The Computational Biomechanics for Medicine titles provide an opportunity for specialists in computational biomechanics to present their latest methodologies and advancements. This volume comprises eighteen of the newest approaches and applications of computational biomechanics, from researchers in Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK, Switzerland, Scotland, France and Russia. Some of the interesting topics discussed are: tailored computational models; traumatic brain injury; soft-tissue mechanics; medical image analysis; and clinically-relevant simulations. One of the greatest challenges facing the computational engineering community is to extend the success of computational mechanics to fields outside traditional engineering, in particular to biology, the biomedical sciences, and medicine. We hope the research presented within this book series will contribute to overcoming this grand challenge.

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.

Quantum machine learning investigates how quantum computers can be used for data-driven prediction and decision making. The books summarises and conceptualises ideas of this relatively young discipline for an audience of computer scientists and physicists from a graduate level upwards. It aims at providing a starting point for those new to the field, showcasing a toy example of a quantum machine learning algorithm and providing a detailed introduction of the two parent disciplines. For more advanced readers, the book discusses topics such as data encoding into quantum states, quantum algorithms and routines for inference and optimisation, as well as the construction and analysis of genuine ``quantum learning models''. A special focus lies on supervised learning, and applications for near-term quantum devices.

Dexterous and autonomous manipulation is a key technology for the personal and service robots of the future. Advances in Bimanual Manipulation edited by Bruno Siciliano provides the robotics community with the most noticeable results of the four-year European project DEXMART (DEXterous and autonomous dual-arm hand robotic manipulation with sMART sensory-motor skills: A bridge from natural to artificial cognition). The volume covers a host of highly important topics in the field, concerned with modelling and learning of human manipulation skills, algorithms for task planning, human-robot interaction, and grasping, as well as hardware design of dexterous anthropomorphic hands. The results described in this five-chapter collection are believed to pave the way towards the development of robotic systems endowed with dexterous and human-aware dual-arm/hand manipulation skills for objects, operating with a high degree of autonomy in unstructured real-world environments.

There is little doubt that robotic and automated systems in space will contribute considerably to the future commercialisation of the space environment. This text provides a systems eye view of robotic spacecraft design with an emphasis on control systems.The first half of the book introduces the techniques of robotics and robotic control, and is the most mathematical part of the book. The second half of the book deals with spacecraft systems themselves, and how a robotic-type payload influences them, including consideration of financial and legal issues which are often left out of technical texts.Running through the book is the implementation of a freeflying robotic spacecraft called ATLAS (Advanced TeLerobotic Actuation System). However, the techniques presented in the book are completely general and the ATLAS spacecraft just serves as an example, albeit a very useful and economically viable space system.

Robot interaction control is one of the most challenging targets for industrial robotics. While it would provide the robotic systems with a high degree of autonomy, its effectiveness is limited by the complexity of this problem and by the necessity of special sensors (six-dof force sensors). On the other hand, the control methodologies to be adopted for addressing this problem can be considered mature and well-assessed. All the known interaction control strategies (e.g. impedance, direct force control) are tackled and reshuffled in a geometrically consistent way for simplification of the task specification and enhancement of the execution performance. This book represents the first step towards the application of theoretical results at an industrial level; in fact each proposed control algorithm is experimentally tested here on an industrial robotic setup.

This book describes approaches to solving the problems of developing the central nervous system of robots (CNSR) based on smart electromechanical systems (SEMS) modules, principles of construction of the various modules of the central nervous system and variants of mathematical software CNSR in control systems for intelligent robots. It presents the latest advances in theory and practice at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Developers of intelligent robots to solve modern problems in robotics are increasingly addressing the use of the bionic approach to create robots that mimic the complexity and adaptability of biological systems. These have smart electromechanical system (SEMS), which are used in various cyber-physical systems (CPhS), and allow the functions of calculation, control, communications, information storage, monitoring, measurement and control of parameters and environmental parameters to be integrated. The behavior of such systems is based on the information received from the central nervous system of the robot (CNSR) on the state of the environment and system state. Recent advances in computer science, measuring and computing techniques have stimulated the practical realization of the CNSR, providing a fundamentally new approach to the methods and algorithms of formation of appropriate robot behavior. Intelligent robots with CNSR occupy a special place among the highly efficient robotic systems with parallel structures and play an important role in modern automated industries, and this timely book is a valuable resource for specialists in the field of robotics and control, as well as for students majoring in "Robots", "System analysis and management", and "Automation and control".

Robotic and manufacturing systems have gained increasing attention at both the academic and industrial levels. A key component in their development is the microprocessor, which offers increased functional capabilities at reduced costs. Microprocessors in Robotic and Manufacturing Systems provides a balanced, state-of-the-art presentation of the involvement of microprocessors in the design and operation of modern robotic and manufacturing systems. Prepared by a distinguished team of experts, the book covers a wide repertory of topics, including the latest developments in the field together with fresh, original results derived by the contributors. The book provides a unique, cohesive reference source providing access to the most current advances in the microprocessor-based robotics and manufacturing field. A subset of the topics covered is the following: Computation of Robot Dynamics by Multiprocessor Schemes; Numerical Applications of Digital Signal Processors in Robotic Computations; Automatic Scheduling of the Newton-Euler Inverse Dynamics; Microprocessor-Based Controllers for Robotic Manipulators; Design Aspects of a Robot Coordinated by a Desktop Computer; Collision Strategies for Robotic Retreat and Resistance: Microprocessor Based Implementations; Microprocessor Based Intelligent Welding Systems; Microprocessors in Robotic/Machine Vison Computer-controlled Integrated Manufacturing Systems; Microcomputer Expert System Tools for Robotic and Manufacturing Operations. The reader can save considerable time in searching the scattered technical information on the application of microprocessors to industrial robots and flexible manufacturing systems. The professional can have readilyavailable a rich set of important analysis, design and operational results.

The International Symposium of Robotics Research (ISRR) continues to be the premiere meeting of the International Foundation of Robotics Research (IFRR). The 13th International Symposium of Robotics Research took place Novemb3r 26-29, 2007, in Hiroshima, Japan, and was organized by the two editors of this book. This volume brings a collection of a broad range of topics in robotics. The content of these contributions provides a wide coverage of the current state of robotics research: the advances and challenges in its theoretical foundation and technology basis, and the developments in its traditional and novel areas of applications. Historically, the proceedings of the ISRR have featured ground-breaking work of the highest caliber, which influenced generations to come. The present volume promises to be no exception. The collection of scientific articles in this volume provides new insights to important problems in robotics, written by some of the leaders in the field.

The 5th International Conference on Field and Service Robotics (FSR05) was held in Port Douglas, Australia, on 29th - 31st July 2005, and brought together the worlds' leading experts in field and service automation. The goal of the conference was to report and encourage the latest research and practical results towards the use of field and service robotics in the community with particular focus on proven technology. The conference provided a forum for researchers, professionals and robot manufacturers to exchange up-to-date technical knowledge and experience.

Field robots are robots which operate in outdoor, complex, and dynamic environments. Service robots are those that work closely with humans, with particular applications involving indoor and structured environments. There are a wide range of topics presented in this issue on field and service robots including: Agricultural and Forestry Robotics, Mining and Exploration Robots, Robots for Construction, Security & Defence Robots, Cleaning Robots, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and Autonomous Flying Robots.

This meeting was the fifth in the series and brings FSR back to Australia where it was first held. FSR has been held every 2 years, starting with Canberra 1997, followed by Pittsburgh 1999, Helsinki 2001 and Lake Yamanaka 2003.

This volume gathers the peer reviewed papers which were presented at the third edition of the International Workshop Service Orientation in Holonic and Multi-agent Manufacturing and Robotics SOHOMA 13 organized on June 20-22, 2013 by the Centre of Research in Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Robotics CIMR Bucharest, and hosted by the University of Valenciennes, France.

The book is structured in five parts, each one covering a specific research domain which represents a trend for modern manufacturing control: Distributed Intelligence for Sustainable Manufacturing, Holonic and Multi-Agent Technologies for Manufacturing Planning and Control; Service Orientation in Manufacturing Management and Control, Intelligent Products and Product-driven Automation and Robotics for Manufacturing and Services. These five evolution lines have in common concepts related to service orientation in a distributed planning and control agent-based industrial environment; today it is generally recognized that the Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture paradigm has been looked upon as a suitable and effective approach for industrial automation and management of manufacturing enterprises."

Fact finding in judicial proceedings is a dynamic process. This collection of papers considers whether computational methods or other formal logical methods developed in disciplines such as artificial intelligence, decision theory, and probability theory can facilitate the study and management of dynamic evidentiary and inferential processes in litigation. The papers gathered here have several epicenters, including (i) the dynamics of judicial proof, (ii) the relationship between artificial intelligence or formal analysis and "common sense," (iii) the logic of factual inference, including (a) the relationship between causality and inference and (b) the relationship between language and factual inference, (iv) the logic of discovery, including the role of abduction and serendipity in the process of investigation and proof of factual matters, and (v) the relationship between decision and inference.

Applied Cyber-Physical Systems presents the latest methods and technologies in the area of cyber-physical systems including medical and biological applications. 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 unique contributions from renowned experts on cyber-physical systems research and education with applications. It also addresses the major challenges in CPS, and then provides a resolution with various diverse applications as examples. Advanced-level students and researchers focused on computer science, engineering and biomedicine will find this to be a useful secondary text book or reference, as will professionals working in this field.

"Software Engineering for Experimental Robotics" collects contributions that describe the state of the art in software development for the Robotics domain. It reports on innovative ideas that are progressively introduced in the software development process, in order to promote the reuse of robotic software artifacts: domain engineering, components, frameworks and architectural styles. It illustrates the results of the most successful and well-known research projects which aim to develop reusable robotic software systems. Most of the chapters report on concepts and ideas discussed at the well attended ICRA2005 Workshop on "Principles and Practice of Software Development in Robotics," Barcelona, Spain, April 18 2005. The authors are recognised as leading scholars internationally, and the result is an effective blend of fundamental and innovative results on research and development in software for robotic systems, where one common factor is the integration of reusable building blocks. Besides the advancement in the field, most contributions survey the state of the art, report a number of practical applications to real systems, and discuss possible future developments.

Universal vehicular communication promises many improvements in terms of ac- dent avoidance and mitigation, better utilization of roads and resources such as time and fuel, and new opportunities for infotainment applications. However, before widespread acceptance, vehicular communication must meet challenges comparable to the trouble and disbelief that accompanied the introduction of traf c lights back then. The rst traf c light was installed in 1868 in London to signal railway, but only later, in 1912, was invented the rst red-green electric traf c light. And roughly 50 years after the rst traf c light, in 1920, the rst four-way traf c signal comparable to our today's traf c lights was introduced. The introduction of traf c signals was necessary after automobiles soon became prevalent once the rst car in history, actually a wooden motorcycle, was constructed in 1885. Soon, the scene became complicated, requiring the introduction of the "right-of-way" philosophy and later on the very rst traf c light. In the same way the traf c light was a necessary mean to regulate the beginning of the automotive life and to protect drivers, passengers, as well as pedestrians and other inhabitants of the road infrastructure, vehicular communication is necessary to accommodate the further growth of traf c volume and to signi cantly reduce the number of accidents.

Roboticsis undergoingamajortransformationinscopeanddimension.From a largelydominantindustrialfocus,roboticsis rapidly expandinginto human environments and vigorouslyengaged in its new challenges. Interacting with, assisting, serving, and exploring with humans, the emerging robots will - creasingly touch people and their lives. Beyond its impact on physical robots, the body of knowledge robotics has produced is revealing a much wider range of applications reaching across - verse research areas and scienti?c disciplines, such as: biomechanics, haptics, neurosciences, virtual simulation, animation, surgery, and sensor networks among others. In return, the challenges of the new emerging areas are pr- ing an abundant source of stimulation and insights for the ?eld of robotics. It is indeed at the intersection of disciplines that the most striking advances happen. TheSpringerTractsinAdvancedRobotics(STAR)isdevotedtobringingto the research community the latest advances in the robotics ?eld on the basis of their signi?cance and quality. Through a wide and timely dissemination of critical research developments in robotics, our objective with this series is to promotemoreexchangesandcollaborationsamongtheresearchersinthec- munity and contributeto further advancements inthis rapidlygrowing?eld. The monographwritten byAlejandro DizanVasquez Goveafocusesonthe practicalproblem of moving in a cluttered environment with pedestrians and vehicles. A frameworkbased on Hidden Markov models is developed to learn typical motion patterns which can be used to predict motion on the basis of sensor data. All the theoretical results have been implemented and validated with experiments, using both real and simulated data.

Here is a comprehensive presentation of methodology for the design and synthesis of an intelligent complex robotic system, connecting formal tools from discrete system theory, artificial intelligence, neural network, and fuzzy logic. The necessary methods for solving real time action planning, coordination and control problems are described. A notable chapter presents a new approach to intelligent robotic agent control acting in a realworld environment based on a lifelong learning approach combining cognitive and reactive capabilities. Another key feature is the homogeneous description of all solutions and methods based on system theory formalism.

Vision-based mobile robot guidance has proved difficult for classical machine vision methods because of the diversity and real-time constraints inherent in the task. This book describes a connectionist system called ALVINN (Autonomous Land Vehicle In a Neural Network) that overcomes these difficulties. ALVINN learns to guide mobile robots using the back-propagation training algorithm. Because of its ability to learn from example, ALVINN can adapt to new situations and therefore cope with the diversity of the autonomous navigation task. But real world problems like vision-based mobile robot guidance present a different set of challenges for the connectionist paradigm. Among them are: how to develop a general representation from a limited amount of real training data; how to understand the internal representations developed by artificial neural networks; how to estimate the reliability of individual networks; how to combine multiple networks trained for different situations into a single system; how to combine connectionist perception with symbolic reasoning. Neural Network Perception for Mobile Robot Guidance presents novel solutions to each of these problems. Using these techniques, the ALVINN system can learn to control an autonomous van in under 5 minutes by watching a person drive. Once trained, individual ALVINN networks can drive in a variety of circumstances, including single-lane paved and unpaved roads, and multi-lane lined and unlined roads, at speeds of up to 55 miles per hour. The techniques also are shown to generalize to the task of controlling the precise foot placement of a walking robot.

Human-in-the-loop Learning and Control for Robot Teleoperation presents recent, research progress on teleoperation and robots, including human-robot interaction, learning and control for teleoperation with many extensions on intelligent learning techniques. The book integrates cutting-edge research on learning and control algorithms of robot teleoperation, neural motor learning control, wave variable enhancement, EMG-based teleoperation control, and other key aspects related to robot technology, presenting implementation tactics, adequate application examples and illustrative interpretations. Robots have been used in various industrial processes to reduce labor costs and improve work efficiency. However, most robots are only designed to work on repetitive and fixed tasks, leaving a gap with the human desired manufacturing effect.

Making Robots Smarter is a book about learning robots. It treats this topic based on the idea that the integration of sensing and action is the central issue. In the first part of the book, aspects of learning in execution and control are discussed. Methods for the automatic synthesis of controllers, for active sensing, for learning to enhance assembly, and for learning sensor-based navigation are presented. Since robots are not isolated but should serve us, the second part of the book discusses learning for human-robot interaction. Methods of learning understandable concepts for assembly, monitoring, and navigation are described as well as optimizing the implementation of such understandable concepts for a robot's real-time performance. In terms of the study of embodied intelligence, Making Robots Smarter asks how skills are acquired and where capabilities of execution and control come from. Can they be learned from examples or experience? What is the role of communication in the learning procedure? Whether we name it one way or the other, the methodological challenge is that of integrating learning capabilities into robots.