John Cusack and Ryan Phillippe star in this thriller about a young American couple who become involved in a deadly scam abroad. Desperate for a child, Steven (Phillippe) and Shannon (Rachelle Lefevre) travel to Puerto Rico to adopt Haitian orphan Nina (Briana Roy), who they met through the organisation International Rescue Adoption run by Reigert (Jacki Weaver). But before the adoption can be finalised Nina mysteriously vanishes and the couple realise they have been the victims of an elaborate con. The case gets even more complex when dangerous criminals become aware of the secret dealings and they move in to capture a slice of proceedings, threatening the couple's lives in the process.

This monograph is framed within the context of off-road mobile robotics. In particular, it discusses issues related to modelling, localization, and motion control of tracked mobile robots working in planar slippery conditions. Tracked locomotion constitutes a well-known solution for mobile platforms operating over diverse challenging terrains, for that reason, tracked robotics constitutes an important research field with many applications (e.g. agriculture, mining, search and rescue operations, military activities). The specific topics of this monograph are: historical perspective of tracked vehicles and tracked robots; trajectory-tracking model taking into account slip effect; visual-odometry-based localization strategies; and advanced slip-compensation motion controllers ensuring efficient real-time execution. Physical experiments with a real tracked robot are presented showing the better performance of the suggested novel approaches to known techniques.

Keywords: longitudinal slip, visual odometry, slip-compensation control, robust predictive control, trajectory tracking.

Related subjects: Robotics Mechanical Engineering Mechanics Computer Science Artificial Intelligence - Applications

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A discussion of challenges related to the modeling and control of greenhouse crop growth, this book presents state-of-the-art answers to those challenges. The authors model the subsystems involved in successful greenhouse control using different techniques and show how the models obtained can be exploited for simulation or control design; they suggest ideas for the development of physical and/or black-box models for this purpose. Strategies for the control of climate- and irrigation-related variables are brought forward. The uses of PID control and feedforward compensators, both widely used in commercial tools, are summarized. The benefits of advanced control techniques-event-based, robust, and predictive control, for example-are used to improve on the performance of those basic methods. A hierarchical control architecture is developed governed by a high-level multiobjective optimization approach rather than traditional constrained optimization and artificial intelligence techniques. Reference trajectories are found for diurnal and nocturnal temperatures (climate-related setpoints) and electrical conductivity (fertirrigation-related setpoints). The objectives are to maximize profit, fruit quality, and water-use efficiency, these being encouraged by current international rules. Illustrative practical results selected from those obtained in an industrial greenhouse during the last eight years are shown and described. The text of the book is complemented by the use of illustrations, tables and real examples which are helpful in understanding the material. Modeling and Control of Greenhouse Crop Growth will be of interest to industrial engineers, academic researchers and graduates from agricultural, chemical, and process-control backgrounds.

Adam Sandler and Emily Watson take the leads in this unlikely romantic comedy from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson. Barry Egan (Sandler) is a socially isolated Californian businessman who runs a wholesaling business in the San Fernando Valley. When he meets businesswoman Lena Leonard (Watson) it seems that there might be a chance for romance between them. Lena is certainly eager, and she pushes Barry to come out on a date with her, but the course of true love is unlikely to run smooth, especially when it has to contend with Barry's occasional bouts of destructive rage and his accidental involvement in a phone sex racket run by petty Utah gangster Dean Trumbell (Philip Seymour Hoffman).

A searing novel of the post-1910 Mexican revolutionary era that itself challenged the Mexican political establishment, Guzman's The Shadow of the Strongman ( La Sombra del Caudillo ) stands beside Azuela's The Underdogs ( Los de abajo ) in the pantheon of Mexican fiction. Unmasking the years of political intrigue and assassination that followed the Revolution, the novel was adapted in the 1960 film La Sombra del Caudillo , which was banned in Mexico for thirty years.

Josh Hutcherson, Dwayne Johnson and Vanessa Hudgens star in this action adventure sequel to 'Journey to the Center of the Earth' (2008). After receiving a radio transmission from his missing grandfather (Michael Caine), Sean Anderson (Hutcherson) sets out on a journey with his mother's boyfriend, Hank (Johnson), to an uncharted island he believes may be the same one Jules Verne wrote a book about. Along the way they meet pilot Gabato (Luis Guzmán) and the attractive Kailani (Hudgens) who Sean soon falls for. As they explore the island they come across many wonders and encounter some deadly creatures. When the island looks set to self-destruct, the adventurers must race against time to find a way back to safety.

A searing novel of the post-1910 Mexican revolutionary era that itself challenged the Mexican political establishment, Guzman's The Shadow of the Strongman ( La Sombra del Caudillo ) stands beside Azuela's The Underdogs ( Los de abajo ) in the pantheon of Mexican fiction. Unmasking the years of political intrigue and assassination that followed the Revolution, the novel was adapted in the 1960 film La Sombra del Caudillo , which was banned in Mexico for thirty years.

Big screen adaptation of the Elmore Leonard crime novel. Bank robber Jack Foley (George Clooney) is forced to kidnap federal agent Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) while breaking out of prison. The two feel a strong sexual attraction for each other, but Karen still takes the opportunity to escape when it arises. Jack teams up with his old partner, Buddy (Ving Rhames), and they plan one last job together in Detroit. Intending to rob the mansion of millionaire Richard Ripley (Albert Brooks), the duo still have Karen on their tail, and also face competition from ex-con Glenn Michaels (Steve Zahn) and the psychopathic Maurice 'Snoopy' Miller (Don Cheadle).

Betrayed by his childhood friend Fernand (Guy Pearce), sailor Edmond Dantes (Jim Caviezel) is found guilty of trumped-up charges and sent to the island prison of Chateau d'If. Thirteen years later, having learnt the art of fencing from the Abbé Faria (Richard Harris), a fellow inmate who also revealed to him the location of a vast treasure hidden on the island of Monte Cristo, Edmond realises that the time has come and carries out a daring escape attempt. Taking the treasure for himself, he reappears as the Count of Monte Cristo and becomes the talk of Parisian society; but he soon learns that Fernand has married Mercédès (Dagmara Dominczyk), Edmond's own childhood sweetheart, and starts drawing up his plans for revenge.

Drama starring Kurt Russell and Dakota Fanning. Ben Crane (Russell) was once a great horseman whose gifts as a trainer are now being wasted on making other men's fortunes. Sonador 'called Sonya' was a great horse whose promising future on the racetrack is suddenly cut short by a career-ending broken leg. Considered as good as dead to her owner, who also happens to be Ben's boss, Sonya is given to Ben as severance pay, along with his walking papers. Now, it will take the unwavering faith and determination of Ben's young daughter, Cale (Fanning), to bring these two damaged souls together in a quest for a seemingly impossible goal: to win the breeders' Cup Classic. However, the true miracle might be that, in helping this injured horse, what they are actually healing is their own family.

This is a tale that might be told around a campfire, night after night in the midst of a military campaign. The kinetic and garrulous Pancho Villa talking on and on about battles and men; bursting out with hearty, masculine laughter; weeping unashamed for fallen comrades; casually mentioning his hotheadedness-"one of my violent outbursts"-which sent one, two, or a dozen men before the firing squad; recounting amours; and always, always protesting dedication to the Revolutionary cause and the interests of "the people." Villa saw himself as the champion, eventually almost the sole champion, of the Mexican people. He fought for them, he said, and opponents who called him bandit and murderer were hypocrites. This is his story, his account of how it all began when as a peasant boy of sixteen he shot a rich landowner threatening the honor of his sister. This lone, starved refugee hiding out in the mountains became the scourge of the Mexican Revolution, the leader of thousands of men, and the hero of the masses of the poor. Great battles of the Revolution are described, sometimes as broad sweeps of strategy, sometimes as they developed half hour by half hour. Long, dusty horseback forays and cold nights spent pinned down under enemy fire on a mountainside are made vivid and gripping. The assault on Ciudad Juarez in 1911, the battles of Tierra Blanca, of Torreon, of Zacatecas, of Celaya, all are here, told with a feeling of great immediacy. This volume ends as Villa and Obregon prepare to engage each other in the war between victorious generals into which the Revolution degenerated before it finally ended. Martin Luis Guzman, eminent historian of Mexico, knew and traveled with Pancho Villa at various times during the Revolution. General Villa offered young Martin Luis a position as his secretary, but he declined. When many years later some of Villa's private papers, records, and what was apparently the beginning of an autobiography came into Guzman's hands, he was ideally suited to blend all these into an authentic account of the Revolution as Pancho Villa saw it, and of the General's life as known only to Villa himself. The Memoirs were first published in Mexico in 1951, where they were extremely popular; this volume was the first English publication. Virginia H. Taylor, translator in the Spanish Archives of the State of Texas Land Office, has accurately captured in English the flavor of the narrative.