systems that walls climbing, poles balancing, and other more complex structures following the traditional of CLAWAR themes. In addition, the proceedings also cover the subject of robot-human interaction, which focus on a more "human" way of communicating with humanoid robots. As for human assistive devices, proceedings also cover exoskeletal and prosthetic devices, robots for personal and nursing cares to address the issues of ageing population in our society. Finally, the issue of the deployment of robots in society, it social and ethically consideration are also addressed in the proceedings.

This book addresses the major challenges in realizing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in IoT-based Smart Cities. The challenges tackled vary from cost and energy efficiency to availability and service quality. The aim of this book is to focus on both the design and implementation aspects of the UAV-based approaches in IoT-enabled smart cities' applications that are enabled and supported by wireless sensor networks, 5G, and beyond. The contributors mainly focus on data delivery approaches and their performability aspects. This book is meant for readers of varying disciplines who are interested in implementing the smart planet/environments vision via wireless/wired enabling technologies. Involves the most up to date unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) assessment and evaluation approaches Includes innovative operational ideas in agriculture, surveillance, rescue, etc. Pertains researchers, scientists, engineers and practitioners in the field of smart cities, IoT, and communications Fadi Al-Turjman received his Ph.D. from Queen's University, Canada. He is a full professor and a research center director at Near East University, Nicosia. He is a leading authority in the area of IoT and intelligent systems. His publication history spans over 250 publications in addition to his editorialship in top journals such as the IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials, and the Elsevier Sustaibable Cities and Society.

This volume gathers together cutting-edge research from the Third Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics and gives a solid overview of the state of the art in robot algorithms. The papers cover core problems in robotics, such as motion planning, sensor-based planning, manipulation, and assembly planning. They also examine the application of robotic algorithms in domains like molecular modeling, geometric modeling, and computer-assisted surgery.

This book will offer ideas on how robots can be used as teachers' assistants to scaffold learning outcomes, where the robot is a learning agent in self-directed learning who can contribute to the development of key competences for today's world through targeted learning - such as engineering thinking, math, physics, computational thinking, etc. starting from pre-school and continuing to a higher education level. Robotization is speeding up at the moment in a variety of dimensions, both through the automation of work, by performing intellectual duties, and by providing support for people in everyday situations. There is increasing political attention, especially in Europe, on educational systems not being able to keep up with such emerging technologies, and efforts to rectify this. This edited volume responds to this attention, and seeks to explore which pedagogical and educational concepts should be included in the learning process so that the use of robots is meaningful from the point of view of knowledge construction, and so that it is safe from the technological and cybersecurity perspective.

Biomimetic Robotic Artificial Muscles presents a comprehensive up- to-date overview of several types of electroactive materials with a view of using them as biomimetic artificial muscles. The purpose of the book is to provide a focused, in-depth, yet self-contained treatment of recent advances made in several promising EAP materials. In particular, ionic polymer-metal composites, conjugated polymers, and dielectric elastomers are considered. Manufacturing, physical characterization, modeling, and control of the materials are presented. Namely, the book adopts a systems perspective to integrate recent developments in material processing, actuator design, control-oriented modeling, and device and robotic applications. While the main focus is on the new developments in these subjects, an effort has been made throughout the book to provide the reader with general, basic information about the materials before going into more advanced topics. As a result, the book is very much self-contained and expected to be accessible for a reader who does not have background in EAPs. Based on the good fundamental knowledge and the versatility of the materials, several promising biomimetic and robotic applications such robotic fish propelled by an IPMC tail, an IPMC energy harvester, an IPMC-based valveless pump, a conjugated polymer petal-driven micropump, and a synthetic elastomer actuator-enabled robotic finger are demonstrated.

Foreword.- List of Contributors.- Part 1: Agile and Turbulence-Suitable Processes for Knowledge and Technology Intensive Organizations.- Part 2: Next-Generation Teaching and Learning Concepts for Universities and the Economy.- Part 3: Cognitive IT-Supported Processes for Heterogeneous and Cooperative Systems.- Part 4: Target Group-Adapted User Models for Innovation and Technology Development Processes.- Part 5: Semantic Networks and Ontologies for Complex Value Chains and Virtual Environments.

This book presents cutting-edge emerging technologies and approaches in the areas of service-oriented architectures, intelligent devices and cloud-based cyber-physical systems. It provides a clear view on their applicability to the management and automation of manufacturing and process industries. It offers a holistic view of future industrial cyber-physical systems and their industrial usage and also depicts technologies and architectures as well as a migration approach and engineering tools based on these.

By providing a careful balance between the theory and the practical aspects, this book has been authored by several experts from academia and industry, thereby offering a valuable understanding of the vision, the domain, the processes and the results of the research. It has several illustrations and tables to clearly exemplify the concepts and results examined in the text and these are supported by four real-life case-studies.

We are witnessing rapid advances in the industrial automation, mainly driven by business needs towards agility and supported by new disruptive advances both on the software and hardware side, as well as the cross-fertilization of concepts and the amalgamation of information and communication technology-driven approaches in traditional industrial automation and control systems. This book is intended for technology managers, application designers, solution developers, engineers working in industry, as well as researchers, undergraduate and graduate students of industrial automation, industrial informatics and production engineering.

With the increasing applications of intelligent robotic systems in various ?elds, the - sign and control of these systems have increasingly attracted interest from researchers. This edited book entitled "Design and Control of Intelligent Robotic Systems" in the book series of "Studies in Computational Intelligence" is a collection of some advanced research on design and control of intelligent robots. The works presented range in scope from design methodologies to robot development. Various design approaches and al- rithms, such as evolutionary computation, neural networks, fuzzy logic, learning, etc. are included. We also would like to mention that most studies reported in this book have been implemented in physical systems. An overview on the applications of computational intelligence in bio-inspired robotics is given in Chapter 1 by M. Begum and F. Karray, with highlights of the recent progress in bio-inspired robotics research and a focus on the usage of computational intelligence tools to design human-like cognitive abilities in the robotic systems. In Chapter 2, Lisa L. Grant and Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy present greedy search, particle swarm optimization and fuzzy logic based strategies for navigating a swarm of robots for target search in a hazardous environment, with potential applications in high-risk tasks such as disaster recovery and hazardous material detection.

This book includes high impact papers presented at the International Conference on Communication, Computing and Electronics Systems 2019, held at the PPG Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, India, on 15-16 November, 2019. Discussing recent trends in cloud computing, mobile computing, and advancements of electronics systems, the book covers topics such as automation, VLSI, embedded systems, integrated device technology, satellite communication, optical communication, RF communication, microwave engineering, artificial intelligence, deep learning, pattern recognition, Internet of Things, precision models, bioinformatics, and healthcare informatics.