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Team Cooperation in a Network of Multi-Vehicle Unmanned Systems develops a framework for modeling and control of a network of multi-agent unmanned systems in a cooperative manner and with consideration of non-ideal and practical considerations. The main focus of this book is the development of “synthesis-based” algorithms rather than on conventional “analysis-based” approaches to the team cooperation, specifically the team consensus problems. The authors provide a set of modified “design-based” consensus algorithms whose optimality is verified through introduction of performance indices.

In recent years, the performance of digital computers has been improved by the rapid development of electronics at remarkable speed. In addition, substantial research has been carried out in developing numerical analysis techniques. Nowadays, a variety of problems in the engineering and scientific fields can be solved by using not only super computers but also personal computers. After the first book titled'Boundary Element'was published by Brebbia in 1978, the boundary element method (BEM) has been recognized as a powerful numerical technique which has some advantages over the finite difference method (FDM) and finite element method (FEM). A great amount of research has been carried out on the applications of BEM to various problems. The numerical analysis of fluid mechanics and heat transfer problems plays a key role in analysing some phenomena and it has become recognized as a new research field called'Computational Fluid Dynamics'. In partic­ ular, the analysis of viscous flow including thermal convection phenomena is one of the most important problems in engineering fields. The FDM and FEM have been generally.applied to solve these problems because of non­ singularities of governing equations.

From the preface: Fluid dynamics is an excellent example of how recent advances in computational tools and techniques permit the rapid advance of basic and applied science. The development of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has opened new areas of research and has significantly supplemented information available from experimental measurements. Scientific computing is directly responsible for such recent developments as the secondary instability theory of transition to turbulence, dynamical systems analyses of routes to chaos, ideas on the geometry of turbulence, direct simulations of turbulence, three-dimensional full-aircraft flow analyses, and so on. We believe that CFD has already achieved a status in the tool-kit of fluid mechanicians equal to that of the classical scientific techniques of mathematical analysis and laboratory experiment.

The Boundary Element Method has now become a powerful tool of engineering analysis and is routinely applied for the solution of elastostatics and potential problems. More recently research has concentrated on solving a large variety of non-linear and time dependent applications and in particular the method has been developed for viscous fluid flow problems. This book presents the state of the art on the solution of viscous flow using boundary elements and discusses different current approaches which have been validated by numerical experiments.. Chapter 1 of the book presents a brief review of previous work on viscous flow simulation and in particular gives an up-to-date list of the most important BEM references in the field. Chapter 2 reviews the governing equations for general viscous flow, including compressibility. The authors present a compre­ hensive treatment of the different cases and their formulation in terms of boundary integral equations. This work has been the result of collaboration between Computational Mechanics Institute of Southampton and Massa­ chusetts Institute of Technology researchers. Chapter 3 describes the gen­ eralized formulation for unsteady viscous flow problems developed over many years at Georgia Institute of Technology. This formulation has been extensively applied to solve aer09ynamic problems.

Unlike uncertain dynamical systems in physical sciences where models for prediction are somewhat given to us by physical laws, uncertain dynamical systems in economics need statistical models. In this context, modeling and optimization surface as basic ingredients for fruitful applications. This volume concentrates on the current methodology of copulas and maximum entropy optimization.This volume contains main research presentations at the Sixth International Conference of the Thailand Econometrics Society held at the Faculty of Economics, Chiang Mai University, Thailand, during January 10-11, 2013. It consists of keynote addresses, theoretical and applied contributions. These contributions to Econometrics are somewhat centered around the theme of Copulas and Maximum Entropy Econometrics. The method of copulas is applied to a variety of economic problems where multivariate model building and correlation analysis are needed. As for the art of choosing copulas in practical problems, the principle of maximum entropy surfaces as a potential way to do so. The state-of-the-art of Maximum Entropy Econometrics is presented in the first keynote address, while the second keynote address focusses on testing stationarity in economic time series data.

Knowledge and Technology Integration in Production and Services presents novel application scenarios for balanced distributed and integrated systems based on knowledge and up-to-date technology and provides a great opportunity for discussion of concepts, models, methodologies, technological developments, case studies, new research ideas, and other results among specialists. It comprises the proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Information Technology for BALANCED AUTOMATION SYSTEMS in Manufacturing and Services (BASYS'02), which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in September 2002 in Cancun, Mexico.

“Intelligent Sensing, Instrumentation and Measurements” addresses issues towards the development of sensor nodes for wireless Sensor Networks. The fundamentals of sensors, interfacing, power supplies, configuration of sensor node, and GUI development are covered.The book will be useful for engineers and researchers in the field,especially for higher undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as practitioners working on the development of Wireless Sensor Networks or Smart Sensors.

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are metaheuristics that learn from natural collective behavior and are applied to solve optimization problems in domains such as scheduling, engineering, bioinformatics, and finance. Such applications demand acceptable solutions with high-speed execution using finite computational resources. Therefore, there have been many attempts to develop platforms for running parallel EAs using multicore machines, massively parallel cluster machines, or grid computing environments. Recent advances in general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) have opened up this possibility for parallel EAs, and this is the first book dedicated to this exciting development. The three chapters of Part I are tutorials, representing a comprehensive introduction to the approach, explaining the characteristics of the hardware used, and presenting a representative project to develop a platform for automatic parallelization of evolutionary computing (EC) on GPGPUs. The 10 chapters in Part II focus on how to consider key EC approaches in the light of this advanced computational technique, in particular addressing generic local search, tabu search, genetic algorithms, differential evolution, swarm optimization, ant colony optimization, systolic genetic search, genetic programming, and multiobjective optimization. The 6 chapters in Part III present successful results from real-world problems in data mining, bioinformatics, drug discovery, crystallography, artificial chemistries, and sudoku. Although the parallelism of EAs is suited to the single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD)-based GPU, there are many issues to be resolved in design and implementation, and a key feature of the contributions is the practical engineering advice offered. This book will be of value to researchers, practitioners,and graduate students in the areas of evolutionary computation and scientific computing.

The present stage of the human civilization is the e-society, which is build over the achievements obtained by the development of the information and communication technologies. It affects everyone, from ordinary mobile phone users to designers of high quality industrial products, and every human activity, from taking medical care to improving the state governing. The science community working in computer sciences and informatics is therefore under constant challenge; it has to solve the new appeared theoretical problem as well as to find new practical solutions. The fourth ICT Innovations Conference, held in September 2012 in Ohrid, Macedonia, was one of the several world-wide forums where academics, professionals and practitioners presented their last scientific results and development applications in the fields of high performance and parallel computing, bioinformatics, human computer interaction, security and cryptography, computer and mobile networks, neural networks, cloud computing, process verification, improving medical care, improving quality of services, web technologies, hardware implementations, cultural implication. In this book the best 37 ranked articles are presented.

In this book, internationally recognized experts in philosophy of science, computer science, and modeling and simulation are contributing to the discussion on how ontology, epistemology, and teleology will contribute to enable the next generation of intelligent modeling and simulation applications.It is well understood that a simulation can provide the technical means to display the behavior of a system over time, including following observed trends to predict future possible states, but how reliable and trustworthy are such predictions? The questions about what we can know (ontology), how we gain new knowledge (epistemology), and what we do with this knowledge (teleology) are therefore illuminated from these very different perspectives, as each experts uses a different facet to look at these challenges. The result of bringing these perspectives into one book is a challenging compendium that gives room for a spectrum of challenges: from general philosophy questions, such as can we use modeling and simulation and other computational means at all to discover new knowledge, down to computational methods to improve semantic interoperability between systems or methods addressing how to apply the recent insights of service oriented approaches to support distributed artificial intelligence.As such, this book has been compiled as an entry point to new domains for students, scholars, and practitioners and to raise the curiosity in them to learn more to fully address the topics of ontology, epistemology, and teleology from philosophical, computational, and conceptual viewpoints.

It is clear that computation is playing an increasingly prominent role in the development of mathematics, as well as in the natural and social sciences. The work of Stephen Wolfram over the last several decades has been a salient part in this phenomenon helping founding the field of Complex Systems, with many of his constructs and ideas incorporated in his book A New Kind of Science (ANKS) becoming part of the scientific discourse and general academic knowledge--from the now established Elementary Cellular Automata to the unconventional concept of mining the Computational Universe, from today's widespread Wolfram's Behavioural Classification to his principles of Irreducibility and Computational Equivalence. This volume, with a Foreword by Gregory Chaitin and an Afterword by Cris Calude, covers these and other topics related to or motivated by Wolfram's seminal ideas, reporting on research undertaken in the decade following the publication of Wolfram's NKS book. Featuring 39 authors, its 23 contributions are organized into seven parts: Mechanisms in Programs & NatureSystems Based on Numbers & Simple Programs Social and Biological Systems & Technology Fundamental Physics The Behavior of Systems & the Notion of Computation Irreducibility & Computational Equivalence Reflections and Philosophical Implications.

Products of modern artificial intelligence (AI) have mostly been formed by the views, opinions and goals of the “insiders”, i.e. people usually with engineering background who are driven by the force that can be metaphorically described as the pursuit of the craft of Hephaestus. However, since the present-day technology allows for tighter and tighter mergence of the “natural” everyday human life with machines of immense complexity, the responsible reaction of the scientific community should be based on cautious reflection of what really lies beyond AI, i.e. on the frontiers where the tumultuous ever-growing and ever-changing cloud of AI touches the rest of the world. The chapters of this boo are based on the selected subset of the presentations that were delivered by their respective authors at the conference “Beyond AI: Interdisciplinary Aspects of Artificial Intelligence” held in Pilsen in December 2011. From its very definition, the reflection of the phenomena that lie beyond AI must be inherently interdisciplinary. And so is this book: all the authors took part in a mutual transdisciplinary dialogue after explaining their views on AI not only to a narrow selection of their usual close peers with the same specialisation, but to a much broader audience of various experts from AI engineering, natural sciences, humanities and philosophy. The chapters of this book thus reflect results of such a dialogue.

Electronic Chips & Systems Design Languagesoutlines and describes the latest advances in design languages. The challenge of System on a Chip (SOC) design requires designers to work in a multi-lingual environment which is becoming increasingly difficult to master. It is therefore crucial for them to learn, almost in real time, from the experiences of their colleagues in the use of design languages and how these languages have become more advanced to cope with system design. System designers, as well as students willing to become system designers, often do not have the time to attend all scientific events where they could learn the necessary information. This book will bring them a selected digest of the best contributions and industry strength case studies. All the levels of abstraction that are relevant, from the informal user requirements down to the implementation specifications, are addressed by different contributors. The author, together with colleague authors who provide valuable additional experience, presents examples of actual industrial world applications. Furthermore the academic concepts presented in this book provide excellent theories to student readers and the concepts described are up to date and in so doing provide most suitable root information for Ph.D. postgraduates.

Intelligent agents are rescuer in the information glut. They help users to find information which better corresponds to their interests and needs. This book describes the architecture and basic modules of an intelligent media agent. A personal television guide is described as an example of intelligent help, addressing the problem of managing TV channels by using an intelligent agent. Contents: intelligent agents - software agents - programming - fuzzy logic Target groups: Computer scientists - students - software developers - multimedia and internet programmer About the Author: Hartmut Wittig is directing the corporate strategy department of'Deutsche Telekom Computer Service Management'(DeTeCSM). In the recent years, H.Wittig has directed multimedia and internet software R&D departments and groups. He gave lectures on'Multimedia Systems'in German universities and worked as Editor in Chief of IEEE Multimedia Newsletter.

This symposium was born as a research forum to present and discuss original, rigorous and significant contributions on Artificial Intelligence-based (AI) solutions—with a strong, practical logic and, preferably, with empirical applications—developed to aid the management of organizations in multiple areas, activities, processes and problem-solving; what we call Management Intelligent Systems (MiS). This volume presents the proceedings of these activities in a collection of contributions with many original approaches. They address diverse Management and Business areas of application such as decision support, segmentation of markets, CRM, product design, service personalization, organizational design, e-commerce, credit scoring, workplace integration, innovation management, business database analysis, workflow management, location of stores, etc. A wide variety of AI techniques have been applied to these areas such as multi-objective optimization and evolutionary algorithms, classification algorithms, ant algorithms, fuzzy rule-based systems, intelligent agents, Web mining, neural networks, Bayesian models, data warehousing, rough sets, etc. This volume also includes a track focused on the latest research on Intelligent Systems and Technology Enhanced Learning (iTEL), as well as its impacts for learners and institutions. It aims at bringing together researchers and developers from both the professional and the academic realms to present, discuss and debate the latest advances on intelligent systems and technology-enhanced learning The symposium was organized by the Soft Computing and Intelligent Information Systems Research Group(http://sci2s.ugr.es) of the University of Granada (Spain) and the Bioinformatics, Intelligent System and Educational Technology Research Group (http:// bisite.usal.es/) of the University of Salamanca (Spain). The present edition was held in Salamanca (Spain) on May 22–24, 2013.

In this book, the capability map, a novel general representation of the kinematic capabilities of a robot arm, is introduced. The capability map allows to determine how well regions of the workspace are reachable for the end effector in different orientations. It is a representation that can be machine processed as well as intuitively visualized for the human. The capability map and the derived algorithms are a valuable source of information for high- and low-level planning processes. The versatile applicability of the capability map is shown by examples from several distinct application domains. In human-robot interaction, a bi-manual interface for tele-operation is objectively evaluated. In low-level geometric planning, more human-like motion is planned for a humanoid robot while also reducing the computation time. And in high-level task reasoning, the suitability of a robot for a task is evaluated.

There are many invaluable books available on data mining theory and applications. However, in compiling a volume titled “DATA MINING: Foundations and Intelligent Paradigms: Volume 3: Medical, Health, Social, Biological and other Applications” we wish to introduce some of the latest developments to a broad audience of both specialists and non-specialists in this field.

Since year 2000, scientists on artificial and natural intelligences started to study chance discovery - methods for discovering events/situations that significantly affect decision making. Partially because the editors Ohsawa and Abe are teaching at schools of Engineering and of Literature with sharing the interest in chance discovery, this book reflects interdisciplinary aspects of progress:First, as an interdisciplinary melting pot of cognitive science, computational intelligence, data mining/visualization, collective intelligence, … etc, chance discovery came to reach new application domains e.g. health care, aircraft control, energy plant, management of technologies, product designs, innovations, marketing, finance etc.Second, basic technologies and sciences including sensor technologies, medical sciences, communication technologies etc. joined this field and interacted with cognitive/computational scientists in workshops on chance discovery, to obtain breakthroughs by stimulating each other. Third, “time” came to be introduced explicitly as a significant variable ruling causalities - background situations causing chances and chances causing impacts on events and actions of humans in the future. Readers may urge us to list the fourth, fifth, sixth, … but let us stop here and open this book.

Research on Agents and Multi-Agent Systems has matured during the last decade and many effective applications of this technology are now deployed. PAAMS provides an international forum to present and discuss the latest scientific developments and their effective applications, to assess the impact of the approach, and to facilitate technology transfer. PAAMS started as a local initiative, but has since grown to become THE international yearly platform to present, to discuss, and to disseminate the latest developments and the most important outcomes related to real-world applications. It provides a unique opportunity to bring multi-disciplinary experts, academics and practitioners together to exchange their experience in the development and deployment of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. PAAMS intends to bring together researchers and developers from industry and the academic world to report on the latest scientific and technical advances on the application of multi-agent systems, to discuss and debate the major issues, and to showcase the latest systems using agent based technology. It will promote a forum for discussion on how agent-based techniques, methods, and tools help system designers to accomplish the mapping between available agent technology and application needs. Other stakeholders should be rewarded with a better understanding of the potential and challenges of the agent-oriented approach. This edition of PAAMS brings together past experience, current work, and promising future trends associated with distributed computing, artificial intelligence and their application in order to provide efficient solutions to real problems. This symposium is organized by the Bioinformatics, Intelligent System and Educational Technology Research Group (http://bisite.usal.es/) of the University of Salamanca. The present edition will be held in Salamanca, Spain, from 28th to 30th March 2012.This edition of PAAMS brings together past experience, current work, and promising future trends associated with distributed computing, artificial intelligence and their application in order to provide efficient solutions to real problems. This symposium is organized by the Bioinformatics, Intelligent System and Educational Technology Research Group (http://bisite.usal.es/) of the University of Salamanca. The present edition will be held in Salamanca, Spain, from 28th to 30th March 2012.

Information technology is the enabling foundation for all of human activity at the beginning of the 21st century, and advances in this area are crucial to all of us. These advances are taking place all over the world and can only be followed and perceived when researchers from all over the world assemble, and exchange their ideas in conferences such as the one presented in this proceedings volume regarding the 26th International Symposium on Computer and Information Systems, held at the Royal Society in London on 26th to 28th September 2011.Computer and Information Sciences II contains novel advances in the state of the art covering applied research in electrical and computer engineering and computer science, across the broad area of information technology. It provides access to the main innovative activities in research across the world, and points to the results obtained recently by some of the most active teams in both Europe and Asia.

ECWAC2012 is an integrated conference devoted to Electronic Commerce, Web Application and Communication. In the this proceedings you can find the carefully reviewed scientific outcome of the second International Conference on Electronic Commerce, Web Application and Communication (ECWAC 2012) held at March 17-18,2012 in Wuhan, China, bringing together researchers from all around the world in the field.

The latest inventions in computer technology influence most of human daily activities. In the near future, there is tendency that all of aspect of human life will be dependent on computer applications. In manufacturing, robotics and automation have become vital for high quality products. In education, the model of teaching and learning is focusing more on electronic media than traditional ones. Issues related to energy savings and environment is becoming critical. Computational Science should enhance the quality of human life, not only solve their problems. Computational Science should help humans to make wise decisions by presenting choices and their possible consequences. Computational Science should help us make sense ofobservations, understand natural language, plan and reason with extensive background knowledge. Intelligence with wisdom is perhaps an ultimate goal for human-oriented science. This book is a compilation of some recent research findings in computer application and computational science. This book provides state-of-the-art accounts in Computer Control and Robotics, Computers in Education and Learning Technologies, Computer Networks and Data Communications, Data Mining and Data Engineering, Energy and Power Systems, Intelligent Systems and Autonomous Agents, Internet and Web Systems, Scientific Computing and Modeling, Signal, Image and Multimedia Processing, and Software Engineering.

ECWAC2012 is an integrated conference devoted to Electronic Commerce, Web Application and Communication. In the this proceedings you can find the carefully reviewed scientific outcome of the second International Conference on Electronic Commerce, Web Application and Communication (ECWAC 2012) held at March 17-18,2012 in Wuhan, China, bringing together researchers from all around the world in the field.

Design has now become an important research topic in engineering and architecture. Design is one of the keystones to economic competitiveness and the fundamental precursor to manufacturing. The development of computational models founded on the artificial intelligence paradigm has provided an impetus for current design research. This volume contains contributions from the Second International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Design held in June 1992 in Pittsburgh. They represent the state-of-the-art and the cutting edge of research and development in this field. They are of particular interest to researchers, developers and users of computer systems in design. This volume demonstrates both the breadth and depth of artificial intelligence in design and points the way forward for our understanding of design as a process and for the development of computer-based tools to aiddesigners.

This monograph is a self-contained, coherent presentation of the background and progress of the stability of time-delay systems. Focusing on techniques, tools, and advances in numerical methods and optimization algorithms, the authors developed material which, up until now, has been scattered in technical journals and conference proceedings. Special emphasis is placed on systems with uncertainty and stability criteria which can be computationally implemented. The second edition is major update to reflect the state of art in this field greatly expanding on the original material in addition to two new chapters on Systems of Neutral Type and an Introduction to Frequency Domain Method. Requiring only basic knowledge of linear systems and Lyapunov stability theory, Stability of Time-Delay Systems, 2nd ed is accessible to a broad audience of researchers, professional engineers, and graduate students. It may be used for self-study or as a reference; portions of the text may be used in advanced graduate courses and seminars.

eScience allows scientific research to be carried out in highly distributed environments. The complex nature of the interactions in an eScience infrastructure, which often involves a range of instruments, data, models, application, people and computational facilities, suggests there is a need for data provenance and data management (DPDM). The W3C Provenance Working Group defines the provenance of a resource as a “record that describes entities and processes involved in producing and delivering or otherwise influencing that resource”. It has been widely recognised that provenance is a critical issue to enable sharing, trust, authentication and reproducibility of eScience process. Data Provenance and Data Management in eScience identifies the gaps between DPDM foundations and their practice within eScience domains including clinical trials, bioinformatics and radio astronomy. The book covers important aspects of fundamental research in DPDM including provenance representation and querying. It also explores topics that go beyond the fundamentals including applications. This book is a unique reference for DPDM with broad appeal to anyone interested in the practical issues of DPDM in eScience domains.

Agent-centric theories, approaches and technologies are contributing to enrich interactions between users and computers. This book aims at highlighting the influence of the agency perspective in Human-Computer Interaction through a careful selection of research contributions. Split into five sections; Users as Agents, Agents and Accessibility, Agents and Interactions, Agent-centric Paradigms and Approaches, and Collective Agents, the book covers a wealth of novel, original and fully updated material, offering: To provide a coherent, in depth, and timely material on the agency perspective in HCITo offer an authoritative treatment of the subject matter presented by carefully selected authors To offer a balanced and broad coverage of the subject area, including, human, organizational, social, as well as technological concerns.ü To offer a hands-on-experience by covering representative case studies and offering essential design guidelines The book will appeal to a broad audience of researchers and professionals associated to software engineering, interface design, accessibility, as well as agent-based interaction paradigms and technology.

Computational Intelligence for Engineering Systems provides an overview and original analysis of new developments and advances in several areas of computational intelligence. Computational Intelligence have become the road-map for engineers to develop and analyze novel techniques to solve problems in basic sciences (such as physics, chemistry and biology) and engineering, environmental, life and social sciences. The contributions are written by international experts, who provide up-to-date aspects of the topics discussed and present recent, original insights into their own experience in these fields. The authors also include methods that apply to diverse fields such as manufacturing, tourism, power systems, computer science, robotics, chemistry, and biology. Topics include: Simulation and evolution of real and artificial life forms; Self-organization; Models of communication and social behaviors; Emergent collective behaviors and swarm intelligence; Adaptive, complex and biologically inspired systems; Power Systems ; Web-based Applications; Knowledge discovery; Intelligent Tutoring Systems ; Decision support Systems; Intelligent Tutoring Systems.

Knowledge can be modeled and computed using computational mathematical methods, then lead to real world conclusions. The strongly related to that Computational Analysis is a very large area with lots of applications. This monograph includes a great variety of topics of Computational Analysis. We present: probabilistic wavelet approximations, constrained abstract approximation theory, shape preserving weighted approximation, non positive approximations to definite integrals, discrete best approximation, approximation theory of general Picard singular operators including global smoothness preservation property, fractional singular operators. We also deal with non-isotropic general Picard singular multivariate operators and q-Gauss-Weierstrass singular q-integral operators. We talk about quantitative approximations by shift-invariant univariate and multivariate integral operators, nonlinear neural networks approximation, convergence with rates of positive linear operators, quantitative approximation by bounded linear operators, univariate and multivariate quantitative approximation by stochastic positive linear operators on univariate and multivariate stochastic processes. We further present right fractional calculus and give quantitative fractional Korovkin theory of positive linear operators. We also give analytical inequalities, fractional Opial inequalities, fractional identities and inequalities regarding fractional integrals. We further deal with semi group operator approximation, simultaneous Feller probabilistic approximation. We also present Fuzzy singular operator approximations. We give transfers from real to fuzzy approximation and talk about fuzzy wavelet and fuzzy neural networks approximations, fuzzy fractional calculus and fuzzy Ostrowski inequality. We talk about discrete fractional calculus, nabla discrete fractional calculus and inequalities. We study the q-inequalities, and q-fractional inequalities. We further study time scales: delta and nabla approaches, duality principle and inequalities. We introduce delta and nabla time scales fractional calculus and inequalities. We finally study convergence with rates of approximate solutions to exact solution of multivariate Dirichlet problem and multivariate heat equation, and discuss the uniqueness of solution of general evolution partial differential equation \ in multivariate time. The exposed results are expected to find applications to: applied and computational mathematics, stochastics, engineering, artificial intelligence, vision, complexity and machine learning. This monograph is suitable for graduate students and researchers.

The International Symposium on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence 2011 (DCAI 2011) is a stimulating and productive forum where the scientific community can work towards future cooperation on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence areas. This conference is the forum in which to present application of innovative techniques to complex problems. Artificial intelligence is changing our society. Its application in distributed environments, such as internet, electronic commerce, environment monitoring, mobile communications, wireless devices, distributed computing, to cite some, is continuously increasing, becoming an element of high added value with social and economic potential, both industry, life quality and research. These technologies are changing constantly as a result of the large research and technical effort being undertaken in universities, companies. The exchange of ideas between scientists and technicians from both academic and industry is essential to facilitate the development of systems that meet the demands of today's society. This edition of DCAI brings together past experience, current work and promising future trends associated with distributed computing, artificial intelligence and their application to provide efficient solutions to real problems. This symposium is organized by the Bioinformatics, Intelligent System and Educational Technology Research Group (http://bisite.usal.es/) of the University of Salamanca. The present edition has been held in Salamanca, Spain, from 6 to 8 April 2011.

Knowledge creation and technological experiences resulting from modern production life cycles are definitely the most Economical and important intellectual capitals in the current manufacturing endeavors. These are also the basis for enabling industrial competition through managing and identifying organizational and product related needs and opportunities; e. g. health care systems society needs clean environment, sustainable production life cycles needs flexible approachable design and engineering of materials whilst valuable materials are needed for renewable energies and the production of fuel cells. Integration of components, design of structures and managing knowledge inherent in engineering is a difficult and complex endeavor. A wide range of advanced technologies such as smart materials and their approaches in alternative energy have to be invoked in providing assistance for knowledge requirements ranging from acquisition, modeling, (re)using, retrieving, sharing, publishing and maintaining of knowledge. Integration, Design and management with regards to knowledge management originates at least on three roots.

Contemporary design in engineering and industry relies heavily on computer simulation and efficient algorithms to reduce the cost and to maximize the performance and sustainability as well as profits and energy efficiency. Solving an optimization problem correctly and efficiently requires not only the right choice of optimization algorithms and simulation methods, but also the proper implementation and insight into the problem of interest. This book consists of ten self-contained, detailed case studies of real-world optimization problems, selected from a wide range of applications and contributed from worldwide experts who are working in these exciting areas. Optimization topics and applications include gas and water supply networks, oil field production optimization, microwave engineering, aerodynamic shape design, environmental emergence modelling, structural engineering, waveform design for radar and communication systems, parameter estimation in laser experiment and measurement, engineering materials and network scheduling. These case studies have been solved using a wide range of optimization techniques, including particle swarm optimization, genetic algorithms, artificial bee colony, harmony search, adaptive error control, derivative-free pattern search, surrogate-based optimization, variable-fidelity modelling, as well as various other methods and approaches. This book is a practical guide to help graduates and researchers to carry out optimization for real-world applications. More advanced readers will also find it a helpful reference and aide memoire.

Speech Processing and Soft Computing includes coverage of synergy between speech technology and bio-inspired soft computing methods. Through practical cases, the author explores, dissects and examines how soft computing may complement conventional techniques in speech enhancement and speech recognition in order to provide robust systems. The material is especially useful to graduate students and experienced researchers who are interested in expanding their horizons and investigating new research directions through review of the theoretical and practical settings of soft computing methods in very recent speech applications.

Hybrid Optimization focuses on the application of artificial intelligence and operations research techniques to constraint programming for solving combinatorial optimization problems. This book covers the most relevant topics investigated in the last ten years by leading experts in the field, and speculates about future directions for research. This book includes contributions by experts from different but related areas of research including constraint programming, decision theory, operations research, SAT, artificial intelligence, as well as others. These diverse perspectives are actively combined and contrasted in order to evaluate their relative advantages. This volume presents techniques for hybrid modeling, integrated solving strategies including global constraints, decomposition techniques, use of relaxations, and search strategies including tree search local search and metaheuristics. Various applications of the techniques presented as well as supplementary computational tools are also discussed.

The design of formal calculi in which fundamental concepts underlying interactive systems can be described and studied has been a central theme of theoretical computer science in recent decades, while membrane computing, a rule-based formalism inspired by biological cells, is a more recent field that belongs to the general area of natural computing. This is the first book to establish a link between these two research directions while treating mobility as the central topic. In the first chapter the authors offer a formal description of mobility in process calculi, noting the entities that move: links (π-calculus), ambients (ambient calculi) and branes (brane calculi). In the second chapter they study mobility in the framework of natural computing. The authors define several systems of mobile membranes in which the movement inside a spatial structure is provided by rules inspired by endocytosis and exocytosis. They study their computational power in comparison with the classical notion of Turing computability and their efficiency in algorithmically solving hard problems in polynomial time. The final chapter deals with encodings, establishing links between process calculi and membrane computing so that researchers can share techniques between these fields.The book is suitable for computer scientists working in concurrency and in biologically inspired formalisms, and also for mathematically inclined scientists interested in formalizing moving agents and biological phenomena. The text is supported with examples and exercises, so it can also be used for courses on these topics.

Turbulent combustion sits at the interface of two important nonlinear, multiscale phenomena: chemistry and turbulence. Its study is extremely timely in view of the need to develop new combustion technologies in order to address challenges associated with climate change, energy source uncertainty, and air pollution. Despite the fact that modeling of turbulent combustion is a subject that has been researched for a number of years, its complexity implies that key issues are still eluding, and a theoretical description that is accurate enough to make turbulent combustion models rigorous and quantitative for industrial use is still lacking. In this book, prominent experts review most of the available approaches in modeling turbulent combustion, with particular focus on the exploding increase in computational resources that has allowed the simulation of increasingly detailed phenomena. The relevant algorithms are presented, the theoretical methods are explained, and various application examples are given. The book is intended for a relatively broad audience, including seasoned researchers and graduate students in engineering, applied mathematics and computational science, engine designers and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) practitioners, scientists at funding agencies, and anyone wishing to understand the state-of-the-art and the future directions of this scientifically challenging and practically important field.

Another Calculus book? As long as students find calculus scary, the failure rate in mathematics is higher than in all other subjects, and as long as most people mistakenly believe that only geniuses can learn and understand mathematics, there will always be room for a new book of Calculus. We call it Calculus Light.This book is designed for a one semester course in'light'calculus – mostly single variable, meant to be used by undergraduate students without a wide mathematical background and who do not major in mathematics but study subjects such as engineering, biology or management information systems. The first chapter contains a historical background of calculus. Every scientific achievement involves people and therefore characterized by victories and disappointments, intrigues and hope. All of these elements exist in the story behind calculus and when you add the time dimension, starting 2400 years ago, it is a saga. We hope the reader enjoys reading this chapter as much as we enjoyed the writing.In addition to classic calculus the book provides tools for practical applications such as Fourier series, Lagrange multipliers and elementary numerical methods.

The Atlantic Web Intelligence Conference brings together scientists, engineers, computer users, and students to exchange and share their experiences, new ideas, and research results about all aspects (theory, applications and tools) of intelligent methods applied to Web based systems, and to discuss the practical challenges encountered and the solutions adopted. Previous AWIC events were held in Spain – 2003, Mexico – 2004, Poland – 2005, Israel – 2006, France – 2007 and Czech Rep. – 2009.The present 7th Atlantic Web Intelligence Conference (AWIC'2011) was held during January 26-28, 2011, at the University of Applied Sciences of Fribourg, Switzerland. AWIC2011 is organized by the Multimedia Information System Group (MISG), Institute of the Technologies of Information and Communication (iTIC) of the University of Applied Sciences of Fribourg.

From nature, we observe swarming behavior in the form of ant colonies, bird flocking, animal herding, honey bees, swarming of bacteria, and many more. It is only in recent years that researchers have taken notice of such natural swarming systems as culmination of some form of innate collective intelligence, albeit swarm intelligence (SI) - a metaphor that inspires a myriad of computational problem-solving techniques. In computational intelligence, swarm-like algorithms have been successfully applied to solve many real-world problems in engineering and sciences. This handbook volume serves as a useful foundational as well as consolidatory state-of-art collection of articles in the field from various researchers around the globe. It has a rich collection of contributions pertaining to the theoretical and empirical study of single and multi-objective variants of swarm intelligence based algorithms like particle swarm optimization (PSO), ant colony optimization (ACO), bacterial foraging optimization algorithm (BFOA), honey bee social foraging algorithms, and harmony search (HS). With chapters describing various applications of SI techniques in real-world engineering problems, this handbook can be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners, giving an in-depth flavor of what SI is capable of achieving.

Emotion pervades human life in general, and human communication in particular, and this sets information technology a challenge. Traditionally, IT has focused on allowing people to accomplish practical tasks efficiently, setting emotion to one side. That was acceptable when technology was a small part of life, but as technology and life become increasingly interwoven we can no longer ask people to suspend their emotional nature and habits when they interact with technology. The European Commission funded a series of related research projects on emotion and computing, culminating in the HUMAINE project which brought together leading academic researchers from the many related disciplines. This book grew out of that project, and its chapters are arranged according to its working areas: theories and models; signals to signs; data and databases; emotion in interaction; emotion in cognition and action; persuasion and communication; usability; and ethics and good practice. The fundamental aim of the book is to offer researchers an overview of the related areas, sufficient for them to do credible work on affective or emotion-oriented computing. The book serves as an academically sound introduction to the range of disciplines involved – technical, empirical and conceptual – and will be of value to researchers in the areas of artificial intelligence, psychology, cognition and user—machine interaction.

Our homes anticipate when we want to wake up. Our computers predict what music we want to buy. Our cars adapt to the way we drive. In today's world, even washing machines, rice cookers and toys have the capability of autonomous decision-making. As we grow accustomed to computing power embedded in our surroundings, it becomes clear that these ‘smart environments', with a number of devices controlled by a coordinating system capable of ‘ambient intelligence', will play an ever larger role in our lives. This handbook provides readers with comprehensive, up-to-date coverage in what is a key technological field.. Systematically dealing with each aspect of ambient intelligence and smart environments, the text covers everything, from visual information capture and human/computer interaction to multi-agent systems, network use of sensor data, and building more rationality into artificial systems. The book also details a wide range of applications, examines case studies of recent major projects from around the world, and analyzes both the likely impact of the technology on our lives, and its ethical implications.With a wide variety of separate disciplines all conducting research relevant to this field, this handbook encourages collaboration between disparate researchers by setting out the fundamental concepts from each area that are relevant to ambient intelligence and smart environments, providing a fertile soil in which ground-breaking new work candevelop.

Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Networked Manufacturing Enterprises Management addresses prominent concepts and applications of AI technologies in the management of networked manufacturing enterprises. The aim of this book is to align latest practices, innovation and case studies with academic frameworks and theories, where AI techniques are used efficiently for networked manufacturing enterprises. More specifically, it includes the latest research results and projects at different levels addressing quick-response system, theoretical performance analysis, performance and capability demonstration. The role of emerging AI technologies in the modelling, evaluation and optimisation of networked enterprises'activities at different decision levels is also covered. Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Networked Manufacturing Enterprises Management is a valuable guide for postgraduates and researchers in industrial engineering, computer science, automation and operations research.

In recent years, discretization methods have been proposed which are more flexible and which have the potential of capturing (moving) discontinuities in a robust and efficient manner. This monograph assembles contributions of leading experts with the most recent developments in this rapidly evolving field. It provides the most comprehensive coverage of state-of-the art numerical methods for treating discontinuities in mechanics.

Das Buch „Intelligente Verfahren'führt anschaulich und verständlich in das Gebiet der intelligenten Verfahren ein. In geschlossenen Darstellungen zeigt das Buch zuerst die theoretischen Grundlagen und anschließend praktische Beispiele, wobei bei den Beispielen auch fehlerhafte Ansätze gezeigt werden. Nach einer kurzen Übersicht werden im zweiten, einführenden Kapitel die Einschränkungen behandelt, die bereits bei relativ einfachen Systemen zu beachten sind, wenn ein lineares System vorausgesetzt wird. Es wird weiterhin gezeigt, dass praktisch alle Systeme nicht- linear sind und damit die Basis für die kommenden Kapitel gelegt. In vielen Anwendungsfällen, in denen die Nichtlinearitäten separiert werden können. Die Abbildung solcher Nichtlinearitäten durch Funktionsapproximatoren wird mit Beispielen im dritten Kapitel abgehandelt. Das vierte Kapitel stellt die grundlegenden Lernverfahren wie der Gradientenabstieg vor, und im fünften Kapitel wird das erste intelligente Verfahren, der lernfähige, nichtlineare Beobachter entwickelt, wobei angenommen wird, dass nur die Nichtlinearitäten wie Reibung und Lose unbekannt sind und deshalb gelernt werden müssen. Im sechsten Kapitel werden die Voraussetzungen der Vorkenntnisse verringert, denn nun ist nur noch die regelungs- technische Struktur des nichtlinearen Systems bekannt. Kapitel sieben und acht stellt allgemein die Identifikationsstrukturen sowie die Vor- und Nachteile bei linearen und nicht- linearen Systemen dar. In Kapitel neun werden Identifikationsverfahren für dynamische Nichtlinearitäten vorgestellt. Im zehnten Kapitel erfolgt eine umfassende und kritische Darstellung der höherwertigen Lernverfahren. Es wird außerdem ein intelligentes Verfahren vorgestellt bei dem Vorwissen eingebracht werden kann. In einem weiteren Kapitel werden die globalen Optimierungsverfahren vorgestellt. Nachdem in den bisherigen Kapiteln die Identifikation nichtlinearer Systeme der Schwerpunkt war, folgen nun, beginnend mit Kapitel elf, die Regelungsverfahren bei nichtlinearen Systemen, wobei auch Randgebiete wie die Bedeutung der Nulldynamik ausführlich vorgestellt werden. Kapitel dreizehn behandelt u.a. Regelungsverfahren bei denen das nichtlineare System gestört ist bzw. sich in der Struktur oder/ und den Parametern sprungförmig ändert. Kapitel vierzehn erweitert den Aspekt des vorherigen Kapitels auf stochastische Prozesse. In Kapitel fünfzehn werden Regelungsverfahren für nichtlineare, unbekannte Systeme erarbeitet, die außerdem unbekannt gestört sind. Diese Verfahren nützen einen entscheidend veränderten High-Gain-Ansatz. Kapitel sechszehn stellt die Fuzzy-Logik vor. Die Verfahren können bei allen nichtlinearen Systemen angewendet werden und wurden bereits äußerst erfolgreich in der Medizin, in der Robotik, in der Getriebesteuerung von Hybridfahrzeugen etc. eingesetzt.

Intelligent Decision Technologies (IDT) seeks an interchange of research on intelligent systems and intelligent technologies which enhance or improve decision making in industry, government and academia. The focus is interdisciplinary in nature, and includes research on all aspects of intelligent decision technologies, from fundamental development to the applied system. This volume represents leading research from the Second KES International Symposium on Intelligent Decision Technologies (KES IDT'10), hosted and organized by the Sellinger School of Business and Management, Loyola University Maryland, USA, in conjunction with KES International. The symposium was concerned with theory, design development, implementation, testing and evaluation of intelligent decision systems. Topics include decision making theory, intelligent agents, fuzzy logic, multi-agent systems, Bayesian networks, optimization, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, expert systems, decision support systems, geographic information systems, case-based reasoning, time series, knowledge management systems, Kansei communication, rough sets, spatial decision analysis, and multi-criteria decision analysis. These technologies have the potential to revolutionize decision making in many areas of management, healthcare, international business, finance, accounting, marketing, military applications, ecommerce, network management, crisis response, building design, information retrieval, and disaster recovery.

This volume presents a collection of recent studies covering the spectrum of computational intelligence applications with emphasis on their application to challenging real-world problems. Topics covered include: Intelligent agent-based algorithms, Hybrid intelligent systems, Cognitive and evolutionary robotics, Knowledge-Based Engineering, fuzzy sets and systems, Bioinformatics and Bioengineering, Computational finance and Computational economics, Data mining, Machine learning, and Expert systems.'Computational Intelligence in Optimization'is a comprehensive reference for researchers, practitioners and advanced-level students interested in both the theory and practice of using computational intelligence in real-world applications.

Admittedly, the notion “intelligence or intelligent computing” has been around us for several decades, implicitly indicating any non-conventional methods of solving complex system problems such as expert systems and intelligent control techniques that mimic human skill and replace human operators for automation. Various kinds of intelligent methods have been suggested, phenomenological or ontological, and we have been witnessing quite successful applications. On the other hand, “Soft Computing Techniques” is the concept coined by Lot? Zadeh, referring to “a set of approaches of computing which parallels the remarkable ability of the human mind to reason and learn in an environment of uncertainty, imprecision and partial truth. ” Such a notion is well contrasted with the conventionalbinary logic based hard c- puting and has been effectively utilized with the guiding principle of “exploiting the tolerance for uncertainty,imprecision and partial truth to achieve tractability, - bustness and low solution cost. ” The soft computing techniques are often employed as the technical entities in a tool box with tools being FL, ANN, Rough Set, GA etc. Based on one's intuition and experience, an engineer can build and realize hum- like systems by smartly mixing proper technical tools effectivelyand ef?ciently in a wide range of?elds. For some time, the soft computing techniques are also referred to as intelligent computing tools.

Robust Nano-Computing focuses on various issues of robust nano-computing, defect-tolerance design for nano-technology at different design abstraction levels. It addresses both redundancy- and configuration-based methods as well as fault detecting techniques through the development of accurate computation models and tools. The contents present an insightful view of the ongoing researches on nano-electronic devices, circuits, architectures, and design methods, as well as provide promising directions for future research.

Petri Nets were introduced and still successfully used to analyze and model discrete event systems especially in engineering and computer sciences such as in automatic control. Recently this discrete Petri Nets formalism was successfully extended to continuous and hybrid systems. This monograph presents a well written and clearly organized introduction in the standard methods of Petri Nets with the aim to reach an accurate understanding of continuous and hybrid Petri Nets, while preserving the consistency of basic concepts throughout the book. The book is a monograph as well as a didactic tool which is easy to understand due to many simple solved examples and detailed figures. In its second completely reworked edition various sections, concepts and recently developed algorithms are added as well as additional examples/exercises.