Discrete Networked Dynamic Systems: Analysis and Performance provides a high-level treatment of a general class of linear discrete-time dynamic systems interconnected over an information network, exchanging relative state measurements or output measurements. It presents a systematic analysis of the material and provides an account to the math development in a unified way. The topics in this book are structured along four dimensions: Agent, Environment, Interaction, and Organization, while keeping global (system-centered) and local (agent-centered) viewpoints. The focus is on the wide-sense consensus problem in discrete networked dynamic systems. The authors rely heavily on algebraic graph theory and topology to derive their results. It is known that graphs play an important role in the analysis of interactions between multiagent/distributed systems. Graph-theoretic analysis provides insight into how topological interactions play a role in achieving coordination among agents. Numerous types of graphs exist in the literature, depending on the edge set of G. A simple graph has no self-loop or edges. Complete graphs are simple graphs with an edge connecting any pair of vertices. The vertex set in a bipartite graph can be partitioned into disjoint non-empty vertex sets, whereby there is an edge connecting every vertex in one set to every vertex in the other set. Random graphs have fixed vertex sets, but the edge set exhibits stochastic behavior modeled by probability functions. Much of the studies in coordination control are based on deterministic/fixed graphs, switching graphs, and random graphs.

Fundamental Design and Automation Technologies in Offshore Robotics introduces technological design, modelling, stability analysis, control synthesis, filtering problem and real time operation of robotics vehicles in offshore environments. The book gives numerical and simulation results in each chapter to reflect the engineering practice yet demonstrate the focus of the developed analysis and synthesis approaches. The book is ideal to be used as a reference book for senior and graduate students. It is written in a way that the presentation is simple, clear, and easy to read and understand which would be appreciated by graduate students. Researchers working on marine vehicles and robotics would be able to find reference material on related topics from the book. The book could be of a significant interest to the researchers within offshore and deep see society, including both academic and industrial parts.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) integrate computing and communication capabilities by monitoring and controlling the physical systems via embedded hardware and computers. This book brings together new and futuristic findings on IoT, Cyber Physical Systems and Robotics leading towards Automation and solving issues of various critical applications in Real-time. The book initially overviews the concepts of IoT, IIoT and Cyber Physical Systems followed by various critical applications and discusses the latest designs and developments that provide common solutions for the convergence of technologies. In addition, the book specifies methodologies, algorithms and other relevant architectures in various fields that include Automation, Robotics, Smart Agriculture and Industry 4.0. The book is intended for practitioners, enterprise representatives, scientists, students and Ph.D Scholars in hopes of steering research further towards cyber physical systems design and development and implementation across various domains. Additionally, this book can be used as a secondary reference, or rather one-stop guide, by professionals for real-life implementation of cyber physical systems. The book highlights: * A Critical Coverage of various domains: IoT, Cyber Physical Systems, Industry 4.0, Smart Automation and related critical applications. * Advanced elaborations for target audiences to understand the conceptual methodology and future directions of cyber physical systems and IoT. * An approach towards Research Orientations to enable researchers to point out areas and scope for implementation of Cyber Physical Systems in several domains for better productivity.

For over a quarter of a century, high-gain observers have been used extensively in the design of output feedback control of nonlinear systems. This book presents a clear, unified treatment of the theory of high-gain observers and their use in feedback control. Also provided is a discussion of the separation principle for nonlinear systems; this differs from other separation results in the literature in that recovery of stability as well as performance of state feedback controllers is given. The author provides a detailed discussion of applications of high-gain observers to adaptive control and regulation problems and recent results on the extended high-gain observers. In addition, the author addresses two challenges that face the implementation of high-gain observers: high dimension and measurement noise. Low-power observers are presented for high-dimensional systems. The effect of measurement noise is characterized and techniques to reduce that effect are presented. The book ends with discussion of digital implementation of the observers. Readers will find: comprehensive coverage of the main results on high-gain observers rigorous, self-contained proofs of all results; and numerous examples that illustrate and provide motivation for the results.

Designed for beginners, undergraduate students, and robotics enthusiasts, Practical Robot Design: Game Playing Robots is a comprehensive guide to the theory, design, and construction of game-playing robots. Drawing on years of robot building and teaching experience, the authors demonstrate the key steps of building a robot from beginning to end, with independent examples for extra modules. Each chapter covers basic theory and key topics, including actuators, sensors, robot vision, and control, with examples and case studies from robotic games. Furthermore, the book discusses the application of AI techniques and provides algorithms, and application examples with MATLAB (R) code. The book includes: Comprehensive coverate on drive motors and drive motor control References to vendor websites as necessary Digital control techniques, with a focus on implementation Techniques for designing and implementing slightly advanced controllers for pole-balancing robots Basic artificial intelligence techniques with examples in MATLAB Discussion of the vision systems, sensor systems, and controlling of robots The result of a summer course for students taking up robotic games as their final-year project, the authors hope that this book will empower readers in terms of the necessary background as well as the understanding of how various engineering fields are amalgamated in robotics.

'The best up-to-date, go-to book on the social and economic implications of artificial intelligence - Tyler Cowen' Rule of the Robots explores the future implications of artificial intelligence as a uniquely scalable and potentially disruptive technology. In this sequel to his prescient New York Times bestseller Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford presents us with a striking vision of the very near future. He argues that AI is a uniquely powerful technology, a kind of "electricity of intelligence" that is altering every dimension of human life, often for the better with advanced science being done by machines who can solve problems humans can not. AI has the potential to help us fight climate change or the next pandemic, but it also has a capacity for profound harm. Deep fakes-AI-generated audio or video of events that never happened-are poised to cause havoc throughout society. AI empowers authoritarian regimes like China with unprecedented mechanisms for social control. And AI can be deeply biased, learning bigoted attitudes from the data used to train algorithms and perpetuating them. Hard-hitting and thought-provoking, covering everything from self-driving cars to the history of deep learning to apps for diagnosing skin cancer, Rule of the Robots challenges our fears and preconceptions about artificial intelligence. Ford argues that AI is here to stay and the real question is not how to stop it, but how to control its negative potential and harness its power for good as AI transforms our economy, our politics, and our lives.

This book presents programming by demonstration for robot learning from observations with a focus on the trajectory level of task abstraction * Discusses methods for optimization of task reproduction, such as reformulation of task planning as a constrained optimization problem * Focuses on regression approaches, such as Gaussian mixture regression, spline regression, and locally weighted regression * Concentrates on the use of vision sensors for capturing motions and actions during task demonstration by a human task expert

Discover what robots can do and how they work

Find out how to build your own robot and program it to perform tasks

Ready to enter the robot world? This book is your passport! It walks you through building your very own little metal assistant from a kit, dressing it up, giving it a brain, programming it to do things, even making it talk. Along the way, you’ll gather some tidbits about robot history, enthusiasts’ groups, and more.

The Dummies Way

• Explanations in plain English
• "Get in, get out" information
• Icons and other navigational aids
• Tear-out cheat sheet
• Top ten lists
• A dash of humor and fun

Since the creation of the first modern robots in the 1950s, robotics has developed rapidly and in diverse directions; the term robot (from the Czech word for drudgery) now applies to a spectrum of creations, from mechanical limbs bolted to factory floors to computer-driven bipeds with human-like capabilities. But the urge to create "mechanical men" to perform mundane, repetitive, and even complex human tasks is nearly as old as civilization itself. The ancient Greeks built automata, as did the Egyptians and the Japanese. Leonardo da Vinci designed mechanical men, and entertainment robots were all the rage in eighteenth-century Europe. Robot Evolution is unique in robotics literature, at once a comprehensive pictorial history of robots and a technical guide to robot designs, devices, and systems. Author and robot expert Mark E. Rosheim reviews and describes the gamut of robot mechanisms, from ancient to state-of-the-art, from subcomponents such as joints, grippers, and actuators to completely integrated systems equipped with artificial intelligence, sensors, and autonomous mobility. Rosheim chronicles the development and increasing complexity of these systems, using the kinesiology of human body parts as a framework for evaluating the kinematics of robotic components and explaining how these components are used to emulate human motion. Particular emphasis is placed on the most advanced current devices and promising experimental designs. Supplemented with hundreds of photographs, drawings, and illustrated tables, Robot Evolution is written in a clear, forthright style and organized to provide quick and easy access to information. Separate chapters are devoted to robot arms, wrists, hands, and legs, and each chapter contains examples of several different design approaches to the same problem or component. The advantages and disadvantages of each design are discussed in detail along with preferred applications and specific functions of each device. An annotated bibliography assists those interested in further reading, and a comprehensive glossary is also provided. This indispensable quick reference will be of great help to machine design and robotics engineers, controls engineers, researchers in biomechanics, and kinesiologists who need concise and detailed answers to problems in robot design and function. For the technically minded layman, Robot Evolution offers both a fascinating tour of the robotic universe and an uncommonly accessible introduction to the design, function, and operation of robots and their components.

How to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover-filling needs that even the most sophisticated robot cannot. Driverless cars are hitting the road, powered by artificial intelligence. Robots can climb stairs, open doors, win Jeopardy, analyze stocks, work in factories, find parking spaces, advise oncologists. In the past, automation was considered a threat to low-skilled labor. Now, many high-skilled functions, including interpreting medical images, doing legal research, and analyzing data, are within the skill sets of machines. How can higher education prepare students for their professional lives when professions themselves are disappearing? In Robot-Proof, Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun proposes a way to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover-to fill needs in society that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agent cannot. A "robot-proof" education, Aoun argues, is not concerned solely with topping up students' minds with high-octane facts. Rather, it calibrates them with a creative mindset and the mental elasticity to invent, discover, or create something valuable to society-a scientific proof, a hip-hop recording, a web comic, a cure for cancer. Aoun lays out the framework for a new discipline, humanics, which builds on our innate strengths and prepares students to compete in a labor market in which smart machines work alongside human professionals. The new literacies of Aoun's humanics are data literacy, technological literacy, and human literacy. Students will need data literacy to manage the flow of big data, and technological literacy to know how their machines work, but human literacy-the humanities, communication, and design-to function as a human being. Life-long learning opportunities will support their ability to adapt to change. The only certainty about the future is change. Higher education based on the new literacies of humanics can equip students for living and working through change.

What is transhumanism? Simply put, it is a movement whose aim is to use technology to fundamentally change the human condition, to improve our bodies and minds to the point where we become something other, and better, than the animals we are. It's a philosophy that, depending on how you look at it, can seem hopeful, or terrifying, or absurd. In To Be a Machine, Mark O'Connell presents us with the first full-length exploration of transhumanism: its philosophical and scientific roots, its key players and possible futures. From charismatic techies seeking to enhance the body to immortalists who believe in the possibility of 'solving' death; from computer programmers quietly re-designing the world to vast competitive robotics conventions; To Be a Machine is an Adventure in Wonderland for our time. To Be a Machine paints a vivid portrait of an international movement driven by strange and frequently disturbing ideas and practices, but whose obsession with transcending human limitations can be seen as a kind of cultural microcosm, a radical intensification of our broader faith in the power of technology as an engine of human progress. It is a character study of human eccentricity, and a meditation on the immemorial desire to transcend the basic facts of our animal existence - a desire as primal as the oldest religions, a story as old as the earliest literary texts.A stunning new non-fiction voice tackles an urgent question... what next for mankind?

Autonomous robots may become our closest companions in the near future. While the technology for physically building such machines is already available today, a problem lies in the generation of the behavior for such complex machines. Nature proposes a solution: young children and higher animals learn to master their complex brain-body systems by playing. Can this be an option for robots? How can a machine be playful? The book provides answers by developing a general principle---homeokinesis, the dynamical symbiosis between brain, body, and environment---that is shown to drive robots to self- determined, individual development in a playful and obviously embodiment- related way: a dog-like robot starts playing with a barrier, eventually jumping or climbing over it; a snakebot develops coiling and jumping modes; humanoids develop climbing behaviors when fallen into a pit, or engage in wrestling-like scenarios when encountering an opponent. The book also develops guided self-organization, a new method that helps to make the playful machines fit for fulfilling tasks in the real world.

The book provides two levels of presentation. Students and scientific researchers interested in the field of robotics, self-organization and dynamical systems theory may be satisfied by the in-depth mathematical analysis of the principle, the bootstrapping scenarios, and the emerging behaviors. But the book additionally comes with a robotics simulator inviting also the non- scientific reader to simply enjoy the fabulous world of playful machines by performing the numerous experiments.

Robots and Manufacturing Automation Second Edition C. Ray Asfahl University of Arkansas 55391 3, 512 pp., cloth, 1992 A Complete Guide to Using Automation to Boost Productivity This applications-oriented book surveys the wide spectrum of automated systems available to increase manufacturing productivity. It covers all aspects of automation including robots, numerical control machines, programmable controllers, computer controllers, and microprocessor-based automated systems. Technical topics are explained in an easy-to-understand style and illustrated with vivid images. Every chapter includes quantitative exercises or problems and design case studies to help solidify understanding of the material. The new Second Edition is now completely current in coverage, and includes a number of enhancements: Text expansion (approximately 20 per cent) ensures complete coverage of the field. Careful changes have modernized the text and emphasize the most recent and widely-used automation equipment and techniques. Updated coverage now includes concepts which show how to design products to enhance automation and manual production. New chapters on Machine Vision and Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) bring topic coverage to the cutting edge. The Robot Programming chapter contains new material on the AML Language.

This book presents the outcomes of the 12th International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR 2016). WAFR is a prestigious, single-track, biennial international meeting devoted to recent advances in algorithmic problems in robotics. Robot algorithms are an important building block of robotic systems and are used to process inputs from users and sensors, perceive and build models of the environment, plan low-level motions and high-level tasks, control robotic actuators, and coordinate actions across multiple systems. However, developing and analyzing these algorithms raises complex challenges, both theoretical and practical. Advances in the algorithmic foundations of robotics have applications to manufacturing, medicine, distributed robotics, human-robot interaction, intelligent prosthetics, computer animation, computational biology, and many other areas. The 2016 edition of WAFR went back to its roots and was held in San Francisco, California - the city where the very first WAFR was held in 1994. Organized by Pieter Abbeel, Kostas Bekris, Ken Goldberg, and Lauren Miller, WAFR 2016 featured keynote talks by John Canny on "A Guided Tour of Computer Vision, Robotics, Algebra, and HCI," Erik Demaine on "Replicators, Transformers, and Robot Swarms: Science Fiction through Geometric Algorithms," Dan Halperin on "From Piano Movers to Piano Printers: Computing and Using Minkowski Sums," and by Lydia Kavraki on "20 Years of Sampling Robot Motion." Furthermore, it included an Open Problems Session organized by Ron Alterovitz, Florian Pokorny, and Jur van den Berg. There were 58 paper presentations during the three-day event. The organizers would like to thank the authors for their work and contributions, the reviewers for ensuring the high quality of the meeting, the WAFR Steering Committee led by Nancy Amato as well as WAFR's fiscal sponsor, the International Federation of Robotics Research (IFRR), led by Oussama Khatib and Henrik Christensen. WAFR 2016 was an enjoyable and memorable event.

This volume presents a collection of papers presented at the 14th International Symposium of Robotic Research (ISRR). ISRR is the biennial meeting of the International Foundation of Robotic Research (IFRR) and its 14th edition took place in Lucerne, Switzerland, from August 31st to September 3rd, 2009. As for the previous symposia, ISRR 2009 followed up on the successful concept of a mixture of invited contributions and open submissions. Half of the 48 presentations were therefore invited contributions from outstanding researchers selected by the IFRR officers, and half were chosen among the 66 submissions after peer review. This selection process resulted in a truly excellent technical program which, we believe, featured some of the very best of robotic research. Out of the 48 presentations, the 42 papers which were finally submitted for publication are organized in 8 sections that encompass the major research orientations in robotics: Navigation, Control & Planning, Human-Robot Interaction, Manipulation and Humanoids, Learning, Mapping, Multi-Robot Systems, and Micro-Robotics. They represent an excellent snapshot of cutting-edge research in robotics and outline future directions.

Science world luminary John Brockman assembles twenty-five of the most important scientific minds, people who have been thinking about the field artificial intelligence for most of their careers, for an unparalleled round-table examination about mind, thinking, intelligence and what it means to be human. "Artificial intelligence is today's story--the story behind all other stories. It is the Second Coming and the Apocalypse at the same time: Good AI versus evil AI." --John Brockman More than sixty years ago, mathematician-philosopher Norbert Wiener published a book on the place of machines in society that ended with a warning: "we shall never receive the right answers to our questions unless we ask the right questions.... The hour is very late, and the choice of good and evil knocks at our door." In the wake of advances in unsupervised, self-improving machine learning, a small but influential community of thinkers is considering Wiener's words again. In Possible Minds, John Brockman gathers their disparate visions of where AI might be taking us. The fruit of the long history of Brockman's profound engagement with the most important scientific minds who have been thinking about AI--from Alison Gopnik and David Deutsch to Frank Wilczek and Stephen Wolfram--Possible Minds is an ideal introduction to the landscape of crucial issues AI presents. The collision between opposing perspectives is salutary and exhilarating; some of these figures, such as computer scientist Stuart Russell, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, and physicist Max Tegmark, are deeply concerned with the threat of AI, including the existential one, while others, notably robotics entrepreneur Rodney Brooks, philosopher Daniel Dennett, and bestselling author Steven Pinker, have a very different view. Serious, searching and authoritative, Possible Minds lays out the intellectual landscape of one of the most important topics of our time.

This book introduces how to improve the accuracy and robustness of model predictive control. Firstly, the disturbance observation- and compensation-based method is developed. Secondly, direct parameter identification methods are developed. Thirdly, the seldom-focused-on issues such as sampling and delay problems are solved in this book. Overall, this book solves the problems in a systematic and innovative way. Chapter 2 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com

The market demand for skills, knowledge and adaptability have positioned robotics to be an important field in both engineering and science. One of the most highly visible applications of robotics has been the robotic automation of many industrial tasks in factories. In the future, a new era will come in which we will see a greater success for robotics in non-industrial environments. In order to anticipate a wider deployment of intelligent and autonomous robots for tasks such as manufacturing, healthcare, ent- tainment, search and rescue, surveillance, exploration, and security missions, it is essential to push the frontier of robotics into a new dimension, one in which motion and intelligence play equally important roles. The 2010 International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications (ICIRA 2010) was held in Shanghai, China, November 10-12, 2010. The theme of the c- ference was "Robotics Harmonizing Life," a theme that reflects the ever-growing interest in research, development and applications in the dynamic and exciting areas of intelligent robotics. These volumes of Springer's Lecture Notes in Artificial Intel- gence and Lecture Notes in Computer Science contain 140 high-quality papers, which were selected at least for the papers in general sessions, with a 62% acceptance rate Traditionally, ICIRA 2010 holds a series of plenary talks, and we were fortunate to have two such keynote speakers who shared their expertise with us in diverse topic areas spanning the rang of intelligent robotics and application activities.

The market demand for skills, knowledge and adaptability have positioned robotics to be an important field in both engineering and science. One of the most highly visible applications of robotics has been the robotic automation of many industrial tasks in factories. In the future, a new era will come in which we will see a greater success for robotics in non-industrial environments. In order to anticipate a wider deployment of intelligent and autonomous robots for tasks such as manufacturing, healthcare, ent- tainment, search and rescue, surveillance, exploration, and security missions, it is essential to push the frontier of robotics into a new dimension, one in which motion and intelligence play equally important roles. The 2010 International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications (ICIRA 2010) was held in Shanghai, China, November 10-12, 2010. The theme of the c- ference was "Robotics Harmonizing Life," a theme that reflects the ever-growing interest in research, development and applications in the dynamic and exciting areas of intelligent robotics. These volumes of Springer's Lecture Notes in Artificial Intel- gence and Lecture Notes in Computer Science contain 140 high-quality papers, which were selected at least for the papers in general sessions, with a 62% acceptance rate Traditionally, ICIRA 2010 holds a series of plenary talks, and we were fortunate to have two such keynote speakers who shared their expertise with us in diverse topic areas spanning the rang of intelligent robotics and application activities.

The Centre for Intelligent Machines (CIM), McGill University, was of?cially c- ated on November13th, 1985,upon approvalby the University Senate. The mission of the centre is, since its inception, "to excel in the ?eld of intelligent systems, stressing basic research, technology development and education." Intelligent - chines are understood,along these lines, as systems "capable of adapting their go- oriented behavior by sensing and interpreting their environment, making decisions and plans, and then carrying out those plans using physical actions." Research - tivities of interest to CIM include robot design, mechanical system dynamics, robot control,computervision,visualperception,medicalimaging,haptics,systemtheory and applications, and virtual environments.These ?elds can be succinctly described by the title of the international symposium recorded in this book,Brain,Bodyand Machine (BBM). CIM's objectof research is thusre?ected in the book,wherereaderswill ?nd that most papers cover at least two of the three main thrusts. Papers re?ect the state-- the-artofthemultidisciplineofintelligentmachines,nowadayshighlydiversi?ed.A broad spectrum of applications is covered, from humanoid robots and autonomous planetary rovers, to innovative procedures and systems for shape-reproduction and on to systems or devices for medical diagnosis. Applications are all geared to one commongoal,a better quality of life for highlychallengedpatients or simply for the healthy individual. Methods to face the challenges include not only sophisticated deterministic algorithms, but also their heuristic counterparts, at the roots of what is known assoftcomputing.

The technologies for product assembly and manufacturing evolve along with the advancement of enabling technologies such as material science, robotics, machine intelligence as well as information and communication. Furthermore, they may be subject to fundamental changes due to the shift in key product features and/or - gineering requirements. The enabling technologies emerging offer new opportunities for moving up the level of automation, optimization and reliability in product assembly and ma- facturing beyond what have been possible. We see assembly and manufacturing becoming more Intelligent with the perception-driven robotic autonomy, more flexible with the human-robot coupled collaboration in work cells, and more in- grated in scale and complexity under the distributed and networked frameworks. On the other hand, the shift in key product features and engineering requirements dictates the new technologies and tools for assembly and manufacturing to be - veloped. This may be exemplified by a high complexity of micro/nano system products integrated and packaged in 3D with various heterogeneous parts, com- nents, and interconnections, including electrical, optical, mechanical as well as fluidic means.

This book is a revised version of the doctoral dissertation presented by D. Ribas in the Department of Computer Engineering at the University of Girona. The main purpose of this work is to present different techniques developed with the objective of providing a solution to the navigation problem for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) operating in structured environments, with special attention to localization techniques but, particularly, to the application of SLAM (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) techniques as a self-contained system which requires neither previous knowledge of the scenario nor the use of absolute positioning systems like GPS, LBL or USBL. This book also presents techniques for feature extraction capable of dealing with the particular complexities of a mechanically scanned imaging sonar. The approaches described in this book are designed for use in structured environments like those present in many industrial scenarios, specifically for scenarios containing manmade structures in the form of rectilinear walls like those met in harbours, breakwaters, marinas, canal systems, etc. Although most of the previous work done in this field focuses on open sea and coastal applications, obtaining an accurate positioning in such scenarios would increase AUVs capabilities notably, allowing to perform autonomously tasks such as inspection of underwater structures, surveillance of marine installations and even enabling autonomous harbour leaving and returning operations.