Effective evacuations can save lives. This book provides mathematical models of pedestrian movements that can be used specifically for designing feedback control laws for effective evacuation. The book also provides various feedback control laws to accomplish the effective evacuation. It book uses the hydrodynamic hyperbolic PDE macroscopic pedestrian models since they are amenable to feedback control design. The control designs are obtained through different nonlinear techniques.

Underwater vehicles present some difficult and very particular control system design problems. These are often the result of nonlinear dynamics and uncertain models, as well as the presence of sometimes unforeseeable environmental disturbances that are difficult to measure or estimate. Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: Modeling, Control Design, and Simulation outlines a novel approach to help readers develop models to simulate feedback controllers for motion planning and design. The book combines useful information on both kinematic and dynamic nonlinear feedback control models, providing simulation results and other essential information, giving readers a truly unique and all-encompassing new perspective on design. Includes MATLAB (R) Simulations to Illustrate Concepts and Enhance Understanding Starting with an introductory overview, the book offers examples of underwater vehicle construction, exploring kinematic fundamentals, problem formulation, and controllability, among other key topics. Particularly valuable to researchers is the book's detailed coverage of mathematical analysis as it applies to controllability, motion planning, feedback, modeling, and other concepts involved in nonlinear control design. Throughout, the authors reinforce the implicit goal in underwater vehicle design-to stabilize and make the vehicle follow a trajectory precisely. Fundamentally nonlinear in nature, the dynamics of AUVs present a difficult control system design problem which cannot be easily accommodated by traditional linear design methodologies. The results presented here can be extended to obtain advanced control strategies and design schemes not only for autonomous underwater vehicles but also for other similar problems in the area of nonlinear control.

Taking a completely hands-on approach, using cheap and easily available robotics kits, Practical and Experimental Robotics provides a detailed exploration of the construction, theory, and experiments for different types of robots. With topics ranging from basic stamp microcontrollers to biped and propeller based robots, the text contains laboratory experiments, examples with solutions, and case studies. The authors begin with a review of the essential elements of electronics and mechanics. They describe the basic mechanical construction and electrical control of the robot, then give at least one example of how to operate the robot using microcontrollers or software. The book includes a reference chapter on Basic Stamp Microcontollers with example code pieces and a chapter completely devoted to PC interfacing. Each chapter begins with the fundamentals, then moves on to advanced topics, thus building a foundation for learning from the ground up. Building a bridge between technicians who have hands-on experience and engineers with a deeper insight into the workings, the book covers a range of machines, from arm, wheel, and leg robots to flying robots and robotic submarines and boats. Unlike most books in this field, this one offers a complete set of topics from electronics, mechanics, and computer interface and programming, making it an independent source for knowledge and understanding of robotics.

Feedback Ramp Metering in Intelligent Transportation Systems is the first book on the topic of using feedback control (also called real-time traffic control or adaptive control by some traffic engineers) in ramp metering. It provides traffic theory fundamentals and then the design of feedback controllers for isolated and coordinated ramp metering problems. Software simulation code in Matlab and Paramics is provided in the book so that the reader can get a hands-on feel for the various algorithms. With a large number of examples, illustrations, and original problems, this book is excellent as a textbook or reference book for a senior or graduate level course on the subject, as well as a reference for researchers in related fields.

The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology impacts all areas of the control discipline. New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies, .... , new challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports, feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial control for wider and rapid dissemination. Micro-technology and modern communications technology are revolutionising many aspects of our daily lives and so it is not surprising that it is impacting societal transportation systems whether our highways, airways, seaways or railways. The Advances in Industrial Control series reported on these developments for long haul railway systems in a monograph by Howlett and Pudney (ISBN 3-S40-19990-X, 1995). Now it is the turn of transportation in a contribution from Pushkin Kachroo and Kaan Ozbay. The authors viewpoint is that this new set of transportation problems are control problems and that control engineers should be highly active in this field. Their volume covers all the aspects of modelling, problem formulation, and applies various control methodologies to solve the control problems formulated.

Effective evacuations can save lives. This book provides mathematical models of pedestrian movements that can be used specifically for designing feedback control laws for effective evacuation. The book also provides various feedback control laws to accomplish the effective evacuation. It book uses the hydrodynamic hyperbolic PDE macroscopic pedestrian models since they are amenable to feedback control design. The control designs are obtained through different nonlinear techniques.

The subject of this book is model abstraction of dynamical systems. The p- mary goal of the work embodied in this book is to design a controller for the mobile robotic car using abstraction. Abstraction provides a means to rep- sent the dynamics of a system using a simpler model while retaining important characteristics of the original system. A second goal of this work is to study the propagation of uncertain initial conditions in the framework of abstraction. The summation of this work is presented in this book. It includes the following: * An overview of the history and current research in mobile robotic control design. * A mathematical review that provides the tools used in this research area. * The development of the robotic car model and both controllers used in the new control design. * A review of abstraction and an extension of these ideas into new system relationship characterizations called traceability and -traceability. * A framework for designing controllers based on abstraction. * An open-loop control design with simulation results. * An investigation of system abstraction with uncertain initial conditions.

"Feedback Ramp Metering in Intelligent Transportation Systems" is the first book on the topic of using feedback control (also called real-time traffic control or adaptive control by some traffic engineers) in ramp metering. It provides traffic theory fundamentals and then the design of feedback controllers for isolated and coordinated ramp metering problems. Software simulation code in Matlab and Paramics is provided in the book so that the reader can get a hands-on feel for the various algorithms. With a large number of examples, illustrations, and original problems, this book is excellent as a textbook or reference book for a senior or graduate level course on the subject, as well as a reference for researchers in related fields.