This book contains fifty-eight revised and extended research articles written by prominent researchers participating in the Advances in Engineering Technologies and Physical Science conference, held in London, U.K., 4-6 July, 2012. Topics covered include Applied and Engineering Mathematics, Computational Statistics, Mechanical Engineering, Bioengineering, Internet Engineering, Wireless Networks, Knowledge Engineering, Computational Intelligence, High Performance Computing, Manufacturing Engineering, and industrial applications. The book offers the state of art of tremendous advances in engineering technologies and physical science and applications, and also serves as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working on engineering technologies and physical science and applications.

This book contains a selection of papers accepted for presentation and discussion at ROBOT 2015: Second Iberian Robotics Conference, held in Lisbon, Portugal, November 19th-21th, 2015. ROBOT 2015 is part of a series of conferences that are a joint organization of SPR - "Sociedade Portuguesa de Robotica/ Portuguese Society for Robotics", SEIDROB - Sociedad Espanola para la Investigacion y Desarrollo de la Robotica/ Spanish Society for Research and Development in Robotics and CEA-GTRob - Grupo Tematico de Robotica/ Robotics Thematic Group. The conference organization had also the collaboration of several universities and research institutes, including: University of Minho, University of Porto, University of Lisbon, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, University of Aveiro, University of Zaragoza, University of Malaga, LIACC, INESC-TEC and LARSyS. Robot 2015 was focussed on the Robotics scientific and technological activities in the Iberian Peninsula, although open to research and delegates from other countries. The conference featured 19 special sessions, plus a main/general robotics track. The special sessions were about: Agricultural Robotics and Field Automation; Autonomous Driving and Driver Assistance Systems; Communication Aware Robotics; Environmental Robotics; Social Robotics: Intelligent and Adaptable AAL Systems; Future Industrial Robotics Systems; Legged Locomotion Robots; Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics; Robotic Applications in Art and Architecture; Surgical Robotics; Urban Robotics; Visual Perception for Autonomous Robots; Machine Learning in Robotics; Simulation and Competitions in Robotics; Educational Robotics; Visual Maps in Robotics; Control and Planning in Aerial Robotics, the XVI edition of the Workshop on Physical Agents and a Special Session on Technological Transfer and Innovation.

This book provides readers with alternative robust approaches to control design for an important class of systems characteristically associated with ocean-going vessels and structures. These systems, which include crane vessels, on-board cranes, radar gimbals and a conductivity temperature and depth winch, are modelled as manipulators with oscillating bases. One design approach is based on the H-infinity control framework exploiting an effective combination of PD control, an extended matrix polytope and a robust stability analysis method with a state-dependent coefficient form. The other is based on sliding-mode control using some novel nonlinear sliding surfaces. The model demonstrates how successful motion control can be achieved by suppressing base oscillations and in the presence of uncertainties. This is important not only for ocean engineering systems in which the problems addressed here originate but more generally as a benchmark platform for robust motion control with disturbance rejection. Researchers interested in the robust control of mechanical systems operating on unstable bases will find this monograph valuable. MATLAB (R) and Simulink (R) programs are available for download to make the methods described in the text easier to understand and to allow readers to experience practical procedures at first hand.

This volume includes the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, RAAD 2015, which was held in Bucharest, Romania, on May 27-29, 2015. The Conference brought together academic and industry researchers in robotics from the 11 countries affiliated to the Alpe-Adria-Danube space: Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia, and their worldwide partners. According to its tradition, RAAD 2015 covered all important areas of research, development and innovation in robotics, including new trends such as: bio-inspired and cognitive robots, visual servoing of robot motion, human-robot interaction, and personal robots for ambient assisted living. The accepted papers have been grouped in nine sessions: Robot integration in industrial applications; Grasping analysis, dexterous grippers and component design; Advanced robot motion control; Robot vision and sensory control; Human-robot interaction and collaboration; Modelling and design of novel mechanisms and robotic structures; Robots in medicine and rehabilitation; Tracking systems and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles; Autonomous task learning, motion planning and scheduling.

'A refreshing variation on the will-intelligent-robots-bring-Armageddon genre . . . this colorful mixture of expert futurology and quirky speculation does not disappoint' Kirkus

'A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.' Isaac Asimov, The First Law of Robotics

What robot and AI systems are being built and imagined right now? What do they say about us, their creators? Will they usher in a fantastic new future, or destroy us? What do some of our greatest thinkers, from physicist Brian Greene and futurist Kevin Kelly to inventor Dean Kamen, geneticist George Church and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, anticipate for our human-robot future? For even as robots and AI intrigue us and make us anxious about the future, our fascination with robots has always been about more than the potential of the technology - it also concerns what robots tell us about being human.

From present-day Facebook and Amazon bots to near-future 'intimacy' bots and 'the robot that swiped my job' bots, bestselling American popular science writer David Ewing Duncan's Talking to Robots is a wonderfully entertaining and insightful guide to possible future scenarios about robots, both real and imagined.

Featured bots include robot drivers; doc bots; politician bots; warrior bots; sex bots; synthetic bio bots; dystopic bots that are hopefully just bad dreams; and ultimately, God Bot (as described by physicist Brian Greene).

These scenarios are informed by discussions with well-known thinkers, engineers, scientists, artists, philosophers and others, who share with us their ideas, hopes and fears about robots. David spoke with, among others, Kevin Kelly, David Baldacci, Brian Greene, Dean Kamen, Craig Venter, Stephanie Mehta, David Eagleman, George Poste, George Church, General R. H. Latiff, Robert Seigel, Emily Morse, David Sinclair, Ken Goldberg, Sunny Bates, Adam Gazzaley, Tim O'Reilly, Tiffany Shlain, Eric Topol and Juan Enriquez.

These discussions, along with some reporting on bot-tech, bot-history and real-time societal and ethical issues with robots, are the launch pads for unfurling possible bot futures that are informed by how people and societies have handled new technologies in the past.

The book describes how robots work, but its primary focus is on what our fixation with bots and AI says about us as humans: about our hopes and anxieties; our myths, stories, beliefs and ideas about beings both real and artificial; and our attempts to attain perfection.

We are at a pivotal moment when our ancient infatuation with human-like beings with certain attributes or superpowers - in mythology, religion and storytelling - is coinciding with our ability to actually build some of these entities.

We are facing a new technological challenge on how to store and retrieve knowledge and manipulate intelligence for autonomous services by intelligent systems which should be capable of carrying out real world tasks autonomously. To address this issue, robot researchers have been developing intelligence technology (InT) for "robots that think" which is in the focus of this book. The book covers all aspects of intelligence from perception at sensor level and reasoning at cognitive level to behavior planning at execution level for each low level segment of the machine. It also presents the technologies for cognitive reasoning, social interaction with humans, behavior generation, ability to cooperate with other robots, ambience awareness and an artificial genome that can be passed on to other robots. These technologies are to materialize cognitive intelligence, social intelligence, behavioral intelligence, collective intelligence, ambient intelligence and genetic intelligence. The book aims at serving researchers and practitioners with a timely dissemination of the recent progress on robot intelligence technology and its applications, based on a collection of papers presented at the at the 2nd International Conference on Robot Intelligence Technology and Applications (RiTA), held in Denver, USA, December 18-20, 2013.

One of the greatest challenges for mechanical engineers is to extend the success of computational mechanics to fields outside traditional engineering, in particular to biology, biomedical sciences, and medicine.This book is an opportunity for computational biomechanics specialists to present and exchange opinions on the opportunities of applying their techniques to computer-integrated medicine.

"Computational Biomechanics for Medicine: Deformation and Flow" collects the papers from the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention conference (MICCAI 2011) dedicated to research in the field of medical image computing and computer assisted medical interventions. The topics covered include: medical image analysis, image-guided surgery, surgical simulation, surgical intervention planning, disease prognosis and diagnostics, injury mechanism analysis, implant and prostheses design, andmedical robotics."

"Immersive Multimodal Interactive Presence "presents advanced interdisciplinary approaches that connect psychophysical and behavioral haptics research with advances in haptic technology and haptic rendering.

It delivers a summary of the results achieved in the IMMERSENCE European project and includes selected chapters by international researchers. Organized into two parts: I. Psychophysical and Behavioral Basis and II. Technology and Rendering, it is an excellent example of interdisciplinary research directed towards the advancement of multimodal immersive virtual environments with particular focus on haptic interaction.

The twelve chapters of the book are grouped around three different scenarios representing different types of interactions in virtual environments: Person-Object (PO), Person-Object-Person (POP) and Person-Person (PP) interaction. Recent results of psychophysical and behavioral studies are reported along with new technological developments for haptic displays and novel haptic rendering techniques.

Can we make machines that think and act like humans or other natural intelligent agents? The answer to this question depends on how we see ourselves and how we see the machines in question. Classical AI and cognitive science had claimed that cognition is computation, and can thus be reproduced on other computing machines, possibly surpassing the abilities of human intelligence. This consensus has now come under threat and the agenda for the philosophy and theory of AI must be set anew, re-defining the relation between AI and Cognitive Science. We can re-claim the original vision of general AI from the technical AI disciplines; we can reject classical cognitive science and replace it with a new theory (e.g. embodied); or we can try to find new ways to approach AI, for example from neuroscience or from systems theory. To do this, we must go back to the basic questions on computing, cognition and ethics for AI. The 30 papers in this volume provide cutting-edge work from leading researchers that define where we stand and where we should go from here.

Gathering presentations to the First International Conference on Cable-Driven Parallel Robots, this book covers classification and definition, kinematics, workspace analysis, cable modeling, hardware/prototype development, control and calibration and more.

Data-driven discovery is revolutionizing the modeling, prediction, and control of complex systems. This textbook brings together machine learning, engineering mathematics, and mathematical physics to integrate modeling and control of dynamical systems with modern methods in data science. It highlights many of the recent advances in scientific computing that enable data-driven methods to be applied to a diverse range of complex systems, such as turbulence, the brain, climate, epidemiology, finance, robotics, and autonomy. Aimed at advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in the engineering and physical sciences, the text presents a range of topics and methods from introductory to state of the art.

This volume contains accepted papers presented at AECIA2014, the First International Afro-European Conference for Industrial Advancement. The aim of AECIA was to bring together the foremost experts as well as excellent young researchers from Africa, Europe, and the rest of the world to disseminate latest results from various fields of engineering, information, and communication technologies. The first edition of AECIA was organized jointly by Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, Addis Ababa University, and VSB - Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic and took place in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa.

Intelligent system and robotics are inevitably bound up; intelligent robots makes embodiment of system integration by using the intelligent systems. We can figure out that intelligent systems are to cell units, while intelligent robots are to body components. The two technologies have been synchronized in progress. Making leverage of the robotics and intelligent systems, applications cover boundlessly the range from our daily life to space station; manufacturing, healthcare, environment, energy, education, personal assistance, logistics. This book aims at presenting the research results in relevance with intelligent robotics technology. We propose to researchers and practitioners some methods to advance the intelligent systems and apply them to advanced robotics technology. This book consists of 10 contributions that feature mobile robots, robot emotion, electric power steering, multi-agent, fuzzy visual navigation, adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system, swarm EKF localization and inspection robot. This edition is published in original, peer reviewed contributions covering from initial design to final prototypes and authorization.

The volume includes a set of selected papers extended and revised from the 2011 International Conference on Computer, Communication, Control and Automation (3CA 2011). 2011 International Conference on Computer, Communication, Control and Automation (3CA 2011) has been held in Zhuhai, China, November 19-20, 2011. This volume topics covered include signal and Image processing, speech and audio Processing, video processing and analysis, artificial intelligence, computing and intelligent systems, machine learning, sensor and neural networks, knowledge discovery and data mining, fuzzy mathematics and Applications, knowledge-based systems, hybrid systems modeling and design, risk analysis and management, system modeling and simulation. We hope that researchers, graduate students and other interested readers benefit scientifically from the proceedings and also find it stimulating in the process.

The international conference on Automation and Robotics-ICAR2011 is held during December 12-13, 2011 in Dubai, UAE. The proceedings of ICAR2011 have been published by Springer Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, which include 163 excellent papers selected from more than 400 submitted papers.

The conference is intended to bring together the researchers and engineers/technologists working in different aspects of intelligent control systems and optimization, robotics and automation, signal processing, sensors, systems modeling and control, industrial engineering, production and management.

This part of proceedings includes 82 papers contributed by many researchers in relevant topic areas covered at ICAR2011 from various countries such as France, Japan, USA, Korea and China etc.

The session topic of this proceeding is signal processing and industrial engineering, production and management, which includes papers about signal reconstruction, mechanical sensors, real-time systems control system identification, change detection problems, business process modeling, production planning, scheduling and control, computer-based manufacturing technologies, systems modeling and simulation, facilities planning and management, quality control and management, precision engineering, intelligent design and manufacturing.

The papers in this proceedings focus on industry engineering to promote efficiency and affect for the world, which typically showed their advanced research work recently in their various field. I am sure that discussing with many colleagues will give much more creative idea for each other on ICAR2011.

All of papers with powerful evidence and detail demonstration involved the authors' numerous time and energy will be proved valuable by their unexhausted exploring sprit. Sincere thanks to the committee and all the authors, in additionally, including anonymous reviewers from many fields and organizations. They pointed out us direction to go on research work for the world.

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I. ALEKSANDER Kobler Unit for Information Technology Management, Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, England It is now over half a decade since Joseph Engelberger wrote: 'Given a six-articulation arm of any configuration, software can be powerful enough to think only in tool coordinates. That is, a programmer concerns himself only with the tool on the end of the robot arm. He can think of the tool's frame of reference and com puter subroutines automatically make the various articulations move so as to accomplish the desired tool manipulation. ' As is often the case with statements of this kind, they are appealing and generally well-founded in technological feasibility. But in order to turn the prediction into reality it requires the dedication and in ventiveness of an international community of researchers. The object of this book is to provide a window on to some of the advances made by this community which go towards the fulfilment of Engelberger's predictions. A significant factor in the framework within which this work is being pursued is the phenomenal advance in the availability of inex pensive and highly compact computing power. It becomes increas ingly possible to imagine powerful microprocessors providing local intelligence at key points in a robot arm Uoints, gripper, etc) by being connected through a communications network and controlled by some specially designated supervisory microchip."

Artificial intelligence is the most discussed and arguably the most powerful technology in the world today. The very rapid development of the technology, and its power to change the world, and perhaps even ourselves, calls for a serious and systematic thinking about its ethical and social implications, as well as how its development should be directed. The present book offers a new perspective on how such a direction should take place, based on insights obtained from the age-old tradition of Buddhist teaching. The book argues that any kind of ethical guidelines for AI and robotics must combine two kinds of excellence together, namely the technical and the ethical. The machine needs to aspire toward the status of ethical perfection, whose idea was laid out in detail by the Buddha more than two millennia ago. It is this standard of ethical perfection, called "machine enlightenment," that gives us a view toward how an effective ethical guideline should be made. This ideal is characterized by the realization that all things are interdependent, and by the commitment to alleviate all beings from suffering, in other words by two of the quintessential Buddhist values. The book thus contributes to a concern for a norm for ethical guidelines for AI that is both practical and cross-cultural.

The 4th edition includes updated and additional examples and exercises on the core fundamental concepts of mechanics, robots, and kinematics of serial robots. New images of CAD models and physical robots help to motivate concepts being introduced. Each chapter of the book can be read independently of others as it addresses a seperate issue in robotics.

In a world suffering from an ageing population and declining birth rate, service robotics and mechatronics have an increasingly vital role to play in maintaining a safe and sustainable environment for everyone. Mechatronics can be used in the reconstruction or restoration of various environments which we rely upon to survive; for example the reconstruction of a city after an earthquake, or the restoration of polluted waters This collection of papers was originally presented at the 7th International Conference on Machine Automation, 2008, in Awaji, Japan, and covers a variety of new trends in service robotics and mechatronics. Service Robotics and Mechatronics showcases the latest research in the area to provide researchers and scientists with an up-to-date source of knowledge and basis for further study, as well as offering graduate students valuable reference material.

Musical robotics is a multi- and trans-disciplinary research area involving a wide range of different domains that contribute to its development, including: computer science, multimodal interfaces and processing, artificial intelligence, electronics, robotics, mechatronics and more. A musical robot requires many different complex systems to work together; integrating musical representation, techniques, expressions, detailed analysis and controls, for both playing and listening. The development of interactive multimodal systems provides advancements which enable enhanced human-machine interaction and novel possibilities for embodied robotic platforms. This volume is focused on this highly exciting interdisciplinary field. This book consists of 14 chapters highlighting different aspects of musical activities and interactions, discussing cutting edge research related to interactive multimodal systems and their integration with robots to further enhance musical understanding, interpretation, performance, education and enjoyment. It is dichotomized into two sections: Section I focuses on understanding elements of musical performance and expression while Section II concentrates on musical robots and automated instruments. Musical Robots and Interactive Multimodal Systems provides an introduction and foundation for researchers, students and practitioners to key achievements and current research trends on interactive multimodal systems and musical robotics.

The term "haptics" refers to the science of sensing and manipulation through touch. Multiple disciplines such as biomechanics, psychophysics, robotics, neuroscience, and software engineering converge to support haptics, and generally, haptic research is done by three communities: the robotics community, the human computer interface community, and the virtual reality community.

This book is different from any other book that has looked at haptics. The authors treat haptics as a new medium rather than just a domain within one of the above areas. They describe human haptic perception and interfaces and present fundamentals in haptic rendering and modeling in virtual environments. Diverse software architectures for standalone and networked haptic systems are explained, and the authors demonstrate the vast application spectrum of this emerging technology along with its accompanying trends. The primary objective is to provide a comprehensive overview and a practical understanding of haptic technologies. An appreciation of the close relationship between the wide range of disciplines that constitute a haptic system is a key principle towards being able to build successful collaborative haptic environments.

Structured as a reference to allow for fast accommodation of the issues concerned, this book is intended for researchers interested in studying touch and force feedback for use in technological multimedia systems in computer science, electrical engineering, or other related disciplines. With its novel approach, it paves the way for exploring research trends and challenges in such fields as interpersonal communication, games, or military applications.

Chaos and nonlinear dynamics initially developed as a new emergent field with its foundation in physics and applied mathematics. The highly generic, interdisciplinary quality of the insights gained in the last few decades has spawned myriad applications in almost all branches of science and technology-and even well beyond. Wherever quantitative modeling and analysis of complex, nonlinear phenomena is required, chaos theory and its methods can play a key role. This volume concentrates on reviewing the most relevant contemporary applications of chaotic nonlinear systems as they apply to the various cutting-edge branches of engineering. The book covers the theory as applied to robotics, electronic and communication engineering (for example chaos synchronization and cryptography) as well as to civil and mechanical engineering, where its use in damage monitoring and control is explored). Featuring contributions from active and leading research groups, this collection is ideal both as a reference and as a 'recipe book' full of tried and tested, successful engineering applications

Membrane computing is an unconventional model of computation associated with a new computing paradigm. The field of membrane computing was initiated in 1998 by the author of this book; it is a branch of natural computing inspired by the structure and functioning of the living cell and devises distributed parallel computing models in the form of membrane systems. This book is the first monograph surveying the new field in a systematic and coherent way. It presents the central notions and results: the main classes of P systems, the main results about their computational power and efficiency, a complete bibliography, and a series of open problems and research topics.

Large scale optical mapping methods are in great demand among scientists who study different aspects of the seabed, and have been fostered by impressive advances in the capabilities of underwater robots in gathering optical data from the seafloor. Cost and weight constraints mean that low-cost ROVs usually have a very limited number of sensors. When a low-cost robot carries out a seafloor survey using a down-looking camera, it usually follows a predefined trajectory that provides several non time-consecutive overlapping image pairs. Finding these pairs (a process known as topology estimation) is indispensable to obtaining globally consistent mosaics and accurate trajectory estimates, which are necessary for a global view of the surveyed area, especially when optical sensors are the only data source. This book contributes to the state-of-art in large area image mosaicing methods for underwater surveys using low-cost vehicles equipped with a very limited sensor suite. The main focus has been on global alignment and fast topology estimation, which are the most challenging steps in creating large area image mosaics. This book is intended to emphasise the importance of the topology estimation problem and to present different solutions using interdisciplinary approaches opening a way to further develop new strategies and methodologies.

This book presents recent progresses in control, automation, robotics and measuring techniques. It includes contributions of top experts in the fields, focused on both theory and industrial practice. The particular chapters present a deep analysis of a specific technical problem which is in general followed by a numerical analysis and simulation and results of an implementation for the solution of a real world problem. The presented theoretical results, practical solutions and guidelines will be useful for both researchers working in the area of engineering sciences and for practitioners solving industrial problems.