ALBERT

Beschreibung: The purpose of this volume is to encourage and inspire the continual invention of robot manipulators for science and the good of humanity. The concepts of artificial intelligence combined with the engineering and technology of feedback control, have great potential for new, useful and exciting machines. The concept of eclecticism for the design, development, simulation and implementation of a real time controller for an intelligent, vision guided robots is now being explored. The dream of an eclectic perceptual, creative controller that can select its own tasks and perform autonomous operations with reliability and dependability is starting to evolve. We have not yet reached this stage but a careful study of the contents will start one on the exciting journey that could lead to many inventions and successful solutions.

Beschreibung: This book represents the contributions of the top researchers in the field of robotics, automation and control and will serve as a valuable tool for professionals in these interdisciplinary fields. It consists of 25 chapter that introduce both basic research and advanced developments covering the topics such as kinematics, dynamic analysis, accuracy, optimization design, modelling , simulation and control. Without a doubt, the book covers a great deal of recent research, and as such it works as a valuable source for researchers interested in the involved subjects.

Beschreibung: To design a team of robots which is able to perform given tasks is a great concern of many members of robotics community. There are many problems left to be solved in order to have the fully functional robot team. Robotics community is trying hard to solve such problems (navigation, task allocation, communication, adaptation, control, ...). This book represents the contributions of the top researchers in this field and will serve as a valuable tool for professionals in this interdisciplinary field. It is focused on the challenging issues of team architectures, vehicle learning and adaptation, heterogeneous group control and cooperation, task selection, dynamic autonomy, mixed initiative, and human and robot team interaction. The book consists of 16 chapters introducing both basic research and advanced developments. Topics covered include kinematics, dynamic analysis, accuracy, optimization design, modelling, simulation and control of multi robot systems.

Beschreibung: Factory automation has evolved significantly in the last few decades, and is today a complex, interdisciplinary, scientific area. In this book a selection of papers on topics related to factory automation is presented, covering a broad spectrum, so that the reader may become familiar with the various fields, and also study them in more depth where required. Within various chapters in this book, special attention is given to distributed applications and their use of networks, since it is one of the most relevant subjects in the evolution of factory automation. Different Medium Access Control and networks are analyzed, while Ethernet and Wireless networks are looked at in more detail, since they are among the hottest topics in recent research. Another important subject is everything concerning the increase in the complexity of factory automation, and the need for flexibility and interoperability. Finally the use of multi-agent systems, advanced control, formal methods, or the application in this field of RFID, are additional examples of the ideas and disciplines that experts around the world have analyzed in their work.

Beschreibung: Since the introduction of the first industrial robot Unimate in a General Motors automobile factory in New Jersey in 1961, robots have gained stronger and stronger foothold in the industry. In the meantime, robotics research has been expanding from fix based robots to mobile robots at a stunning pace. There have been significant milestones that are worth noting in recent decades. Examples are the octopus-like Tentacle Arm developed by Marvin Minsky in 1968, the Stanford Cart crossing a chair-filled room without human assistance in 1979, and most recently, humanoid robots developed by Honda. Despite rapid technological developments and extensive research efforts in mobility, perception, navigation and control, mobile robots still fare badly in comparison with human abilities. For example, in physical interactions with subjects and objects in an operational environment, a human being can easily relies on his/her intuitively force-based servoing to accomplish contact tasks, handling and processing materials and interacting with people safely and precisely. The intuitiveness, learning ability and contextual knowledge, which are natural part of human instincts, are hard to come by for robots. The above observations simply highlight the monumental works and challenges ahead when researchers aspire to turn mobile robots to greater benefits to humankinds. This book is by no means to address all the issues associated mobile robots, but reports current states of some challenging research projects in mobile robotics ranging from land, humanoid, underwater, aerial robots, to rehabilitation.

Beschreibung: Model Predictive Control (MPC) usually refers to a class of control algorithms in which a dynamic process model is used to predict and optimize process performance, but it is can also be seen as a term denoting a natural control strategy that matches the human thought form most closely. Half a century after its birth, it has been widely accepted in many engineering fields and has brought much benefit to us. The purpose of the book is to show the recent advancements of MPC to the readers, both in theory and in engineering. The idea was to offer guidance to researchers and engineers who are interested in the frontiers of MPC. The examples provided in the first part of this exciting collection will help you comprehend some typical boundaries in theoretical research of MPC. In the second part of the book, some excellent applications of MPC in modern engineering field are presented. With the rapid development of modeling and computational technology, we believe that MPC will remain as energetic in the future.

Beschreibung: Despite the great technological advancement experienced in recent years, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) are still used in many applications from the real world and still play a central role in infrastructure of industrial automation. PLC operate in the factory-floor level and are responsible typically for implementing logical control, regulatory control strategies, such as PID and fuzzy-based algorithms, and safety logics. Usually PLC are interconnected with the supervision level through communication network, such as Ethernet networks, in order to work in an integrated form. In this context, this book was written by professionals that work and research in automation area and it has two major objectives. The first objective is present some advances in methodologies and techniques for development of industrial programs based on PLC. The second objective is present some PLC-based real applications from various areas such as manufacturing system, robotics, power system, communication system, and education.

Beschreibung: The book presents an excellent overview of the recent developments in the different areas of Robotics, Automation and Control. Through its 24 chapters, this book presents topics related to control and robot design; it also introduces new mathematical tools and techniques devoted to improve the system modeling and control. An important point is the use of rational agents and heuristic techniques to cope with the computational complexity required for controlling complex systems. Through this book, we also find navigation and vision algorithms, automatic handwritten comprehension and speech recognition systems that will be included in the next generation of productive systems developed by man.

Beschreibung: This book is the result of inspirations and contributions from many researchers worldwide. It presents a collection of wide range research results of robotics scientific community. Various aspects of current research in robotics area are explored and discussed. The book begins with researches in robot modelling & design, in which different approaches in kinematical, dynamical and other design issues of mobile robots are discussed. Second chapter deals with various sensor systems, but the major part of the chapter is devoted to robotic vision systems. Chapter III is devoted to robot navigation and presents different navigation architectures. The chapter IV is devoted to research on adaptive and learning systems in mobile robots area. The chapter V speaks about different application areas of multi-robot systems. Other emerging field is discussed in chapter VI - the human- robot interaction. Chapter VII gives a great tutorial on legged robot systems and one research overview on design of a humanoid robot.The different examples of service robots are showed in chapter VIII. Chapter IX is oriented to industrial robots, i.e. robot manipulators. Different mechatronic systems oriented on robotics are explored in the last chapter of the book.

Beschreibung: Biped robots represent a very interesting research subject, with several particularities and scope topics, such as: mechanical design, gait simulation, patterns generation, kinematics, dynamics, equilibrium, stability, kinds of control, adaptability, biomechanics, cybernetics, and rehabilitation technologies. We have diverse problems related to these topics, making the study of biped robots a very complex subject, and many times the results of researches are not totally satisfactory. However, with scientific and technological advances, based on theoretical and experimental works, many researchers have collaborated in the evolution of the biped robots design, looking for to develop autonomous systems, as well as to help in rehabilitation technologies of human beings. Thus, this book intends to present some works related to the study of biped robots, developed by researchers worldwide.

Beschreibung: Humanoid robots are developed to use the infrastructures designed for humans, to ease the interactions with humans, and to help the integrations into human societies. The developments of humanoid robots proceed from building individual robots to establishing societies of robots working alongside with humans. This book addresses the problems of constructing a humanoid body and mind from generating walk patterns and balance maintenance to encoding and specifying humanoid motions and the control of eye and head movements for focusing attention on moving objects. It provides methods for learning motor skills and for language acquisition and describes how to generate facial movements for expressing various emotions and provides methods for decision making and planning. This book discusses the leading researches and challenges in building humanoid robots in order to prepare for the near future when human societies will be advanced by using humanoid robots.

Beschreibung: In this book the variety of humanoid robotic research can be obtained. This book is divided in four parts: Hardware Development: Components and Systems, Biped Motion: Walking, Running and Self-orientation, Sensing the Environment: Acquisition, Data Processing and Control and Mind Organisation: Learning and Interaction. The first part of the book deals with remarkable hardware developments, whereby complete humanoid robotic systems are as well described as partial solutions. In the second part diverse results around the biped motion of humanoid robots are presented. The autonomous, efficient and adaptive two-legged walking is one of the main challenge in humanoid robotics. The two-legged walking will enable humanoid robots to enter our environment without rearrangement. Developments in the field of visual sensors, data acquisition, processing and control are to be observed in third part of the book. In the fourth part some "mind building" and communication technologies are presented.

Beschreibung: Vibrations are a part of our environment and daily life. Many of them are useful and are needed for many purposes, one of the best example being the hearing system. Nevertheless, vibrations are often undesirable and have to be suppressed or reduced, as they may be harmful to structures by generating damages or compromise the comfort of users through noise generation of mechanical wave transmission to the body. the purpose of this book is to present basic and advanced methods for efficiently controlling the vibrations and limiting their effects. Open-access publishing is an extraordinary opportunity for a wide dissemination of high quality research. This book is not an exception to this, and I am proud to introduce the works performed by experts from all over the world.

Beschreibung: This book book is a collection of 18 chapters written by internationally recognized experts and well-known professionals of the field. Chapters contribute to diverse facets of contemporary robotics and autonomous systems. The volume is organized in four thematic parts according to the main subjects, regarding the recent advances in the contemporary robotics. The first thematic topics of the book are devoted to the theoretical issues. This includes development of algorithms for automatic trajectory generation using redudancy resolution scheme, intelligent algorithms for robotic grasping, modelling approach for reactive mode handling of flexible manufacturing and design of an advanced controller for robot manipulators. The second part of the book deals with different aspects of robot calibration and sensing. This includes a geometric and treshold calibration of a multiple robotic line-vision system, robot-based inline 2D/3D quality monitoring using picture-giving and laser triangulation, and a study on prospective polymer composite materials for flexible tactile sensors. The third part addresses issues of mobile robots and multi-agent systems, including SLAM of mobile robots based on fusion of odometry and visual data, configuration of a localization system by a team of mobile robots, development of generic real-time motion controller for differential mobile robots, control of fuel cells of mobile robots, modelling of omni-directional wheeled-based robots, building of hunter- hybrid tracking environment, as well as design of a cooperative control in distributed population-based multi-agent approach. The fourth part presents recent approaches and results in humanoid and bioinspirative robotics. It deals with design of adaptive control of anthropomorphic biped gait, building of dynamic-based simulation for humanoid robot walking, building controller for perceptual motor control dynamics of humans and biomimetic approach to control mechatronic structure using smart materials.

Beschreibung: Frontiers of Model Predictive Control Robust Model Predictive Control Nonlinear Model Predictive Control Excellent Applications Guide for Researchers and Engineers Recent Achievements of Authors over the World Theory with Practical Examples Kinds of Algorithms for Choice

Beschreibung: This book pretends to bring the state-of-art research results on advanced control from both the theoretical and practical perspectives. The fundamental and advanced research results as well as the contributions in terms of the technical evolution of control theory are of particular interest. This book can serve as a bridge between people who are working on the theoretical and practical research on control theory, and facilitate the proposal of development of new control techniques and its applications. In addition, this book presents educational importance to help students and researchers to know the frontiers of the control technology.

Beschreibung: The idea of using soccer game for promoting science and technology of artificial intelligence and robotics was presented in the early 90s of the last century. Researchers in many different scientific fields all over the world recognized this idea as an inspiring challenge. Robot soccer research is interdisciplinary, complex, demanding but most of all, fun and motivational. Obtained knowledge and results of research can easily be transferred and applied to numerous applications and projects dealing with relating fields such as robotics, electronics, mechanical engineering, artificial intelligence, etc. As a consequence, we are witnesses of rapid advancement in this field with numerous robot soccer competitions and a vast number of teams and team members. The best illustration is numbers from the RoboCup 2009 world championship held in Graz, Austria which gathered around 2300 participants in over 400 teams from 44 nations. Attendance numbers at various robot soccer events show that interest in robot soccer goes beyond the academic and R&D community. Several experts have been invited to present state of the art in this growing area. It was impossible to cover all aspects of the research in detail but through the chapters of this book, various topics were elaborated. Among them are hardware architecture and controllers, software design, sensor and information fusion, reasoning and control, development of more robust and intelligent robot soccer strategies, AI-based paradigms, robot communication and simulations as well as some other issues such as educational aspect. Some strict partition of chapter in this book hasn’t been done because areas of research are overlapping and interweaving. However, it can be said that chapters at the beginning are more system-oriented with wider scope of presented research while later chapters generally deal with some more particular aspects of robot soccer.

Beschreibung: Many papers in the book concern advanced research on (multi-)robot subsystems, naturally motivated by the challenges posed by robot soccer, but certainly applicable to other domains: reasoning, multi-criteria decision-making, behavior and team coordination, cooperative perception, localization, mobility systems (namely omni-directional wheeled motion, as well as quadruped and biped locomotion, all strongly developed within RoboCup), and even a couple of papers on a topic apparently solved before Soccer Robotics - color segmentation - but for which several new algorithms were introduced since the mid-nineties by researchers on the field, to solve dynamic illumination and fast color segmentation problems, among others. This book is certainly a small sample of the research activity on Soccer Robotics going on around the globe as you read it, but it surely covers a good deal of what has been done in the field recently, and as such it works as a valuable source for researchers interested in the involved subjects, whether they are currently "soccer roboticists" or not.

Beschreibung: Model Predictive Control (MPC) refers to a class of control algorithms in which a dynamic process model is used to predict and optimize process performance. From lower request of modeling accuracy and robustness to complicated process plants, MPC has been widely accepted in many practical fields. As the guide for researchers and engineers all over the world concerned with the latest developments of MPC, the purpose of "Advanced Model Predictive Control" is to show the readers the recent achievements in this area. The first part of this exciting book will help you comprehend the frontiers in theoretical research of MPC, such as Fast MPC, Nonlinear MPC, Distributed MPC, Multi-Dimensional MPC and Fuzzy-Neural MPC. In the second part, several excellent applications of MPC in modern industry are proposed and efficient commercial software for MPC is introduced. Because of its special industrial origin, we believe that MPC will remain energetic in the future.

Beschreibung: First placed on the market in 1939, the design of PID controllers remains a challenging area that requires new approaches to solving PID tuning problems while capturing the effects of noise and process variations. The augmented complexity of modern applications concerning areas like automotive applications, microsystems technology, pneumatic mechanisms, dc motors, industry processes, require controllers that incorporate into their design important characteristics of the systems. These characteristics include but are not limited to: model uncertainties, system's nonlinearities, time delays, disturbance rejection requirements and performance criteria. The scope of this book is to propose different PID controllers designs for numerous modern technology applications in order to cover the needs of an audience including researchers, scholars and professionals who are interested in advances in PID controllers and related topics.

Beschreibung: The objective of this book is to cover advances of mobile robotics and related technologies applied for multi robot systems' design and development. Design of control system is a complex issue, requiring the application of information technologies to link the robots into a single network. Human robot interface becomes a demanding task, especially when we try to use sophisticated methods for brain signal processing. Generated electrophysiological signals can be used to command different devices, such as cars, wheelchair or even video games. A number of developments in navigation and path planning, including parallel programming, can be observed. Cooperative path planning, formation control of multi robotic agents, communication and distance measurement between agents are shown. Training of the mobile robot operators is very difficult task also because of several factors related to different task execution. The presented improvement is related to environment model generation based on autonomous mobile robot observations.

Beschreibung: Robust control has been a topic of active research in the last three decades culminating in H_2/H_\infty and \mu design methods followed by research on parametric robustness, initially motivated by Kharitonov's theorem, the extension to non-linear time delay systems, and other more recent methods. The two volumes of Recent Advances in Robust Control give a selective overview of recent theoretical developments and present selected application examples. The volumes comprise 39 contributions covering various theoretical aspects as well as different application areas. The first volume covers selected problems in the theory of robust control and its application to robotic and electromechanical systems. The second volume is dedicated to special topics in robust control and problem specific solutions. Recent Advances in Robust Control will be a valuable reference for those interested in the recent theoretical advances and for researchers working in the broad field of robotics and mechatronics.

Beschreibung: This book provides state of the art scientific and engineering research findings and developments in the field of humanoid robotics and its applications. It is expected that humanoids will change the way we interact with machines, and will have the ability to blend perfectly into an environment already designed for humans. The book contains chapters that aim to discover the future abilities of humanoid robots by presenting a variety of integrated research in various scientific and engineering fields, such as locomotion, perception, adaptive behavior, human-robot interaction, neuroscience and machine learning. The book is designed to be accessible and practical, with an emphasis on useful information to those working in the fields of robotics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, computational methods and other fields of science directly or indirectly related to the development and usage of future humanoid robots. The editor of the book has extensive R&D experience, patents, and publications in the area of humanoid robotics, and his experience is reflected in editing the content of the book.

Beschreibung: This book was conceived as a gathering place of new ideas from academia, industry, research and practice in the fields of robotics, automation and control. The aim of the book was to point out interactions among various fields of interests in spite of diversity and narrow specializations which prevail in the current research. The common denominator of all included chapters appears to be a synergy of various specializations. This synergy yields deeper understanding of the treated problems. Each new approach applied to a particular problem can enrich and inspire improvements of already established approaches to the problem.

Beschreibung: This book brings together some of the latest research in robot applications, control, modeling, sensors and algorithms. Consisting of three main sections, the first section of the book has a focus on robotic surgery, rehabilitation, self-assembly, while the second section offers an insight into the area of control with discussions on exoskeleton control and robot learning among others. The third section is on vision and ultrasonic sensors which is followed by a series of chapters which include a focus on the programming of intelligent service robots and systems adaptations.

Beschreibung: Mobile robots are the focus of a great deal of current research in robotics. Mobile robotics is a young, multidisciplinary field involving knowledge from many areas, including electrical, electronic and mechanical engineering, computer, cognitive and social sciences. Being engaged in the design of automated systems, it lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, computational vision, and robotics. Thanks to the numerous researchers sharing their goals, visions and results within the community, mobile robotics is becoming a very rich and stimulating area. The book Recent Advances in Mobile Robotics addresses the topic by integrating contributions from many researchers around the globe. It emphasizes the computational methods of programming mobile robots, rather than the methods of constructing the hardware. Its content reflects different complementary aspects of theory and practice, which have recently taken place. We believe that it will serve as a valuable handbook to those who work in research and development of mobile robots.

Beschreibung: This book consists of 18 chapters about current research results of service robots. Topics covered include various kinds of service robots, development environments, architectures of service robots, Human-Robot Interaction, networks of service robots and basic researches such as SLAM, sensor network, etc. This book has some examples of the research activities on Service Robotics going on around the globe, but many chapters in this book concern advanced research on this area and cover interesting topics. Therefore I hope that all who read this book will find lots of helpful information and be interested in Service Robotics. I am really appreciative of all authors who have invested a great deal of time to write such interesting and high quality chapters.

Beschreibung: In this book, new results or developments from different research backgrounds and application fields are put together to provide a wide and useful viewpoint on these headed research problems mentioned above, focused on the motion planning problem of mobile ro-bots. These results cover a large range of the problems that are frequently encountered in the motion planning of mobile robots both in theoretical methods and practical applications including obstacle avoidance methods, navigation and localization techniques, environmental modelling or map building methods, and vision signal processing etc. Different methods such as potential fields, reactive behaviours, neural-fuzzy based methods, motion control methods and so on are studied. Through this book and its references, the reader will definitely be able to get a thorough overview on the current research results for this specific topic in robotics. The book is intended for the readers who are interested and active in the field of robotics and especially for those who want to study and develop their own methods in motion/path planning or control for an intelligent robotic system.

Beschreibung: Today robots navigate autonomously in office environments as well as outdoors. They show their ability to beside mechanical and electronic barriers in building mobile platforms, perceiving the environment and deciding on how to act in a given situation are crucial problems. In this book we focused on these two areas of mobile robotics, Perception and Navigation. This book gives a wide overview over different navigation techniques describing both navigation techniques dealing with local and control aspects of navigation as well es those handling global navigation aspects of a single robot and even for a group of robots.

Beschreibung: Adaptive control has been a remarkable field for industrial and academic research since 1950s. Since more and more adaptive algorithms are applied in various control applications, it is becoming very important for practical implementation. As it can be confirmed from the increasing number of conferences and journals on adaptive control topics, it is certain that the adaptive control is a significant guidance for technology development.The authors the chapters in this book are professionals in their areas and their recent research results are presented in this book which will also provide new ideas for improved performance of various control application problems.

Beschreibung: This book presented techniques and experimental results which have been pursued for the purpose of evolutionary robotics. Evolutionary robotics is a new method for the automatic creation of autonomous robots. When executing tasks by autonomous robots, we can make the robot learn what to do so as to complete the task from interactions with its environment, but not manually pre-program for all situations. Many researchers have been studying the techniques for evolutionary robotics by using Evolutionary Computation (EC), such as Genetic Algorithms (GA) or Genetic Programming (GP). Their goal is to clarify the applicability of the evolutionary approach to the real-robot learning, especially, in view of the adaptive robot behavior as well as the robustness to noisy and dynamic environments. For this purpose, authors in this book explain a variety of real robots in different fields. For instance, in a multi-robot system, several robots simultaneously work to achieve a common goal via interaction; their behaviors can only emerge as a result of evolution and interaction. How to learn such behaviors is a central issue of Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI), which has recently attracted much attention. This book addresses the issue in the context of a multi-robot system, in which multiple robots are evolved using EC to solve a cooperative task. Since directly using EC to generate a program of complex behaviors is often very difficult, a number of extensions to basic EC are proposed in this book so as to solve these control problems of the robot.

Beschreibung: Modern medicine has reached a point where the patient is not treated as a biopsychosocial-spiritual being but rather is seen as a virtual identity consisting of laboratory findings and images. More focus is placed on relieving the symptoms instead of curing the disease. Mostly, patients are turned into lifetime medication-dependent individuals. New medicines are needed to overcome the side effects, complications, resistance, and intolerance caused by pharmacological and interventional therapies. In hopes of drug-free and painless alternative treatments with fewer complications, there has been a trend to revisit traditional methods that have been dismissed by modern medicine. Traditional medicine has to be reevaluated with modern scientific methods to complement and integrate with evidence-based modern medicine.

Beschreibung: The main objective of this monograph is to present a broad range of well worked out, recent theoretical and application studies in the field of robust control system analysis and design. The contributions presented here include but are not limited to robust PID, H-infinity, sliding mode, fault tolerant, fuzzy and QFT based control systems. They advance the current progress in the field, and motivate and encourage new ideas and solutions in the robust control area.

Beschreibung: With the advancement of technology, new exciting approaches enable us to render mobile robotic systems more versatile, robust and cost-efficient. Some researchers combine climbing and walking techniques with a modular approach, a reconfigurable approach, or a swarm approach to realize novel prototypes as flexible mobile robotic platforms featuring all necessary locomotion capabilities. The purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the latest wide-range achievements in climbing and walking robotic technology to researchers, scientists, and engineers throughout the world. Different aspects including control simulation, locomotion realization, methodology, and system integration are presented from the scientific and from the technical point of view. This book consists of two main parts, one dealing with walking robots, the second with climbing robots. The content is also grouped by theoretical research and applicative realization. Every chapter offers a considerable amount of interesting and useful information.

Beschreibung: The title of the book System, Structure and Control encompasses broad field of theory and applications of many different control approaches applied on different classes of dynamic systems. Output and state feedback control include among others robust control, optimal control or intelligent control methods such as fuzzy or neural network approach, dynamic systems are e.g. linear or nonlinear with or without time delay, fixed or uncertain, onedimensional or multidimensional. The applications cover all branches of human activities including any kind of industry, economics, biology, social sciences etc.

Beschreibung: This book presents the most recent research advances in robot manipulators. It offers a complete survey to the kinematic and dynamic modelling, simulation, computer vision, software engineering, optimization and design of control algorithms applied for robotic systems. It is devoted for a large scale of applications, such as manufacturing, manipulation, medicine and automation. Several control methods are included such as optimal, adaptive, robust, force, fuzzy and neural network control strategies. The trajectory planning is discussed in details for point-to-point and path motions control. The results in obtained in this book are expected to be of great interest for researchers, engineers, scientists and students, in engineering studies and industrial sectors related to robot modelling, design, control, and application. The book also details theoretical, mathematical and practical requirements for mathematicians and control engineers. It surveys recent techniques in modelling, computer simulation and implementation of advanced and intelligent controllers.

Beschreibung: A trend of investigation of Nonlinear Control Systems has been present over the last few decades. As a result the methods for its analysis and design have improved rapidly. This book includes nonlinear design topics such as Feedback Linearization, Lyapunov Based Control, Adaptive Control, Optimal Control and Robust Control. All chapters discuss different applications that are basically independent of each other. The book will provide the reader with information on modern control techniques and results which cover a very wide application area. Each chapter attempts to demonstrate how one would apply these techniques to real-world systems through both simulations and experimental settings.

Beschreibung: Human-robot interaction (HRI) is the study of interactions between people (users) and robots. HRI is multidisciplinary with contributions from the fields of human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, robotics, speech recognition, and social sciences (psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, and human factors). There has been a great deal of work done in the area of human-robot interaction to understand how a human interacts with a computer. However, there has been very little work done in understanding how people interact with robots. For robots becoming our friends, these studies will be required more and more.

Beschreibung: The need to be tolerant to changes in the control systems or in the operational environment of systems subject to unknown disturbances has generated new control methods that are able to deal with the non-parametrized disturbances of systems, without adapting itself to the system uncertainty but rather providing stability in the presence of errors bound in a model. With this approach in mind and with the intention to exemplify robust control applications, this book includes selected chapters that describe models of H-infinity loop, robust stability and uncertainty, among others. Each robust control method and model discussed in this book is illustrated by a relevant example that serves as an overview of the theoretical and practical method in robust control.

Beschreibung: Medicinal plants are a source of a wide variety of biologically active compounds that have been used extensively over many centuries as crude material or pure compounds for treating various diseases. Of the estimated 250,000-500,000 species of plants on Earth, only 1%-10% are used by humans. Plant-based traditional medicine plays a key role in the development and advancement of modern studies by serving as a starting point for the development of novelties in drug discovery. This book presents a comprehensive overview of medicinal plants and their potential uses, with chapters on Chinese traditional medicine, antioxidant activity of faba bean extracts, and antiviral activity of several plant extracts. This book will prove useful to a wide variety of readers, from medical professionals to farmers and gardeners to those interested in herbs and herbal medicine.

Beschreibung: The subject matter of this book ranges from new control design methods to control theory applications in electrical and mechanical engineering and computers. The book covers certain aspects of control theory, including new methodologies, techniques, and applications. It promotes control theory in practical applications of these engineering domains and shows the way to disseminate researchers’ contributions in the field. This project presents applications that improve the properties and performance of control systems in analysis and design using a higher technical level of scientific attainment. The authors have included worked examples and case studies resulting from their research in the field. Readers will benefit from new solutions and answers to questions related to the emerging realm of control theory in engineering applications and its implementation.

Beschreibung: Nowadays, our expectations of robots have been significantly increases. The robot, which was initially only doing simple jobs, is now expected to be smarter and more dynamic. People want a robot that resembles a human (humanoid) has and has emotional intelligence that can perform action-reaction interactions. This book consists of two sections. The first section focuses on emotional intelligence, while the second section discusses the control of robotics. The contents of the book reveal the outcomes of research conducted by scholars in robotics fields to accommodate needs of society and industry.

Beschreibung: We feel the impact of robots on our lives more and more every day. Service robots constitute the broadest and the most exciting applications in this field, such as; personal care and assistance, agriculture, logistics, mobility, medical, and defense-oriented robots. Since service robotics contains many different types of robots, the variety of problems to be solved is also large. Many popular robotic problems, ranging from mechanism design to simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), from motion planning to system security, can be examined in this context. You will find various examples and solutions for this critical area of robotics in this book. We hope that researchers interested in the subject will benefit from this book.

Beschreibung: Mobile robots navigation includes different interrelated activities: (i) perception, as obtaining and interpreting sensory information; (ii) exploration, as the strategy that guides the robot to select the next direction to go; (iii) mapping, involving the construction of a spatial representation by using the sensory information perceived; (iv) localization, as the strategy to estimate the robot position within the spatial map; (v) path planning, as the strategy to find a path towards a goal location being optimal or not; and (vi) path execution, where motor actions are determined and adapted to environmental changes. The book addresses those activities by integrating results from the research work of several authors all over the world. Research cases are documented in 32 chapters organized within 7 categories next described.

Beschreibung: Robotics research, especially mobile robotics is a young field. Its roots include many engineering and scientific disciplines from mechanical, electrical and electronics engineering to computer, cognitive and social sciences. Each of this parent fields is exciting in its own way and has its share in different books. This book is a result of inspirations and contributions from many researchers worldwide. It presents a collection of a wide range of research results in robotics scientific community. We hope you will enjoy reading the book as much as we have enjoyed bringing it together for you.

Beschreibung: For many years, the human being has been trying, in all ways, to recreate the complex mechanisms that form the human body. Such task is extremely complicated and the results are not totally satisfactory. However, with increasing technological advances based on theoretical and experimental researches, man gets, in a way, to copy or to imitate some systems of the human body. These researches not only intended to create humanoid robots, great part of them constituting autonomous systems, but also, in some way, to offer a higher knowledge of the systems that form the human body, objectifying possible applications in the technology of rehabilitation of human beings, gathering in a whole studies related not only to Robotics, but also to Biomechanics, Biomimmetics, Cybernetics, among other areas. This book presents a series of researches inspired by this ideal, carried through by various researchers worldwide, looking for to analyze and to discuss diverse subjects related to humanoid robots. The presented contributions explore aspects about robotic hands, learning, language, vision and locomotion.

Beschreibung: The range of potential applications for mobile robots is enormous. It includes agricultural robotics applications, routine material transport in factories, warehouses, office buildings and hospitals, indoor and outdoor security patrols, inventory verification, hazardous material handling, hazardous site cleanup, underwater applications, and numerous military applications. This book is the result of inspirations and contributions from many researchers worldwide. It presents a collection of wide range research results of robotics scientific community. Various aspects of current research in new robotics research areas and disciplines are explored and discussed. It is divided in three main parts covering different research areas: Humanoid Robots, Human-Robot Interaction, and Special Applications. We hope that you will find a lot of useful information in this book, which will help you in performing your research or fire your interests to start performing research in some of the cutting edge research fields mentioned in the book.

Beschreibung: Nowadays robotics is one of the most dynamic fields of scientific researches. The shift of robotics researches from manufacturing to services applications is clear. During the last decades interest in studying climbing and walking robots has been increased. This increasing interest has been in many areas that most important ones of them are: mechanics, electronics, medical engineering, cybernetics, controls, and computers. Today’s climbing and walking robots are a combination of manipulative, perceptive, communicative, and cognitive abilities and they are capable of performing many tasks in industrial and non- industrial environments. Surveillance, planetary exploration, emergence rescue operations, reconnaissance, petrochemical applications, construction, entertainment, personal services, intervention in severe environments, transportation, medical and etc are some applications from a very diverse application fields of climbing and walking robots. By great progress in this area of robotics it is anticipated that next generation climbing and walking robots will enhance lives and will change the way the human works, thinks and makes decisions. This book presents the state of the art achievments, recent developments, applications and future challenges of climbing and walking robots. These are presented in 24 chapters by authors throughtot the world The book serves as a reference especially for the researchers who are interested in mobile robots. It also is useful for industrial engineers and graduate students in advanced study.

Beschreibung: Robot arms have been developing since 1960's, and those are widely used in industrial factories such as welding, painting, assembly, transportation, etc. Nowadays, the robot arms are indispensable for automation of factories. Moreover, applications of the robot arms are not limited to the industrial factory but expanded to living space or outer space. The robot arm is an integrated technology, and its technological elements are actuators, sensors, mechanism, control and system, etc.

Beschreibung: This book presents selected issues related to switched systems, including practical examples of such systems. This book is intended for people interested in switched systems, especially researchers and engineers. Graduate and undergraduate students in the area of switched systems can find this book useful to broaden their knowledge concerning control and switching systems.

Beschreibung: A quarter century period of the 3D printing technology development affords ground for speaking about new realities or the formation of a new technological system of digital manufacture and partnership. The up-to-date 3D printing is at the top of its own overrated expectations. So the development of scalable, high-speed methods of the material 3D printing aimed to increase the productivity and operating volume of the 3D printing machines requires new original decisions. It is necessary to study the 3D printing applicability for manufacturing of the materials with multilevel hierarchical functionality on nano-, micro- and meso-scales that can find applications for medical, aerospace and/or automotive industries. Some of the above-mentioned problems and new trends are considered in this book.

Beschreibung: In this book we have grouped contributions in 28 chapters from several authors all around the world on the several aspects and challenges of research and applications of robots with the aim to show the recent advances and problems that still need to be considered for future improvements of robot success in worldwide frames. Each chapter addresses a specific area of modeling, design, and application of robots but with an eye to give an integrated view of what make a robot a unique modern system for many different uses and future potential applications. Main attention has been focused on design issues as thought challenging for improving capabilities and further possibilities of robots for new and old applications, as seen from today technologies and research programs. Thus, great attention has been addressed to control aspects that are strongly evolving also as function of the improvements in robot modeling, sensors, servo-power systems, and informatics. But even other aspects are considered as of fundamental challenge both in design and use of robots with improved performance and capabilities, like for example kinematic design, dynamics, vision integration.

Beschreibung: The main objective of this monograph is to present a broad range of well worked out, recent application studies as well as theoretical contributions in the field of sliding mode control system analysis and design. The contributions presented here include new theoretical developments as well as successful applications of variable structure controllers primarily in the field of power electronics, electric drives and motion steering systems. They enrich the current state of the art, and motivate and encourage new ideas and solutions in the sliding mode control area.

Beschreibung: Robot manipulators are developing more in the direction of industrial robots than of human workers. Recently, the applications of robot manipulators are spreading their focus, for example Da Vinci as a medical robot, ASIMO as a humanoid robot and so on. There are many research topics within the field of robot manipulators, e.g. motion planning, cooperation with a human, and fusion with external sensors like vision, haptic and force, etc. Moreover, these include both technical problems in the industry and theoretical problems in the academic fields. This book is a collection of papers presenting the latest research issues from around the world.

Beschreibung: The objective of this book is to provide an up-to-date and state-of-the-art coverage of diverse aspects related to adaptive control theory, methodologies and applications. These include various robust techniques, performance enhancement techniques, techniques with less a-priori knowledge, nonlinear adaptive control techniques and intelligent adaptive techniques. There are several themes in this book which instance both the maturity and the novelty of the general adaptive control. Each chapter is introduced by a brief preamble providing the background and objectives of subject matter. The experiment results are presented in considerable detail in order to facilitate the comprehension of the theoretical development, as well as to increase sensitivity of applications in practical problems

Beschreibung: This book consists of 18 chapters divided in four sections: Robots for Educational Purposes, Health-Care and Medical Robots, Hardware - State of the Art, and Localization and Navigation. In the first section, there are four chapters covering autonomous mobile robot Emmy III, KCLBOT - mobile nonholonomic robot, and general overview of educational mobile robots. In the second section, the following themes are covered: walking support robots, control system for wheelchairs, leg-wheel mechanism as a mobile platform, micro mobile robot for abdominal use, and the influence of the robot size in the psychological treatment. In the third section, there are chapters about I2C bus system, vertical displacement service robots, quadruped robots - kinematics and dynamics model and Epi.q (hybrid) robots. Finally, in the last section, the following topics are covered: skid-steered vehicles, robotic exploration (new place recognition), omnidirectional mobile robots, ball-wheel mobile robots, and planetary wheeled mobile robots.

Beschreibung: This book covers a wide range of topics relating to advanced industrial robotics, sensors and automation technologies. Although being highly technical and complex in nature, the papers presented in this book represent some of the latest cutting edge technologies and advancements in industrial robotics technology. This book covers topics such as networking, properties of manipulators, forward and inverse robot arm kinematics, motion path-planning, machine vision and many other practical topics too numerous to list here. The authors and editor of this book wish to inspire people, especially young ones, to get involved with robotic and mechatronic engineering technology and to develop new and exciting practical applications, perhaps using the ideas and concepts presented herein.

Beschreibung: Amongst the robotic systems, robot manipulators have proven themselves to be of increasing importance and are widely adopted to substitute for human in repetitive and/or hazardous tasks. Modern manipulators are designed complicatedly and need to do more precise, crucial and critical tasks. So, the simple traditional control methods cannot be efficient, and advanced control strategies with considering special constraints are needed to establish. In spite of the fact that groundbreaking researches have been carried out in this realm until now, there are still many novel aspects which have to be explored.

Beschreibung: Robust control has been a topic of active research in the last three decades culminating in H_2/H_\infty and \mu design methods followed by research on parametric robustness, initially motivated by Kharitonov's theorem, the extension to non-linear time delay systems, and other more recent methods. The two volumes of Recent Advances in Robust Control give a selective overview of recent theoretical developments and present selected application examples. The volumes comprise 39 contributions covering various theoretical aspects as well as different application areas. The first volume covers selected problems in the theory of robust control and its application to robotic and electromechanical systems. The second volume is dedicated to special topics in robust control and problem specific solutions. Recent Advances in Robust Control will be a valuable reference for those interested in the recent theoretical advances and for researchers working in the broad field of robotics and mechatronics.

Beschreibung: Any book which presents works about controlling distant robotics entities, namely the field of telerobotics, will propose advanced technics concerning time delay compensation, error handling, autonomous systems, secured and complex distant manipulations, etc. So does this new book, Remote and Telerobotics, which presents such state-of-the-art advanced solutions, allowing for instance to develop an open low-cost Robotics platform or to use very efficient prediction models to compensate latency. This edition is organized around eleven high-level chapters, presenting international research works coming from Japan, Korea, France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Netherlands.

Beschreibung: This book addresses several issues related to the introduction of automaton and robotics in the construction industry in a collection of 23 chapters. The chapters are grouped in 3 main sections according to the theme or the type of technology they treat. Section I is dedicated to describe and analyse the main research challenges of Robotics and Automation in Construction (RAC). The second section consists of 12 chapters and is dedicated to the technologies and new developments employed to automate processes in the construction industry. Among these we have examples of ICT technologies used for purposes such as construction visualisation systems, added value management systems, construction materials and elements tracking using multiple IDs devices. This section also deals with Sensorial Systems and software used in the construction to improve the performances of machines such as cranes, and in improving Human-Machine Interfaces (MMI). Authors adopted Mixed and Augmented Reality in the MMI to ease the construction operations. Section III is dedicated to describe case studies of RAC and comprises 8 chapters. Among the eight chapters the section presents a robotic excavator and a semi-automated façade cleaning system. The section also presents work dedicated to enhancing the force of the workers in construction through the use of Robotic-powered exoskeletons and body joint-adapted assistive units, which allow the handling of greater loads.

Beschreibung: The present edited book is a collection of 18 chapters written by internationally recognized experts and well-known professionals of the field. Chapters contribute to diverse facets of automation and control. The volume is organized in four parts according to the main subjects, regarding the recent advances in this field of engineering. The first thematic part of the book �is devoted to automation. This includes solving of assembly line balancing problem and design of software architecture for cognitive assembling in production systems. The second part of the book concerns different aspects of modelling and control. This includes a study on modelling pollutant emission of diesel engine, development of a PLC program obtained from DEVS model, control networks for digital home, automatic control of temperature and flow in heat exchanger, and non-linear analysis and design of phase locked loops. The third part addresses issues of parameter estimation and filter design, including methods for parameters estimation, control and design of the wave digital filters. The fourth part presents new results in the intelligent control. This includes building a neural PDF strategy for hydroelectric satation simulator, intelligent network system for process control, neural generalized predictive control for industrial processes, intelligent system for forecasting, diagnosis and decision making based on neural networks and self-organizing maps, development of a smart semantic middleware for the Internet , development of appropriate AI methods in fault-tollerant control, building expert system in rotary railcar dumpers, expert system for plant asset management, and building of a image retrieval system in heterogeneous database. �The content of this thematic book admirably reflects the complementary aspects of theory and practice which have taken place in the last years. Certainly, the content of this book will serve as a valuable overview of theoretical and practical methods in control and automation to those who deal with engineering and research in this field of activities.

Beschreibung: This book covers many aspects of the exciting research in mobile robotics. It deals with different aspects of the control problem, especially also under uncertainty and faults. Mechanical design issues are discussed along with new sensor and actuator concepts. Games like soccer are a good example which comprise many of the aforementioned challenges in a single comprehensive and in the same time entertaining framework. Thus, the book comprises contributions dealing with aspects of the Robotcup competition. The reader will get a feel how the problems cover virtually all engineering disciplines ranging from theoretical research to very application specific work. In addition interesting problems for physics and mathematics arises out of such research. We hope this book will be an inspiring source of knowledge and ideas, stimulating further research in this exciting field. The promises and possible benefits of such efforts are manifold, they range from new transportation systems, intelligent cars to flexible assistants in factories and construction sites, over service robot which assist and support us in daily live, all the way to the possibility for efficient help for impaired and advances in prosthetics.

Beschreibung: The aim of this book is to provide new ideas, original results and practical experiences regarding service robotics. This book provides only a small example of this research activity, but it covers a great deal of what has been done in the field recently. Furthermore, it works as a valuable resource for researchers interested in this field.

Beschreibung: United Nation Department of Human Affairs (UNDHA) assesses that there are more than 100 million mines that are scattered across the world and pose significant hazards in more than 68 countries. The international Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) estimates that the casualty rate from landmines currently exceeds 26,000 persons every year. It is estimated that more than 800 persons are killed and 1,200 maimed each month by landmines around the world. Humanitarian demining demands that all the landmines (especially AP mines) and ERW affecting the places where ordinary people live must be cleared, and their safety in areas that have been cleared must be guaranteed. Innovative solutions and technologies are required and hence this book is coming out to address and deal with the problems, difficulties, priorities, development of sensing and demining technologies and the technological and research challenges. This book reports on the state of the art research and development findings and results. The content of the book has been structured into three technical research sections with total of 16 chapters written by well recognized researchers in the field worldwide. The main topics of these three technical research sections are: Humanitarian Demining: the Technology and the Research Challenges (Chapters 1 and 2), Sensors and Detection Techniques for Humanitarian Demining (Chapters 3 to 8), and Robotics and Flexible Mechanisms for Humanitarian Demining respectively (Chapters 9 to 16).

Beschreibung: The main objective of this book is to present important challenges and paradigms in the field of applied robust control design and implementation. Book contains a broad range of well worked out, recent application studies which include but are not limited to H-infinity, sliding mode, robust PID and fault tolerant based control systems. The contributions enrich the current state of the art, and encourage new applications of robust control techniques in various engineering and non-engineering systems.

Beschreibung: Over the last few years, interest in the industrial applications of AI and learning systems has surged. This book covers the recent developments and provides a broad perspective of the key challenges that characterize the field of Industry 4.0 with a focus on applications of AI. The target audience for this book includes engineers involved in automation system design, operational planning, and decision support. Computer science practitioners and industrial automation platform developers will also benefit from the timely and accurate information provided in this work. The book is organized into two main sections comprising 12 chapters overall: •Digital Platforms and Learning Systems •Industrial Applications of AI