This volume surveys three decades of modern robot control theory and describes how the work of Suguru Arimoto shaped its development. Twelve survey articles written by experts associated with Suguru Arimoto at various stages in his career treat the subject comprehensively. This book provides an important reference for graduate students and researchers, as well as for mathematicians, engineers and scientists whose work involves robot control theory.

Tele operation systems, in which robots are controlled remotely, are a potential solution to performing tasks in remote, small, and hazardous environments. However, there is a big disadvantage to these systems; as the direct connection between the human and the environment is lost and operators are deprived of their sense of touch. The recreation of touch feedback through haptic devices is a possible solution, however haptic devices are far from perfect and improving their design is usually a slow trial-and-error process. This book describes 7 scientific studies that try to break this slow loop by using a deductive approach. Through investigating fundamental properties of human haptic perception using psychophysical paradigms, general knowledge on haptic perception of force, position, movement and hardness was gained. The resulting information can be applied to many different haptic devices. Consequently haptic systems can be more easily designed in an intuitive, human-centered way.

This book focuses on two challenges posed in robot control by the increasing adoption of robots in the everyday human environment: uncertainty and networked communication. Part I of the book describes learning control to address environmental uncertainty. Part II discusses state estimation, active sensing, and complex scenario perception to tackle sensing uncertainty. Part III completes the book with control of networked robots and multi-robot teams. Each chapter features in-depth technical coverage and case studies highlighting the applicability of the techniques, with real robots or in simulation. Platforms include mobile ground, aerial, and underwater robots, as well as humanoid robots and robot arms. Source code and experimental data are available at http://extras.springer.com. The text gathers contributions from academic and industry experts, and offers a valuable resource for researchers or graduate students in robot control and perception. It also benefits researchers in related areas, such as computer vision, nonlinear and learning control, and multi-agent systems.

In 1960, R. E. Kalman published his celebrated paper on recursive min imum variance estimation in dynamical systems [14]. This paper, which introduced an algorithm that has since been known as the discrete Kalman filter, produced a virtual revolution in the field of systems engineering. Today, Kalman filters are used in such diverse areas as navigation, guid ance, oil drilling, water and air quality, and geodetic surveys. In addition, Kalman's work led to a multitude of books and papers on minimum vari ance estimation in dynamical systems, including one by Kalman and Bucy on continuous time systems [15]. Most of this work was done outside of the mathematics and statistics communities and, in the spirit of true academic parochialism, was, with a few notable exceptions, ignored by them. This text is my effort toward closing that chasm. For mathematics students, the Kalman filtering theorem is a beautiful illustration of functional analysis in action; Hilbert spaces being used to solve an extremely important problem in applied mathematics. For statistics students, the Kalman filter is a vivid example of Bayesian statistics in action. The present text grew out of a series of graduate courses given by me in the past decade. Most of these courses were given at the University of Mas sachusetts at Amherst.

] Starting with the research of G. Bogelsack in the 1970s, the analysis of biological locomotion andmanipulation systemsandtheirtechnical realizationhas beenan- portant research eld within the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Ilmenau University of Technology. In 1996, the German Research Foundation (DFG) funded the Innovation College "Motion Systems" at the University of Jena in a coope- tion with engineers at the Ilmenau University of Technology. Thus, research was able to be intensi ed and extended. Of course, the whole spectrum of biologically inspired systems is much too wide, so the analysis was still focused on locomotion and manipulation systems. At this stage J. Steigenberger from the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural S- ences at the Ilmenau University of Technology contributed important studies of worm-like locomotion systems with much dedication and technical competence. Moreover, he conceived and carried out a lecture series entitled "Mathematical Basics for Locomotion Systems," which was based on his evaluation of national and international research developments in this eld. I. Zeidis and K. Zimmermann contributed many publications on the mechanics of worm-like locomotion systems based on continuum and rigid-body models as well as asymptotic methods. Since 2004 the German Research Foundation has supported a series of projects led by K. Zimmermann dedicated to biologically inspired robotics. In addition to these activities, the Department of Technical Mechanics and the Department of Computer Application in Mechanical Engineering (M. Weiss) together with masters and doctoral students started the development of mobile robots for the RoboCup Small-Size League in 1998."

While sailing has a long tradition, both as a means of transportation and as a sport, robotic sailing is a fairly new area of research. One of its unique characteristics is the use of wind for propulsion. On the one hand, this allows for long range and long term autonomy. On the other hand, the dependency on changing winds presents a serious challenge for short and long term planning, collision avoidance, and boat control. Moreover, building a robust and seaworthy sailing robot is no simple task, leading to a truly interdisciplinary engineering problem. These proceedings summarize the state of the art as presented at the International Robotic Sailing Conference 2011. Following an overview of the history of autonomous sailing a number of recent boat designs is presented, ranging from small one-design boats to vessels built to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Subsequently, various aspects of system design and validation are discussed, further highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Finally, methods for collision avoidance, localization and route planning are covered.

Surveillance systems have become increasingly popular. Full involvement of human operators has led to shortcomings, e.g. high labor cost, limited capability for multiple screens, inconsistency in long-duration, etc. Intelligent surveillance systems (ISSs) can supplement or even replace traditional ones. In ISSs, computer vision, pattern recognition, and artificial intelligence technologies are used to identify abnormal behaviours in videos. They present the development of real-time behaviour-based intelligent surveillance systems. The book focuses on the detection of individual abnormal behaviour based on learning and the analysis of dangerous crowd behaviour based on texture and optical flow. Practical systems include a real-time face classification and counting system, a surveillance robot system that utilizes video and audio information for intelligent interaction, and a robust person counting system for crowded environments.

This book presents a study on the novel concept of "event-triggered control of nonlinear systems subject to disturbances", discussing the theory and practical applications. Richly illustrated, it is a valuable resource for researchers, engineers and graduate students in automation engineering who wish to learn the theories, technologies, and applications of event-triggered control of nonlinear systems.

Explores the history of telepresence from the 1948 developments of master-slave manipulation, through to current telepresence technology used in space, undersea, surgery and telemedicine, operations in nuclear and other hazardous environments, policing and surveillance, agriculture, construction, mining, warehousing, education, amusement, social media and other contexts Reviews the differing technologies for visual, haptic, tactile remote sensing at the remote site, and the corresponding means of the display to the human operator Reviews the sensing and control technology, its history, and likely future, and discusses the many research and policy issues Reviews psychological experiments in telepresence with relation to virtual and augmented reality Examines social and ethical concerns: ease of spying, mischief, and crime via remote control of an avatar

Neural Networks in Robotics is the first book to present an integrated view of both the application of artificial neural networks to robot control and the neuromuscular models from which robots were created. The behavior of biological systems provides both the inspiration and the challenge for robotics. The goal is to build robots which can emulate the ability of living organisms to integrate perceptual inputs smoothly with motor responses, even in the presence of novel stimuli and changes in the environment. The ability of living systems to learn and to adapt provides the standard against which robotic systems are judged. In order to emulate these abilities, a number of investigators have attempted to create robot controllers which are modelled on known processes in the brain and musculo-skeletal system. Several of these models are described in this book. On the other hand, connectionist (artificial neural network) formulations are attractive for the computation of inverse kinematics and dynamics of robots, because they can be trained for this purpose without explicit programming. Some of the computational advantages and problems of this approach are also presented. For any serious student of robotics, Neural Networks in Robotics provides an indispensable reference to the work of major researchers in the field. Similarly, since robotics is an outstanding application area for artificial neural networks, Neural Networks in Robotics is equally important to workers in connectionism and to students for sensormonitor control in living systems.

In the last decade, we have seen an extraordinary progress in the the ory and applications of robot kinematics. This has been motivated espe cially by the development of complex parallel and humanoid robots. The present book reports the most recent research advances in the theory, design, control and application of robotic systems, which are intended for a variety of purposes such as manipulation, manufacturing, automa tion, surgery, locomotion and biomechanics. The issues addressed are fundamentally kinematic in nature, including synthesis, calibration, re dundancy, force control, dexterity, inverse and forward kinematics, kine matic singularities, as well as over-constrained systems. Methods used include line geometry, quaternion algebra, screw algebra, and linear alge bra. These methods are applied to both parallel and serial multi-degree of-freedom systems. The results should interest researchers, teachers and students, in fields of engineering and mathematics related to robot theory, design, control and application. This is the sixth book of the series Advances in Robot Kinematics published by Kluwer. The contributions in this book had been rigorously reviewed by in dependent reviewers and fifty one articles had been recommended for publication. They were introduced in seven chapters. These articles were also reported and discussed at the ninth international symposium on Advances in Robot Kinematics which was held in June 2004 in Sestri Levante in Italy. Indexed in Conference Proceedings Citation Index- Science (CPCI-S)

This book aims at reporting some of the most challenging open problems of control theoretic nature raised by robotics applications. Topics covered in the book represent many of the most innovative areas in contemporary robotics research, with special emphasis on vision, sensory-feedback control, human-centered robotics, manipulation, planning, flexible and cooperative robots, or assembly systems. The basic idea behind the book is to present the variety of innovative applications and related technology demands that arise from robotics and automation to a larger community, including in particular, researchers in automatic control, applied mathematics, mechanical engineering, or computer science. The book is intended for an audience of researchers and graduate students in those disciplines and in robotics. It is the outcome of a workshop held in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 14, 2002 jointly sponsored by the IEEE Control Systems Society and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft that is equipped with necessary data processing units, sensors, automatic control and communications systems, and is capable of performing autonomously flight missions without a human pilot. Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems provides a complete treatment of the design of fully autonomous miniature rotorcraft UAVs. It is an integration of advanced technologies developed in communications, computing and control areas. In particular, it focuses on:

the systematic hardware construction;

software systems integration;

aerodynamic modeling; and

automatic flight control system design.

Emphasis is extended to the cooperative control and flight formation of multiple UAVs, and vision-based ground target tracking and landing on moving platforms. Other issues such as the development of GPSless indoor micro aerial vehicles and vision-based navigation are also highlighted.

The proposed monograph aims to explore the research and development of fully functional miniature UAV (unmanned-aerial-vehicle) rotorcraft. This consists of a small-scale basic rotorcraft with all necessary accessories onboard, and a ground station. The unmanned system is an integration of advanced technologies developed in communications, computing and control areas. It is an excellent testing ground for trialing and implementing modern control techniques. It is however a highly challenging process. The aerodynamics of a small-scale rotorcraft such as a hobby helicopter are similar to its full-scale counterpart but has some unique characteristics, such as the utilization of stabilizer bar and higher main/tail rotors rotation speed. Besides these, the strict limitation on payload also increases the difficulty on upgrading a small-scale rotorcraft to a UAV with full capacities. Based on its various characteristics and limitations, a light-weight but effective onboard computer system with corresponding onboard/ground software should be carefully designed to realize the system identification and automatic flight requirements. These issues will be addressed in detail in this monograph. Research on the following will be detailed:

utilizing the vision-based system for accomplishing ground target tracking;

attacking and landing;

cooperative control and flight formation of muitiple unmanned rotorcraft;

future research directions on the related areas.

The book will be a good reference for researchers and students working on the related subjects. Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems will be of great value to practicing engineers in rotorcraft industries and to researchers in areas related to the development of unmanned systems in general. It may be used as a reference for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in aeronautics and astrinautics, electrical and mechanical engineering."

This book reveals that the way we perceive sex robots is how we perceive ourselves, overcoming the false human/non-human binary. From Greek myths, to the film Ex Machina, to Japanese technology, non-human sexuality has been at the heart of culture. In Sex Robots, the history of this culture is explored. This text sheds new light on what the sex robot represents and signifies, examining its philosophical implications within the context of today's society. This volume will be of interest to scholars of technology, cultural studies, the social sciences and philosophy.

This book presents a collection of papers from the International Symposium in Robotics Research (ISRR01). The goal of the symposium was to bring together active, leading robotics researchers from academia, government, and industry, to define the state of the art in robotics and its future direction.

This volume contains the Proceedings of the 3rd IFToMM Symposium on Mechanism Design for Robotics, held in Aalborg, Denmark, 2-4 June, 2015. The book contains papers on recent advances in the design of mechanisms and their robotic applications. It treats the following topics: mechanism design, mechanics of robots, parallel manipulators, actuators and their control, linkage and industrial manipulators, innovative mechanisms/robots and their applications, among others. The book can be used by researchers and engineers in the relevant areas of mechanisms, machines and robotics.

The fully automated estimation of the 6 degrees of freedom camera motion and the imaged 3D scenario using as the only input the pictures taken by the camera has been a long term aim in the computer vision community. The associated line of research has been known as Structure from Motion (SfM). An intense research effort during the latest decades has produced spectacular advances; the topic has reached a consistent state of maturity and most of its aspects are well known nowadays. 3D vision has immediate applications in many and diverse fields like robotics, videogames and augmented reality; and technological transfer is starting to be a reality. This book describes one of the first systems for sparse point-based 3D reconstruction and egomotion estimation from an image sequence; able to run in real-time at video frame rate and assuming quite weak prior knowledge about camera calibration, motion or scene. Its chapters unify the current perspectives of the robotics and computer vision communities on the 3D vision topic: As usual in robotics sensing, the explicit estimation and propagation of the uncertainty hold a central role in the sequential video processing and is shown to boost the efficiency and performance of the 3D estimation. On the other hand, some of the most relevant topics discussed in SfM by the computer vision scientists are addressed under this probabilistic filtering scheme; namely projective models, spurious rejection, model selection and self-calibration.

The book discusses new algorithms capable of searching for, tracking, mapping and providing a visualization of invisible substances. It reports on the realization of a bacterium-inspired robotic controller that can be used by an agent to search for any environmental spatial function such as temperature or pollution. Using the parameters of a mathematical model, the book shows that it is possible to control the exploration, exploitation and sensitivity of the agent. This feature sets the work apart from the usual method of applying the bacterium behavior to robotic agents. The book also discusses how a computationally tractable multi-agent robotic controller was developed and used to track as well as provide a visual map of a spatio-temporal distribution of a substance. On the one hand, this book provides biologists and ecologists with a basis to perform simulations related to how individual organisms respond to spatio-temporal factors in their environment as well as predict and analyze the behavior of organisms at a population level. On the other hand, it offers robotic engineers practical and fresh insights into the development of computationally tractable algorithms for spatial exploratory and mapping robots. It also allows a more general audience to gain an understanding of the design of computational intelligence algorithms for autonomous physical systems.

Building a robot that learns to perform a task has been acknowledged as one of the major challenges facing artificial intelligence. Self-improving robots would relieve humans from much of the drudgery of programming and would potentially allow operation in environments that were changeable or only partially known. Progress towards this goal would also make fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence by furthering our understanding of how to successfully integrate disparate abilities such as perception, planning, learning and action. Although its roots can be traced back to the late fifties, the area of robot learning has lately seen a resurgence of interest. The flurry of interest in robot learning has partly been fueled by exciting new work in the areas of reinforcement earning, behavior-based architectures, genetic algorithms, neural networks and the study of artificial life. Robot Learning gives an overview of some of the current research projects in robot learning being carried out at leading universities and research laboratories in the United States. The main research directions in robot learning covered in this book include: reinforcement learning, behavior-based architectures, neural networks, map learning, action models, navigation and guided exploration.

This book addresses the major challenges in realizing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in IoT-based Smart Cities. The challenges tackled vary from cost and energy efficiency to availability and service quality. The aim of this book is to focus on both the design and implementation aspects of the UAV-based approaches in IoT-enabled smart cities' applications that are enabled and supported by wireless sensor networks, 5G, and beyond. The contributors mainly focus on data delivery approaches and their performability aspects. This book is meant for readers of varying disciplines who are interested in implementing the smart planet/environments vision via wireless/wired enabling technologies. Involves the most up to date unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) assessment and evaluation approaches Includes innovative operational ideas in agriculture, surveillance, rescue, etc. Pertains researchers, scientists, engineers and practitioners in the field of smart cities, IoT, and communications Fadi Al-Turjman received his Ph.D. from Queen's University, Canada. He is a full professor and a research center director at Near East University, Nicosia. He is a leading authority in the area of IoT and intelligent systems. His publication history spans over 250 publications in addition to his editorialship in top journals such as the IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials, and the Elsevier Sustaibable Cities and Society.

Robotic technology offers two potential benefits for future space exploration. One benefit is minimizing the risk that astronauts face. The other benefit is increasing their productivity. Realizing the benefits of robotic technology in space will require solving several problems which are unique and now becoming active research topics. One of the most important research areas is dynamics, control, motion and planning for space robots by considering the dynamic interaction between the robot and the base (space station, space shuttle, or satellite). Any inefficiency in the planning and control can considerably risk by success of the space mission. Space Robotics: Dynamics and Control presents a collection of papers concerning fundamental problems in dynamics and control of space robots, focussing on issues relevant to dynamic base/robot interaction. The authors are all pioneers in theoretical analysis and experimental systems development of space robot technology. The chapters are organized within three problem areas: dynamics problems, nonholonomic nature problems, and control problems. This collection provides a solid reference for researchers in robotics, mechanics, control, and astronautical science.

"Parallel Kinematics- Type, Kinematics, and Optimal Design "presents the results of 15 year's research on parallel mechanisms and parallel kinematics machines. This book covers the systematic classification of parallel mechanisms (PMs) as well as providing a large number of mechanical architectures of PMs available for use in practical applications. It focuses on the kinematic design of parallel robots. One successful application of parallel mechanisms in the field of machine tools, which is also called parallel kinematics machines, has been the emerging trend in advanced machine tools. The book describes not only the main aspects and important topics in parallel kinematics, but also references novel concepts and approaches, i.e. type synthesis based on evolution, performance evaluation and optimization based on screw theory, singularity model taking into account motion and force transmissibility, and others.
This book is intended for researchers, scientists, engineers and postgraduates or above with interests in robotics and advanced machine tools technology such as parallel kinematics machines (PKMs).
Xinjun Liu and Jinsong Wang, professors, work at The Institute of Manufacturing Engineering, Department of Precision Instruments and Mechanology, Tsinghua University."

Microsystem technology (MST) integrates very small (up to a few nanometers) mechanical, electronic, optical, and other components on a substrate to construct functional devices. These devices are used as intelligent sensors, actuators, and controllers for medical, automotive, household and many other purposes. This book is a basic introduction to MST for students, engineers, and scientists. It is the first of its kind to cover MST in its entirety. It gives a comprehensive treatment of all important parts of MST such as microfabrication technologies, microactuators, microsensors, development and testing of microsystems, and information processing in microsystems. It surveys products built to date and experimental products and gives a comprehensive view of all developments leading to MST devices and robots.