In the early nineties, a visionary special-effects guru named Marc Thorpe conjured a field of dreams different from any the world had seen before: It would be framed by unbreakable plastic instead of cornstalks; populated not by ghostly ballplayers but by remote-controlled robots, armed to the steely teeth, fighting in a booby-trapped ring. If you built it, they'd come all right.... In Gearheads, Newsweek technology correspondent Brad Stone examines the history of robotic sports, from their cultish early years at universities and sci-fi conventions to today's televised extravaganzas -- and the turmoil that threatened the whole enterprise almost from the beginning. By turns a lively historical narrative, a legal thriller, and an exploration of a cultural and technological phenomenon, Gearheads is a funny and fascinating look at the sport of the future today.

This book provides an introduction to the state of the art in financial technology (FinTech) and the current applications of FinTech in digital banking. It is a comprehensive guide to the various technologies, products, processes, and business models integral to the FinTech environment. Covering key definitions and characteristics, models and best practice, as well as presenting relevant case studies related to FinTech and e-Business, this book helps build a theoretical framework for future discussion.

This collection of short stories will take you on a rollercoaster ride oscillating between daring adventures to laugh-out-loud mishaps. Each story is a delightful glimpse into the mind of our 10 year old author. You encourage her creative journey, proving to all young minds that age is no barrier in crafting “captivating tales.

In light of current developments in modelling, and with the aim of reinvigorating debates around the potentiality of the architectural model – its philosophies, technologies and futures – this issue of AD examines how the model has developed to become an immersive worldbuilding machine. Worldbuilding is the creation of imaginary worlds through forms of cultural production. Although this discourse began with an analysis of imaginary places constructed in works of literature, it has evolved to encompass worlds from fields such as cinema, games, design, landscape, urbanism and architecture. Worldbuilding differs from the notion of worldmaking, which deals with how speculative thinking can influence the construction of the phenomenal world. As architects postulate ever-increasingly complex world models from which to draw inspiration and inform their practice, questions of scale, representation and collaboration emerge. Discussed through a range of articles from acclaimed international contributors in the fields of both architecture and media studies, this issue explores how the architectural model is situated between concepts of worldbuilding and worldmaking – in the creative space of worldmodelling. Contributors: Kathy Battista, Thea Brejzek and Lawrence Wallen, Pascal Bronner and Thomas Hillier, Mark Cousins, James A Craig and Matt Ozga-Lawn, Kate Davies, Ryan Dillon, Christian Hubert, Chad Randl, Theodore Spyropoulos, and Mark JP Wolf. Featured architects: Phil Ayres, FleaFolly Architects, Minimaforms, and Stasus.

Introduces a revolutionary, quadratic-programming based approach to solving long-standing problems in motion planning and control of redundant manipulators This book describes a novel quadratic programming approach to solving redundancy resolutions problems with redundant manipulators. Known as ``QP-unified motion planning and control of redundant manipulators'' theory, it systematically solves difficult optimization problems of inequality-constrained motion planning and control of redundant manipulators that have plagued robotics engineers and systems designers for more than a quarter century. An example of redundancy resolution could involve a robotic limb with six joints, or degrees of freedom (DOFs), with which to position an object. As only five numbers are required to specify the position and orientation of the object, the robot can move with one remaining DOF through practically infinite poses while performing a specified task. In this case redundancy resolution refers to the process of choosing an optimal pose from among that infinite set. A critical issue in robotic systems control, the redundancy resolution problem has been widely studied for decades, and numerous solutions have been proposed. This book investigates various approaches to motion planning and control of redundant robot manipulators and describes the most successful strategy thus far developed for resolving redundancy resolution problems. Provides a fully connected, systematic, methodological, consecutive, and easy approach to solving redundancy resolution problems Describes a new approach to the time-varying Jacobian matrix pseudoinversion, applied to the redundant-manipulator kinematic control Introduces The QP-based unification of robots' redundancy resolution Illustrates the effectiveness of the methods presented using a large number of computer simulation results based on PUMA560, PA10, and planar robot manipulators Provides technical details for all schemes and solvers presented, for readers to adopt and customize them for specific industrial applications Robot Manipulator Redundancy Resolution is must-reading for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of robotics, mechatronics, mechanical engineering, tracking control, neural dynamics/neural networks, numerical algorithms, computation and optimization, simulation and modelling, analog, and digital circuits. It is also a valuable working resource for practicing robotics engineers and systems designers and industrial researchers.

Issues in Robotics and Automation / 2011 Edition is a ScholarlyEditions™ eBook that delivers timely, authoritative, and comprehensive information about Robotics and Automation. The editors have built Issues in Robotics and Automation: 2011 Edition on the vast information databases of ScholarlyNews.™ You can expect the information about Robotics and Automation in this eBook to be deeper than what you can access anywhere else, as well as consistently reliable, authoritative, informed, and relevant. The content of Issues in Robotics and Automation: 2011 Edition has been produced by the world’s leading scientists, engineers, analysts, research institutions, and companies. All of the content is from peer-reviewed sources, and all of it is written, assembled, and edited by the editors at ScholarlyEditions™ and available exclusively from us. You now have a source you can cite with authority, confidence, and credibility. More information is available at http://www.ScholarlyEditions.com/.