This volume is a special Issue on "Dynamical Systems, Wave based computation and neuro inspired robots'^ based on a Course carried out at the CISM in Udine (Italy), the last week of September, 2003. From the topics treated within that Course, several new ideas were f- mulated, which led to a new kind of approach to locomotion and p- ception, grounded both on biologically inspired issues and on nonlinear dynamics. The Course was characterised by a high degree of multi disciplinarity. In fact, in order to conceive, design and build neuro inspired machines, it is necessary to deeply scan into different d- ciplines, including neuroscience. Artificial Intelligence, Biorobotics, Dynamical Systems theory and Electronics. New types of moving machines should be more closely related to the biological rules, not discarding the real implementation issues. The recipe has to include neurobiological paradigms as well as behavioral aspects from the one hand, new circuit paradigms, able of real time control of multi joint robots on the other hand. These new circuit paradigms are based on the theory of complex nonlinear dynamical systems, where aggregates of simple non linear units into ensembles of lattices, have the pr- erty that the solution set is much richer than that one shown by the single units. As a consequence, new solutions ^'emerge'\ which are often characterized by order and harmony.

This book provides a comprehensive account of stochastic filtering as a modeling tool in finance and economics. It aims to present this very important tool with a view to making it more popular among researchers in the disciplines of finance and economics. It is not intended to give a complete mathematical treatment of different stochastic filtering approaches, but rather to describe them in simple terms and illustrate their application with real historical data for problems normally encountered in these disciplines. Beyond laying out the steps to be implemented, the steps are demonstrated in the context of different market segments. Although no prior knowledge in this area is required, the reader is expected to have knowledge of probability theory as well as a general mathematical aptitude. Its simple presentation of complex algorithms required to solve modeling problems in increasingly sophisticated financial markets makes this book particularly valuable as a reference for graduate students and researchers interested in the field. Furthermore, it analyses the model estimation results in the context of the market and contrasts these with contemporary research publications. It is also suitable for use as a text for graduate level courses on stochastic modeling.

This book provides state-of-the-art scientific and engineering research findings and developments in the area of mobile robotics and associated support technologies. The book contains peer reviewed articles presented at the CLAWAR 2010 conference. Robots are no longer confined to industrial manufacturing environments. A great deal of interest is invested in the use of robots outside the factory environment. The CLAWAR conference series, established as a high profile international event, acts as a platform for dissemination of research and development findings and supports such a trend to address the current interest in mobile robotics to meet the needs of mankind in various sectors of the society. These include personal care, public health, and services in the domestic, public and industrial environments. The editors of the book have extensive research experience and publications in the area of robotics in general and in mobile robotics specifically, and their experience is reflected in editing the contents of the book.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a concept, whose meaning and perception has changed considerably over the last decades. Starting off with individual and purely theoretical research efforts in the 1950s, AI has grown into a fully developed research field of modern times and may arguably emerge as one of the most important technological advancements of mankind. Despite these rapid technological advancements, some key questions revolving around the matter of transparency, interpretability and explainability of an AI’s decision-making remain unanswered. Thus, a young research field coined with the general term Explainable AI (XAI) has emerged from increasingly strict requirements for AI to be used in safety critical or ethically sensitive domains. An important research branch of XAI is to develop methods that help to facilitate a deeper understanding for the learned knowledge of artificial neural systems. In this book, a series of scientific studies are presented that shed light on how to adopt an empirical neuroscience inspired approach to investigate a neural network’s learned representation in the same spirit as neuroscientific studies of the brain.

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Simulation and Adaptive Behavior, SAB 2010, held in Paris and Clos Lucé, France, in August 2010. The articles cover all main areas in animat research, including perception and motor control, action selection, motivation and emotion, internal models and representation, collective behavior, language evolution, evolution and learning. The authors focus on well-defined models, computer simulations or robotic models, that help to characterize and compare various organizational principles, architectures, and adaptation processes capable of inducing adaptive behavior in real animals or synthetic agents, the animats.

Bringing together over fifty contributions on all aspects of nonlinear and complex dynamics, this impressive topical collection is both a scientific and personal tribute, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, by many outstanding colleagues in the broad fields of research pursued by Prof. Manuel G Velarde. The topics selected reflect the research areas covered by the famous Instituto Pluridisciplinar at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, which he co-founded over two decades ago, and include: fluid physics and related nonlinear phenomena at interfaces and in other geometries, wetting and spreading dynamics, geophysical and astrophysical flows, and novel aspects of electronic transport in anharmonic lattices, as well as topics in neurodynamics and robotics.