The goal of this book is to provide engineers and scientIsts in academia and industry with a thorough understanding of the underlying principles of nonlinear system identification. The reader will be able to apply the discussed models and methods to real problems with the necessary confidence and the awareness of potential difficulties that may arise in practice. This book is self-contained in the sense that it requires merely basic knowledge of matrix algebra, signals and systems, and statistics. Therefore, it also serves as an introduction to linear system identification and gives a practical overview on the major optimization methods used in engineering. The emphasis of this book is on an intuitive understanding of the subject and the practical application of the discussed techniques. It is not written in a theorem/proof style; rather the mathematics is kept to a minimum and the pursued ideas are illustrated by numerous figures, examples, and real-world applications. Fifteen years ago, nonlinear system identification was a field of several ad-hoc approaches, each applicable only to a very restricted class of systems. With the advent of neural networks, fuzzy models, and modern structure opti­ mization techniques a much wider class of systems can be handled. Although one major characteristic of nonlinear systems is that almost every nonlinear system is unique, tools have been developed that allow the use of the same ap­ proach for a broad variety of systems.

This book presents a vision of a future, where avatars play an integral role in shaping the fabric of our interconnected society. The book introduces the authors’ ongoing efforts to advance avatar technologies and is structured into nine chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the potentially revolutionary impact of cybernetic avatars (CAs) as a new medium of communication, liberating individuals from physical barriers and creating more flexible work environments. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 present developments in CAs with advanced autonomous functionality. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss the creation of a CA platform that connects multiple operators and CAs. Chapter 7 explores the physiological and neuroscientific effects of avatars and other media on operators and users. Finally, Chapters 8 and 9 discuss the societal implementation of CAs.

This book explains in detail systems and technologies for assisted and automated driving. It also provides an overview of the limitations of such systems concerning development processes and test tools. This description covers today’s advanced driver assistance systems with environment perception in passenger cars, commercial vehicles, and motorcycles. This includes functional principles as well as embodiments of the components required for this purpose, such as sensors, actuators, mechatronic subsystems, and actuating elements. Additionally, data fusion concepts, environment representations, and user-friendly designs of the human-machine interface between the assistance system and driver are presented.

The Seventh International Symposium of Robotics Research was held in Herrsching near Munich, Germany, from October 21 to 24, 1995, the first to be organized following the renewal undergone by the International Foundation of Robotics Research (IFRR) during the preceding Symposium (Hidden Valley, October 1993). A board of eighteen officers was appointed: Suguru Arimoto (Tokyo University) Ruzena Bajcsy (University of Pennsylvania) Robert Bolles (SRI International) Mike Brady (Oxford University) Paolo Dario (Pisa University, Italy) Joris De Schutter (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) Olivier Faugeras (INRIA, France) Georges Giralt (LAAS-CNRS, Fra~ce), Secretary Gerd Hirzinger (DFVLR, Germany) Hirochika Inoue (Tokyo University), President-elect Ray Jarvis (Monash University, Australia) Takeo Kanade (Carnegie Mellon University) Hirofumi Miura (Tokyo University) Richard Paul (University of Pennsylvania), President Marc Raibert (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Bernie Roth (Stanford University) Yoshiaki Shirai (Osaka University) Tsuneo Yoshikawa (Kyoto University) It was our commitment to bring together active, leading robotics researchers from academia, government, and industry, with the ambitious objective to assess the state of Advanced Robotics and to discuss future research directions.

This book consists of a collection of the high-quality research articles in the field of computer vision and robotics which are presented in the International Conference on Computer Vision and Robotics (CVR 2021), organized by BBD University Lucknow, India, during 7–8 August 2021. The book discusses applications of computer vision and robotics in the fields like medical science, defence, and smart city planning. The book presents recent works from researchers, academicians, industry, and policy makers.

Many practical control problems are dominated by characteristics such as state, input and operational constraints, alternations between different operating regimes, and the interaction of continuous-time and discrete event systems. At present no methodology is available to design controllers in a systematic manner for such systems. This book introduces a new design theory for controllers for such constrained and switching dynamical systems and leads to algorithms that systematically solve control synthesis problems. The first part is a self-contained introduction to multiparametric programming, which is the main technique used to study and compute state feedback optimal control laws. The book's main objective is to derive properties of the state feedback solution, as well as to obtain algorithms to compute it efficiently. The focus is on constrained linear systems and constrained linear hybrid systems. The applicability of the theory is demonstrated through two experimental case studies: a mechanical laboratory process and a traction control system developed jointly with the Ford Motor Company in Michigan.

The book is a compilation of selected papers from the 13th International Workshop of Advanced Manufacturing and Automation (IWAMA 2023), held in Shanghai University of Engineering Science, China on 15 - 16 October, 2023. Topics focusing on novel techniques for manufacturing and automation in Industry 4.0 are now vital factors for the maintenance and improvement of the economy of a nation and the quality of life. It will help academic researchers and engineers to implement the concept, theory and methods in Industry 4.0 which has been a hot topic. These proceedings will make valuable contributions to academic researchers, engineers in the industry for the challenges in the 4th industry revolution and smart factories.

This volume contains the Proceedings of the 4th IFToMM Symposium on Mechanism Design for Robotics, held in Udine, Italy, 11-13 September, 2018. It includes recent advances in the design of mechanisms and their robotic applications. It treats, among others, the following topics: mechanism design, mechanics of robots, parallel manipulators, actuators and their control, linkage and industrial manipulators, innovative mechanisms/robots and their applications.
This book can be used by students, researchers and engineers in the relevant areas of mechanisms, machines and robotics.

This book presents select proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Lightweight Materials and Structures (ICALMS) 2020, and discusses the triad of processing, structure, and various properties of lightweight materials. It provides a well-balanced insight into materials science and mechanics of both synthetic and natural composites.