This book offers psychologists and those who are involved with systems design an overview of changing technology and guidelines for using new techniques in the design and development of systems in the workplace. The first part of the book concerns productivity and cognitive assessment. The papers provide state of the art appraisals of robotic perception, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, decision making and the control of automation systems. The second part, on systems design research, discusses a number of key applied human factors problems, including supervisory control systems, human workloads, methods of systems design, job aiding, and human factors considerations.

Moving from theory into practical reality, ergonomics has come of age as a useful tool for generating safe, comfortable, and productive working environments. Tackling both the simple and complex aspects of a variety of workplaces, Office Ergonomics: Practical Applications demonstrates how to create offices that accommodate all workers. The book contains practical advice on how to maintain an office environment that promotes a healthy, safe, and efficient workforce.

Covering workstation design, selection, layout, and use, the book details the impact of computers on worker well-being, particularly when used under unfavorable conditions, and discusses how ergonomics can accommodate disabled workers. The author emphasizes the need to offer 'protection' to people involved in manual handling in offices, an issue that is frequently overlooked, and offers advice on how to work satisfactorily in non-office environments. She explores the possible negative outcomes, such as back pain, headaches, and upper limb disorders, of a poorly designed workstation.

Walking you through all the features of an office, the book provides insight into the potential problem areas that workers often encounter. The book explains how to identify suitable workstation furniture, test it, trial it, and introduce the final selection so the workforce accepts it. The author draws on first-hand experience dealing with difficulties in many types of office situations to provide straightforward, easily applicable advice on how to improve the workplace to reduce the likelihood of workers experiencing discomfort, ill-health, and dissatisfaction.

The importance of research and education in design continues to grow. For example, government agencies are gradually increasing funding of design research, and increasing numbers of engineering schools are revising their curricula to emphasize design. This is because of an increasing realization that design is part of the wealth creation of a nation and needs to be better understood and taught. The continuing globalization of industry and trade has required nations to re-examine where their core contributions lie if not in production efficiency. Design is a precursor to manufacturing for phy- cal objects and is the precursor to implementation for virtual objects. At the same time, the need for sustainable development is requiring design of new products and processes, and feeding a movement towards design - novations and inventions. There are now three sources for design research: design computing, design cognition and human-centered information technology. The foun- tions for much of design computing remains artificial intelligence with its focus on ways of representation and on processes that support simulation and generation. Artificial intelligence continues to provide an environm- tally rich paradigm within which design research based on computational constructions can be carried out. Design cognition is founded on concepts from cognitive science, an even newer area than artificial intelligence. It provides tools and methods to study human designers in both laboratory and practice settings.

Ontologies are increasingly recognized as essential tools in information science. Although the concepts are well understood theoretically , the practical implementation of ontologies remains challenging. In this book, researchers in computer science, information systems, ontology engineering, urban planning and design, civil and building engineering, and architecture present an interdisciplinary study of ontology engineering and its application in urban development projects. The first part of the book introduces the general notion of ontology, describing variations in abstraction level, coverage, and formality. It also discusses the use of ontologies to achieve interoperability, and to represent multiple points of view and multilingualism. This is illustrated with examples from the urban domain. The second part is specific to urban development. It covers spatial and geographical knowledge representation, the creation of urban ontologies from various knowledge sources, the interconnection of urban models and the interaction between standards and domain models. The third part presents case studies of the development of ontologies for urban mobility, urban morphological processes, road systems, and cultural heritage. Other cases report on the use of ontologies to solve urban development problems, in construction business models, building regulations and urban regeneration. It concludes with a discussion of key challenges for the future deployment of ontologies in this domain. This book bridges the gap between urban practitioners and computer scientists. As the essence of most urban projects lies in making connections between worldviews, ontology development has an important role to play, in promoting interoperability between data sources, both formal (urban databases, Building Integrated Models, Geographical Information Systems etc.) and less formal (thesauri, text records, web sources etc.). This volume offers a comprehensive introduction to ontology engineering for urban development. It is essential reading for practitioners and ontology designers working in urban development.

Do large cities grow more or less rapidly than small ones? Why should the relationship between city size and population growth vary so much from one period to another? This book studies the process of population growth in a national set of cities, relating its findings to the theoretical concepts of urban geography. To test his ideas, the author studies the growth of cities in England and Wales between 1801 and 1911. His explanations draw strongly on the connection between growth and the adoption of innovations. He develops a model of innovation diffusions in a set of cities and, in support of this model, looks at the way in which three particular innovations - the telephone, building societies and gaslighting - spread amongst English towns in the nineteenth century. This book was first published in 1973.

Originally published in 1967, this title reveals how the missionaries, so often misguided and short-sighted, were in fact pioneers of modernization, science and freedom. The structure of the book allows for comparative analysis and the volume illustrates how some of the social consequences of action through the schools could be foreseen. In addition light is thrown on the results of Imperial rule during the nineteenth century and on the nature of the impact of Western education in Asia and Africa.

Anthony Dear argues that just-in-time is essentially a philosophy rather than a rigid methodology and that the important thing is to grasp the fundamental ideas involved and then to see where, how and to what extent they can be applied in the context of any particular enterprise. The book is written in a refreshingly direct manner and the discussion focuses on the kind of practical issues which are likely to concern working managers. Illustrated with a wealth of examples drawn from the author's own experience, Working Towards Just-in-Time tackles its subject in a fashion which has direct and immediate relevance to managers of small and medium-sized companies and to middle management in larger firms. This book should be of interest to managers of small and medium-sized companies; middle management in larger firms.

This book deals with the analysis, the design and the implementation of the mechatronic systems. Classical and modern tools are developed for the analysis and the design for such systems. Robust control, H-Infinity and guaranteed cost control theory are also used for analysis and design of mechatronic systems. Different controller such as state feedback, static output feedback and dynamic output feedback controllers are used to stabilize mechatronic systems.

Heuristic algorithms are provided to solve the design of the classical controller such as PID, phase lead, phase lag and phase lead-lag controllers while linear matrix inequalities (LMI) algorithms are provided for finding solutions to the state feedback, static output feedback and dynamic output feedback controllers.

The theory presented in the different chapters of the volume is applied to numerical examples to show the usefulness of the theoretical results. Some case studies are also provided to show how the developed concepts apply for real system.

Emphasis is also put on the implementation in real-time for some real systems that we have developed in our mechatronic laboratory and all the detail is provided to give an idea to the reader how to implement its own mechatronic system.

Mechatronics Systems: Analysis, Design and Implementation is an excellent textbook for undergraduate and graduate students in mechatronic system and control theory and as a reference for academic researchers in control or mathematics with interest in control theory. The reader should have completed first-year graduate courses in control theory, linear algebra, and linear systems. It will also be of great value to engineers practising in fields where the systems can be modeled by linear time invariant systems.

Showcases the state-of-the-art research in the area of AI with specific consideration to engineering, management and safety of civil construction. Offers detailed insights towards applying AI into design, construction and maintenance of infrastructure Leverages the various sub-disciplines of AI to arrive at modern, smart, and safe infrastructure as well as achieve a synergy between users/commuters and such structures. Covers practical case studies of primary interest to students, researchers, engineers, social scientists and government officials.

Professor Bird presents a synthesis of the many approaches to the study of a central featuer of modern life - the city, including its distant past and its future. He sees centrality as a mental projection on to space, and discusses the concept in relation to three types of its manifestation in spatial terms: the city as centre of a tributary region; the centres and central areas of cities themselves; and the city considered as a centre or gateway for other distant regions, often overseas. This book should do much to unravel the funamental similarities between cities of the world while recognizing the myriad variations upon a common theme. This book was first published in 1977.

Contemporary urban studies engages a wide range of approaches in the analysis of the processes at work in urban areas. These approaches derive from anthropology, economics, geography, history, politics and sociology as well as from the professional experience of town planning and architecture. Social process and the city reflects this growing cross-disciplinary engagement. This shows the important, problematic, role which cities in particular, and urban change in general have played in the growth of Australia. The overriding concern of each essay in this collection is to develop an understanding of the ways urban areas function and an awareness of how differing interpretations of 'urban phenomena' might be applied. This attention to the nature of the forces at work, and the processes these forces manifest themselves in, is extended both empirically and conceptually. This book was first published in 1983.

IFIP Working Group 5.2 has organized a series of workshops aimed at presenting and discussing current issues and future perspectives of Geometric Modeling in the CAD environment. From Geometric Modeling to Shape Modeling comprises the proceedings of the seventh GEO workshop, which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Parma, Italy in October 2000. The workshop looked at new paradigms for CAD including the evolution of geometric-centric CAD systems, modeling of non-rigid materials, shape modeling, geometric modeling and virtual prototyping, and new methods of interaction with geometric models. The seventeen included papers provide an interesting overview of the evolution of geometric centric modeling into shape modeling. Also included is an invited speaker paper, which discusses the foundation of the next generation of CAD systems, where shape and function enhance geometric descriptions. The main topics discussed in the book are: Theoretical foundation for solids and surfaces; Computational basis for geometric modeling; Methods of interaction with geometric models; Industrial and other applications of geometric modeling; New paradigms of geometric modeling for CAD; Shape modeling. From Geometric Modeling to Shape Modeling is essential reading for researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, systems developers of advanced computer-aided design and manufacturing systems, and engineers involved in industrial applications.

Direct Engineering (DE) is the creation of a product development cycle into a single, unified process. The design process in most industries is an evolutionary one (i.e., incremental changes to some existing design). DE is a manufacturing process that seeks to improve the design processes by providing complete archival documentation of existing designs. It uses three-dimensional geometric models with integrated manufacturing information throughout the design process. DE reduces the design cycle, and the variety and number of engineering changes. This process decreases the design cycle time, increases productivity, and provides a higher quality product. The required technologies and methodologies that will support the development of the DE environment are: (1) product representation using feature-based modeling; (2) knowledge-based applications that will support the entire product development cycle; (3) an engineering environment implemented around distributed computing and object-oriented systems; (4) direct manufacturing techniques using rapid prototyping. Direct Engineering: Toward Intelligent Manufacturing addresses the following recent topics related to the development, implementation, and integration of the DE environment: (1) the current scope of the research in intelligent manufacturing; (2) the results of the technologies and tools developed for integrated product and process designs, and (3) examination of the methodologies and algorithms used for the implementation of direct engineering.

The chapters of this book summarize the lectures delivered du ring the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) on Computational Methods in Mechanisms, that took place in the Sts. Constantin and Elena Resort, near Varna, on the Bulgarian Coast of the Black Sea, June 16-28, 1997. The purpose of the ASI was to bring together leading researchers in the area of mechanical systems at large, with special emphasis in the computational issues around their analysis, synthesis, and optimization, during two weeks of lectures and discussion. A total of 89 participants from 23 count ries played an active role during the lectures and sessions of contributed papers. Many of the latter are being currently reviewed for publication in specialized journals. The subject of the book is mechanical systems, Le., systems composed of rigid and flexible bodies, coupled by mechanical means so as to constrain their various bodies in a goal-oriented manner, usually driven under computer con trol. Applications of the discipline are thus of the most varied nature, ranging from transportation systems to biomedical devices. U nder normal operation conditions, the constitutive bodies of a mechanical system can be consid ered to be rigid, the rigidity property then easing dramatically the analysis of the kinematics and dynamics of the system at hand. Examples of these systems are the suspension of a terrestrial vehicle negotiating a curve at speeds within the allowed or recommended limits and the links of multiaxis industrial robots performing conventional pick-and-place operations."

This book contains 24 technical papers presented at the fourth edition of the Advances in Architectural Geometry conference, AAG 2014, held in London, England, September 2014. It offers engineers, mathematicians, designers, and contractors insight into the efficient design, analysis, and manufacture of complex shapes, which will help open up new horizons for architecture. The book examines geometric aspects involved in architectural design, ranging from initial conception to final fabrication. It focuses on four key topics: applied geometry, architecture, computational design, and also practice in the form of case studies. In addition, the book also features algorithms, proposed implementation, experimental results, and illustrations. Overall, the book presents both theoretical and practical work linked to new geometrical developments in architecture. It gathers the diverse components of the contemporary architectural tendencies that push the building envelope towards free form in order to respond to multiple current design challenges. With its introduction of novel computational algorithms and tools, this book will prove an ideal resource to both newcomers to the field as well as advanced practitioners.

Theory and practice of tolerances are very important for designing and manufacturing engineering artifacts on a rational basis. Tolerance specifies a degree of "discrepancy" between an idealized object and its physical realization. Such discrepancy inevitably comes into our product realization processes because of practical cost consideration or our inability to fully control manufacturing processes. Major product and production characteristics which are affected by tolerances are product quality and cost. For achieving high precision machines tight tolerance specification is necessary, but this will normally increase product cost. In order to optimally compromise the conflicting requirements of quality and cost, it is essential to take into account of the total product life cycle throughout product planning, design, manufacturing, maintenance and recycling. For example, in order to construct durable products under severe working conditions, low sensitivity of product functionality with respect to tolerances is required. In future, re-use of components or parts will become important, and tolerance synthesis with respect to this aspect will be an interesting future research topics.

This book is devoted to the optimization of product design and manufacturing systems. It contains selected and carefully composed articles based on presentations given at the IDMME conference held in Nantes, France in 1996. The authors are all involved in cutting-edge research in their respective fields of specialization. The integration of manufacturing constraints and their optimization in the design process is becoming more and more widespread in the development of mechanical products or systems. There is a clear industrial need for these kind of methodologies. Important - but still unsolved - problems are related to the definition of design processes, the choice of optimal manufacturing processes and their integration through coherent methodologies in adapted environments. The main topics addressed in this book are: the optimization and evaluation of the product design process (design methodology, representation and integration of design constraints, design for manufacturing, synthesis of objects with constraints, automatic modelling) the optimization and evaluation of the manufacturing systems (modelling of machining processes, modelling for control and measuring, feature-based manufacturing, CAM and off-line programming) some methodological aspects (computational geometry, simultaneous and concurrent engineering, integrated design and CAD/CAM systems, object modelling, feature-based modelling, design and communication, automatic solvers and optimizers) . Apart from giving a thorough theoretical background, a very important theme is the relation between research and industrial applications. The book is of interest for engineers, researchers and PhD students who are involved in theoptimization of design and manufacturing processes.

Presenting the proceedings of the Ergonomics Society's annual conference, the series embraces the wide range of topics covered by ergonomics. Individual papers provide insight into current practice, present new research findings and form an invaluable reference source. A wide range of topics are covered in these proceedings, including Ergonomics, Human Factors and User-Centred Design. It also features related disciplines such as Psychology, Engineering and Physiology. Particular emphasis is given to the utility of these disciplines in improving health, safety, efficiency and productivity. The 2006 Annual Conference features four special sessions on:Usability of Homes; Human Computer Interaction; Human Factors in the Oil, Gas and Chemical Industries; and Control Room Design: Current and Future Challenges. As well as being of interest to mainstream ergonomists and human factors specialists, Contemporary Ergonomics will appeal to all those who are concerned with the interaction of people with their working and leisure environment - including designers, manufacturing and production engineers, health and safety specialists, occupational, applied and industrial psychologists and applied physiologists.

The dilemma facing Cyprus--that of limited water supplies (both in terms of quantity and quality) in the face of steadily increasing water demand, coupled with a fragmented institutional structure of the water sector--is characteristic of most arid and semi-arid countries all over the world. Another common characteristic of Cyprus is that the water management administrative boundaries there do not coincide with the hydrological ones, while the ongoing political problem of the island creates significant administration problems.

The proceedings contain papers accepted for the 17th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering, which was held in Cracow, Poland, September 6-10, 2010. Concurrent Engineering (CE) has a history of over twenty years. At first, primary focus was on bringing downstream information as much upstream as possible, by introducing parallel processing of processes, in order to prevent errors at the later stage which would sometimes cause irrevocable damage and to reduce time to market. During the period of more than twenty years, numerous new concepts, methodologies and tools have been developed. During this period the background for engineering/manufacturing has changed extensively. Now, industry has to work with global markets. The globalization brought forth a new network of experts and companies across many different domains and fields in distributed environments. These collaborations integrated with very high level of profesionalism and specialisation, provided the basis for innovations in design and manufacturing and succeeded in creating new products on a global market.

"Beginning AutoCAD 2006" is a course based on learning and practising the essentials of 2D drawing using AutoCAD. Bob McFarlane's hands-on approach is uniquely suited to independent learning and use on courses. The focus on 2D drawing in one book ensures the reader gets a thorough grounding in the subject, with a greater depth of coverage than tends to be available from general introductions to AutoCAD. As a result, this book provides a true, step-by-step, detailed exploration of the AutoCAD functions required at each stage of producing a 2D drawing - an approach often not found in the many software reference guides available.
The emphasis on learning through doing makes this book ideal for anyone involved in engineering, construction or architecture - where the focus is on productivity and practical skills. The author has also matched the coverage to the requirements of City and Guilds, Edexcel (BTEC) and SQA syllabuses.
New features in AutoCAD 2006 are covered in this book including: DYN (dynamic input showing coordinate position and lengths - an important new feature of the latest AutoCAD software), as well as new commands in the Modify and Dimension tool set. The result is a useful refresher course for anyone using AutoCAD at this level, and those upgrading to the new software release. The course is also designed to be fully relevant to anyone using other recent releases, including AutoCAD 2005.
* A complete course on 2D design with AutoCAD in one book - ideal for independent learning
* Exercises aid student learning and self assessment
* Focus on 2D drawing provides in-depth coverage to this key introductory-level use of AutoCAD

Completely revised and updated, taking the scientific rigor to a whole new level, the second edition of the Occupational Ergonomics Handbook is now available in two volumes. This new organization demonstrates the enormous amount of advances that have occurred in the field since the publication of the first edition. The editors have brought together researchers from a wide range of disciplines with pioneering practitioners in industry to cover a diverse list of ergonomics topics. The second edition not only provides more information but makes it more accessible. Fundamental and Assessment Tools for Occupational Ergonomics introduces basic principles of ergonomics in system design and evaluation, as well as comprehensive approach to work related musculoskeletal disorders. This volume is a comprehensive source of theoretical ergonomics knowledge relevant to product and process quality, management of health and safety, and productivity in a variety of industries and businesses. Interventions, Controls, and Applications in Occupational Ergonomics begins with descriptions of the elements of the ergonomics processes, including success factors for implementation of industrial ergonomics programs. It includes coverage of injury surveillance database systems and corporate health management for the design and evaluation of health in industrial organizations, ergonomics processes from the small and large industry perspectives, and human digital modeling, as well as facilities planning and organizational design and macro-ergonomics. Additional chapters present methods and techniques for engineering control, including tried and true strategies and pitfalls to avoid, and discuss the theory and practice of ergonomics interventions in the workplace. Narrowing the focus while broadening the coverage, each individual volume supplies immediate access to important information. One of the most comprehensive sources for ergonomic knowledge available, providing both sound theory and practical examples, this book is a valuable resource for anyone in the field.

Since the establishment of the CAAD Futures Foundation in 1985, CAAD experts from all over the world meet every two years to present and document the state of the art of research in Computer Aided Architectural Design. Together, the series provides a good record of the evolving state of research in this area over the last fourteen years. The Proceedings this year is the eighth in the series. The conference held at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, includes twenty-five papers presenting new and exciting results and capabilities in areas such as computer graphics, building modeling, digital sketching and drawing systems, Web-based collaboration and information exchange. An overall reading shows that computers in architecture is still a young field, with many exciting results emerging out of both greater understanding of the human processes and information processing needed to support design and also the continuously expanding capabilities of digital technology.

There has been significant interest for designing flight controllers for small-scale unmanned helicopters. Such helicopters preserve all the physical attributes of their full-scale counterparts, being at the same time more agile and dexterous. This book presents a comprehensive and well justified analysis for designing flight controllers for small-scale unmanned helicopters guarantying flight stability and tracking accuracy. The design of the flight controller is a critical and integral part for developing an autonomous helicopter platform. Helicopters are underactuated, highly nonlinear systems with significant dynamic coupling that needs to be considered and accounted for during controller design and implementation. Most reliable mathematical tools for analysis of control systems relate to modern control theory. Modern control techniques are model-based since the controller architecture depends on the dynamic representation of the system to be controlled. Therefore, the flight controller design problem is tightly connected with the helicopter modeling.

This book provides a step-by-step methodology for designing, evaluating and implementing efficient flight controllers for small-scale helicopters. Design issues that are analytically covered include:

An illustrative presentation of both linear and nonlinear models of ordinary differential equations representing the helicopter dynamics. A detailed presentation of the helicopter equations of motion is given for the derivation of both model types. In addition, an insightful presentation of the main rotor's mechanism, aerodynamics and dynamics is also provided. Both model types are of low complexity, physically meaningful and capable of encapsulating the dynamic behavior of a large class of small-scale helicopters.

An illustrative and rigorous derivation of mathematical control algorithms based on both the linear and nonlinear representation of the helicopter dynamics. Flight controller designs guarantee that the tracking objectives of the helicopter's inertial position (or velocity) and heading are achieved. Each controller is carefully constructed by considering the small-scale helicopter's physical flight capabilities. Concepts of advanced stability analysis are used to improve the efficiency and reduce the complexity of the flight control system. Controller designs are derived in both continuous time and discrete time covering discretization issues, which emerge from the implementation of the control algorithm using microprocessors.

Presentation of the most powerful, practical and efficient methods for extracting the helicopter model parameters based on input/output responses, collected by the measurement instruments. This topic is of particular importance for real-life implementation of the control algorithms.

This book is suitable for students and researches interested in the development and the mathematical derivation of flight controllers for small-scale helicopters. Background knowledge in modern control is required."