This book provides a simplified description of how to design an underwater swimming robot, inspired by the mechanism of the Labriform mode of fish. This style of swimming depends on the pectoral fins only as a main locomotor for movement. A unique model with fins having a concave shape allows the highest thrust force to be achieved during the power period and the lowest drag force during the recovery period, especially if the velocity values between the powering and recovery periods are manipulated.Besides the ability to swim quickly, the proposed model was also inspired by a method of maneuvering based on the principle of differential drive for two-wheel mobile robot, achieving the minimum turning radius by controlling the speed of the rowing fins.Also, by applying the technique of the diving model used by gliders, the robot achieves underwater gliding by changing the center of the body's mass. Thus, the robot obtains the ability to dive and float in a manner similar to the Sawtooth wave.All the mentioned tasks were conducted via laboratory experiments and proven to be both effective and efficient.

The paradigm of complexity is pervading both science and engineering, le- ing to the emergence of novel approaches oriented at the development of a systemic view of the phenomena under study; the de?nition of powerful tools for modelling, estimation, and control; and the cross-fertilization of di?erent disciplines and approaches. One of the most promising paradigms to cope with complexity is that of networked systems. Complex, dynamical networks are powerful tools to model, estimate, and control many interesting phenomena, like agent coordination, synch- nization, social and economics events, networks of critical infrastructures, resourcesallocation, informationprocessing, controlovercommunicationn- works, etc. Advances in this ?eld are highlighting approaches that are more and more oftenbasedondynamicalandtime-varyingnetworks, i.e.networksconsisting of dynamical nodes with links that can change over time. Moreover, recent technological advances in wireless communication and decreasing cost and size of electronic devices are promoting the appearance of large inexpensive interconnected systems, each with computational, sensing and mobile ca- bilities. This is fostering the development of many engineering applications, which exploit the availability of these systems of systems to monitor and control very large-scale phenomena with ?ne resoluti

Soft sensors are inferential estimators, drawing conclusions from process observations when hardware sensors are unavailable or unsuitable; they have an important auxiliary role in sensor validation when performance declines through senescence or fault accumulation.

The non-linear behaviour exhibited by many industrial processes can be usefully modelled with the techniques of computational intelligence: neural networks; fuzzy systems and nonlinear partial least squares.

Soft Sensors for Monitoring and Control of Industrial Processes underlines the real usefulness of each approach and the sensitivity of the individual steps in soft-sensor design to the choice of one or the other. Design paths are suggested and readers shown how to evaluate the effects of their choices. All the case studies reported, resulting from collaborations between the authors and a number of industrial partners, raised challenging soft-sensor-design problems. The applications of soft sensors presented in this volume are designed to cope with the whole range from measuring system backup and what-if analysis through real-time prediction for plant control to sensor diagnosis and validation. Some of the soft sensors developed here are implemented on-line at industrial plants.

Features:

• soft-sensor design;
• advice on data selection and choice of model structure;
• model validation;
• strategies for the improvement of soft-sensor performance;
• uses of soft sensors in fault detection and sensor validation;
• soft sensors in use in industrial applications such as a debutanizer column and a sulfur recovery unit.

This monograph guides interested readers a"researchers, graduate students and industrial process technologists a" through the design of their own soft sensors. It is self-contained with full references and appraisal of existing literature and data sets for some of the case studies can be downloaded from springer.com.

There are many books on advanced control for specialists, but not many present these topics for non-specialists. Assuming only a basic knowledge of automatic control and signals and systems, this second edition of Optimal and Robust Control offers a straightforward, self-contained handbook of advanced topics and tools in automatic control. The book deals with advanced automatic control techniques, paying particular attention to robustness-the ability to guarantee stability in the presence of uncertainty. It explains advanced techniques for handling uncertainty and optimizing the control loop. It also details analytical strategies for obtaining reduced order models. The authors then propose using the Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) technique as a unifying tool to solve many types of advanced control problems. Topics covered in the book include, LQR and H approaches Kalman and singular value decomposition Open-loop balancing and reduced order models Closed-loop balancing Positive-real systems, bounded-real systems, and imaginary-negative systems Criteria for stability control Time-delay systems This easy-to-read text presents the essential theoretical background and provides numerous examples and MATLAB (R) exercises to help the reader efficiently acquire new skills. Written for electrical, electronic, computer science, space, and automation engineers interested in automatic control, this book can also be used for self-study of for a one-semester course in robust control. This fully renewed second edition of the book also includes new fundamental topics such as Lyapunov functions for stability, variational calculus, formulation in terms of optimization problems of matrix algebraic equations, negative-imaginary systems, and time-delay systems.

This book comprises the most recent advanced results on nonlinear electronic circuits, and the contents range from networks, synchronization, memristors to several other topics. Both theory and advanced timely results are included. It provides an overview of popular themes in the field of nonlinear dynamics of electronic circuits with contributions from outstanding scientists.

This book focuses on a class of uncertain systems that are called imperfect, and shows how much systems can regularly work if an appropriate control strategy is adopted. Along with some practical well studied examples, a formalization of the models for imperfect system is considered and a control strategy is proposed. Experimental case studies on electromechanical systems are also included.New concepts, experimental innovative circuits and laboratory details allow the reader to implement at low cost the outlined strategy. Emergent topics in nonlinear device realization are emphasized with the aim to allow researchers and students to perform experiments with large scale electromechanical systems. Moreover, the possibility of using imperfections and noise to generate nonlinear strange behavior is discussed.

This book deals with nonlinear dynamics of electronic circuits, which could be used in robot control, secure communications, sensors and synchronized networks. The genesis of the content is related to a course on complex adaptive systems that has been held at the University of Catania since 2005. The efforts are devoted in order to emulate with nonlinear electronic circuits nonlinear dynamics. Step-by-step methods show the essential concepts of complex systems by using the Varela diagrams and accompanying MATLAB (R) exercises to reinforce new information. Special attention has been devoted to chaotic systems and networks of chaotic circuits by exploring the fundamentals, such as synchronization and control. The aim of the book is to give to readers a comprehensive view of the main concepts of nonlinear dynamics to help them better understand complex systems and their control through the use of electronics devices.

The book is a compilation of selected papers from the conference on Physics and Control 2009, presenting a unified perspective underlying the thematics and strategies related to the control of physical systems with emerging applications in physics, engineering, chemistry, biology and other natural sciences. The selected papers reflect the state-of-the-art of the more advanced theoretical and practical studies in the field of control of complex systems. The contributions provide a comprehensive view on some selected topics of particular importance at the disciplinary borderline between Physics and Control.

This book aims to propose implementations and applications of Fractional Order Systems (FOS). It is well known that FOS can be applied in control applications and systems modeling, and their effectiveness has been proven in many theoretical works and simulation routines. A further and mandatory step for FOS real world utilization is their hardware implementation and applications on real systems modeling. With this viewpoint, introductive chapters on FOS are included, on the definition of stability region of Fractional Order PID Controller and Chaotic FOS, followed by the practical implementation based on Microcontroller, Field Programmable Gate Array, Field Programmable Analog Array and Switched Capacitor. Another section is dedicated to FO modeling of Ionic Polymeric Metal Composite (IPMC). This new material may have applications in robotics, aerospace and biomedicine.

Since the birth of the Chua circuit in 1983, a considerable number of fruitful, fascinating and relevant research topics have arisen. In honor of the 25th anniversary of the invention of Chua's circuit, this book presents the 25 years of research on the implementation of Chua's circuit, and also discusses future directions and emerging applications of recent results.

The purpose of the book is to provide researchers, PhD students, and undergraduate students a research monograph containing both fundamentals on the topics and advanced results that have been recently obtained. With about 60 illustrations included in the book, it also shows the detailed schematics of several different implementations that can be easily reproduced with a low-cost experimental setup and PC-based measurement instrumentation.

This brief is a clear, concise description of the main techniques of time series analysis -stationary, autocorrelation, mutual information, fractal and multifractal analysis, chaos analysis, etc.- as they are applied to the influence of wind speed and solar radiation on the production of electrical energy from these renewable sources. The problem of implementing prediction models is addressed by using the embedding-phase-space approach: a powerful technique for the modeling of complex systems. Readers are also guided in applying the main machine learning techniques for classification of the patterns hidden in their time series and so will be able to perform statistical analyses that are not possible by using conventional techniques. The conceptual exposition avoids unnecessary mathematical details and focuses on concrete examples in order to ensure a better understanding of the proposed techniques. Results are well-illustrated by figures and tables.

This brief provides a source of instruction from which students can be taught about the practicalities of designing and using chaotic circuits. The text provides information on suitable materials, circuit design and schemes for design realization. Readers are then shown how to reproduce experiments on chaos and to design new ones. The text guides the reader easily from the basic idea of chaos to the laboratory test providing an experimental basis that can be developed for such applications as secure communications.

This brief provides introductory information on sample chaotic circuits, includes coverage of their development, and the gallery section provides information on a wide range of circuits. "Concise Guide to Chaotic Electronic Circuits" will be useful to anyone running a laboratory class involving chaotic circuits and to students wishing to learn about them."

The book focuses on the role of the Leonardo da Vinci projects and inventions, specifically the interdisciplinarity of his studies that represents perhaps the first example of the paradigm of complex systems engineering. The projects are characterized within a modern conception of his thinking, looking at the main motivations behind his machines. The book also proposes a set of experimental realizations of the models made mainly in wood, using the actual concept of automatic control and microcontroller technology emphasizing that the Leonardo machines can be seen in agreement with modern current technology.The remote control of each machine is considered and the behavior of each monitored. Machines are revisited based on the transmission principle that adopts microcontrollers and bluetooth devices, studying the equipment behind the actuation of the systems. Thus, the paradigm of each machine is maintained unaltered while the latest technologies show the relevance of such inventions in the modern era. The study also stimulated more applications and future projects that can start from the original Leonardo projects and then proceed to the next centuries, providing readers simple and efficient ideas to innovate his projects using modern low-cost microcontrollers.

The paradigm of complexity is pervading both science and engineering, le- ing to the emergence of novel approaches oriented at the development of a systemic view of the phenomena under study; the de?nition of powerful tools for modelling, estimation, and control; and the cross-fertilization of di?erent disciplines and approaches. One of the most promising paradigms to cope with complexity is that of networked systems. Complex, dynamical networks are powerful tools to model, estimate, and control many interesting phenomena, like agent coordination, synch- nization, social and economics events, networks of critical infrastructures, resourcesallocation, informationprocessing, controlovercommunicationn- works, etc. Advances in this ?eld are highlighting approaches that are more and more oftenbasedondynamicalandtime-varyingnetworks, i.e.networksconsisting of dynamical nodes with links that can change over time. Moreover, recent technological advances in wireless communication and decreasing cost and size of electronic devices are promoting the appearance of large inexpensive interconnected systems, each with computational, sensing and mobile ca- bilities. This is fostering the development of many engineering applications, which exploit the availability of these systems of systems to monitor and control very large-scale phenomena with ?ne resoluti

The book presents the best contributions, extracted from the theses written by the students who have attended the second edition of the Master in Microelectronics and Systems that has been organized by the Universita degli Studi di Catania and that has been held at the STMicroelectronics Company (Catania Site) from May 2000 to January 2001. In particular, the mentioned Master has been organized among the various ac tivities of the "Istituto Superiore di Catania per la Formazione di Eccellenza." The Institute is one of the Italian network of universities selected by MURST (Ministry University Research Scientific Technology). The first aim of tl;te Master in Microelectronics and Systems is to increase the skills of the students with the Laurea Degree in Physics or Electrical Engineering in the more advanced areas as VLSI system design, high-speed low-voltage low-power circuitS and RF systems. The second aim has been to involve in the educational program companies like STMicroelectronics, ACCENT and ITEL, interested in emergent microelectronics topics, to cooperate with the University in developing high-level research projects. Besides the tutorial activity during the teaching hours, provided by national and international researchers, a significant part of the School has been dedicated to the presentation of specific CAD tools and experiments in order to prepare the students to solve specific problems during the stage period and in the thesis work."

The field of cellular neural networks (CNNs) is of growing importance in non linear circuits and systems and it is maturing to the point of becoming a new area of study in general nonlinear theory. CNNs emerged through two semi nal papers co-authored by Professor Leon O. Chua back in 1988. Since then, the attention that CNNs have attracted in the scientific community has been vast. For instance, there are international workshops dedicated to CNNs and their applications, special issues published in both the International Journal of Circuit Theory and in the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, and there are also Associate Editors appointed in the latter journal especially for the CNN field. All of this bears witness the importance that CNNs are gaining within the scientific community. Without doubt this book is a primer in the field. Its extensive coverage provides the reader with a very comprehensive view of aspects involved in the theory and applications of cellular neural networks. The authors have done an excellent job merging basic CNN theory, synchronization, spatio temporal phenomena and hardware implementation into eight exquisitely written chapters. Each chapter is thoroughly illustrated with examples and case studies. The result is a book that is not only excellent as a professional reference but also very appealing as a textbook. My view is that students as well professional engineers will find this volume extremely useful."

Soft sensors are inferential estimators, drawing conclusions from process observations when hardware sensors are unavailable or unsuitable; they have an important auxiliary role in sensor validation when performance declines through senescence or fault accumulation.

The non-linear behaviour exhibited by many industrial processes can be usefully modelled with the techniques of computational intelligence: neural networks; fuzzy systems and nonlinear partial least squares.

Soft Sensors for Monitoring and Control of Industrial Processes underlines the real usefulness of each approach and the sensitivity of the individual steps in soft-sensor design to the choice of one or the other. Design paths are suggested and readers shown how to evaluate the effects of their choices. All the case studies reported, resulting from collaborations between the authors and a number of industrial partners, raised challenging soft-sensor-design problems. The applications of soft sensors presented in this volume are designed to cope with the whole range from measuring system backup and what-if analysis through real-time prediction for plant control to sensor diagnosis and validation. Some of the soft sensors developed here are implemented on-line at industrial plants.

Features:

• soft-sensor design;
• advice on data selection and choice of model structure;
• model validation;
• strategies for the improvement of soft-sensor performance;
• uses of soft sensors in fault detection and sensor validation;
• soft sensors in use in industrial applications such as a debutanizer column and a sulfur recovery unit.

This monograph guides interested readers researchers, graduate students and industrial process technologists through the design of their own soft sensors. It is self-contained with full references and appraisal of existing literature and data sets for some of the case studies can be downloaded from springer.com."

In the last decade new artificial intelligence methods for the modelling and control of complex systems, namely neural networks, fuzzy logic and probabilistic reasoning have drawn the interest of researchers and engineers. Recently, the advantages achievable by using combinations of these methods, which have independent origin and evolution, have been pointed out, generating a new paradigm which is now termed "soft-computing". This new methodology subsumes the capabilities of neural networks for modelling non-linear systems and for solving classification problems, the power of fuzzy-logic to represent approximate or heuristic reasoning and the large capabilities of evolutionary computation for problem optimisation. The book presents a clear understanding of a new type of computation system, the cellular neural network (CNN), which has been successfully applied to the solution of many heavy computation problems, mainly in the fields of image processing and complex partial differential equations. CNNs' computation-based systems represent new opportunities for improving the soft-computation toolbox. The application of soft computing to complex systems and in particular to chaotic systems with the generation of chaotic dynamics by using CNN is also described. These aspects are of particular interest owing to their growing interest for research and application purposes.Specific topics covered in the text include:- fuzzy logic, control and neural networks;- artificial neural networks and their application in the modelling and control of dynamical systems;- evolutionary optimisation algorithms;- complex dynamics and cellular neural networks;- applications in urban traffic noise monitoring, robot control and rapid thermal process systems.

In this monograph, new structures of neural networks in multidimensional domains are introduced. These architectures are a generalization of the Multi-layer Perceptron (MLP) in Complex, Vectorial and Hypercomplex algebra. The approximation capabilities of these networks and their learning algorithms are discussed in a multidimensional context. The work includes the theoretical basis to address the properties of such structures and the advantages introduced in system modelling, function approximation and control. Some applications, referring to attractive themes in system engineering and a MATLAB software tool, are also reported. The appropriate background for this text is a knowledge of neural networks fundamentals. The manuscript is intended as a research report, but a great effort has been performed to make the subject comprehensible to graduate students in computer engineering, control engineering, computer sciences and related disciplines.

These lecture notes focus on the synthesis of robust con- trollers for feedback systems, in the presence of unstruc- tured perturbations. It is assumed, as a prerequisites, that the reader is familiar with the basic linear system and au- tomatic control concepts. In part I interpolation theory is used to solve various single-input-single-output (SISO) ro- bust control problems. While the interpolation approach is awkward for multivariable systems, it provides a very natu- ral and simple approach for SISO systems. In particular the interpolation approach requires only elementary knowledge of complex variables, and provides a great deal of physical insight into various robust control problems. The required interpolation theory is developed in some detail. Part II is devoted to multivariable systems. Two approaches are out- lined: the Hankle-norm approach and the two-Riccati-equa- tion approach. In this part only a limited number of results are proven. However MATLAB software is presented for nu- merical solution. The book is addressed to researchers, practicing engineers, and students who wish to get an intro- duction to robust control theory for unstructured plant perturbations. The organization of the book as lecture notes and the presence of examples and of exercises at the end of many chapters allow to use the book as an introductory text in Robust Control courses.

The book focuses on the role of the Leonardo da Vinci projects and inventions, specifically the interdisciplinarity of his studies that represents perhaps the first example of the paradigm of complex systems engineering. The projects are characterized within a modern conception of his thinking, looking at the main motivations behind his machines. The book also proposes a set of experimental realizations of the models made mainly in wood, using the actual concept of automatic control and microcontroller technology emphasizing that the Leonardo machines can be seen in agreement with modern current technology.The remote control of each machine is considered and the behavior of each monitored. Machines are revisited based on the transmission principle that adopts microcontrollers and bluetooth devices, studying the equipment behind the actuation of the systems. Thus, the paradigm of each machine is maintained unaltered while the latest technologies show the relevance of such inventions in the modern era. The study also stimulated more applications and future projects that can start from the original Leonardo projects and then proceed to the next centuries, providing readers simple and efficient ideas to innovate his projects using modern low-cost microcontrollers.

This book deals with nonlinear dynamics of electronic circuits, which could be used in robot control, secure communications, sensors and synchronized networks. The genesis of the content is related to a course on complex adaptive systems that has been held at the University of Catania since 2005. The efforts are devoted in order to emulate with nonlinear electronic circuits nonlinear dynamics. Step-by-step methods show the essential concepts of complex systems by using the Varela diagrams and accompanying MATLAB (R) exercises to reinforce new information. Special attention has been devoted to chaotic systems and networks of chaotic circuits by exploring the fundamentals, such as synchronization and control. The aim of the book is to give to readers a comprehensive view of the main concepts of nonlinear dynamics to help them better understand complex systems and their control through the use of electronics devices.