Cyber-Physical Systems: AI and COVID-19 highlights original research which addresses current data challenges in terms of the development of mathematical models, cyber-physical systems-based tools and techniques, and the design and development of algorithmic solutions, etc. It reviews the technical concepts of gathering, processing and analyzing data from cyber-physical systems (CPS) and reviews tools and techniques that can be used. This book will act as a resource to guide COVID researchers as they move forward with clinical and epidemiological studies on this outbreak, including the technical concepts of gathering, processing and analyzing data from cyber-physical systems (CPS). The major problem in the identification of COVID-19 is detection and diagnosis due to non-availability of medicine. In this situation, only one method, Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) has been widely adopted and used for diagnosis. With the evolution of COVID-19, the global research community has implemented many machine learning and deep learning-based approaches with incremental datasets. However, finding more accurate identification and prediction methods are crucial at this juncture.

This monograph deals with energy based control of interactive robotic interfaces. The port-Hamiltonian framework is exploited both for modeling and controlling interactive robotic interfaces. The book provides an energy oriented analysis and control synthesis of interactive robotic interfaces, from a single robot to multi-robot systems for interacting with real and virtual, possibly unstructured, environments.

This book gathers the latest advances, innovations, and applications in the field of machine science and mechanical engineering, as presented by international researchers and engineers at the 11th International Conference on Machine and Industrial Design in Mechanical Engineering (KOD), held in Novi Sad, Serbia on June 10-12, 2021. It covers topics such as mechanical and graphical engineering, industrial design and shaping, product development and management, complexity, and system design. The contributions, which were selected by means of a rigorous international peer-review process, highlight numerous exciting ideas that will spur novel research directions and foster multidisciplinary collaborations.

ISRR, the "International Symposium on Robotics Research," is one of robotics pioneering symposia, which has established some of the field's most fundamental and lasting contributions over the past two decades. This book presents the results of the eleventh edition of "Robotics Research" ISRR03, offering a broad range of topics in robotics. The contributions provide 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 new emerging areas of applications. The diversity, novelty, and span of the work unfolding in these areas reveal the field's increased maturity and expanded scope, and define the state of the art of robotics and its future direction. "

This book is devoted to the development of the shape memory materials and their applications. It covers many aspects of smart materials. It also describes the method on how we can obtain not only large recovery strains but also high recovery stress, energy storage and energy dissipation in applications. This volume treats the mechanical properties of shape memory alloys, shape memory polymers and the constitutive equations of the materials which are necessary to design the shape memory elements in applications. It also deals with the fatigue properties of materials, the method to design the shape memory elements, and the shape memory composites. The authors are international experts on shape memory alloys and shape memory polymers in the metallurgical, chemical, mechanical and engineering fields. The book will be of interest to graduate students, engineers, scientists and designers who are working in the field of electric and mechanical engineering, industries, medical engineering, aerospace engineering, robots, automatic machines, clothes and recycling for research, design and manufacturing.

The interest in climbing and walking robots (CLAWAR) has intensified in recent years, and novel solutions for complex and very diverse applications have been anticipated by means of significant progress in this area of - botics. Moreover, the amalgamation of original ideas and related inno- tions, search for new potential applications and the use of state of the art support technologies permit to foresee an important step forward and a significant socio-economic impact of advanced robot technology in the - ture. This is leading to the creation and consolidation of a mobile service robotics sector where most of the robotics activities are foreseen in the - ture. The technology is now maturing to become of real benefit to society and methods of realizing this potential quickly are being eagerly explored. Robot standards and modularity are key to this and form key components of the research presented here. CLAWAR 2005 is the eighth in a series of international conferences - ganised annually since 1998 with the aim to report on latest research and development findings and to provide a forum for scientific discussion and debate within the mobile service robotics community. The series has grown in its popularity significantly over the years, and has attracted - searchers and developers from across the globe. The CLAWAR 2005 p- ceedings reports state of the art scientific and developmental findings p- sented during the CLAWAR 2005 conference in 131 technical presentations by authors from 27 countries covering the five continents.

The inspiration from Biology and the Natural Evolution process has become a research area within computer science. For instance, the description of the arti?cial neuron given by McCulloch and Pitts was inspired from biological observations of neural mechanisms; the power of evolution in nature in the diverse species that make up our world has been related to a particular form of problem solving based on the idea of survival of the ?ttest; similarly, - ti?cial immune systems, ant colony optimisation, automated self-assembling programming, membrane computing, etc. also have their roots in natural phenomena. The ?rst and second editions of the International Workshop on Nature Inspired Cooperative Strategies for Optimization (NICSO), were held in Granada, Spain, 2006, and in Acireale, Italy, 2007, respectively. As in these two previous editions, the aim of NICSO 2008, held in Tenerife, Spain, was to provide a forum were the latest ideas and state of the art research related to nature inspired cooperative strategies for problem solving were discussed. The contributions collected in this book were strictly peer reviewed by at least three members of the international programme committee, to whom we are indebted for their support and assistance. The topics covered by the contributionsincludenature-inspiredtechniqueslikeGeneticAlgorithms, Ant Colonies, Amorphous Computing, Arti?cial Immune Systems, Evolutionary Robotics, Evolvable Systems, Membrane Computing, Quantum Computing, Software Self Assembly, Swarm Intelligence, etc

In this book the use of ER techniques for the design of self-organising group behaviours, for both simulated and real robots is introduced. The book tries to mediate between two apparently opposed perspectives: engineering and cognitive science. The experiments presented in the book and the results obtained contribute to the assessment of ER not only as a design tool, but also as a methodology for modelling and understanding intelligent adaptive behaviours.

This book demonstrates bene?ts of abstract and qualitative reasoning that have not received much attention in the context of autonomous robotics before. Bremen, Christian Freksa December 2007 Director of the SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition Preface This book addresses spatial representations and reasoning techniques for - bile robot mapping, providing an analysis of fundamental representations and processes involved. A spatial representation based on shape information is p- posed and shape analysis techniques are developed to tackle the correspondence problem in robot mapping. A general mathematical formulation is presented to provide the formal ground for an e?cient matching of con?gurations of objects. This book is a slightly revised version of my doctoral thesis submitted to the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Bremen, Germany. Manycontributeto the developmentofa dissertation,butsomeofthemstand out. Christian Freksa, I thank you for supporting and encouraging my work, for introducing me to interdisciplinary work, for giving me the freedom to develop this dissertation, and for providing an enjoyable atmosphere to work in. Longin Jan Latecki, thank you for countless in-depth discussions helping me to develop andtopositionmywork,forthefruitfulcollaboration,andformakingaresearch stay possible that has been very valuable to me. I thank the research groups in Bremen and Philadelphia for helpful discussions and feedback, in particular Jan Oliver Wallgrun. I also thank Kai-Florian Richter, Sven Bertel, and Lutz Frommberger for feedback on this work. Robert Ross, thank you for helping to proof-read this dissertation.

The science associated with the development of artificial sen sory systems is occupied primarily with determining how information about the world can be extracted from sensory data. For example, computational vision is, for the most part, concerned with the de velopment of algorithms for distilling information about the world and recognition of various objects in the environ (e. g. localization ment) from visual images (e. g. photographs or video frames). There are often a multitude of ways in which a specific piece of informa tion about the world can be obtained from sensory data. A subarea of research into sensory systems has arisen which is concerned with methods for combining these various information sources. This field is known as data fusion, or sensor fusion. The literature on data fusion is extensive, indicating the intense interest in this topic, but is quite chaotic. There are no accepted approaches, save for a few special cases, and many of the best methods are ad hoc. This book represents our attempt at providing a mathematical foundation upon which data fusion algorithms can be constructed and analyzed. The methodology that we present in this text is mo tivated by a strong belief in the importance of constraints in sensory information processing systems. In our view, data fusion is best un derstood as the embedding of multiple constraints on the solution to a sensory information processing problem into the solution pro cess."

The essays in this book, written by researchers from both humanities and science, describe various theoretical and experimental approaches to adding medical ethics to a machine, what design features are necessary in order to achieve this, philosophical and practical questions concerning justice, rights, decision-making and responsibility in medical contexts, and accurately modeling essential physician-machine-patient relationships.

In medical settings, machines are in close proximity with human beings: with patients who are in vulnerable states of health, who have disabilities of various kinds, with the very young or very old and with medical professionals. Machines in these contexts are undertaking important medical tasks that require emotional sensitivity, knowledge of medical codes, human dignity and privacy.

As machine technology advances, ethical concerns become more urgent: should medical machines be programmed to follow a code of medical ethics? What theory or theories should constrain medical machine conduct? What design features are required? Should machines share responsibility with humans for the ethical consequences of medical actions? How ought clinical relationships involving machines to be modeled? Is a capacity for empathy and emotion detection necessary? What about consciousness?

This collection is the first book that addresses these 21st-century concerns.

Cognitive Computing for Human-Robot Interaction: Principles and Practices explores the efforts that should ultimately enable society to take advantage of the often-heralded potential of robots to provide economical and sustainable computing applications. This book discusses each of these applications, presents working implementations, and combines coherent and original deliberative architecture for human-robot interactions (HRI). Supported by experimental results, it shows how explicit knowledge management promises to be instrumental in building richer and more natural HRI, by pushing for pervasive, human-level semantics within the robot's deliberative system for sustainable computing applications. This book will be of special interest to academics, postgraduate students, and researchers working in the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Key features: Introduces several new contributions to the representation and management of humans in autonomous robotic systems; Explores the potential of cognitive computing, robots, and HRI to generate a deeper understanding and to provide a better contribution from robots to society; Engages with the potential repercussions of cognitive computing and HRI in the real world.

This book presents select proceedings of the International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering Research and Development (ICRAMERD 21). It covers the latest research trends in various branches of mechanical engineering. The topics covered include materials engineering, industrial system engineering, manufacturing systems engineering, automotive engineering, thermal systems, smart composite materials, manufacturing processes, industrial automation, and energy system. The book will be a valuable reference for beginners, researchers, engineers, and industry professionals working in the various fields of mechanical engineering.

Automation and Robotics in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Industry provides distinct and unified insight into current and future construction robotics, offering readers a comprehensive perspective for constructing a road map and illuminating improvements for a successful transition towards construction robotization. The book covers the fundamentals and applications of robotics, autonomous vehicles, and human-perceptive machines at construction sites. Through theoretical and experimental analyses, it examines the potential of robotics and automated systems for current and future fieldwork operations and identifies the factors that determine their implementation pace, adoption scale, and ubiquity throughout the industry. The book evaluates the technical, societal, and economic aspects of adopting robots in construction, both as standalone and collaborative systems, which in return can afford the opportunity to investigate these AI-enabled machines more systematically.

The vision of seamless human-robot interaction in our everyday life that allows for tight cooperation between human and robot has not become reality yet. However, the recent increase in technology maturity finally made it possible to realize systems of high integration, advanced sensorial capabilities and enhanced power to cross this barrier and merge living spaces of humans and robot workspaces to at least a certain extent. Together with the increasing industrial effort to realize first commercial service robotics products this makes it necessary to properly address one of the most fundamental questions of Human-Robot Interaction: How to ensure safety in human-robot coexistence? In this authoritative monograph, the essential question about the necessary requirements for a safe robot is addressed in depth and from various perspectives. The approach taken in this book focuses on the biomechanical level of injury assessment, addresses the physical evaluation of robot-human impacts, and isolates the major factors that cause human injuries. This assessment is the basis for the design and exploration of various measures to improve safety in human-robot interaction. They range from control schemes for collision detection, reflex reaction, and avoidance to the investigation of novel joint designs that equip robots with fundamentally new capabilities. By the depth of its analysis and exceptionally salient experimental work, this monograph offers one of the most comprehensive treatments of the safety challenge in the field.

This volume constitutes the results of the International Conference on Underwater Environment, MOQESM'14, held at "Le Quartz" Conference Center in Brest, France, on October 14-15, 2014, within the framework of the 9th Sea Tech Week, International Marine Science and Technology Event. The objective of MOQESM'14 was to bring together researchers from both academia and industry, interested in marine robotics and hydrography with application to the coastal environment mapping and underwater infrastructures surveys. The common thread of the conference is the combination of technical control, perception, and localization, typically used in robotics, with the methods of mapping and bathymetry. The papers presented in this book focus on two main topics. Firstly, coastal and infrastructure mapping is addressed, focusing not only on hydrographic systems, but also on positioning systems, bathymetry, and remote sensing. The proposed methods rely on acoustic sensors such as side scan sonars, multibeam echo sounders, phase-measuring bathymetric sonars, as well as optical systems such as underwater laser scanners. Accurate underwater positioning is also addressed in the case of the use of a single acoustic beacon, and the latest advances in increasing the vertical precision of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) are also presented. Most of the above mentioned works are closely related to autonomous marine vehicles. Consequently, the second part of the book describes some works concerning the methods associated with such type of vehicles. The selected papers focus on autonomous surface or underwater vehicles, detailing new approaches for localization, modeling, control, mapping, obstacle detection and avoidance, surfacing, and software development. Some of these works imply acoustics sensing as well as image processing. Set membership methods are also used in some papers. The applications of the work presented in this book concern in particular oceanography, monitoring of oil and gas infrastructures, and military field.

This book presents social welfare functions as a unified multidisciplinary framework for various resource allocation problems. By measuring the impact of local decisions on broader society, social welfare functions enable "socialized" decisions and thereby produce an emergent property that "global" balance and welfare emerge from "local" welfare-maximizing behaviors. Social welfare functions are originally used in economics to quantify income welfare, jointly considering average and inequality to arrive at better measures of welfare than average alone. Wishing the readers to find opportunities for their problems of interest, this book introduces research results of social welfare functions applied in five different engineering applications, defining welfare metrics pertaining to the characteristics of the application. The "energy welfare" in wireless sensor network measures richness of distributed sensors in energy. The "preparedness welfare" in emergency medical services quantifies the preparedness level of an entire service area by aggregating preparedness levels of individual zones. The "preference welfare" in intelligent shared environments represents the opinions of real people for groups. The "resource welfare" in multi-robot task allocation quantifies the efficiency of utilizing distributed resources across robots. The "utility welfare" in complex cyber-physical systems quantifies the impact of local resource sharing decisions on the broader task communities.

This fascinating book examines some of the characteristics of technological/engineering models that are likely to be unfamiliar to those who are interested primarily in the history and philosophy of science and mathematics, and which differentiate technological models from scientific and mathematical ones. Themes that are highlighted include:
the role of language: the models developed for engineering design have resulted in new ways of talking about technological systems
communities of practice: related to the previous point, particular engineering communities have particular ways of sharing and developing knowledge
graphical (re)presentation: engineers have developed many ways of reducing quite complex mathematical models to more simple representations
reification: highly abstract mathematical models are turned into 'objects' that can be manipulated almost like components of a physical system
machines: not only the currently ubiquitous digital computer, but also older analogue devices - slide rules, physical models, wind tunnels and other small-scale simulators, as well as mechanical, electrical and electronic analogue computers
mathematics and modelling as a bridging tool between disciplines
This book studies primarily modelling in technological practice. It is worth noting that models of the type considered in the book are not always highly valued in formal engineering education at university level, which often takes an "applied science" approach close to that of the natural sciences (something that can result in disaffection on the part of students). Yet in an informal context, such as laboratories, industrial placements, and so on, a very different situation obtains. A number of chapters considers such epistemological aspects, as well as the status of different types of models within the engineering education community.
The book will be of interest to practising engineers and technologists; sociologists of science and technology; and historians and philosophers of science and mathematics. It will also be written in a way that will be accessible to non-specialists."

During the last years there has been an increasing interest in the area of service robots. Under this category we find robots working in tasks such as elderly care, guiding, office and domestic assistance, inspection, and many more. Service robots usually work in indoor environments designed for humans, with offices and houses being some of the most typical examples. These environments are typically divided into places with different functionalities like corridors, rooms or doorways. The ability to learn such semantic categories from sensor data enables a mobile robot to extend its representation of the environment, and to improve its capabilities. As an example, natural language terms like corridor or room can be used to indicate the position of the robot in a more intuitive way when communicating with humans. This book presents several approaches to enable a mobile robot to categorize places in indoor environments. The categories are indicated by terms which represent the different regions in these environments. The objective of this work is to enable mobile robots to perceive the spatial divisions in indoor environments in a similar way as people do. This is an interesting step forward to the problem of moving the perception of robots closer to the perception of humans. Many approaches introduced in this book come from the area of pattern recognition and classification. The applied methods have been adapted to solve the specific problem of place recognition. In this regard, this work is a useful reference to students and researchers who want to introduce classification techniques to help solve similar problems in mobile robotics.

Mathematical Modelling of Swimming Soft Microrobots presents a theoretical framework for modelling of soft microrobotic systems based on resistive-force theory. Microorganisms are highly efficient at swimming regardless of the rheological and physical properties of the background fluids. This efficiency has inspired researchers and Engineers to develop microrobots that resemble the morphology and swimming strategies of microorganisms. The ultimate goal of this book is threefold: first, to relate resistive-force theory to externally and internally actuated microrobotic systems; second, to enable the readers to develop numerical models of a wide range of microrobotic systems; third, to enable the reader to optimize the design of the microrobot to enhance its swimming efficiency.

This book covers three main types of agricultural systems: the use of robotics, drones (unmanned aerial vehicles), and satellite-guided precision farming methods. Some of these are well refined and are currently in use, while others are in need of refinement and are yet to become popular. The book provides a valuable source of information on this developing field for those involved with agriculture and farming and agricultural engineering. The book is also applicable as a textbook for students and a reference for faculty.

This book is a compilation of selected papers from the 12th International Workshop of Advanced Manufacturing and Automation (IWAMA 2022), held in Jimei University, Xiamen, China on 01 - 02 November, 2022. Topics focusing on novel techniques for manufacturing and automation in Industry 4.0 are now vital factors for the maintenance and improvement of the economy of a nation and the quality of life. It will help academic researchers and engineering to implement the concept, theory and methods in Industry 4.0 which has been a hot topic. These proceedings will make valuable contributions to academic researchers, engineers in the industry for the challenges in the 4th industry revolution and smart factories.

A History Today Book of the Year A world-renowned astronomer and an esteemed science writer make the provocative argument for space exploration without astronauts. Human journeys into space fill us with wonder. But the thrill of space travel for astronauts comes at enormous expense and is fraught with peril. As our robot explorers grow more competent, governments and corporations must ask, does our desire to send astronauts to the Moon and Mars justify the cost and danger? Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees believe that beyond low-Earth orbit, space exploration should proceed without humans. In The End of Astronauts, Goldsmith and Rees weigh the benefits and risks of human exploration across the solar system. In space humans require air, food, and water, along with protection from potentially deadly radiation and high-energy particles, at a cost of more than ten times that of robotic exploration. Meanwhile, automated explorers have demonstrated the ability to investigate planetary surfaces efficiently and effectively, operating autonomously or under direction from Earth. Although Goldsmith and Rees are alert to the limits of artificial intelligence, they know that our robots steadily improve, while our bodies do not. Today a robot cannot equal a geologist's expertise, but by the time we land a geologist on Mars, this advantage will diminish significantly. Decades of research and experience, together with interviews with scientific authorities and former astronauts, offer convincing arguments that robots represent the future of space exploration. The End of Astronauts also examines how spacefaring AI might be regulated as corporations race to privatize the stars. We may eventually decide that humans belong in space despite the dangers and expense, but their paths will follow routes set by robots.

This book on computing systems for autonomous driving takes a comprehensive look at the state-of-the-art computing technologies, including computing frameworks, algorithm deployment optimizations, systems runtime optimizations, dataset and benchmarking, simulators, hardware platforms, and smart infrastructures. The objectives of level 4 and level 5 autonomous driving require colossal improvement in the computing for this cyber-physical system. Beginning with a definition of computing systems for autonomous driving, this book introduces promising research topics and serves as a useful starting point for those interested in starting in the field. In addition to the current landscape, the authors examine the remaining open challenges to achieve L4/L5 autonomous driving. Computing Systems for Autonomous Driving provides a good introduction for researchers and prospective practitioners in the field. The book can also serve as a useful reference for university courses on autonomous vehicle technologies.This book on computing systems for autonomous driving takes a comprehensive look at the state-of-the-art computing technologies, including computing frameworks, algorithm deployment optimizations, systems runtime optimizations, dataset and benchmarking, simulators, hardware platforms, and smart infrastructures. The objectives of level 4 and level 5 autonomous driving require colossal improvement in the computing for this cyber-physical system. Beginning with a definition of computing systems for autonomous driving, this book introduces promising research topics and serves as a useful starting point for those interested in starting in the field. In addition to the current landscape, the authors examine the remaining open challenges to achieve L4/L5 autonomous driving. Computing Systems for Autonomous Driving provides a good introduction for researchers and prospective practitioners in the field. The book can also serve as a useful reference for university courses on autonomous vehicle technologies.

The book presents an overview of current research on biologically inspired autonomous robotics from the perspective of some of the most relevant researchers in this area. The book crosses several boundaries in the field of robotics and the closely related field of artificial life. The key aim throughout the book is to obtain autonomy at different levels. From the basic motor behavior in some exotic robot architectures right through to the planning of complex behaviors or the evolution of robot control structures, the book explores different degrees and definitions of autonomous behavior. These behaviors are supported by a wide variety of modeling techniques: structural grammars, neural networks, and fuzzy logic and evolution underlies many of the development processes. Thus this text can be used by scientists and students interested in these areas and provides a general view of the field for a more general audience.