This handbook incorporates new developments in automation. It also presents a widespread and well-structured conglomeration of new emerging application areas, such as medical systems and health, transportation, security and maintenance, service, construction and retail as well as production or logistics. The handbook is not only an ideal resource for automation experts but also for people new to this expanding field.

This handbook incorporates new developments in automation. It also presents a widespread and well-structured conglomeration of new emerging application areas, such as medical systems and health, transportation, security and maintenance, service, construction and retail as well as production or logistics. The handbook is not only an ideal resource for automation experts but also for people new to this expanding field.

This handbook plays a fundamental role in sustainable progress in speech research and development. With an accessible format and with accompanying DVD-Rom, it targets three categories of readers: graduate students, professors and active researchers in academia, and engineers in industry who need to understand or implement some specific algorithms for their speech-related products. It is a superb source of application-oriented, authoritative and comprehensive information about these technologies, this work combines the established knowledge derived from research in such fast evolving disciplines as Signal Processing and Communications, Acoustics, Computer Science and Linguistics.

This book is a groundbreaking exploration of the historical and contemporary challenges in systems collaboration and integration. This exceptional book delves into engineering design, planning, control, and management, offering invaluable insights into the evolving nature of systems and networks. In an era defined by the ongoing cyber and digital transformation, coupled with artificial intelligence and machine learning, this book offers insights into the future of systems collaboration and integration. Over the past three decades, the PRISM Center and its affiliated PRISM Global Research Network (PGRN) have spearheaded pioneering theories, technologies, and applications in the realm of systems collaboration and integration. Their research, driven by the motto “Knowledge through information; Wisdom through collaboration,” has yielded remarkable advancements. Those achievements and papers presented and updated by the PGRN scholars in the 26th ICPR are included in this book.

With the science of robotics undergoing a major transformation just now, Springer’s new, authoritative handbook on the subject couldn’t have come at a better time. Having broken free from its origins in industry, robotics has been rapidly expanding into the challenging terrain of unstructured environments. Unlike other handbooks that focus on industrial applications, the Springer Handbook of Robotics incorporates these new developments. Just like all Springer Handbooks, it is utterly comprehensive, edited by internationally renowned experts, and replete with contributions from leading researchers from around the world. The handbook is an ideal resource for robotics experts but also for people new to this expanding field.

The two volume set LNAI 7101 and LNAI 7102 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, ICIRA 2011, held in Aachen, Germany, in November 2011. The 122 revised full papers presented were thoroughly reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. They are organized in topical sections on progress in indoor UAV, robotics intelligence, industrial robots, rehabilitation robotics, mechanisms and their applications, multi robot systems, robot mechanism and design, parallel kinematics, parallel kinematics machines and parallel robotics, handling and manipulation, tangibility in human-machine interaction, navigation and localization of mobile robot, a body for the brain: embodied intelligence in bio-inspired robotics, intelligent visual systems, self-optimising production systems, computational intelligence, robot control systems, human-robot interaction, manipulators and applications, stability, dynamics and interpolation, evolutionary robotics, bio-inspired robotics, and image-processing applications.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 5th IFIP WG 13.6 Working Conference on Human Work Interaction Design, HWID 2018, held in Espoo, Finland, in August 2018. The 19 revised and extended full papers presented were carefully selected for inclusion in this volume. The papers deal with the analysis and interaction design of a variety of complex work and life contexts found in different business and application domains. They focus on interaction design for work engagement taking usability of interactive systems to the next level by providing employees pleasurable and meaningful experiences via the tools used at work. The papers are organized in two sections: the first section presents cases of HWID in practice, while the second one focuses on methodological discussion.

Collaboration in highly distributed organizations of people, robots, and autonomous systems is and must be revolutionized by engineering augmentation. The aim is to augment humans’ abilities at work and, through this augmentation, improve organizations’ abilities to accomplish their missions. This book establishes the theoretical foundations and design principles of collaborative e-Work, e-Business and e-Service, their models and applications, design and implementation techniques. The fundamental premise is that without effective e-Work and e-Services, the potential of emerging activities, such as e-Commerce, virtual manufacturing, tele-robotic medicine, automated construction, smart energy grid, cyber-supported agriculture, and intelligent transportation cannot be fully materialized. Typically, workers and managers of such value networks are frustrated with complex information systems, originally designed and built to simplify and improve performance. Even if the human-computer interface for such systems is well designed, the information and task overloads can be overwhelming. Effective delivery of expected outcomes may not occur. Challenges and emerging solutions in the context of the recently developed CCT, Collaborative Control Theory, are described, with emphasis on issues of computer-supported and communication-enabled integration, coordination and augmented collaboration. Research results and analyses of engineering design methods and complex systems management techniques are explained and illustrated.

Since the time of the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing industries have accumulated a huge experience in creating different machines and systems for fabricating various goods, work parts, and products. All these diverse machines and systems, with different designs to solve pivoted economic problems, increased the productivity rate of manufacturing processes and generated high-quality products. In the area of productivity theory for industrial engineering, there are numerous publications that describe the fundamental approaches and the mathematical models of productivity rate for the different designs of industrial machines and systems. Known theories consider the physical productivity rate as the number of products fabricated over a given time (ASME) that is a component of economic productivity. However, known mathematical models are simplified with assumptions and not well developed analytically, which can lead to severe errors in computing the output of manufacturing systems. Modern industrial machines and systems are complex in design and in structure with serial, parallel, and serial-parallel arrangements, and any failure of any component leads to downtime of expensive production systems. For this reason, industries need a productivity theory that enables accurate predicting of the output of manufacturing systems at the preliminary stages. Key features Offers fundamental principles of productivity theory for industrial machines and systems based on mathematics, technology, design, reliability, probability, and management Presents the conceptual principles of productivity theory for industrial machines and systems Provides methods for computing productivity losses in real industrial environments Closes the gap between theory and practice for computing productivity rates of manufacturing systems Incudes a comparative analysis of productivity rates for manufacturing systems of serial, parallel, and serial-parallel arrangements Productivity Theory for Industrial Engineering presents analytical approaches and methods to define maximal productivity rates, optimal machining regimes, and optimal structure of manufacturing machines and systems based on the parameters of technological processes, structural design, reliability of mechanisms, and management systems. This book uses productivity theory for solving productivity problems and can also be used for complex approaches for sustainable improvement of production processes.

Food Process Engineering and Technology, Third Edition combines scientific depth with practical usefulness, creating a tool for graduate students and practicing food engineers, technologists and researchers looking for the latest information on transformation and preservation processes and process control and plant hygiene topics. This fully updated edition provides recent research and developments in the area, features sections on elements of food plant design, an introductory section on the elements of classical fluid mechanics, a section on non-thermal processes, and recent technologies, such as freeze concentration, osmotic dehydration, and active packaging that are discussed in detail. - Provides a strong emphasis on the relationship between engineering and product quality/safety - Considers cost and environmental factors - Presents a fully updated, adequate review of recent research and developments in the area - Includes a new, full chapter on elements of food plant design - Covers recent technologies, such as freeze concentration, osmotic dehydration, and active packaging that are discussed in detail