The theory of linear functional observers, which is the subject of this book, is increasingly becoming a popular researched topic because of the many advantages it presents in state observation and control system design. This book presents recent information on the current state of the art research in this field. This book will serve as a useful reference to researchers in this area of research to understand the fundamental concepts relevant to the theory of functional observers and to gather most recent advancements in the field. This book is useful to academics and postgraduate students researching into the theory of linear functional observers. This book can also be useful for specialized final year undergraduate courses in control systems engineering and applied mathematics with a research focus.

A Two-port Framework for Robust and Optimal Control introduces an alternative approach to robust and optimal controller synthesis procedures for linear, time-invariant systems, based on the two-port system widespread in electrical engineering. The novel use of the two-port system in this context allows straightforward engineering-oriented solution-finding procedures to be developed, requiring no mathematics beyond linear algebra. A chain-scattering description provides a unified framework for constructing the stabilizing controller set and for synthesizing H2 optimal and H∞ sub-optimal controllers. Simple yet illustrative examples explain each step.

A Two-port Framework for Robust and Optimal Control features:

· a hands-on, tutorial-style presentation giving the reader the opportunity to repeat the designs presented and easily to modify them for their own programs;

· an abundance of examples illustrating the most important steps in robust and optimal design; and

· end-of-chapter exercises.

To further demonstrate the proposed approaches, in the last chapter an application case study is presented which demonstrates the use of the framework in a real-world control system design and helps the reader quickly move on with their own challenges. MATLAB® codes used in examples throughout the book and solutions to selected exercise questions are available for download.

The text will have particular resonance for researchers in control with an electrical engineering background, who wish to avoid spending excessive time in learning complex mathematical, theoretical developments but need to know how to deal with robust and optimal control synthesis problems.

Please see [http://km.emotors.ncku.edu.tw/class/hw1.html] for solutions to the exercises provided in this book.

In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet— Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001.

Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.

Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.

While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner.

In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.

Complexity, Analysis and Control of Singular Biological Systems follows the control of real-world biological systems at both ecological and phyisological levels concentrating on the application of now-extensively-investigated singular system theory. Much effort has recently been dedicated to the modelling and analysis of developing bioeconomic systems and the text establishes singular examples of these, showing how proper control can help to maintain sustainable economic development of biological resources.
The book begins from the essentials of singular systems theory and bifurcations before tackling the use of various forms of control in singular biological systems using examples including predator-prey relationships and viral vaccination and quarantine control. Researchers and graduate students studying the control of complex biological systems are shown how a variety of methods can be brought to bear and practitioners working with the economics of biological systems and their control will also find the monograph illuminating.

Robot Motion Control 2011 presents very recent results in robot motion and control. Forty short papers have been chosen from those presented at the sixth International Workshop on Robot Motion and Control held in Poland in June 2011. The authors of these papers have been carefully selected and represent leading institutions in this field.
The following recent developments are discussed:
Design of trajectory planning schemes for holonomic and nonholonomic systems with optimization of energy, torque limitations and other factors.
New control algorithms for industrial robots, nonholonomic systems and legged robots.
Different applications of robotic systems in industry and everyday life, like medicine, education, entertainment and others.
Multiagent systems consisting of mobile and flying robots with their applications
The book is suitable for graduate students of automation and robotics, informatics and management, mechatronics, electronics and production engineering systems as well as scientists and researchers working in these fields.

The “highly entertaining” New York Times bestseller, which explains chaos theory and the butterfly effect, from the author of The Information (Chicago Tribune).

For centuries, scientific thought was focused on bringing order to the natural world. But even as relativity and quantum mechanics undermined that rigid certainty in the first half of the twentieth century, the scientific community clung to the idea that any system, no matter how complex, could be reduced to a simple pattern. In the 1960s, a small group of radical thinkers began to take that notion apart, placing new importance on the tiny experimental irregularities that scientists had long learned to ignore. Miniscule differences in data, they said, would eventually produce massive ones—and complex systems like the weather, economics, and human behavior suddenly became clearer and more beautiful than they had ever been before.In this seminal work of scientific writing, James Gleick lays out a cutting edge field of science with enough grace and precision that any reader will be able to grasp the science behind the beautiful complexity of the world around us. With more than a million copies sold, Chaos is “a groundbreaking book about what seems to be the future of physics” by a writer who has been a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, the author of Time Travel: A History and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (Publishers Weekly).

Robust Control Design with MATLAB® (second edition) helps the student to learn how to use well-developed advanced robust control design methods in practical cases. To this end, several realistic control design examples from teaching-laboratory experiments, such as a two-wheeled, self-balancing robot, to complex systems like a flexible-link manipulator are given detailed presentation. All of these exercises are conducted using MATLAB® Robust Control Toolbox 3, Control System Toolbox and Simulink®.
By sharing their experiences in industrial cases with minimum recourse to complicated theories and formulae, the authors convey essential ideas and useful insights into robust industrial control systems design using major H-infinity optimization and related methods allowing readers quickly to move on with their own challenges. The hands-on tutorial style of this text rests on an abundance of examples and features for the second edition:
• rewritten and simplified presentation of theoretical and methodological material including original coverage of linear matrix inequalities;
• new Part II forming a tutorial on Robust Control Toolbox 3;
• fresh design problems including the control of a two-rotor dynamic system; and
• end-of-chapter exercises.
Electronic supplements to the written text that can be downloaded from extras.springer.com/isbn include:
• M-files developed with MATLAB® help in understanding the essence of robust control system design portrayed in text-based examples;
• MDL-files for simulation of open- and closed-loop systems in Simulink®; and
• a solutions manual available free of charge to those adopting Robust Control Design with MATLAB® as a textbook for courses.
Robust Control Design with MATLAB® is for graduate students and practising engineers who want to learn how to deal with robust control design problems without spending a lot of time in researching complex theoretical developments.

This volume is concerned with the control and dynamics of time delay systems; a research field with at least six-decade long history that has been very active especially in the past two decades. In parallel to the new challenges emerging from engineering, physics, mathematics, and economics, the volume covers several new directions including topology induced stability, large-scale interconnected systems, roles of networks in stability, and new trends in predictor-based control and consensus dynamics. The associated applications/problems are described by highly complex models, and require solving inverse problems as well as the development of new theories, mathematical tools, numerically-tractable algorithms for real-time control. The volume, which is targeted to present these developments in this rapidly evolving field, captures a careful selection of the most recent papers contributed by experts and collected under five parts: (i) Methodology: From Retarded to Neutral Continuous Delay Models, (ii) Systems, Signals and Applications, (iii): Numerical Methods, (iv) Predictor-based Control and Compensation, and (v) Networked Control Systems and Multi-agent Systems.

In the tradition of Being Digital and The Tipping Point, Steven Johnson, acclaimed as a "cultural critic with a poet's heart" (The Village Voice), takes readers on an eye-opening journey through emergence theory and its applications.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
A VOICE LITERARY SUPPLEMENT TOP 25 FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
AN ESQUIRE MAGAZINE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Explaining why the whole is sometimes smarter than the sum of its parts, Johnson presents surprising examples of feedback, self-organization, and adaptive learning. How does a lively neighborhood evolve out of a disconnected group of shopkeepers, bartenders, and real estate developers? How does a media event take on a life of its own? How will new software programs create an intelligent World Wide Web?

In the coming years, the power of self-organization -- coupled with the connective technology of the Internet -- will usher in a revolution every bit as significant as the introduction of electricity. Provocative and engaging, Emergence puts you on the front lines of this exciting upheaval in science and thought.

Saturation nonlinearities are ubiquitous in engineering systems: every physical actuator or sensor is subject to saturation owing to its maximum and minimum limits. Input saturation is an operating condition that is well known to the control community for its “side effects”, which cause conventional controllers to lose their closed-loop performance as well as control authority in stabilization. Therefore, the practical application of control theory cannot avoid taking into account saturation nonlinearities in actuators, explicitly dealing with constraints in control design.

Sensor networks have recently come into prominence because they hold the potential to revolutionize a wide spectrum of both civilian and military applications. An ingenious characteristic of sensor networks is the distributed nature of data acquisition. Therefore they seem to be ideally prepared for the task of monitoring processes with spatio-temporal dynamics which constitute one of most general and important classes of systems in modelling of the real-world phenomena. It is clear that careful deployment and activation of sensor nodes are critical for collecting the most valuable information from the observed environment.

Optimal Sensor Network Scheduling in Identification of Distributed Parameter Systems discusses the characteristic features of the sensor scheduling problem, analyzes classical and recent approaches, and proposes a wide range of original solutions, especially dedicated for networks with mobile and scanning nodes. Both researchers and practitioners will find the case studies, the proposed algorithms, and the numerical examples to be invaluable.

The pioneering young scientist whose work on the structure of small worlds has triggered an avalanche of interest in networks. In this remarkable book, Duncan Watts, one of the principal architects of network theory, sets out to explain the innovative research that he and other scientists are spearheading to create a blueprint of our connected planet. Whether they bind computers, economies, or terrorist organizations, networks are everywhere in the real world, yet only recently have scientists attempted to explain their mysterious workings.

From epidemics of disease to outbreaks of market madness, from people searching for information to firms surviving crisis and change, from the structure of personal relationships to the technological and social choices of entire societies, Watts weaves together a network of discoveries across an array of disciplines to tell the story of an explosive new field of knowledge, the people who are building it, and his own peculiar path in forging this new science.

Saturated Switching Systems treats the problem of actuator saturation, inherent in all dynamical systems by using two approaches: positive invariance in which the controller is designed to work within a region of non-saturating linear behaviour; and saturation technique which allows saturation but guarantees asymptotic stability. The results obtained are extended from the linear systems in which they were first developed to switching systems with uncertainties, 2D switching systems, switching systems with Markovian jumping and switching systems of the Takagi-Sugeno type. The text represents a thoroughly referenced distillation of results obtained in this field during the last decade. The selected tool for analysis and design of stabilizing controllers is based on multiple Lyapunov functions and linear matrix inequalities. All the results are illustrated with numerical examples and figures many of them being modelled using MATLAB®. Saturated Switching Systems will be of interest to academic researchers in control systems and to professionals working in any of the many fields where systems are affected by saturation including: chemical and pharmaceutical batch processing, manufacturing (for example in steel rolling), air-traffic control, and the automotive and aerospace industries.

Search and Classification Using Multiple Autonomous Vehicles provides a comprehensive study of decision-making strategies for domain search and object classification using multiple autonomous vehicles (MAV) under both deterministic and probabilistic frameworks. It serves as a first discussion of the problem of effective resource allocation using MAV with sensing limitations, i.e., for search and classification missions over large-scale domains, or when there are far more objects to be found and classified than there are autonomous vehicles available. Under such scenarios, search and classification compete for limited sensing resources. This is because search requires vehicle mobility while classification restricts the vehicles to the vicinity of any objects found. The authors develop decision-making strategies to choose between these competing tasks and vehicle-motion-control laws to achieve the proposed management scheme. Deterministic Lyapunov-based, probabilistic Bayesian-based, and risk-based decision-making strategies and sensor-management schemes are created in sequence. Modeling and analysis include rigorous mathematical proofs of the proposed theorems and the practical consideration of limited sensing resources and observation costs. A survey of the well-developed coverage control problem is also provided as a foundation of search algorithms within the overall decision-making strategies. Applications in both underwater sampling and space-situational awareness are investigated in detail. The control strategies proposed in each chapter are followed by illustrative simulation results and analysis.
Academic researchers and graduate students from aerospace, robotics, mechanical or electrical engineering backgrounds interested in multi-agent coordination and control, in detection and estimation or in Bayes filtration will find this text of interest.

At once a celebration of technology and a warning about its misuse, The Glass Cage will change the way you think about the tools you use every day. In The Glass Cage, best-selling author Nicholas Carr digs behind the headlines about factory robots and self-driving cars, wearable computers and digitized medicine, as he explores the hidden costs of granting software dominion over our work and our leisure. Even as they bring ease to our lives, these programs are stealing something essential from us.

Drawing on psychological and neurological studies that underscore how tightly people’s happiness and satisfaction are tied to performing hard work in the real world, Carr reveals something we already suspect: shifting our attention to computer screens can leave us disengaged and discontented.

From nineteenth-century textile mills to the cockpits of modern jets, from the frozen hunting grounds of Inuit tribes to the sterile landscapes of GPS maps, The Glass Cage explores the impact of automation from a deeply human perspective, examining the personal as well as the economic consequences of our growing dependence on computers.

With a characteristic blend of history and philosophy, poetry and science, Carr takes us on a journey from the work and early theory of Adam Smith and Alfred North Whitehead to the latest research into human attention, memory, and happiness, culminating in a moving meditation on how we can use technology to expand the human experience.

This monograph is aiming at researchers of systems control, especially those interested in multiagent systems, distributed and decentralized control, and structured systems. The book assumes no prior background in geometric control theory; however, a first

year graduate course in linear control systems is desirable. Since not all control researchers today are exposed to geometric control theory, the book also adopts a tutorial style by way of examples that illustrate the geometric and abstract algebra concepts used in linear geometric control. In addition, the matrix calculations required for the studied control synthesis problems of linear multivariable control are illustrated via a set of running design examples. As such, some of the design examples are of higher dimension than one may typically see in a text; this is so that all the geometric features of the design problem are illuminated.

Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change, and seeks to understand the qualities of a system that must be maintained or enhanced in order to achieve sustainability. It explains why greater efficiency by itself cannot solve resource problems and offers a constructive alternative that opens up options rather than closing them down. In Resilience Thinking, scientist Brian Walker and science writer David Salt present an accessible introduction to the emerging paradigm of resilience. The book arose out of appeals from colleagues in science and industry for a plainly written account of what resilience is all about and how a resilience approach differs from current practices. Rather than complicated theory, the book offers a conceptual overview along with five case studies of resilience thinking in the real world. It is an engaging and important work for anyone interested in managing risk in a complex world.

Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) has become the accepted methodology to solve complex control problems related to process industries. The main motivation behind explicit NMPC is that an explicit state feedback law avoids the need for executing a numerical optimization algorithm in real time. The benefits of an explicit solution, in addition to the efficient on-line computations, include also verifiability of the implementation and the possibility to design embedded control systems with low software and hardware complexity.

This book considers the multi-parametric Nonlinear Programming (mp-NLP) approaches to explicit approximate NMPC of constrained nonlinear systems, developed by the authors, as well as their applications to various NMPC problem formulations and several case studies. The following types of nonlinear systems are considered, resulting in different NMPC problem formulations:

ؠ Nonlinear systems described by first-principles models and nonlinear systems described by black-box models;

- Nonlinear systems with continuous control inputs and nonlinear systems with quantized control inputs;

- Nonlinear systems without uncertainty and nonlinear systems with uncertainties (polyhedral description of uncertainty and stochastic description of uncertainty);

- Nonlinear systems, consisting of interconnected nonlinear sub-systems.

The proposed mp-NLP approaches are illustrated with applications to several case studies, which are taken from diverse areas such as automotive mechatronics, compressor control, combustion plant control, reactor control, pH maintaining system control, cart and spring system control, and diving computers.

This book is devoted to analysis and design on delta operator systems. When sampling is fast, a dynamical system will become difficult to control, which can be seen in wide real world applications. Delta operator approach is very effective to deal with fast sampling systems. Moreover, it is easy to observe and analyze the control effect with different sampling periods in delta operator systems. The framework of this book has been carefully constructed for delta operator systems to handle sliding mode control, time delays, filter design, finite frequency and networked control. These problems indeed are especially important and significant in automation and control systems design. Through the clear framework of the book, readers can easily go through the learning process on delta operator systems via a precise and comfortable learning sequence. Following this enjoyable trail, readers will come out knowing how to use delta operator approach to deal with control problems under fast sampling case. This book should be a good reference for academies, post-graduates scientists and engineers working in the field of control science and control engineering.

This is a step-by-step book that builds on your knowledge by adding to an example game over the course of each chapter. Each topic uses example code that can be compiled and tested to show how things work instead of just telling you. Complicated tasks are broken down into easy to follow steps with clear explanations of what each line of code is doing. This book is written for beginners to UnrealScript, whether this is your first experience with programming or you're coming into it from another language and would like to learn how UnrealScript uses concepts you're already familiar with. If you would like to make games with the Unreal Development Kit, this book is for you.

Control analysis and design of large nuclear reactors requires a suitable mathematical model representing the steady state and dynamic behavior of the reactor with reasonable accuracy. This task is, however, quite challenging because of several complex dynamic phenomena existing in a reactor. Quite often, the models developed would be of prohibitively large order, non-linear and of complex structure not readily amenable for control studies. Moreover, the existence of simultaneously occurring dynamic variations at different speeds makes the mathematical model susceptible to numerical ill-conditioning, inhibiting direct application of standard control techniques. This monograph introduces a technique for mathematical modeling of large nuclear reactors in the framework of multi-point kinetics, to obtain a comparatively smaller order model in standard state space form thus overcoming these difficulties. It further brings in innovative methods for controller design for systems exhibiting multi-time-scale property, with emphasis on three-time-scale systems.

Frequency Domain Criteria for Absolute Stability focuses on recently-developed methods of delay-integral-quadratic constraints to provide criteria for absolute stability of nonlinear control systems. The known or assumed properties of the system are the basis from which stability criteria are developed. Through these methods, many classical results are naturally extended, particularly to time-periodic but also to nonstationary systems. Mathematical prerequisites including Lebesgue-Stieltjes measures and integration are first explained in an informal style with technically more difficult proofs presented in separate sections that can be omitted without loss of continuity.
The results are presented in the frequency domain – the form in which they naturally tend to arise. In some cases, the frequency-domain criteria can be converted into computationally tractable linear matrix inequalities but in others, especially those with a certain geometric interpretation, inferences concerning stability can be made directly from the frequency-domain inequalities.
The book is intended for applied mathematicians and control systems theorists. It can also be of considerable use to mathematically-minded engineers working with nonlinear systems.

The SIMATIC S7-1200 PLC offers a modular design concept with similar functionality as the well-known S7-300 series. Being the follow-up generation of the SIMATIC S7-200 the controllers can be used in a versatile manner for small machines and small automation systems. Simple motion control functionalities are both an integral part of the micro PLC and an integrated PROFINET interface for programming, HMI link and CPU-CPU communication.
As part of Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) Portal, the engineering software STEP 7 Basic offers a newly developed user interface, which is matched to intuitive operation. The functionality comprises all interests concerning automation: From configuring the controllers via programming in the IEC languages LAD (ladder diagram), FBD (function block diagram) and SCL (structured control language) up to program testing.
The book presents all of the hardware components of the automation system S7-1200, as well as its configuration and parameterization. A profound introduction into STEP 7 Basic V11 illustrates the basics of programming and trouble shooting. Beginners learn the basics of automation with SIMATIC S7-1200 and advanced users of S7-200 and S7-300 receive the knowledge required to work with the new PLC.

Users of STEP 7 Professional V12 will easily get along with the descriptions based on the V11. With start of V12, the screens of the technology functions might differ slightly from the V11.

Control of Discrete-event Systems provides a survey of the most important topics in the discrete-event systems theory with particular focus on finite-state automata, Petri nets and max-plus algebra. Coverage ranges from introductory material on the basic notions and definitions of discrete-event systems to more recent results. Special attention is given to results on supervisory control, state estimation and fault diagnosis of both centralized and distributed/decentralized systems developed in the framework of the Distributed Supervisory Control of Large Plants (DISC) project. Later parts of the text are devoted to the study of congested systems though fluidization, an over approximation allowing a much more efficient study of observation and control problems of timed Petri nets. Finally, the max-plus algebraic approach to the analysis and control of choice-free systems is also considered. Control of Discrete-event Systems provides an introduction to discrete-event systems for readers that are not familiar with this class of systems, but also provides an introduction to research problems and open issues of current interest to readers already familiar with them. Most of the material in this book has been presented during a Ph.D. school held in Cagliari, Italy, in June 2011.

A revolutionary new theory showing how we can predict human behavior-from a radical genius and bestselling author

Can we scientifically predict our future? Scientists and pseudo scientists have been pursuing this mystery for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. But now, astonishing new research is revealing patterns in human behavior previously thought to be purely random. Precise, orderly, predictable patterns...

Albert Laszlo Barabasi, already the world's preeminent researcher on the science of networks, describes his work on this profound mystery in Bursts, a stunningly original investigation into human nature. His approach relies on the digital reality of our world, from mobile phones to the Internet and email, because it has turned society into a huge research laboratory. All those electronic trails of time stamped texts, voicemails, and internet searches add up to a previously unavailable massive data set of statistics that track our movements, our decisions, our lives. Analysis of these trails is offering deep insights into the rhythm of how we do everything. His finding? We work and fight and play in short flourishes of activity followed by next to nothing. The pattern isn't random, it's "bursty." Randomness does not rule our lives in the way scientists have assumed up until now.

Illustrating this revolutionary science, Barabasi artfully weaves together the story of a 16th century burst of human activity-a bloody medieval crusade launched in his homeland, Transylvania-with the modern tale of a contemporary artist hunted by the FBI through our post 9/11 surveillance society. These narratives illustrate how predicting human behavior has long been the obsession, sometimes the duty, of those in power. Barabási's astonishingly wide range of examples from seemingly unrelated areas include how dollar bills move around the U.S., the pattern everyone follows in writing email, the spread of epidemics, and even the flight patterns of albatross. In all these phenomena a virtually identical, mathematically described bursty pattern emerges.

Bursts reveals what this amazing new research is showing us about where individual spontaneity ends and predictability in human behavior begins. The way you think about your own potential to do something truly extraordinary will never be the same.

Stochastic Recursive Algorithms for Optimization presents algorithms for constrained and unconstrained optimization and for reinforcement learning. Efficient perturbation approaches form a thread unifying all the algorithms considered. Simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation and smooth fractional estimators for gradient- and Hessian-based methods are presented. These algorithms:
• are easily implemented;
• do not require an explicit system model; and
• work with real or simulated data.
Chapters on their application in service systems, vehicular traffic control and communications networks illustrate this point. The book is self-contained with necessary mathematical results placed in an appendix.
The text provides easy-to-use, off-the-shelf algorithms that are given detailed mathematical treatment so the material presented will be of significant interest to practitioners, academic researchers and graduate students alike. The breadth of applications makes the book appropriate for reader from similarly diverse backgrounds: workers in relevant areas of computer science, control engineering, management science, applied mathematics, industrial engineering and operations research will find the content of value.

Singular systems which are also referred to as descriptor systems, semi-state systems, differential- algebraic systems or generalized state-space systems have attracted much attention because of their extensive applications in the Leontief dynamic model, electrical and mechanical models, etc. This monograph presented up-to-date research developments and references on stability analysis and design of nonlinear singular systems. It investigated the problems of practical stability, strongly absolute stability, input-state stability and observer design for nonlinear singular systems and the problems of absolute stability and multi-objective control for nonlinear singularly perturbed systems by using Lyapunov stability theory, comparison principle, S-procedure and linear matrix inequality (LMI), etc.

Practical stability, being quite different from stability in the sense of Lyapunov, is a significant performance specification from an engineering point of view. The basic concepts and results on practical stability for standard state-space systems were generalized to singular systems. For Lur’e type descriptor systems (LDS) which were the feedback interconnection of a descriptor system with a static nonlinearity, strongly absolute stability was defined and Circle criterion and Popov criterion were derived. The notion of input-state stability (ISS) for nonlinear singular systems was defined based on the concept of ISS for standard state-space systems and the characteristics of singular systems. LMI-based sufficient conditions for ISS of Lur’e singular systems were proposed. Furthermore, observer design for nonlinear singular systems was studied and some observer design methods were proposed by the obtained stability results and convex optimization algorithms. Finally, absolute stability and multi-objective control of nonlinear singularly perturbed systems were considered. By Lyapunov functions, absolute stability criteria of Lur’e singularly perturbed systems were proposed and multi-objective control of T-S fuzzy singularly perturbed systems was achieved. Compared with the existing results, the obtained methods do not depend on the decomposition of the original system and can produce a determinate upper bound for the singular perturbation parameter.

Critically acclaimed science journalist, Mark Buchanan tells the fascinating story of the discovery that there is a natural structure of instability woven into the fabric of our world, which explains why catastrophes-- both natural and human-- happen.

Scientists have recently discovered a new law of nature and its footprints are virtually everywhere-- in the spread of forest fires, mass extinctions, traffic jams, earthquakes, stock-market fluctuations, the rise and fall of nations, and even trends in fashion, music and art. Wherever we look, the world is modelled on a simple template: like a steep pile of sand, it is poised on the brink of instability, with avalanches-- in events, ideas or whatever-- following a universal pattern of change. This remarkable discovery heralds what Mark Buchanan calls the new science of 'ubiquity', a science whose secret lies in the stuff of the everyday world. Combining literary flair with scientific rigour, this enthralling book documents the coming revolution by telling the story of the researchers' exploration of the law, their ingenious work and unexpected insights.

Buchanan reveals that we are witnessing the emergence of an extraordinarily powerful new field of science that will help us comprehend the bewildering and unruly rhythms that dominate our lives and may even lead to a true science of the dynamics of human culture and history.

Due to the increasing security and reliability demand of actual industrial process control systems, the study on fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control of dynamic systems has received considerable attention. Fault accommodation (FA) is one of effective methods that can be used to enhance system stability and reliability, so it has been widely and in-depth investigated and become a hot topic in recent years.

Fault detection is used to monitor whether a fault occurs, which is the first step in FA. On the basis of fault detection, fault estimation (FE) is utilized to determine online the magnitude of the fault, which is a very important step because the additional controller is designed using the fault estimate. Compared with fault detection, the design difficulties of FE would increase a lot, so research on FE and accommodation is very challenging. Although there have been advancements reported on FE and accommodation for dynamic systems, the common methods at the present stage have design difficulties, which limit applications of respective design approaches.

Therefore, the problems of FE and accommodation are needed to be further studied. This book considers the theory and technology of FE and accommodation for dynamic systems, and establishes a systemic and comprehensive framework of FE and accommodation for continuous/discrete-time systems.

Vehicles are complex systems (non-linear, multi-variable) where the abundance of embedded controllers should ensure better security. This book aims at emphasizing the interest and potential of Linear Parameter Varying methods within the framework of vehicle dynamics, e.g. proposed control-oriented model, complex enough to handle some system non linearities but still simple for control or observer design, take into account the adaptability of the vehicle's response to driving situations, to the driver request and/or to the road sollicitations, manage interactions between various actuators to optimize the dynamic behavior of vehicles.

This book results from the 32th International Summer School in Automatic that held in Grenoble, France, in September 2011, where recent methods (based on robust control and LPV technics), then applied to the control of vehicle dynamics, have been presented. After some theoretical background and a view on some recent works on LPV approaches (for modelling, analysis, control, observation and diagnosis), the main emphasis is put on road vehicles but some illustrations are concerned with railway, aerospace and underwater vehicles. The main objective of the book is to demonstrate the value of this approach for controlling the dynamic behavior of vehicles.

It presents, in a rm way, background and new results on LPV methods and their application to vehicle dynamics.

All aspects of fuel products and systems including fuel handling,quantity gauging and management functions for both commercial(civil) and military applications.

The fuel systems on board modern aircraft are multi-functional,fully integrated complex networks. They are designed to provide aproper and reliable management of fuel resources throughout allphases of operation, notwithstanding changes in altitude or speed,as well as to monitor system functionality and advise the flightcrew of any operational anomalies that may develop.

Collates together a wealth of information on fuel system designthat is currently disseminated throughout the literature.Authored by leading industry experts from Airbus and ParkerAerospace.Includes chapters on basic system functions, features andfunctions unique to military aircraft, fuel handling, fuel quantitygauging and management, fuel systems safety and fuel systems designand development.Accompanied by a companion website housing a MATLAB/SIMULINKmodel of a modern aircraft fuel system that allows the user to setup flight conditions, investigate the effects of equipment failuresand virtually fly preset missions.

Aircraft Fuel Systems provides a timely and invaluableresource for engineers, project and programme managers in theequipment supply and application communities, as well as forgraduate and postgraduate students of mechanical and aerospaceengineering. It constitutes an invaluable addition to theestablished Wiley Aerospace Series.

“Compound Control Methodology for Flight Vehicles” focuses on new control methods for flight vehicles. In this monograph, the concept of compound control is introduced. It is demonstrated that both Sliding Mode Control (SMC) and Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) have their own advantages and limitations, i.e., chattering of SMC and the observability of extended state observer (ESO), respectively. It is shown that compound control combines their advantages and improves the performance of the closed-loop systems. The book is self-contained, providing sufficient mathematical foundations for understanding the contents of each chapter. It will be of significant interest to scientists and engineers engaged in the field of flight vehicle control.

 CATIA V5 Tips and Tricks by Emmett Ross contains over 70 tips to improve your CATIA design efficiency and productivity! 
If you’ve ever thought to yourself “there has to be a better way to do this,” while using CATIA V5, then know you're probably right. There probably is a better way to complete your tasks you just don't know what it is and you don't have time to read a boring, expensive, thousand page manual on every single CATIA feature. If so, then CATIA V5 Tips and Tricks is for you. No fluff, just CATIA best practices and time savers you can put to use right away. From taming the specification tree to sketching, managing large assemblies and drawings, CATIA V5 Tips and Tricks will save you time and help you avoid common stumbling blocks. 

Advanced Topics in Control and Estimation of State-Multiplicative Noisy Systems begins with an introduction and extensive literature survey. The text proceeds to cover the field of H∞ time-delay linear systems where the issues of stability and L2−gain are presented and solved for nominal and uncertain stochastic systems, via the input-output approach. It presents solutions to the problems of state-feedback, filtering, and measurement-feedback control for these systems, for both the continuous- and the discrete-time settings. In the continuous-time domain, the problems of reduced-order and preview tracking control are also presented and solved. The second part of the monograph concerns non-linear stochastic state- multiplicative systems and covers the issues of stability, control and estimation of the systems in the H∞ sense, for both continuous-time and discrete-time cases. The book also describes special topics such as stochastic switched systems with dwell time and peak-to-peak filtering of nonlinear stochastic systems. The reader is introduced to six practical engineering- oriented examples of noisy state-multiplicative control and filtering problems for linear and nonlinear systems. The book is rounded out by a three-part appendix containing stochastic tools necessary for a proper appreciation of the text: a basic introduction to stochastic control processes, aspects of linear matrix inequality optimization, and MATLAB codes for solving the L2-gain and state-feedback control problems of stochastic switched systems with dwell-time. Advanced Topics in Control and Estimation of State-Multiplicative Noisy Systems will be of interest to engineers engaged in control systems research and development, to graduate students specializing in stochastic control theory, and to applied mathematicians interested in control problems. The reader is expected to have some acquaintance with stochastic control theory and state-space-based optimal control theory and methods for linear and nonlinear systems.

The sliding mode control paradigm has become a mature technique for the design of robust controllers for a wide class of systems including nonlinear, uncertain and time-delayed systems. This book is a collection of plenary and invited talks delivered at the 12th IEEE

International Workshop on Variable Structure System held at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India in January 2012. After the workshop, these researchers were invited to develop book chapters for this edited collection in order to reflect the latest results and open research questions in the area.

The contributed chapters have been organized by the editors to reflect the various themes of sliding mode control which are the current areas of theoretical research and applications focus; namely articulation of the fundamental underpinning theory of the sliding mode design paradigm, sliding modes for decentralized system representations, control of time-delay systems, the higher order sliding mode concept, results applicable to nonlinear and underactuated systems, sliding mode observers, discrete sliding mode control together with cutting edge research contributions in the application of the sliding mode concept to real world problems.

This book provides the reader with a clear and complete picture of the current trends in Variable Structure Systems and Sliding Mode Control Theory.

Written in cookbook style, this book offers many recipes to create objects, import and export data, create 3D solid objects. Each recipe contains step-by-step instructions followed by analysis of what was done in each task and other useful information. If you've been toying around with FreeCAD and want to have more control over your work flow then this book is for you. The reader needs to have basic knowledge of modeling.

Biomedical Applications of Control Engineering is a lucidly written textbook for graduate control engineering and biomedical engineering students as well as for medical practitioners who want to get acquainted with quantitative methods. It is based on decades of experience both in control engineering and clinical practice.

The book begins by reviewing basic concepts of system theory and the modeling process. It then goes on to discuss control engineering application areas like: Different models for the human operator,dosage and timing optimization in oral drug administration, measuring symptoms of and optimal dopaminergic therapy in Parkinson’s disease, measurement and control of blood glucose levels both naturally and by means of external controllers in diabetes, and control of depth of anaesthesia using inhalational anaesthetic agents like sevoflurane using both fuzzy and state feedback controllers.

All chapters include three types of exercises constructed to: Review the concepts discussed in the chapter, allow the reader to apply the newly acquired techniques and subject related facts on simple problems, and indicate directions for open ended theses projects.

Appendices on Optimal Control and Fuzzy Control meant as refreshers on those control engineering techniques used throughout the book are also included.

The groundbreaking follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Great Stagnation
 
The United States continues to mint more millionaires and billionaires than any country ever. Yet, since the great recession, three quarters of the jobs created here pay only marginally more than minimum wage. Why is there growth only at the top and the bottom?
 
Renowned economist and bestselling author Tyler Cowen explains that high earners are taking ever more advantage of machine intelligence and achieving ever-better results. Meanwhile, nearly every business sector relies less and less on manual labor, and that means a steady, secure life somewhere in the middle—average—is over.
 
In Average is Over, Cowen lays out how the new economy works and identifies what workers and entrepreneurs young and old must do to thrive in this radically new economic landscape.

Stock Market Modeling and Forecasting translates experience in system adaptation gained in an engineering context to the modeling of financial markets with a view to improving the capture and understanding of market dynamics. The modeling process is considered as identifying a dynamic system in which a real stock market is treated as an unknown plant and the identification model proposed is tuned by feedback of the matching error. Like a physical system, a financial market exhibits fast and slow dynamics corresponding to external (such as company value and profitability) and internal forces (such as investor sentiment and commodity prices) respectively. The framework presented here, consisting of an internal model and an adaptive filter, is successful at considering both fast and slow market dynamics. A double selection method is efficacious in identifying input factors influential in market movements, revealing them to be both frequency- and market-dependent.
The authors present work on both developed and developing markets in the shape of the US, Hong Kong, Chinese and Singaporean stock markets. Results from all these sources demonstrate the efficiency of the model framework in identifying significant influences and the quality of its predictive ability; promising results are also obtained by applying the model framework to the forecasting of major market-turning periods. Having shown that system-theoretic ideas can form the core of a novel and effective basis for stock market analysis, the book is completed by an indication of possible and likely future expansions of the research in this area.

Singular time-delay systems are very suitable to describe a lot of practical systems such as manufacturing systems, networked control systems, power systems and electrical circuits. Thus, the past two decades have witnessed a significant progress on the theory of singular time-delay systems, and many fundamental and important topics have been successfully investigated including stability analysis, stabilization, guaranteed cost control, filtering, observer design, sliding mode control and so on. The main objective of this book is to present the latest developments and references in the analysis and synthesis of singular time-delay systems with or without Markov jumping parameters in a unified framework. The materials adopted in this book are mainly based on research results of the authors. This book will be of interest to academic researchers working in singular systems, time-delay systems and Markov jump systems and to graduate students interested in systems and control theory.

Take a step by step journey through the circuitry of a pinball machine and learn the most effective troubleshooting techniques the professionals use. 

If you are new to pinball machines you can quickly learn how the pinball machine works and what to do about problems. 

 

For the experienced technicians this book provides invaluable references, test points and pinouts for effective troubleshooting.

 

This book refers to the Williams/Bally WPC System and the System 11 however, many troubleshooting techniques and principles of operation will apply for pinball machines of different systems and manufacturers.

A team of launched and coordinated Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), requires advanced technologies in sensing, communication, computing, and control to improve their intelligence and robustness towards autonomous operations. To enhance reliability, robustness, and mission capability of a team of UAVs, a system-oriented and holistic approach is desirable in which all components and subsystems are considered in terms of their roles and impact on the entire system.

This volume aims to summarize the recent progress, identify challenges and opportunities, and develop new methodologies and systems on coordinated UAV control.

A group of experts working in this area have contributed to this volume in several related aspects of autonomous control of networked UAVs. Their papers introduce new control methodologies, algorithms, and systems that

address several important issues in developing intelligent, autonomous or semi-autonomous, networked systems for the next generation of UAVs. The papers share a common focus on improved coordination of the members of the networked system to accomplish a common mission, to achieve heightened capability in system reconfiguration to compensate for lost members or connections, and to enhance robustness against terrain complications and attacks.

Switched delay systems appear in a wide field of applications including networked control systems, power systems, memristive systems. Though the large amount of ideas with respect to such systems have generated, until now, it still lacks a framework to focus on filter design and fault detection issues which are relevant to life safety and property loss. Beginning with the comprehensive coverage of the new developments in the analysis and control synthesis for switched delay systems, the monograph not only provides a systematic approach to designing the filter and detecting the fault of switched delay systems, but it also covers the model reduction issues.

Specific topics covered include:

(1) Arbitrary switching signal where delay-independent and delay-dependent conditions are presented by proposing a linearization technique.

(2) Average dwell time where a weighted Lyapunov function is come up with dealing with filter design and fault detection issues beside taking model reduction problems.

The monograph is intended for academic researchers and engineers in systems and control community who will discover of particular value in dealing with filter design and fault detection of switched system and time delay systems. In addition, it will be helpful and complementary reading for graduate students in such field.

If engineering is the art and science of technical problem solving, systems architecting happens when you don’t yet know what the problem is. The third edition of a highly respected bestseller, The Art of Systems Architecting provides in-depth coverage of the least understood part of systems design: moving from a vague concept and limited resources to a satisfactory and feasible system concept and an executable program. The book provides a practical, heuristic approach to the "art" of systems architecting. It provides methods for embracing, and then taming, the growing complexity of modern systems.

New in the Third Edition:

Five major case studies illustrating successful and unsuccessful practices Information on architecture frameworks as standards for architecture descriptions New methods for integrating business strategy and architecture and the role of architecture as the technical embodiment of strategy Integration of process guidance for organizing and managing architecture projects Updates to the rapidly changing fields of software and systems-of-systems architecture Organization of heuristics around a simple and practical process model

A Practical Heuristic Approach to the Art of Systems Architecting

Extensively rewritten to reflect the latest developments, the text explains how to create a system from scratch, presenting invention/design rules together with clear explanations of how to use them. The author supplies practical guidelines for avoiding common systematic failures while implementing new mandates. He uses a heuristics-based approach that provides an organized attack on very ill-structured engineering problems. Examining architecture as more than a set of diagrams and documents, but as a set of decisions that either drive a system to success or doom it to failure, the book provide methods for integrating business strategy with technical architectural decision making.

The tracking/rejection of periodic signals constitutes a wide field of research in the control theory and applications area. Repetitive Control has proven to be an efficient way to face this topic. However, in some applications the frequency of the reference/disturbance signal is time-varying or uncertain. This causes an important performance degradation in the standard Repetitive Control scheme. This book presents some solutions to apply Repetitive Control in varying frequency conditions without loosing steady-state performance. It also includes a complete theoretical development and experimental results in two representative systems. The presented solutions are organized in two complementary branches: varying sampling period Repetitive Control and High Order Repetitive Control. The first approach allows dealing with large range frequency variations while the second allows dealing with small range frequency variations. The book also presents applications of the described techniques to a Rota-magnet plant and to a power active filter device.

Cryptography is ubiquitous and plays a key role in ensuring data secrecy and integrity as well as in securing computer systems more broadly. Introduction to Modern Cryptography provides a rigorous yet accessible treatment of this fascinating subject.

The authors introduce the core principles of modern cryptography, with an emphasis on formal definitions, clear assumptions, and rigorous proofs of security. The book begins by focusing on private-key cryptography, including an extensive treatment of private-key encryption, message authentication codes, and hash functions. The authors also present design principles for widely used stream ciphers and block ciphers including RC4, DES, and AES, plus provide provable constructions of stream ciphers and block ciphers from lower-level primitives. The second half of the book covers public-key cryptography, beginning with a self-contained introduction to the number theory needed to understand the RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and El Gamal cryptosystems (and others), followed by a thorough treatment of several standardized public-key encryption and digital signature schemes.

Integrating a more practical perspective without sacrificing rigor, this widely anticipated Second Edition offers improved treatment of:

Stream ciphers and block ciphers, including modes of operation and design principles Authenticated encryption and secure communication sessions Hash functions, including hash-function applications and design principles Attacks on poorly implemented cryptography, including attacks on chained-CBC encryption, padding-oracle attacks, and timing attacks The random-oracle model and its application to several standardized, widely used public-key encryption and signature schemes Elliptic-curve cryptography and associated standards such as DSA/ECDSA and DHIES/ECIES

Containing updated exercises and worked examples, Introduction to Modern Cryptography, Second Edition can serve as a textbook for undergraduate- or graduate-level courses in cryptography, a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners, or a general introduction suitable for self-study.

This monograph deals with control problems of discrete-time dynamical systems, which include linear and nonlinear input/output relations. It will be of popular interest to researchers, engineers and graduate students who specialized in system theory. A new method, which produces manipulated inputs, is presented in the sense of state control and output control. This monograph provides new results and their extensions, which can also be more applicable for nonlinear dynamical systems. To present the effectiveness of the method, many numerical examples of control problems are provided as well.

This book presents a survey on recent attempts to treat classical regulator design problems in case of an uncertain dynamics. It is shown that source of the uncertainty can be twofold:

(i) The system is under the influence of an exogenous disturbance about which one has only incomplete - or none - information.

(ii) A portion of the dynamical law is unspecified - due to imperfect modeling.

Both cases are described by the state space model in a unified way

“Disturbance Attenuation for Uncertain Control Systems” presents a variety of approaches to the design problem in the presence of a (partly) unknown disturbance signal. There is a clear philosophy underlying each approach which can be characterized by either one of the following terms: Adaptive Control, Worst Case Design, Dissipation Inequalities.

The widespread use of effective prescription drugs for erectile dysfunction has helped advance societys acceptance of talking about sexual dysfunction for both men and women. As the authors elegantly describe, sexual dysfunction and attempts at treating it have been around for as long as sexuality itself. Its no surprise that history is full of myths about aphrodisiacs. Despite all the advances we have made in medicine, the myth of the aphrodisiacs is as powerful as ever. However, sexual dysfunction is very often a complex problem requiring careful, thoughtful and educated treatment. Rarely is there quick natural fix. Consumers need to do their homework before buying into the claims of companies selling natural aphrodisiacs. This book is an excellent resource for those seeking to educate themselves about the history, effectiveness, safety and future of natural aphrodisiacs. Nevertheless, the information contained within the text is also important and valuable for both sides of the patient-physician equation in the treatment of sexual dysfunction. Siobhan Hyland McGaughey, M.D. Urologist Urology Associates of central Missouri Columbia, MO 65201 The authors have expressed very clearly the various merits and demerits of natural aphrodisiac products on the market. Discussion on the future prospects of plant used as aphrodisiacs is excellent information for the phytochemists who are interested to pursue research limitations in the area of existing natural aphrodisiacs and their standardizations is consistent with the rising interest of global consumers in green environment. A special effort in creating the drawings of the natural products for enabling readers to identify the natural products is phenomenal. I recommend this book to the lovers of natural products without any hesitation. I hope that manufacturers, scholars and consumers of natural aphrodisiac products will take advantage of this document in years to come. Usha Chowdhary, Ph.D. Professor, Human Environmental Sciences Central Michigan University Mount Pleasant, MI 48859 The latest research on herbal aphrodisiacs cited by the authors is very impressive. The appropriate quotations at the beginning of each chapter are very fascinating. It is a comprehensive compendium on natural aphrodisiacs comprising their origin, myth, chemistry, pharmacology, risk and romance. Hand drawings of the plants are excellent and depict their morphological characteristics that can be helpful in identifying them. The book is actually a ready reckoner for physicians, pharmacist, or herbalists for guiding the patients who are incorporating natural products in their daily regime. K. C. Varma, Ph.D. Emeritus Professor & Chief Editor Indian Journal of Natural Products, India

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) involve deeply integrated, tightly coupled computational and physical components. These systems, spanning multiple scientific and technological domains, are highly complex and pose several fundamental challenges. They are also critically important to society’s advancement and security. The design and deployment of the adaptable, reliable CPS of tomorrow requires the development of a basic science foundation, synergistically drawing on various branches of engineering, mathematics, computer science, and domain specific knowledge.

This book brings together 19 invited papers presented at the Workshop on Control of Cyber-Physical Systems, hosted by the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University in March 2013. It highlights the central role of control theory and systems thinking in developing the theory of CPS, in addressing the challenges of cyber-trust and cyber-security, and in advancing emerging cyber-physical applications ranging from smart grids to smart buildings, cars and robotic systems.

Learn the fundamentals of PLCs and how to control them using Arduino software to create your first Arduino PLC. You will learn how to draw Ladder Logic diagrams to represent PLC designs for a wide variety of automated applications and to convert the diagrams to Arduino sketches.

A comprehensive shopping guide includes the hardware and software components you need in your tool box. You will learn to use Arduino UNO, Arduino Ethernet shield, and Arduino WiFi shield.

Building Arduino PLCs shows you how to build and test a simple Arduino UNO-based 5V DC logic level PLC with Grove Base shield by connecting simple sensors and actuators. You will also learn how to build industry-grade PLCs with the help of ArduiBox.

What You'll Learn

Build ModBus-enabled PLCs
Map Arduino PLCs into the cloud using NearBus cloud connector to control the PLC through the Internet
Use do-it-yourself light platforms such as IFTTT
Enhance your PLC by adding Relay shields for connecting heavy loads

Who This Book Is For

Engineers, designers, crafters, and makers. Basic knowledge in electronics and Arduino programming or any other programming language is recommended.

Information and Control in Networks demonstrates the way in which system dynamics and information flows intertwine as they evolve, and the central role played by information in the control of complex networked systems. It is a milestone on the road to that convergence from traditionally independent development of control theory and information theory which has emerged strongly in the last fifteen years, and is now a very active research field. In addition to efforts in control and information theory, the text is witness to strong research in such diverse fields as computer science, mathematics, and statistics. Aspects that are given specialist treatment include:

· data-rate theorems;

· computation and control over communication networks;

· decentralized stochastic control;

· Gaussian networks and Gaussian–Markov random fields; and

· routability in information networks.

Information and Control in Networks collects contributions from world-leading researchers in the area who came together for the Lund Center for Control of Complex Engineering Systems Workshop in Information and Control in Networks from 17th–19th October 2012; the workshop being the centrepiece of a five-week-long focus period on the same theme. A source of exciting cross-fertilization and new ideas for extensive future research, this volume will be of great interest to any researcher or graduate student interested in the interaction of control and information theory.

A comprehensive development of interpolating control, this monograph demonstrates the reduced computational complexity of a ground-breaking technique compared with the established model predictive control. The text deals with the regulation problem for linear, time-invariant, discrete-time uncertain dynamical systems having polyhedral state and control constraints, with and without disturbances, and under state or output feedback. For output feedback a non-minimal state-space representation is used with old inputs and outputs as state variables.

Constrained Control of Uncertain, Time-Varying, Discrete-time Systems details interpolating control in both its implicit and explicit forms. In the former at most two linear-programming or one quadratic-programming problem are solved on-line at each sampling instant to yield the value of the control variable. In the latter the control law is shown to be piecewise affine in the state, and so the state space is partitioned into polyhedral cells so that at each sampling interval the cell to which the measured state belongs must be determined. Interpolation is performed between vertex control, and a user-chosen control law in its maximal admissible set surrounding the origin.

Novel proofs of recursive feasibility and asymptotic stability of the vertex control law, and of the interpolating control law are given. Algorithms for implicit and explicit interpolating control are presented in such a way that the reader may easily realize them. Each chapter includes illustrative examples, and comparisons with model predictive control in which the disparity in computational complexity is shown to be particularly in favour of interpolating control for high-order systems, and systems with uncertainty. Furthermore, the performance of the two methods proves similar except in those cases when a solution cannot be found with model predictive control at all. The book concludes with two high dimensional examples and a benchmark robust model predictive control problem: the non-isothermal continuously-stirred-tank reactor.

For academic control researchers and students or for control engineers interested in implementing constrained control systems Constrained Control of Uncertain, Time-Varying, Discrete-time Systems will provide an attractive low-complexity control alternative for cases in which model predictive control is currently attempted.

INTRODUCTION.

The nature of the following work will be best understood by a brief account of how it came to be written. During many years I collected notes on the origin or descent of man, without any intention of publishing on the subject, but rather with the determination not to publish, as I thought that I should thus only add to the prejudices against my views. It seemed to me sufficient to indicate, in the first edition of my 'Origin of Species,' that by this work "light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history;" and this implies that man must be included with other organic beings in any general conclusion respecting his manner of appearance on this earth. Now the case wears a wholly different aspect. When a naturalist like Carl Vogt ventures to say in his address as President of the National Institution of Geneva (1869), "personne, en Europe au moins, n'ose plus soutenir la creation indépendante et de toutes pièces, des espèces," it is manifest that at least a large number of naturalists must admit that species are the modified descendants of other species; and this especially holds good with the younger and rising naturalists. The greater number accept the agency of natural selection; though some urge, whether with justice the future must decide, that I have greatly overrated its importance. Of the older and honoured chiefs in natural science, many unfortunately are still opposed to evolution in every form.

In consequence of the views now adopted by most naturalists, and which will ultimately, as in every other case, be followed by others who are not scientific, I have been led to put together my notes, so as to see how far the general conclusions arrived at in my former works were applicable to man. This seemed all the more desirable, as I had never deliberately applied these views to a species taken singly. When we confine our attention to any one form, we are deprived of the weighty arguments derived from the nature of the affinities which connect together whole groups of organisms—their geographical distribution in past and present times, and their geological succession. The homological structure, embryological development, and rudimentary organs of a species remain to be considered, whether it be man or any other animal, to which our attention may be directed; but these great classes of facts afford, as it appears to me, ample and conclusive evidence in favour of the principle of gradual evolution. The strong support derived from the other arguments should, however, always be kept before the mind.

Applied Methods and Techniques for Mechatronic Systems brings together the relevant studies in mechatronic systems with the latest research from interdisciplinary theoretical studies, computational algorithm development and exemplary applications. Readers can easily tailor the techniques in this book to accommodate their ad hoc applications. The clear structure of each paper, background - motivation - quantitative development (equations) - case studies/illustration/tutorial (curve, table, etc.) is also helpful. It is mainly aimed at graduate students, professors and academic researchers in related fields, but it will also be helpful to engineers and scientists from industry.

Lei Liu is a lecturer at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), China; Quanmin Zhu is a professor at University of the West of England, UK; Lei Cheng is an associate professor at Wuhan University of Science and Technology, China; Yongji Wang is a professor at HUST; Dongya Zhao is an associate professor at China University of Petroleum.

Finite-time stability (FTS) is a more practical concept than classical Lyapunov stability, useful for checking whether the state trajectories of a system remain within pre-specified bounds over a finite time interval. In a linear systems framework, FTS problems can be cast as convex optimization problems and solved by the use of effective off-the-shelf computational tools such as LMI solvers. Finite-time Stability and Control exploits this benefit to present the practical applications of FTS and finite-time control-theoretical results to various engineering fields. The text is divided into two parts:

· linear systems; and

· hybrid systems.

The building of practical motivating examples helps the reader to understand the methods presented.

Finite-time Stability and Control is addressed to academic researchers and to engineers working in the field of robust process control. Instructors teaching graduate courses in advanced control will also find parts of this book useful for their courses.

Containing exercises and materials that engage students at all levels, Discrete Mathematics with Ducks presents a gentle introduction for students who find the proofs and abstractions of mathematics challenging. This classroom-tested text uses discrete mathematics as the context for introducing proofwriting.

Facilitating effective and active learning, each chapter contains a mixture of discovery activities, expository text, in-class exercises, and homework problems.

Elementary exercises at the end of each expository section prompt students to review the material Try This! sections encourage students to construct fundamental components of the concepts, theorems, and proofs discussed. Sets of discovery problems and illustrative examples reinforce learning. Bonus sections can be used for take-home exams, projects, or further study Instructor Notes sections offer suggestions on how to use the material in each chapter

Discrete Mathematics with Ducks offers students a diverse introduction to the field and a solid foundation for further study in discrete mathematics and complies with SIGCSE guidelines. The book shows how combinatorics and graph theory are used in both computer science and mathematics.

This book considers a problem of block-oriented nonlinear dynamic system identification in the presence of random disturbances. This class of systems includes various interconnections of linear dynamic blocks and static nonlinear elements, e.g., Hammerstein system, Wiener system, Wiener-Hammerstein ("sandwich") system and additive NARMAX systems with feedback. Interconnecting signals are not accessible for measurement. The combined parametric-nonparametric algorithms, proposed in the book, can be selected dependently on the prior knowledge of the system and signals. Most of them are based on the decomposition of the complex system identification task into simpler local sub-problems by using non-parametric (kernel or orthogonal) regression estimation. In the parametric stage, the generalized least squares or the instrumental variables technique is commonly applied to cope with correlated excitations. Limit properties of the algorithms have been shown analytically and illustrated in simple experiments.

Powerful, Flexible Tools for a Data-Driven World
As the data deluge continues in today’s world, the need to master data mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics has never been greater. These techniques and tools provide unprecedented insights into data, enabling better decision making and forecasting, and ultimately the solution of increasingly complex problems.

Learn from the Creators of the RapidMiner Software
Written by leaders in the data mining community, including the developers of the RapidMiner software, RapidMiner: Data Mining Use Cases and Business Analytics Applications provides an in-depth introduction to the application of data mining and business analytics techniques and tools in scientific research, medicine, industry, commerce, and diverse other sectors. It presents the most powerful and flexible open source software solutions: RapidMiner and RapidAnalytics. The software and their extensions can be freely downloaded at www.RapidMiner.com.

Understand Each Stage of the Data Mining Process
The book and software tools cover all relevant steps of the data mining process, from data loading, transformation, integration, aggregation, and visualization to automated feature selection, automated parameter and process optimization, and integration with other tools, such as R packages or your IT infrastructure via web services. The book and software also extensively discuss the analysis of unstructured data, including text and image mining.

Easily Implement Analytics Approaches Using RapidMiner and RapidAnalytics
Each chapter describes an application, how to approach it with data mining methods, and how to implement it with RapidMiner and RapidAnalytics. These application-oriented chapters give you not only the necessary analytics to solve problems and tasks, but also reproducible, step-by-step descriptions of using RapidMiner and RapidAnalytics. The case studies serve as blueprints for your own data mining applications, enabling you to effectively solve similar problems.

This book demonstrates the use of the optimization techniques that are becoming essential to meet the increasing stringency and variety of requirements for automotive systems. It shows the reader how to move away from earlier approaches, based on some degree of heuristics, to the use of more and more common systematic methods. Even systematic methods can be developed and applied in a large number of forms so the text collects contributions from across the theory, methods and real-world automotive applications of optimization.

Greater fuel economy, significant reductions in permissible emissions, new drivability requirements and the generally increasing complexity of automotive systems are among the criteria that the contributing authors set themselves to meet. In many cases multiple and often conflicting requirements give rise to multi-objective constrained optimization problems which are also considered. Some of these problems fall into the domain of the traditional multi-disciplinary optimization applied to system, sub-system or component design parameters and is performed based on system models; others require applications of optimization directly to experimental systems to determine either optimal calibration or the optimal control trajectory/control law.

Optimization and Optimal Control in Automotive Systems reflects the state-of-the-art in and promotes a comprehensive approach to optimization in automotive systems by addressing its different facets, by discussing basic methods and showing practical approaches and specific applications of optimization to design and control problems for automotive systems. The book will be of interest both to academic researchers, either studying optimization or who have links with the automotive industry and to industrially-based engineers and automotive designers.