This book presents the proceedings of the 4th International Manufacturing Engineering Conference and 5th Asia Pacific Conference on Manufacturing Systems (iMEC-APCOMS 2019), held in Putrajaya, Malaysia, on 21-22 August 2019. Covering scientific research in the field of manufacturing engineering, with focuses on industrial engineering, materials, processes, the book appeals to researchers, academics, scientists, students, engineers and practitioners who are interested in the latest developments and applications related to manufacturing engineering.

This volume presents the outcome of the second forum to cable-driven parallel robots, bringing the cable robot community together. It shows the new ideas of the active researchers developing cable-driven robots. The book presents the state of the art, including both summarizing contributions as well as latest research and future options. The book cover all topics which are essential for cable-driven robots: Classification Kinematics, Workspace and Singularity Analysis Statics and Dynamics Cable Modeling Control and Calibration Design Methodology Hardware Development Experimental Evaluation Prototypes, Application Reports and new Application concepts.

This book presents the latest achievements in the theory and practice of SEMS Group interaction by scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences. It also discusses the development of methods for the design and simulation of SEMS Group interaction based on the principles of safety, flexibility and adaptability in behavior and intelligence and parallelism in information processing, computation and control. Recently, the task has been to ensure the functioning of robots within the framework of collective collaboration, so that they function efficiently, reliably and safely in real time. The topics covered include, but are not limited to, the following: - the planning behavior of the SEMS group;- methods and principles of designing of automatic control systems;- mathematical and computer modeling group interaction;- safety, flexibility and adaptability of the SEMS Group;- information-measuring soft- and hardware. This book is intended for students, scientists and engineers specializing in the field of smart electromechanical systems and robotics.

This book presents the latest results in the field of dynamic decoupling of robot manipulators obtained in France, Russia, China and Austria. Manipulator dynamics can be highly coupled and nonlinear. The complicated dynamics result from varying inertia, interactions between the different joints, and nonlinear forces such as Coriolis and centrifugal forces. The dynamic decoupling of robot manipulators allows one to obtain a linear system, i.e. single-input and single output system with constant parameters. This simplifies the optimal control and accumulation of energy in manipulators. There are two ways to create the dynamically decoupled manipulators: via optimal mechanical design or control. This work emphasises mechatronic solutions. These will certainly improve the known design concepts permitting the dynamic decoupling of serial manipulators with a relatively small increase in total mass of the moving links taking into account the changing payload. For the first time such an approach has been applied on serial manipulators. Also of great interest is the dynamic decoupling control of parallel manipulators. Firstly, the dynamic model of redundant multi-axial vibration table with load has been established, and, secondly, its dynamic coupling characteristics have been analyzed. The discussed methods and applications of dynamic decoupling of robot manipulators are illustrated via CAD simulations and experimental tests.

This book describes how the principle of self-sufficiency can be applied to a reconfigurable modular robotic organism. It shows the design considerations for a novel REPLICATOR robotic platform, both hardware and software, featuring the behavioral characteristics of social insect colonies. Following a comprehensive overview of some of the bio-inspired techniques already available, and of the state-of-the-art in re-configurable modular robotic systems, the book presents a novel power management system with fault-tolerant energy sharing, as well as its implementation in the REPLICATOR robotic modules. In addition, the book discusses, for the first time, the concept of "artificial energy homeostasis" in the context of a modular robotic organism, and shows its verification on a custom-designed simulation framework in different dynamic power distribution and fault tolerance scenarios. This book offers an ideal reference guide for both hardware engineers and software developers involved in the design and implementation of autonomous robotic systems.

This collection examines implications of technological automation to global prosperity and peace. Focusing on robots, information communication technologies, and other automation technologies, it offers brief interventions that assess how automation may alter extant political, social, and economic institutions, norms, and practices that comprise the global political economy. In doing so, this collection deals directly with such issues as automated production, trade, war, state sanctioned robot violence, financial speculation, transnational crime, and policy decision making. This interdisciplinary volume will appeal to students, scholars and practitioners grappling with political, economic, and social problems that arise from rapid technological change that automates the prospects for human prosperity and peace.

"Equitable Solutions for Retaining a Robust STEM Workforce" offers strategies and proven recommendations to accommodate work/life satisfaction for those in the STEM fields. Using real-life case studies, this book discusses universal issues such as dual careers and strategic decision making, childcare/dependent care in professional contexts, promoting family-friendly policies, as well as mentoring and networking.

"Equitable Solutions for Retaining a Robust STEM Workforce" provides data and tools to drive successful programs relaying proactive solutions that STEM employers, academic institutions, policy-makers, and individuals can utilize.
Distills and leverages best practices and internationally transportable policies to support and accommodate STEM work/life satisfactionServes as an action plan to help STEM employers, policy makers and academic institutions identify and create systemic changeIncludes case studies and practical tools sections to highlight effective integration strategiesAddresses a variety of work/life challenges, including supporting travel for dual-career couples, making strategic choices around work/life issues, and overcoming implicit bias
"

The proceedings present selected research papers from the CIAC2019, held in Jiangsu, China on September 20-22, 2019. It covers a wide range of topics including intelligent control, robotics, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, unmanned systems, IoT and machine learning. It includes original research and the latest advances in the field of intelligent automation. Engineers and researchers from academia, industry, and government can gain valuable insights into solutions combining ideas from multiple disciplines in this field.

This book introduces and illustrates modeling, sensing, and control methods for analyzing, designing, and developing spherical motors. It systematically presents models for establishing the relationships among the magnetic fields, position/orientation and force/torque, while also providing time-efficient solutions to assist researchers and engineers in studying and developing these motors. In order to take full advantage of spherical motors' compact structure in practical applications, sensing and control methods that utilize their magnetic fields and eliminate the need to install external sensors for feedback are proposed. Further, the book investigates for the first time spherical motors' force/torque manipulation capability, and proposes algorithms enabling the ball-joint-like end-effector for haptic use based on these motors' hybrid position/force actuation modes. While systematically presenting approaches to their design, sensing and control, the book also provides many examples illustrating the implementation issues readers may encounter.

Humanoid robotics have made remarkable progress since the dawn of robotics. So why don't we have humanoid robot assistants in day-to-day life yet? This book analyzes the keys to building a successful humanoid robot for field robotics, where collisions become an unavoidable part of the game. The

author argues that the design goal should be real anthropomorphism, as opposed to mere human-like appearance. He deduces three major characteristics to aim for when designing a humanoid robot, particularly robot hands:

_ Robustness against impacts

_ Fast dynamics

_ Human-like grasping and manipulation performance

Instead of blindly copying human anatomy, this book opts for a holistic design me-tho-do-lo-gy. It analyzes human hands and existing robot hands to elucidate the important functionalities that are the building blocks toward these necessary characteristics.They are the keys to designing an anthropomorphic robot hand, as illustrated in the high performance anthropomorphic Awiwi Hand presented in this book.

This is not only a handbook for robot hand designers. It gives a comprehensive survey and analysis of the state of the art in robot hands as well as the human anatomy. It is also aimed at researchers and roboticists interested in the underlying functionalities of hands, grasping and manipulation.

The methodology of functional abstraction is not limited to robot hands, it can also help realize a new generation of humanoid robots to accommodate a broader spectrum of the needs of human society."

This book presents the state of the art in reinforcement learning applied to robotics both in terms of novel algorithms and applications. It discusses recent approaches that allow robots to learn motor.

skills and presents tasks that need to take into account the dynamic behavior of the robot and its environment, where a kinematic movement plan is not sufficient. The book illustrates a method that learns to generalize parameterized motor plans which is obtained by imitation or reinforcement learning, by adapting a small set of global parameters and appropriate kernel-based reinforcement learning algorithms. The presented applications explore highly dynamic tasks and exhibit a very efficient learning process. All proposed approaches have been extensively validated with benchmarks tasks, in simulation and on real robots. These tasks correspond to sports and games but the presented techniques are also applicable to more mundane household tasks. The book is based on the first author s doctoral thesis, which won the 2013 EURON Georges Giralt PhD Award."

This book contains papers on a wide range of topics in the area of kinematics, mechanisms, robotics, and design, addressing new research advances and innovations in design education. The content is divided into five main categories headed 'Historical Perspectives', 'Kinematics and Mechanisms', 'Robotic Systems', 'Legged Locomotion', and 'Design Engineering Education'. Contributions take the form of survey articles, historical perspectives, commentaries on trends on education or research, original research contributions, and papers on design education. This volume celebrates the achievements of Professor Kenneth Waldron who has made innumerable and invaluable contributions to these fields in the last fifty years. His leadership and his pioneering work have influenced thousands of people in this discipline.

"Advanced Theory of Constraint and Motion Analysis for Robot Mechanisms" provides a complete analytical approach to the invention of new robot mechanisms and the analysis of existing designs based on a unified mathematical description of the kinematic and geometric constraints of mechanisms.

Beginning with a high level introduction to mechanisms and components, the book moves on to present a new analytical theory of terminal constraints for use in the development of new spatial mechanisms and structures. It clearly describes the application of screw theory to kinematic problems and provides tools that students, engineers and researchers can use for investigation of critical factors such as workspace, dexterity and singularity.
Combines constraint and free motion analysis and design, offering a new approach to robot mechanism innovation and improvement.
Clearly describes the use of screw theory in robot kinematic analysis, allowing for concise representation of motion and static forces when compared to conventional analysis methods.
Includes worked examples to translate theory into practice and demonstrate the application of new analytical methods to critical robotics problems."

Mechatronics, as the integrating framework of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer technology, control engineering and automation forms a crucial part in the design, manufacture and maintenance of a wide range of engineering products and processes. The mechatronics itself changes rapidly in last decade, from original mixture of subfields into original approach in engineering as a technical discipline. The book you are holding is aimed to help the reader to orient in this evolving field of science and technology.

"Mechatronics 2013: Recent Technological and Scientific Advances" is the fourth volume following the previous editions in 2007, 2009 and 2011, providing the comprehensive and accessible coverage of advances in mechatronics presented on the 10th International Conference Mechatronics 2013, hosted this year at the Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic.

The contributions, that passed the thorough review process, give an insight into current trends in research and development among Mechatronics 2013 contributing countries, with paper topics covering design and modeling of mechatronic systems, control and automation, signal processing, robotics and others, keeping in mind the innovation benefits of mechatronics design approach, leading to the development, production and daily use of machines and devices possessing a certain degree of computer based intelligence.

This volume gathers the latest advances, innovations and applications in the field of cable robots, as presented by leading international researchers and engineers at the 4th International Conference on Cable-Driven Parallel Robots (CableCon 2019), held in Krakow, Poland on June 30-July 4, 2019, as part of the 5th IFToMM World Congress. It covers the theory and applications of cable-driven parallel robots, including their classification, kinematics and singularity analysis, workspace, statics and dynamics, cable modeling and technologies, control and calibration, design methodologies, hardware development, experimental evaluation and prototypes, as well as application reports and new application concepts. The contributions, which were selected through a rigorous international peer-review process, share exciting ideas that will spur novel research directions and foster new multidisciplinary collaborations.

This book presents a number of aspects to be considered in the development of disassembly automation, including the mechanical system, vision system and intelligent planner. The implementation of cognitive robotics increases the flexibility and degree of autonomy of the disassembly system. Disassembly, as a step in the treatment of end-of-life products, can allow the recovery of embodied value left within disposed products, as well as the appropriate separation of potentially-hazardous components. In the end-of-life treatment industry, disassembly has largely been limited to manual labor, which is expensive in developed countries. Automation is one possible solution for economic feasibility. The target audience primarily comprises researchers and experts in the field, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

The International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER) is a series of bi-annual meetings which are organized in a rotating fashion around North America, Europe and Asia/Oceania. The goal of ISER is to provide a forum for research in robotics that focuses on novelty of theoretical contributions validated by experimental results. The meetings are conceived to bring together, in a small group setting, researchers from around the world who are in the forefront of experimental robotics research. This unique reference presents the latest advances across the various fields of robotics, with ideas that are not only conceived conceptually but also explored experimentally. It collects robotics contributions on the current developments and new directions in the field of experimental robotics, which are based on the papers presented at the 14th ISER held on June 15-18, 2014 in Marrakech and Essaouira, Morocco. This present fourteenth edition of Experimental Robotics edited by M. Ani Hsieh, Oussama Khatib, and Vijay Kumar offers a collection of a broad range of topics in field and human-ce ntered robotics.

This book features selected papers presented at the 2nd International Conference on Advanced Computing Technologies and Applications, held at SVKM's Dwarkadas J. Sanghvi College of Engineering, Mumbai, India, from 28 to 29 February 2020. Covering recent advances in next-generation computing, the book focuses on recent developments in intelligent computing, such as linguistic computing, statistical computing, data computing and ambient applications.

Simulate realistic human motion in a virtual world with an optimization-based approach to motion prediction. With this approach, motion is governed by human performance measures, such as speed and energy, which act as objective functions to be optimized. Constraints on joint torques and angles are imposed quite easily. Predicting motion in this way allows one to use avatars to study how and why humans move the way they do, given specific scenarios. It also enables avatars to react to infinitely many scenarios with substantial autonomy. With this approach it is possible to predict dynamic motion without having to integrate equations of motion -- rather than solving equations of motion, this approach solves for a continuous time-dependent curve characterizing joint variables (also called joint profiles) for every degree of freedom.
Introduces rigorous mathematical methods for digital human modelling and simulationFocuses on understanding and representing spatial relationships (3D) of biomechanicsDevelops an innovative optimization-based approach to predicting human movementExtensively illustrated with 3D images of simulated human motion (full color in the ebook version)

The biennial CONTROLO conferences are the main events promoted by The CONTROLO 2016 - 12th Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control, Guimaraes, Portugal, September 14th to 16th, was organized by Algoritmi, School of Engineering, University of Minho, in partnership with INESC TEC, and promoted by the Portuguese Association for Automatic Control - APCA, national member organization of the International Federation of Automatic Control - IFAC. The seventy-five papers published in this volume cover a wide range of topics. Thirty-one of them, of a more theoretical nature, are distributed among the first five parts: Control Theory; Optimal and Predictive Control; Fuzzy, Neural and Genetic Control; Modeling and Identification; Sensing and Estimation. The papers go from cutting-edge theoretical research to innovative control applications and show expressively how Automatic Control can be used to increase the well being of people.

This book contains mainly the selected papers of the First International Workshop on Medical and Service Robots, held in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 2012. The high quality of the scientific contributions is the result of a rigorous selection and improvement based on the participants exchange of opinions and extensive peer-review. This process has led to the publishing of the present collection of 16 independent valuable contributions and points of view and not as standard symposium or conference proceedings.

The addressed issues are: Computational Kinematics, Mechanism Design, Linkages and Manipulators, Mechanisms for Biomechanics, Mechanics of Robots, Control Issues for Mechanical Systems, Novel Designs, Teaching Methods, all of these being concentrated around robotic systems for medical and service applications.

The results are of interest to researchers and professional practitioners as well as to Ph.D. students in the field of mechanical and electrical engineering.

This volume marks the start of a subseries entitled New Trends in Medical and Service Robots within the "Machine and Mechanism Science Series," presenting recent trends, research results and new challenges in the field of medical and service robotics.

"

This edited monograph includes state-of-the-art contributions on continuous time dynamical networks with delays. The book is divided into four parts. The first part presents tools and methods for the analysis of time-delay systems with a particular attention on control problems of large scale or infinite-dimensional systems with delays. The second part of the book is dedicated to the use of time-delay models for the analysis and design of Networked Control Systems. The third part of the book focuses on the analysis and design of systems with asynchronous sampling intervals which occur in Networked Control Systems. The last part of the book exposes several contributions dealing with the design of cooperative control and observation laws for networked control systems. The target audience primarily comprises researchers and experts in the field of control theory, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

With the intriguing development of technologies in several industries, along with the advent of ubiquitous computational resources, there are now ample opportunities to develop innovative computational technologies in order to solve a wide range of issues concerning uncertainty, imprecision, and vagueness in various real-life problems. The challenge of blending modern computational techniques with traditional computing methods has inspired researchers and academics alike to focus on developing innovative computational techniques. In the near future, computational techniques may provide vital solutions by effectively using evolving technologies such as computer vision, natural language processing, deep learning, machine learning, scientific computing, and computational vision. A vast number of intelligent computational algorithms are emerging, along with increasing computational power, which has significantly expanded the potential for developing intelligent applications. These proceedings of the International Conference on Inventive Computation Technologies [ICICT 2019] cover innovative computing applications in the areas of data mining, big data processing, information management, and security.

This unique book provides a bridge between digital control theory and vehicle guidance and control practice. It presents practical techniques of digital redesign and direct discrete-time design suitable for a real-time implementation of controllers and guidance laws at multiple rates and with and computational techniques. The theory of digital control is given as theorems, lemmas, and propositions. The design of the digital guidance and control systems is illustrated by means of step-by-step procedures, algorithms, and case studies. The systems proposed are applied to realistic models of unmanned systems and missiles, and digital implementation.