This book systematically discusses the development of autonomous driving, describing the related history, technological advances, infrastructure, social impacts, international competition, China's opportunities and challenges, and possible future scenarios. This popular science book uses straightforward language and includes quotes from ancient Chinese poems to enhance the reading experience. The discussions are supplemented by theoretical elaborations, presented in tables and figures. The book is intended for auto fans, upper undergraduate and graduate students in the field of automotive engineering.

This book endeavours to highlight the untapped potential of Smart Agriculture for the innovation and expansion of the agriculture sector. The sector shall make incremental progress as it learns from associations between data over time through Artificial Intelligence, deep learning and Internet of Things applications. The farming industry and Smart agriculture develop from the stringent limits imposed by a farm's location, which in turn has a series of related effects with respect to supply chain management, food availability, biodiversity, farmers' decision-making and insurance, and environmental concerns among others. All of the above-mentioned aspects will derive substantial benefits from the implementation of a data-driven approach under the condition that the systems, tools and techniques to be used have been designed to handle the volume and variety of the data to be gathered. Contributions to this book have been solicited with the goal of uncovering the possibilities of engaging agriculture with equipped and effective profound learning algorithms. Most agricultural research centres are already adopting Internet of Things for the monitoring of a wide range of farm services, and there are significant opportunities for agriculture administration through the effective implementation of Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Big Data and IoT structures.

This book provides a concise and comprehensive overview of vehicular communication technologies. It classifies all relevant standards, protocols and applications, so as to enable the reader to gain a holistic approach towards the subject of vehicular communications. The primary methods are algorithmic processes and simulation results.First, an overview and classification of vehicular technologies is presented. Then, the book focuses on specific applications of V2V and V2I communications. Special attention is given to recent research and development results regarding R&D projects in the field, in cooperation with car manufacturing companies and universities at a global level.Designed to facilitate understanding of vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure technologies, this textbook is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students of vehicular communications or mobile networks.

Written by leading international experts, this volume presents contributions establishing the feasibility of human language-like communication with robots. The book explores the use of language games for structuring situated dialogues in which contextualized language communication and language acquisition can take place. Within the text are integrated experiments demonstrating the extensive research which targets artificial language evolution. Language Grounding in Robots uses the design layers necessary to create a fully operational communicating robot as a framework for the text, focusing on the following areas: Embodiment; Behavior; Perception and Action; Conceptualization; Language Processing; Whole Systems Experiments. This book serves as an excellent reference for researchers interested in further study of artificial language evolution.

Sustainable Entrepreneurship is nowadays considered as a discipline at the cross-roads of many others. This book describes recent cases, techniques and tools proposed for leaders, entrepreneurs, and practitioners who are involved and responsible for making strategic decisions in their companies and aiming at sustainable development. This book highlights the use of new business models/methods that can be employed by organizations and researchers to save millions of dollars, to enhance the economic growth, as well as to resolve environmental and social issues, via sustainable networks, renewal energy distribution, and social/green entrepreneurship. It will provide a comprehensive discussion of practical techniques, like Machine Learning, Robotics, Photovoltaic solar energy, in the field of renewable energy, and other digital tools, such as digital marketing, crowdsourcing platforms, and digital currency. Meanwhile, it will enlighten the way for entrepreneurs and decision makers by helping them to learn how to grow their business. The focus will be on how to benefit from these techniques to develop sustainable and renewable energy-based projects, as well as digitalized new ventures. The book walks the reader through the latest emerging trends in digitalization that can support practitioners, managers, entrepreneurs, and researchers to help them appreciate the application of sustainable solutions in various functional domains.

This book reports on the latest advances in concepts and further development of principal component analysis (PCA), discussing in detail a number of open problems related to dimensional reduction techniques and their extensions. It brings together research findings, previously scattered throughout many scientific journal papers worldwide, and presents them in a methodologically unified form. Offering vital insights into the subject matter in self-contained chapters that balance the theory and concrete applications, and focusing on open problems, it is essential reading for all researchers and practitioners with an interest in PCA

This book supports readers in the development of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) pilot training simulator by exploiting open-source or free gaming software and emphasizing the importance of using established and widely-available game design techniques to provide engaging scenarios for ROV training developers and trainees. There is no such book to guide the users to create an open-source virtual simulator for pilot training in the marine and offshore industry. This book can be used as a reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students, engineers, researchers, and lecturers in VR simulation using UnityTM as the leading software. Some of the key features of the book include: * Step-by-step procedures in development ROV pilot training simulator * Use of open-source software UnityTM that is freely available to all readers * The codes used in the book are self-sufficient as there are no codes hidden from readers

Provides a comprehensive overview and introduction to the concepts, methodologies, analysis, design and applications of metasynthetic computing and engineering. The author: * Presents an overview of complex systems, especially open complex giant systems such as the Internet, complex behavioural and social problems, and actionable knowledge discovery and delivery in the big data era. * Discusses ubiquitous intelligence in complex systems, including human intelligence, domain intelligence, social intelligence, network intelligence, data intelligence and machine intelligence, and their synergy through metasynthetic engineering. * Explains the concept and methodology of human-centred, human-machine-cooperated qualitative-to-quantitative metasynthesis for understanding and managing open complex giant systems, and its computing approach: metasynthetic computing. * Introduces techniques and tools for analysing and designing problem-solving systems for open complex problems and systems. Metasynthetic Computing and Engineering uses the systematology methodology in addressing system complexities in open complex giant systems, for which it may not only be effective to apply reductionism or holism. The book aims to encourage and inspire discussions, design, implementation and reflection of effective methodologies and tools for computing and engineering open complex systems and problems. Researchers, research students and practitioners in complex systems, artificial intelligence, data science, computer science, and even system science, cognitive science, behaviour science, and social science, will find this book invaluable.

This book discusses the principles, methodologies, and challenges of robotic musicianship through an in-depth review of the work conducted at the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology (GTCMT), where the concept was first developed. Robotic musicianship is a relatively new research field that focuses on the design and development of intelligent music-making machines. The motivation behind the field is to develop robots that not only generate music, but also collaborate with humans by listening and responding in an expressive and creative manner. This combination of human and machine creativity has the potential to surprise and inspire us to play, listen, compose, and think about music in new ways. The book provides an in-depth view of the robotic platforms designed at the GTCMT Robotic Musicianship Group, including the improvisational robotic percussionists Haile and Shimon, the personal robotic companion Shimi, and a number of wearable robots, such as the Robotic Drumming Prosthesis, The Third Drumming Arm, and the Skywalker Piano Hand. The book discusses numerous research studies based on these platforms in the context of five main principles: Listen like a Human, Play Like a Machine, Be Social, Watch and Learn, and Wear It.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) fascinates, challenges and disturbs us. There are many voices in society that predict drastic changes that may come as a consequence of AI - a possible apocalypse or Eden on earth. However, only a few people truly understand what AI is, what it can do and what its limitations are. Understanding Artificial Intelligence explains, through a straightforward narrative and amusing illustrations, how AI works. It is written for a non-specialist reader, adult or adolescent, who is interested in AI but is missing the key to understanding how it works. The author demystifies the creation of the so-called "intelligent" machine and explains the different methods that are used in AI. It presents new possibilities offered by algorithms and the difficulties that researchers, engineers and users face when building and using such algorithms. Each chapter allows the reader to discover a new aspect of AI and to become fully aware of the possibilities offered by this rich field.

This book will help researchers and engineers in the design of ethical systems for robots, addressing the philosophical questions that arise and exploring modern applications such as assistive robots and self-driving cars. The contributing authors are among the leading academic and industrial researchers on this topic and the book will be of value to researchers, graduate students and practitioners engaged with robot design, artificial intelligence and ethics.

Rapid technological advances in the field of robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) are transforming the international security environment and the conduct of contemporary conflict. Bringing together leading experts from across the globe, this book provides timely analysis on the current and future challenges associated with greater utilization of RAS by states, their militaries, and a host of non-state actors. Technologically driven change in the international security environment can come about through the development of one significant technology, such as the atomic bomb. At other times, it results from several technologies maturing at roughly the same pace. This second image better reflects the rapid technological change that is taking us into the robotics age. Many of the chapters in this edited volume explore unresolved ethical, legal, and operational challenges that are only likely to become more complex as RAS technology matures. Though the precise ways in which the impact of autonomous systems - both physical and non-physical - will be felt in the long-run is hidden from us, attempting to anticipate the direction of travel remains an important undertaking and one that this book makes a critical effort to contend with. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Small Wars & Insurgencies.

Cable-driven parallel robots are a new kind of lightweight manipulators with excellent scalability in terms of size, payload, and dynamics capacities. For the first time, a comprehensive compendium is presented of the field of cable-driven parallel robots. A thorough theory of cable robots is setup leading the reader from first principles to the latest results in research. The main topics covered in the book are classification, terminology, and fields of application for cable-driven parallel robots. The geometric foundation of the standard cable model is introduced followed by statics, force distribution, and stiffness. Inverse and forward kinematics are addressed by elaborating efficient algorithms. Furthermore, the workspace is introduced and different algorithms are detailed. The book contains the dynamic equations as well as simulation models with applicable parameters. Advanced cable models are described taking into account pulleys, elastic cables, and sagging cables. For practitioner, a descriptive design method is stated including methodology, parameter synthesis, construction design, component selection, and calibration. Rich examples are presented by means of simulation results from sample robots as well as experimental validation on reference demonstrators. The book contains a representative overview of reference demonstrator system. Tables with physical parameters for geometry, cable properties, and robot parameterizations support case studies and are valuable references for building custom cable robots. For scientist, the book provides the starting point to address new scientific challenges as open problems are named and a commented review of the literature on cable robot with more than 500 references are given.

Human Factors in Intelligent Vehicles addresses issues related to the analysis of human factors in the design and evaluation of intelligent vehicles for a wide spectrum of applications and over different dimensions. To commemorate the 8th anniversary of the IEEE ITS Workshop on Human Factors (http://hfiv.net) some recent works of authors active in the automotive human factors community have been collected in this book. Enclosed here are extended versions of papers and tutorials that were presented at the IEEE ITSS Workshop on "Human Factors in Intelligent Vehicles" and also included is additional deeper analysis along with detailed experimental and simulation results. The contributors cover autonomous vehicles as well as the frameworks for analyzing automation, modelling and methods for road users' interaction such as intelligent user interfaces, including brain-computer interfaces and simulation and analysis tools related to human factors.

The term "mechatronics" was coined in 1969, merging "mecha" from mechanism and "tronics" from electronics, to reflect the original idea at the basis of this discipline, that is, the integration of electrical and mechanical systems into a single device. The spread of this term, and of mechatronics itself, has been growing in the years, including new aspects and disciplines, like control engineering, computer engineering and communication/information engineering. Nowadays mechatronics has a well-defined and fundamental role, in strict relation with robotics. Drawing a sharp border between mechatronics and robotics is impossible, as they share many technologies and objectives. Advanced robots could be defined as mechatronic devices equipped with a "smart brain", but there are also up-to-date mechatronic devices, used in tight interaction with humans, that are governed by smart architectures (for example, for safety purposes). Aim of this book is to offer a wide overview of new research trends and challenges for both mechatronics and robotics, through the contribution of researchers from different institutions, providing their view on specific subjects they consider as "hot topics" in both fields, with attention to new fields of application, new challenges to the research communities and new technologies available. The reader of this book will enjoy the various contributions, as they have been prepared with actual applications in mind, along a journey from advanced actuators and sensors to human-robot interaction, through robot control, navigation, planning and programming issues. The book presents several state-of-the-art solutions, like multiple-stage actuation to cope with conflicting specification of large motion-spans, ultra-high accuracy, model-based control for high-tech mechatronic systems, modern approaches of software systems engineering to robotics, aand humanoids for human assistance. The reader can also find new techniques in approaching the design of mechatronic systems in some possible industrial and service robotics scenarios, with a particular attention for the interaction between humans and mechanisms.

This book offers the first systematic guide to machine ethics, bridging between computer science, social sciences and philosophy. Based on a dialogue between an AI scientist and a novelist philosopher, the book discusses important findings on which moral values machines can be taught and how. In turn, it investigates what kind of artificial intelligence (AI) people do actually want. What are the main consequences of the integration of AI in people's every-day life? In order to co-exist and collaborate with humans, machines need morality, but which moral values should we teach them? Moreover, how can we implement benevolent AI? These are just some of the questions carefully examined in the book, which offers a comprehensive account of ethical issues concerning AI, on the one hand, and a timely snapshot of the power and potential benefits of this technology on the other. Starting with an introduction to common-sense ethical principles, the book then guides the reader, helping them develop and understand more complex ethical concerns and placing them in a larger, technological context. The book makes these topics accessible to a non-expert audience, while also offering alternative reading pathways to inspire more specialized readers.

This book includes papers presented at the International Conference "Educational Robotics in the Maker Era - EDUROBOTICS 2020", Online, February 2021. The contributions cover a variety of topics useful for teacher education and for designing learning by making activities for children and youth, with an emphasis on modern low-cost technologies (including block-based programming environments, Do-It-Yourself electronics, 3D printed artifacts, the use of intelligent distributed systems, the IoT technology, and gamification) in formal and informal education settings. This collection of contributions (17 chapters and 2 short papers) provides researchers and practitioners the latest advances in educational robotics in a broader sense focusing on science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) education. Teachers and educators at any school level can find insights and inspirations into how educational robotics can promote technological interest and 21st-century skills: creativity, critical thinking, team working, and problem-solving with special emphasis on new emerging making technologies.

The Ultimate Tool for MINDSTORMS(r) Maniacs
The new MINDSTORMS kit has been updated to include a programming brick, USB cable, RJ11-like cables, motors, and sensors. This book updates the robotics information to be compatible with the new set and to show how sound, sight, touch, and distance issues are now dealt with.
The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT and its predecessor, the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robotics Invention System (RIS), have been called "the most creative play system ever developed." This book unleashes the full power and potential of the tools, sensors, and components that make up LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT. It also provides a unique insight on newer studless building techniques as well as interfacing with the traditional studded beams. Some of the world's leading LEGO MINDSTORMS inventors share their knowledge and development secrets. You will discover an incredible range of ideas to inspire your next invention. This is the ultimate insider's look at LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT system and is the perfect book whether you build world-class competitive robots or just like to mess around for the fun of it.
Featuring an introduction by astronaut Dan Barry and written by Dave Astolfo, Invited Member of the MINDSTORMS Developer Program and MINDSTORMS Community Partners (MCP) groups, and Mario and Guilio Ferrari, authors of the bestselling Building Robots with LEGO Mindstorms, this book covers:
Understanding LEGO Geometry
Playing with Gears
Controlling Motors
Reading Sensors
What's New with the NXT?
Building Strategies
Programming the NXT
Playing Sounds and Music
Becoming Mobile
Getting Pumped: Pneumatics
Finding and Grabbing Objects
Doing the Math
Knowing Where You Are
Classic Projects
Building Robots That Walk
Robotic Animals
Solving a Maze
Drawing and Writing
Racing Against Time
Hand-to-Hand Combat
Searching for Precision
*Complete coverage of the new Mindstorms NXT kit
*Brought to you by the DaVinci's of LEGO
*Updated edition of a bestseller

This book presents the latest information on the intelligent CNC machine tool spindle system, which integrates various disciplines such as mechanical engineering, control engineering, computer science and information technology. It describes a prediction method and model for temperature rise and thermal deformation in motorized spindles and proposes an intelligent stator resistance identification method to reduce the torque ripple of motorized spindles under direct torque control. Further, it discusses the on-line dynamic balance method for NC machine tool spindles. The biogeographic optimization algorithm and hybrid intelligent algorithm presented here were first applied in the field of motorized spindle performance control. In turn, the book presents extensive motorized spindle performance test data and includes detailed examples of how intelligent algorithms can be applied to motor spindle stator resistance identification, temperature field prediction and on-line dynamic balance. In summary, the book provides readers with the latest tools for designing, testing and implementing intelligent motorized spindle systems in terms of the basic theory, technological applications and future prospects, and offers a wealth of practical information for researchers in mechanical engineering, especially in the area of control systems.

Improve the Safety, Flexibility, and Reliability of Autonomous Navigation in Complex Environments Autonomous Vehicle Navigation: From Behavioral to Hybrid Multi-Controller Architectures explores the use of multi-controller architectures in fully autonomous robot navigation-even in highly dynamic and cluttered environments. Accessible to researchers and graduate students involved in mobile robotics and fully autonomous vehicle navigation, the book presents novel techniques and concepts that address different complex mobile robot tasks. The author examines the development of reliable elementary controllers and proposes mechanisms to manage the interaction of these multi-controller architectures while addressing different constraints and enhancing metrics/criteria linked to the safety, flexibility, and reliability of the proposed control architectures. He covers the modeling of subtasks, reliable obstacle avoidance, appropriate stable control laws for target reaching/tracking, short- and long-term trajectory/waypoint planning, navigation through sequential waypoints, and the cooperative control and interaction of a group of mobile robots. The author's website provides MATLAB (R) and Simulink (R) source code of the main procedures related to the task modeling, planning, and control of mobile robots. It also includes videos showing the main simulations and experiments given in the text. In addition to flexible and bottom-up construction, multi-controller architectures can be formally analyzed to achieve reliable navigation in complex environments. This book reveals innovative control architectures that can lead to fully autonomous vehicle navigation in these challenging situations.

Numerical Algorithms: Methods for Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and Graphics presents a new approach to numerical analysis for modern computer scientists. Using examples from a broad base of computational tasks, including data processing, computational photography, and animation, the textbook introduces numerical modeling and algorithmic design from a practical standpoint and provides insight into the theoretical tools needed to support these skills. The book covers a wide range of topics-from numerical linear algebra to optimization and differential equations-focusing on real-world motivation and unifying themes. It incorporates cases from computer science research and practice, accompanied by highlights from in-depth literature on each subtopic. Comprehensive end-of-chapter exercises encourage critical thinking and build students' intuition while introducing extensions of the basic material. The text is designed for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in computer science and related fields with experience in calculus and linear algebra. For students with a background in discrete mathematics, the book includes some reminders of relevant continuous mathematical background.

Behavior Trees (BTs) provide a way to structure the behavior of an artificial agent such as a robot or a non-player character in a computer game. Traditional design methods, such as finite state machines, are known to produce brittle behaviors when complexity increases, making it very hard to add features without breaking existing functionality. BTs were created to address this very problem, and enables the creation of systems that are both modular and reactive. Behavior Trees in Robotics and AI: An Introduction provides a broad introduction as well as an in-depth exploration of the topic, and is the first comprehensive book on the use of BTs. This book introduces the subject of BTs from simple topics, such as semantics and design principles, to complex topics, such as learning and task planning. For each topic, the authors provide a set of examples, ranging from simple illustrations to realistic complex behaviors, to enable the reader to successfully combine theory with practice. Starting with an introduction to BTs, the book then describes how BTs relate to, and in many cases, generalize earlier switching structures, or control architectures. These ideas are then used as a foundation for a set of efficient and easy to use design principles. The book then presents a set of important extensions and provides a set of tools for formally analyzing these extensions using a state space formulation of BTs. With the new analysis tools, the book then formalizes the descriptions of how BTs generalize earlier approaches and shows how BTs can be automatically generated using planning and learning. The final part of the book provides an extended set of tools to capture the behavior of Stochastic BTs, where the outcomes of actions are described by probabilities. These tools enable the computation of both success probabilities and time to completion. This book targets a broad audience, including both students and professionals interested in modeling complex behaviors for robots, game characters, or other AI agents. Readers can choose at which depth and pace they want to learn the subject, depending on their needs and background.

This book describes visual perception and control methods for robotic systems that need to interact with the environment. Multiple view geometry is utilized to extract low-dimensional geometric information from abundant and high-dimensional image information, making it convenient to develop general solutions for robot perception and control tasks. In this book, multiple view geometry is used for geometric modeling and scaled pose estimation. Then Lyapunov methods are applied to design stabilizing control laws in the presence of model uncertainties and multiple constraints.

Mobile robots have been increasingly applied in many different scenarios, such as space exploration and search and rescue, where the robots are required to travel over uneven terrain while outdoors. This book provides a new framework and the related algorithms for designing autonomous mobile robotic systems in such unknown outdoor environments.

Visual Tracking in Conventional Minimally Invasive Surgery introduces the various tools and methodologies that can be used to enhance a conventional surgical setup with some degree of automation. The main focus of this book is on methods for tracking surgical tools and how they can be used to assist the surgeon during the surgical operation. Various notions associated with surgeon-computer interfaces and image-guided navigation are explored, with a range of experimental results. The book starts with some basic motivations for minimally invasive surgery and states the various distinctions between robotic and non-robotic (conventional) versions of this procedure. Common components of this type of operation are presented with a review of the literature addressing the automation aspects of such a setup. Examples of tracking results are shown for both motion and gesture recognition of surgical tools, which can be used as part of the surgeon-computer interface. In the case of marker-less tracking, where no special visual markers can be added to the surgical tools, the tracking results are divided into two types of methodology, depending on the nature and the estimate of the visual noise. Details of the tracking methods are presented using standard Kalman filters and particle filters. The last part of the book provides approaches for tracking a region on the surgical scene defined by the surgeon. Examples of how these tracking approaches can be used as part of image-guided navigation are demonstrated. This book is designed for control engineers interested in visual tracking, computer vision researchers and system designers involved with surgical automation, as well as surgeons, biomedical engineers, and robotic researchers.