This volume gathers the proceedings of the Joint International Conference of the XIII International Conference on Mechanisms and Mechanical Transmissions (MTM) and the XXIV International Conference on Robotics (Robotics), held in Timisoara, Romania. It addresses the applications of mechanisms and transmissions in several modern technical fields such as mechatronics, biomechanics, machines, micromachines, robotics and apparatus. In doing so, it combines theoretical findings and experimental testing. The book presents peer-reviewed papers written by researchers specialized in mechanism analysis and synthesis, dynamics of mechanisms and machines, mechanical transmissions, biomechanics, precision mechanics, mechatronics, micromechanisms and microactuators, computational and experimental methods, CAD in mechanism and machine design, mechanical design of robot architecture, parallel robots, mobile robots, micro and nano robots, sensors and actuators in robotics, intelligent control systems, biomedical engineering, teleoperation, haptics, and virtual reality.

This book at hand is an appropriate addition to the field of fractional calculus applied to control systems. If an engineer or a researcher wishes to delve into fractional-order systems, then this book has many collections of such systems to work upon, and this book also tells the reader about how one can convert an integer-order system into an appropriate fractional-order one through an efficient and simple algorithm. If the reader further wants to explore the controller design for the fractional-order systems, then for them, this book provides a variety of controller design strategies. The use of fractional-order derivatives and integrals in control theory leads to better results than integer-order approaches and hence provides solid motivation for further development of control theory. Fractional-order models are more useful than the integer-order models when accuracy is of paramount importance. Real-time experimental validation of controller design strategies for the fractional-order plants is available. This book is beneficial to the academic institutes for postgraduate and advanced research-level that need a specific textbook on fractional control and its applications in srobotic manipulators. The book is also a valuable teaching and learning resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students.

This book is the volume of the proceedings for the 17th Edition of ISER. The goal of ISER (International Symposium on Experimental Robotics) symposia is to provide a single-track forum on the current developments and new directions of experimental robotics. The series has traditionally attracted a wide readership of researchers and practitioners interested to the advances and innovations of robotics technology. The 54 contributions cover a wide range of topics in robotics and are organized in 9 chapters: aerial robots, design and prototyping, field robotics, human-robot interaction, machine learning, mapping and localization, multi-robots, perception, planning and control. Experimental validation of algorithms, concepts, or techniques is the common thread running through this large research collection. Chapter "A New Conversion Method to Evaluate the Hazard Potential of Collaborative Robots in Free Collisions" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Algorithms that control the computational processes relating sensors and actuators are indispensable for robot navigation and the perception of the world in which they move. Therefore, a deep understanding of how algorithms work to achieve this control is essential for the development of efficient and usable robots in a broad field of applications. An interdisciplinary group of scientists gathers every two years to document the progress in algorithmic foundations of robotics. This volume addresses in particular the areas of control theory, computational and differential geometry in robotics, and applications to core problems such as motion planning, navigation, sensor-based planning, and manipulation.

This book covers the start-of-the-art research and development for the emerging area of autonomous and intelligent systems. In particular, the authors emphasize design and validation methodologies to address the grand challenges related to safety. This book offers a holistic view of a broad range of technical aspects (including perception, localization and navigation, motion control, etc.) and application domains (including automobile, aerospace, etc.), presents major challenges and discusses possible solutions.

The topics covered in this book range from modeling and programming languages and environments, via approaches for design and verification, to issues of ethics and regulation. In terms of techniques, there are results on model-based engineering, product lines, mission specification, component-based development, simulation, testing, and proof. Applications range from manufacturing to service robots, to autonomous vehicles, and even robots than evolve in the real world. A final chapter summarizes issues on ethics and regulation based on discussions from a panel of experts. The origin of this book is a two-day event, entitled RoboSoft, that took place in November 2019, in London. Organized with the generous support of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the University of York, UK, RoboSoft brought together more than 100 scientists, engineers and practitioners from all over the world, representing 70 international institutions. The intended readership includes researchers and practitioners with all levels of experience interested in working in the area of robotics, and software engineering more generally. The chapters are all self-contained, include explanations of the core concepts, and finish with a discussion of directions for further work. Chapters 'Towards Autonomous Robot Evolution', 'Composition, Separation of Roles and Model-Driven Approaches as Enabler of a Robotics Software Ecosystem' and 'Verifiable Autonomy and Responsible Robotics' are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book presents the proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, RAAD 2021, held in Poitiers, France, 21-23 June 2021. It gathers contributions by researchers from several countries on all major areas of robotic research, development and innovation, as well as new applications and current trends. The topics covered include: novel designs and applications of robotic systems, intelligent cooperating and service robots, advanced robot control, human-robot interfaces, robot vision systems, mobile robots, humanoid and walking robots, bio-inspired and swarm robotic systems, aerial, underwater and spatial robots, robots for ambient assisted living, medical robots and bionic prostheses, cognitive robots, cloud robotics, ethical and social issues in robotics, etc. Given its scope, the book offers a source of information and inspiration for researchers seeking to improve their work and gather new ideas for future developments.

This book will help readers to understand the concepts of computational intelligence in automation industries, industrial IoT (IIOT), cognitive systems, data science, and Ecommerce real time applications. The book: Covers computational intelligence in automation industries, industrial IoT (IIOT) , cognitive systems and medical Imaging Discusses intelligent robotics applications with the integration of automation and artificial intelligence Covers foundations of the mathematical concepts applied in robotics and industry automation applications Provides application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the area of computational intelligence The text covers important topics including computational intelligence mathematical modeling, cognitive manufacturing in industry 4.0, artificial intelligence algorithms in robot development, collaborative robots and industrial IoT (IIoT), medical imaging, and multi-robot systems. The text will be useful for graduate students, professional and academic researchers in the fields of electrical engineering, electronics and communication engineering, and computer science. Discussing the advantages of the integrated platform of industry automation, robotics and computational intelligence, this text will be useful for graduate students, professional and academic researchers in the fields of electrical engineering, electronics and communication engineering, and computer science. It enlightens the foundations of the mathematical concepts applied in robotics and industry automation applications.

This book offers a timely and comprehensive snapshot of research and developments in the field of control engineering. Covering a wide range of theoretical and practical issues, the contributions describes a number of different control approaches, such adaptive control, fuzzy and neuro-fuzzy control, remote and robust control systems, real time an fault tolerant control, among others. Sensors and actuators, measurement systems, renewable energy systems, aerospace systems as well as industrial control and automation, are also comprehensively covered. Based on the proceedings of the 14th APCA International Conference on Automatic Control and Soft Computing, held on July 1-3, 2020, in Braganca, Portugal, the book offers a timely and thoroughly survey of the latest research in the field of control, and a source of inspiration for researchers and professionals worldwide.

This book describes active illumination techniques in computer vision. We can classify computer vision techniques into two classes: passive and active techniques. Passive techniques observe the scene statically and analyse it as is. Active techniques give the scene some actions and try to facilitate the analysis. In particular, active illumination techniques project specific light, for which the characteristics are known beforehand, to a target scene to enable stable and accurate analysis of the scene. Traditional passive techniques have a fundamental limitation. The external world surrounding us is three-dimensional; the image projected on a retina or an imaging device is two-dimensional. That is, reduction of one dimension has occurred. Active illumination techniques compensate for the dimensional reduction by actively controlling the illumination. The demand for reliable vision sensors is rapidly increasing in many application areas, such as robotics and medical image analysis. This book explains this new endeavour to explore the augmentation of reduced dimensions in computer vision. This book consists of three parts: basic concepts, techniques, and applications. The first part explains the basic concepts for understanding active illumination techniques. In particular, the basic concepts of optics are explained so that researchers and engineers outside the field can understand the later chapters. The second part explains currently available active illumination techniques, covering many techniques developed by the authors. The final part shows how such active illumination techniques can be applied to various domains, describing the issue to be overcome by active illumination techniques and the advantages of using these techniques. This book is primarily aimed at 4th year undergraduate and 1st year graduate students, and will also help engineers from fields beyond computer vision to use active illumination techniques. Additionally, the book is suitable as course material for technical seminars.

This proceedings presents the papers of the 3rd EAI International Conference on Robotic Sensor Networks (ROSENET 2019). The conference explores the integration of networks and robotic technologies, which has become a topic of increasing interest for both researchers and developers from academic fields and industries worldwide. The authors posit that big networks will be the main approach to the next generation of robotic research, The book discusses how the explosive number of network models and increasing computational power of computers significantly extends the number of potential applications for robotic technologies while also bringing new challenges to each network's community. The conference provided a platform for researchers to share up-to-date scientific achievements in this field. The conference took place August 17, 2019, Kitakyushu, Japan. Presents the proceedings of the 3rd EAI International Conference on Robotic Sensor Networks (ROSENET 2019), August 17, 2019, Kitakyushu, Japan Features papers on robotic technologies for healthcare, medicine, military and more Includes perspectives from a multi-disciplinary selection of global researchers, academics, and professionals

In this book Part I presents first an overview of the ECHORD++ project, with its mission and vision together with a detailed structure of its functionalities and instruments: Experiments, Robotic Innovation Facilities and Public end-user Driven Technology Innovation PDTI. Chapter 1 explains how the project is born, the partners, the different instruments and the new concept of cascade funding projects. This novelty made ECHORD++ a special project along the huge number of research groups and consortia involved in the whole project. So far, it is the European funded project with more research team and partners involved in the robotic field. In Chapter 2, one of the instruments in ECHORD++ is explained in detail: RIF. Robotic innovation facilities are a set of laboratories across Europe funded with the project with the goal of hosting consortia involved in any experiment that have special needs when testing their robotic research. In the chapter the three different and specific RIFs will be described and analyzed. Chapter 3 explains an important instrument in ECHORD++: the Experiments. In this part, a big number of research groups have been involve in short time funded research projects. The chapter explains the management of such Experiments, from the call for participation, the candidate's selection, the monitoring, reviews and funding for each of the 36 experiments funded for Echord. Chapter 4 is very special because it presents the innovation of funding public end-user driven technology, in particular, robotic technology. The robotic challenge is the key of such an instruments together with the management of the different consortia that participated competitively in the success of the robotic challenge proposed by a public entity, selected also with a very special and innovative process.

This book, a compilation of articles from Karl Lunt's long-running column for Nuts & Volts magazine, is a must-read for all beginner and intermediate-level robotics enthusiasts. Written in a friendly, straightforward manner, it contains entertaining anecdotes as well as practical advice and instruction. The author's stories about his various robotics projects will inspire you to try them yourself; and he shares his tips and code to help you. Possible projects range from transforming a TV remote control into a robot controller to building a robot from a drink cooler. You'll want to build them all; the author's enthusiasm for robotics is contagious!

The primary aim of this volume is to provide researchers and engineers from both academic and industry with up-to-date coverage of new results in the field of robotic welding, intelligent systems and automation. The book is mainly based on papers selected from the 2020 International Conference on Robotic Welding, Intelligence and Automation (RWIA'2020) in Shanghai and Lanzhou, China. The articles show that the intelligentized welding manufacturing (IWM) is becoming an inevitable trend with the intelligentized robotic welding as the key technology. The volume is divided into four logical parts: Intelligent Techniques for Robotic Welding, Sensing of Arc Welding Processing, Modeling and Intelligent Control of Welding Processing, as well as Intelligent Control and its Applications in Engineering.

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 book is the fifth volume in the successful book series Robot Operating System: The Complete Reference. The objective of the book is to provide the reader with comprehensive coverage on the Robot Operating System (ROS), which is currently considered to be the primary development framework for robotics applications, and the latest trends and contributing systems. The content is divided into six parts. Pat I presents for the first time the emerging ROS 2.0 framework, while Part II focuses on multi-robot systems, namely on SLAM and Swarm coordination. Part III provides two chapters on autonomous systems, namely self-driving cars and unmanned aerial systems. In turn, Part IV addresses the contributions of simulation frameworks for ROS. In Part V, two chapters explore robotic manipulators and legged robots. Finally, Part VI presents emerging topics in monocular SLAM and a chapter on fault tolerance systems for ROS. Given its scope, the book will offer a valuable companion for ROS users and developers, helping them deepen their knowledge of ROS capabilities and features.

This book presents the proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of IFToMM ITALY, held online on September 9-11, 2020. It includes peer-reviewed papers on the latest advances in mechanism and machine science, discussing topics such as biomechanical engineering, computational kinematics, the history of mechanism and machine science, gearing and transmissions, multi-body dynamics, robotics and mechatronics, the dynamics of machinery, tribology, vibrations, rotor dynamics and vehicle dynamics. A valuable, up-to-date resource, it offers an essential overview of the subject for scientists and practitioners alike, and will inspire further investigations and research.

Ocean covers 70.8% of the Earth's surface, and it plays an important role in supporting all life on Earth. Nonetheless, more than 80% of the ocean's volume remains unmapped, unobserved and unexplored. In this regard, Underwater Sensor Networks (USNs), which offer ubiquitous computation, efficient communication and reliable control, are emerging as a promising solution to understand and explore the ocean. In order to support the application of USNs, accurate position information from sensor nodes is required to correctly analyze and interpret the data sampled. However, the openness and weak communication characteristics of USNs make underwater localization much more challenging in comparison to terrestrial sensor networks. In this book, we focus on the localization problem in USNs, taking into account the unique characteristics of the underwater environment. This problem is of considerable importance, since fundamental guidance on the design and analysis of USN localization is very limited at present. To this end, we first introduce the network architecture of USNs and briefly review previous approaches to the localization of USNs. Then, the asynchronous clock, node mobility, stratification effect, privacy preserving and attack detection are considered respectively and corresponding localization schemes are developed. Lastly, the book's rich implications provide guidance on the design of future USN localization schemes. The results in this book reveal from a system perspective that underwater localization accuracy is closely related to the communication protocol and optimization estimator. Researchers, scientists and engineers in the field of USNs can benefit greatly from this book, which provides a wealth of information, useful methods and practical algorithms to help understand and explore the ocean.

This volume Future Control and Automation- Volume 2 includes best papers from 2012 2nd International Conference on Future Control and Automation (ICFCA 2012) held on July 1-2, 2012, Changsha, China. Future control and automation is the use of control systems and information technologies to reduce the need for human work in the production of goods and services. This volume can be divided into six sessions on the basis of the classification of manuscripts considered, which is listed as follows: Mathematical Modeling, Analysis and Computation, Control Engineering, Reliable Networks Design, Vehicular Communications and Networking, Automation and Mechatronics.

This book is intended to meet the needs of those who seek to develop control systems for ROVs when there is no model available during the initial design stage. The modeling, simulation and application of marine vehicles like underwater robotic vehicles (URVs) are multidisciplinary, and combine mathematical aspects from various engineering disciplines. URVs such as remotely operated vehicle (ROVs) are used for a wide range of applications such as exploring the extreme depths of our ocean, where a hard-wired link is still required. Most ROVs operate in extreme environments with uncertainties in the model prior to control system design. However, the method involved extensive testing before the system model could be used for any control actions. It has been found that the range of error can be extensive and uncertain in actual, continuously varying conditions. Hence, it is important to address the problem of reliance on model testing using different modeling approaches. In this book, approaches such as WAMIT, ANSYS-CFX, STAR CCM+, MATLAB and Simulink are used to model parameters for ROVs. A few benchmark models are provided, allowing researchers and students to explore and test different control schemes. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable reference guide for postgraduate and undergraduate students engaged in modeling and simulation for ROV control.

This book focuses on fish lateral line inspired sensing, which has attracted increasing attention in recent years. The applications of fish lateral line inspired sensing technology on underwater robots were summarized for the first time in this book.

Revised and updated, the second edition includes several new chapters with projects and applications. The authors keep pace with the ever-growing and rapidly expanding field of robotics. The new edition reflects technological developments and includes programs and activities for robot enthusiasts. Using photographs, illustrations, and informative text, Mobile Robots guides the reader through the step-by-step process of constructing two different and inexpensive yet fully functional robots.

Discusses a secure and dependable Wireless Robotics (WR) architecture, to ensure confidentiality, authentic and availability as a priority. Covers topics like Blockchain Technology for securing data at end/ server side. Examines open issues, challenges faced in this era towards wireless robotics. Covers real world case studies. Provides two chapters on ethical concerns and privacy law useful for service providers.

This book presents few novel Discrete-time Sliding Mode (DSM) protocols for leader-following consensus of Discrete Multi-Agent Systems (DMASs). The protocols intend to achieve the consensus in finite time steps and also tackle the corresponding uncertainties. Based on the communication graph topology of multi-agent systems, the protocols are divided into two groups, namely (i) Fixed graph topology and (ii) Switching graph topology. The coverage begins with the design of Discrete-time Sliding Mode (DSM) protocols using Gao's reaching law and power rate reaching law for the synchronization of linear DMASs by using the exchange of information between the agents and the leader to achieve a common goal. Then, in a subsequent chapter, analysis for no. of fixed-time steps required for the leader-following consensus is presented. The book also includes chapters on the design of Discrete-time Higher-order Sliding Mode (DHSM) protocols, Event-triggered DSM protocols for the leader-following consensus of DMASs. A chapter is also included on the design of DHSM protocols for leader-following consensus of heterogeneous DMASs. Special emphasis is given to the practical implementation of each proposed DSM protocol for achieving leader-following consensus of helicopter systems, flexible joint robotic arms, and rigid joint robotic arms. This book offers a ready reference guide for graduate students and researchers working in the areas of control, automation, and communication engineering, and in particular the cooperative control of multi-agent systems. It will also benefit professional engineers working to design and implement robust controllers for power systems, autonomous vehicles, military surveillance, smartgrids/microgrids, vehicle traffic management, robotic teams, and aerial robots.