The integration of manufacturing constraints and their optImIzation within the design process of mechanical products and systems are now an industrial priority. Following the first two IDMME conferences in Nantes in 1996 and Compiegne in 1998, the purpose of the IDMME'2000 conference was to present recent developments in these areas and new areas within the product and process development theme. The original initiative of the conference is mainly due to the efforts of the French AIP-PRIMECA group (Pool of Computer Resources for Mechanics). The organizing committee and the local organizing institutions (Concordia University, Ecole Poly technique de Montreal, and McGill University) contributed to the success of the conference. The presentation of 190 papers and the presence of more than 225 researchers coming from more than 20 countries demonstrate the success of the initiative. This book contains 57 of these papers selected by an International Scientific Committee: Chairman: C. Fortin (Canada) Co-chairmen: P. Chedmail (France), G. Cognet (France), C. Mascle (Canada), J. Pegna (Canada) J. Angeles (Canada) P. Martin (France) J. L. Batoz (France) C. McMahon (U. K. ) J. C. Bocquet (France) M. Mantyla (Finland) A. - Bernard (France) J. L. Maxwell (USA) P. Bourdet (France) N. M. Patrikalakis (USA) A Clement (France) J. P. Pelle (France) D. Cochran (USA) B. Peseux (France) D. Coutellier (France) D. Play (France) A- Dalsky (Russia) M. Pratt (USA) D. A. Dornfeld (USA) B. Ravani (USA) D. Deneux (France) A. Riviere (France) G. Gogu (France) C.

There are many good AI books. Usually they consecrate at most one or two chapters to the imprecision knowledge processing. To our knowledge this is among the few books to be entirely dedicated to the treatment of knowledge imperfection when bui- ing intelligent systems. We consider that an entire book should be focused on this important aspect of knowledge processing. The expected audience for this book - cludes undergraduate students in computer science, IT&C, mathematics, business, medicine, etc. , graduates, specialists and researchers in these fields. The subjects treated in the book include expert systems, knowledge representation, reasoning under knowledge Imperfection (Probability Theory, Possibility Theory, Belief Theory, and Approximate Reasoning). Most of the examples discussed in details throughout the book are from the medical domain. Each chapter ends with a set of carefully pe- gogically chosen exercises, which complete solution provided. Their understanding will trigger the comprehension of the theoretical notions, concepts and results. Chapter 1 is dedicated to the review of expert systems. Hence are briefly discussed production rules, structure of ES, reasoning in an ES, and conflict resolution. Chapter 2 treats knowledge representation. That includes the study of the differences between data, information and knowledge, logical systems with focus on predicate calculus, inference rules in classical logic, semantic nets and frames.

The book largely represents the extended version of select papers from the Inter- tional Conference on Intelligent Unmanned System ICIUS 2007 which was jointly organized by the Center for Unmanned System Studies at Institut Teknologi Bandung, Artificial Muscle Research Center at Konkuk University and Institute of Bio-inspired Structure and Surface Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astrona- ics. The joint-event was the 3rd conference extending from International Conference on Emerging System Technology (ICEST) in 2005 and International Conference on Technology Fusion (ICTF) in 2006 both conducted in Seoul. ICIUS 2007 was focused on both theory and application primarily covering the topics on robotics, autonomous vehicles and intelligent unmanned technologies. The conference was arranged into three parallel symposia with the following scope of topics: Unmanned Systems: Micro air vehicle, Underwater vehicle, Micro-satellite, - manned aerial vehicle, Multi-agent systems, Autonomous ground vehicle, Blimp, Swarm intelligence, learning and control Robotics and Biomimetics: Artificial muscle actuators, Smart sensors, Design and applications of MEMS/NEMS system, Intelligent robot system, Evolutionary al- rithm, Control of biological systems, AI and expert systems, Biological learning control systems, Neural networks, Genetic algorithm Control and Intelligent System: Distributed intelligence, Distributed/decentralized intelligent control, Distributed or decentralized control methods, Distributed and - bedded systems, Embedded intelligent control, Complex systems, Discrete event s- tems, Hybrid systems, Networked control systems, Delay systems, Fuzzy systems, Identification and estimation, Nonlinear systems, Precision motion control, Control applications, Control engineering education.

A proper quality of a track and other infrastructure objects represents a basic requirement for train safety and punctuality. Most of the physical systems and their components deteriorate over time. This affects performance and may lead to failures. Albert Einstein said, "You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else." Only if we understand how the whole system works, taking into account its imperfections and how they influence its quality and performance will we be able to learn the rules of the game and "play better." The book provides the readers with the necessary functional knowledge of track behaviour and comprehensively covers the function of the various track components, their interaction as elements of the track system, as well as the interaction of the track with railway vehicles. By presenting important tools for a deep understanding of track-behaviour this book aims to be a reference guide for infrastructure managers and to help them to find ways improving track quality for optimum long-term behaviour.

IMS'97, the fourth in the series of IFAC Workshops on Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, was held in Seoul, Korea, on July 21-23, 1997. It was sponsored by the IFAC Technical Committee on Advanced Manufacturing Technology and organized by the Engineering Research Center for Advance Control and Instrumentation at Seoul National University on behalf of the Institute of Control, Automation and Systems Engineers in Korea.

Rapid progress in the area of modern manufacturing is probably most evident through the developments in intelligent manufacturing systems. The same fast advancements have made the objective of achieving a balanced technical program a challenging task. The International Program Committee (IPC) wanted the Workshop to include the most notable and recent results, but still to reflect the versatility of maturing IMS technologies.

In the Workshop, the importance of intelligence in modern manufacturing has gained considerable recognition from engineers and researchers due to today's unforeseen manufacturing environment change. This Workshop focused on the issue "intelligent manufacturing," especially, with two intriguing keynote speeches, a special invited session on the worldwide IMS Project and two tutorial programs as well as the 64 papers from 16 countries worldwide. We do hope that this event has provided the excellent opportunity to identify the future trends as well as exchange and learn ideas and experiences in intelligent manufacturing.

Owing to the development and rapid spread of communication technologies including the Internet, the world is indeed turning into a global village. The rate of introduction of new products and technologies is steadily rising. At the same time, pressures to reduce time-to-market are mounting. Only companies that are able to realize products rapidly are able to survive today.
From a technological viewpoint, rapid product realization involves rapid design, rapid prototyping, and rapid tooling. Fortunately, a class of technologies, also collectively called rapid prototyping (RP) technologies, has emerged in the last two decades or so to meet these requirements. Early technologies merely aimed to produce single part look-alikes. However, intense R&D efforts are taking place around the world to go beyond mere look alike' single part prototyping, into functional, multi-part assemblies.
RP technologies are different from other modern manufacturing technologies in many ways. In RP, material is usually added incrementally in a layered manner and, occasionally, subtracted. Some technologies depend upon layers of resin cured under the influence of one or more CNC controlled laser beams. Others use lasers to selectively sinter layers of powdered metal. There are also RP technologies that do not use lasers at all. Indeed, RP is turning out to be a potent arena for technological creativity.
This book provides an updated overview of RP technologies at a level of detail that university engineering students taking courses on RP as well R&D and operating professionals from industry interested in RP are likely to find attractive. While the emphasis is on laser-based technologies, other processesare also discussed. With respect to each important RP process, the part/assembly modeling techniques, the materials used, process itself, advantages and disadvantages, accuracy and finish issues as well as application potential are discussed.

Digital Design: A Critical Introduction provides a much-needed new perspective on designing with digital media. Linking ideas from media theory, generative design and creativity with examples from nature, art, architecture, industrial design, websites, animation and games, it addresses some fundamental questions about creative design with digital media. Featuring original material based on the authors' own research, the book argues that the recognition and understanding of the interplay of the two apparently opposing concepts of rules and contingency supports original thinking, creativity and innovation. Going beyond existing texts on the subject, Digital Design is an accessible primer whose innovative approach transcends the analysis of individual subfields - such as animation, games and website design - yet offers practical help within all of them.

This is the first part of a series of books whose aim is to collect contributed papers describing the work of famous persons in MMS (Mechanism and Machine Science).The current work treats mainly technical developments in the historical evolution of the fields that today are grouped in MMS. Thus, the emphasis is on biographical notes describing the efforts and experiences of people who have contributed to the technical achievements which form the core of each contributed paper. These papers cover the wide field of the History of Mechanical Engineering with specific focus on MMS.This volume will be of value to a broad audience interested in the history of engineering.

Multibody systems are used extensively in the investigation of mechanical systems including structural and non-structural applications. It can be argued that among all the areas in solid mechanics the methodologies and applications associated to multibody dynamics are those that provide an ideal framework to aggregate d- ferent disciplines. This idea is clearly reflected, e. g. , in the multidisciplinary applications in biomechanics that use multibody dynamics to describe the motion of the biological entities, in finite elements where multibody dynamics provides - werful tools to describe large motion and kinematic restrictions between system components, in system control where the methodologies used in multibody dynamics are the prime form of describing the systems under analysis, or even in many - plications that involve fluid-structure interaction or aero elasticity. The development of industrial products or the development of analysis tools, using multibody dynamics methodologies, requires that the final result of the devel- ments are the best possible within some limitations, i. e. , they must be optimal. Furthermore, the performance of the developed systems must either be relatively insensitive to some of their design parameters or be sensitive in a controlled manner to other variables. Therefore, the sensitivity analysis of such systems is fundamental to support the decision making process. This book presents a broad range of tools for designing mechanical systems ranging from the kinematic and dynamic analysis of rigid and flexible multibody systems to their advanced optimization.

High definition video requires substantial compression in order to be transmitted or stored economically. Advances in video coding standards from MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 to H.264/AVC have provided ever increasing coding efficiency, at the expense of great computational complexity which can only be delivered through massively parallel processing.

This book will present VLSI architectural design and chip implementation for high definition H.264/AVC video encoding, using a state-of-the-art video application, with complete VLSI prototype, via FPGA/ASIC. It will serve as an invaluable reference for anyone interested in VLSI design and high-level (EDA) synthesis for video.

The history of gears with asymmetric teeth is not sufficiently recorded in modern gear literature, with some gear researchers concluding that asymmetric tooth gears were discovered just several decades ago. This book sheds light upon the origins and state of asymmetric gearing, referencing technical articles from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. As a practicing gear engineer with over 40 years' experience, author Alexander L. Kapelevich has successfully implemented asymmetric gears in a variety of custom gear transmissions. This book addresses all aspects of asymmetric gear development, including theoretical fundamentals; tooth geometry optimization; stress analysis and rating; design and production specifics; analytical and experimental comparison to the best symmetric gears; and application examples. Readers are encouraged to look beyond the status quo established by traditional gear design, and to apply principles of asymmetric gearing to actual gear design. Optimal solutions are presented for gear drives that will maximize technical performance and marketability. Features Presents a state-of the-art, comprehensive historical overview of asymmetric gearing Explains the Direct Gear Design (R) approach to asymmetric gear design Describes asymmetric tooth gear geometry optimization, areas of existence, and parameter selection limits Considers practical aspects of asymmetric gear fabrication and measurement Presents analytical and experimental comparison of asymmetric gears to advanced symmetric gears, showing the advantages of asymmetric designs Provides numerous real-world examples of asymmetric gear application

In the realm of CAD & Office Integration a new technology has been introduced that will overturn many accepted ideas, both for developer and end-user. What is this revolutionary new technology? Called "OLE for Design and Modeling" it is an enhancement of Microsoft Windows OLE for high performance CAD/CAM/CAE-software. With this book, the reader will understand, how OLE for D&M enables users to introduce and manipulate CAD models within regular text-processing and DTP-documents. And why even high-end 3D design objects can now be transferred between different systems using easy "drag and drop" operations. Furthermore this "plug and play" CAD technology makes it possible to use older CAD documents and older software in an entirely new context. If you want to know, where technology is going to, you should read it.

Maximising reader insights into the theory, models, methods and fundamental reasoning of design, this book addresses design activities in industrial settings, as well as the actors involved. This approach offers readers a new understanding of design activities and related functions, properties and dispositions. Presenting a 'design mindset' that seeks to empower students, researchers, and practitioners alike, it features a strong focus on how designers create new concepts to be developed into products, and how they generate new business and satisfy human needs. Employing a multi-faceted perspective, the book supplies the reader with a comprehensive worldview of design in the form of a proposed model that will empower their activities as student, researcher or practitioner. We draw the reader into the core role of design conceptualisation for society, for the development of industry, for users and buyers of products, and for citizens in relation to public systems. The book also features original contributions related to exploration, conceptualisation and product synthesis. Exploring both the power and limitations of formal design process models, methods, and tools viewed in the light of human ingenuity and cognition, the book develops a unique design mindset that adds human understanding to the list of methods and tools essential to design. This insight is distilled into useful mindset heuristics included throughout the book.

In this book, the authors describe the findings derived from interaction and cooperation between scientific actors employing diverse practices. They reflect on distinct prototyping concepts and examine the transformation of development culture in their fusion to hybrid approaches and solutions. The products of tomorrow are going to be multifunctional, interactive systems - and already are to some degree today. Collaboration across multiple disciplines is the only way to grasp their complexity in design concepts. This underscores the importance of reconsidering the prototyping process for the development of these systems, particularly in transdisciplinary research teams. "Rethinking Prototyping - new hybrid concepts for prototyping" was a transdisciplinary project that took up this challenge. The aim of this programmatic rethinking was to come up with a general concept of prototyping by combining innovative prototyping concepts, which had been researched and developed in three sub-projects: "Hybrid Prototyping" developed new prototyping approaches to validate and evaluate holistically developed systems with their services, infrastructure and business models. "Blended Prototyping" addressed a new technique whereby prototypes for user interfaces of software applications can be generated from hand drawings and immediately be tested. "Beyond Prototyping" examined the issue of the prototype in connection with algorithmically generated design for producing tailor-made products.

The series of IFAC Symposia on Analysis, Design and Evaluation of Man-Machine Systems provides the ideal forum for leading researchers and practitioners who work in the field to discuss and evaluate the latest research and developments. This publication contains the papers presented at the 6th IFAC Symposium in the series which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Adaptive Control provides techniques for the automatic adjustment in real time of controller parameters. Their purpose is to achieve or maintain a desired level of system performance when process parameters are unknown or variable. Such techniques operate by extracting significative information from real data in order to tune the controller and they feature a mechanism for adjusting parameters. The book explores both established ideas and recent trends in the field of adaptive control. More specifically, the book covers synthesis and analysis of parameter adaptation algorithms, robust digital control and recursive digital control in open and closed loop. This book considers the problems and seeks to find answers using mathematical sequences.To guide the reader, the book contains various applications of adaptive control techniques.

This volume contains the proceedings of the First International Con- rence on "Complex System Design & Management" (CSDM 2010; website: http://www.csdm2010.csdm.fr). Jointly organized, under the guidance of the CESAMES nonpro?t organization, by Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Centrale de Paris, it was held from October 27 to October 29 at the Cit' e Internationale Universitaire of Paris (France). Mastering complex systems requires the understanding of industrial pr- tices as well as sophisticated theoretical techniques and tools. Thus, the c- ationofameetingforumatEuropeanlevel(whichdidnotexistyet)dedicated to all academic researchers and industrial actors working on complex ind- trial systems engineering was deemed crucial. It was actually for us a sine qua non condition in order to nurture and develop in Europe this complex industrial systems science which is now emergent. The purpose of the "Complex Systems Design & Management" (CSDM) conference was exactly to be such a forum, in order to become, in time, the European academic-industrial conference of reference in the ?eld of complex industrialsystems engineering,which is a quite ambitious objective.To make the CSDM conference this convergence point of the academic and industrial communities in complex industrial systems, we based our organization on a principle of complete parity between academics and industrialists (see the conference organization sections in the next pages). This principle was ?rst implemented as follows: * the Programme Committee consists of 50 % academics and 50 % indust- alists, * the Invited Speakers are coming equally from academic and industrial environments.

This open access book offers a host of theoretical knowledge at the basis of new EM&Ts (namely, Interactive Connected Smart Materials, Wearables (ICS), Nanomaterials, Advanced Growing Materials, and Experimental Wood-Based Materials), as communicated through the unique design teaching method developed within the context of the European Project DATEMATS, a result of the creative workshops held by the four higher education institutions that were partners in the project, stressing the pros and cons of the method and offering ideas for further development and improvement. The modern age requires its own innovations in regards to both social and industrial progress, innovations made possible by Emerging Materials and Technologies (EM&Ts). Frameworks for designing both with and for the new materials are presented, educating designers about the opportunities offered by EM&Ts and how to take advantage of them. At the same time, the book explains how the method developed through the knowledge generated at research centers and universities can be communicated to companies across various industries that stand to gain from it, linking the assorted stakeholders, and includes a final chapter based on feedback from both students and business professionals as to the benefits of academic/industrial cooperation.  This is an open access book.

This book provides a source of inspiration and a manual for designers, entrepreneurs and professionals who are looking into the practical application of product configurators. In this growing profession, there is a need for a book which focuses on the configuration process from a design perspective. The book delves into the practical application of configurators using case studies of selected firms that present their most significant works. It offers the reader tips, suggestions, technical details and critical issues which need to be considered, from experienced actors and pioneers worldwide, which include: Unfold, Belgium In-flexions, France Nervous System, USA Okinlab, Germany SkimLab, France Twikit, Belgium INDG, The Netherlands ZeroLight, United Kingdom 3Dimerce, The Netherlands 3DSource, USA Bagaar, Belgium MyCustomizer, Canada Combeenation, Austria

The book proposes new technologies and discusses future solutions for design infrastructure for ICT. The book contains high quality submissions presented at Second International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Sustainable Development (ICT4SD - 2016) held at Goa, India during 1 - 2 July, 2016. The conference stimulates the cutting-edge research discussions among many academic pioneering researchers, scientists, industrial engineers, and students from all around the world. The topics covered in this book also focus on innovative issues at international level by bringing together the experts from different countries.

Provides coverage of the most efficient and effective methods of network analysis optimization and synthesis. A step-by-step guide to every aspect of the RF and microwave circuit design process - starting with a set of specifications and ending with hardware that performs as modeled the first time.

This book offers an advanced course on "Computational Geometry for Ships". It takes into account the recent rapid progress in this field by adapting modern computational methodology to ship geometric applications. Preliminary curve and surface techniques are included to educate engineers in the use of mathematical methods to assist in CAD and other design areas. In addition, there is a comprehensive study of interpolation and approximation techniques, which is reinforced by direct application to ship curve design, ship curve fairing techniques and other related disciplines. The design, evaluation and production of ship surface geometries are further demonstrated by including current and evolving CAD modelling systems.

This book offers an advanced course on "Computational Geometry for Ships". It takes into account the recent rapid progress in this field by adapting modern computational methodology to ship geometric applications. Preliminary curve and surface techniques are included to educate engineers in the use of mathematical methods to assist in CAD and other design areas. In addition, there is a comprehensive study of interpolation and approximation techniques, which is reinforced by direct application to ship curve design, ship curve fairing techniques and other related disciplines. The design, evaluation and production of ship surface geometries are further demonstrated by including current and evolving CAD modelling systems.