Product Description: Imagine a mechanism that would end all wars and bloodshed. A machine that can create a virtual world where conflicts seem to be fought, but no one dies. Dr. Leo's Dueling Machine is just that. But when a warrior from the Kerak Empire finds a way to circumvent the machine, actually killing his opponents, the results are devastating...read more

Product Description: N. R. Russell’s GOSPEL combines the four New Testament Gospels into a single easy-to-read narrative of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Why read GOSPEL? Why not just read the Bible? Unlike the Bible, GOSPEL is written entirely in chronological order...read more

Sera was devastated when Kier Sutherlands became more interested in his career than their wedding plans. Convinced he didn't love her any more, Sera knew she had to let Kier go... Trying to forget him, Sera became engaged to another man: Keir's greatest rival! So she was thrown into turmoil when Keir returned and seemed determined to marry her after all!

Reliable terminology is a vital prerequisite for efficient, unambiguous communication in international business. This technical dictionary is a result of terminological work carried out in the Translation Department of Siemens AG in Erlangen and covers the field of power engineering, electrical installation and the rapidly expanding field of automation.

Product Description: This volume contains revised and extended research articles written by prominent researchers participating in the conference. Topics covered include engineering physics, communications systems, control theory, automation, engineering mathematics, scientific computing, industrial engineering, and industrial applications...read more

Product Description: This book examines the unique challenges presented by underwater environments when designing autonomous robots. It presents new solutions like multi-agent systems and autonomy frameworks and includes several useful case studies.

Product Description: There are many methods of stable controller design for nonlinear systems. In seeking to go beyond the minimum requirement of stability, Adaptive Dynamic Programming in Discrete Time approaches the challenging topic of optimal control for nonlinear systems using the tools of  adaptive dynamic programming (ADP)...read more

From the preface: "The designer plays a key role in the development and rationalisation of the assembly process. If designs are not efficient from the point of view of assembly, improvements in the assembly process will have very limited results. This book is perceived as an introduction to the assembly process and the principles of design for efficient assembly, with an emphasis towards automation. The revised and extended edition is the result of collaboration between the original authors and Ken Swift, and arose out of the desire to include in the book important new material on assemblibility evaluation, computer-based design, design for flexability and CIM. These additions will enable the designer and manufacturing engineer to explore new possibilities for achieving product rationalisation and economic assembly and manufacture."

This slim supplement can serve as a course component in a variety of efforts to revise the Freshman Year Experience in a large number of Engineering departments and Schools of Engineering (particularly those schools involved in NSF-funded undergraduate curriculum reform, such as Texas A&M and Arizona State). The book is currently being used at UMass by Electrical Engineers, Mechanical Engineers, Civil Engineers, and Chemical Engineers.

A self-deprecating divorce lawyer with a yen for happy endings, D.T. Jones takes on as clients three women--Mareth Stone, Lucinda Flinders, and Esther Preston--each of whom has a seemingly hopeless case

Product Description: This book offers a thorough, rigorous presentation of kinematics and dynamics using MATLAB® as an integrated problem-solving tool. Covers theory and application, using examples from multibody systems, robotics, spacecraft and mechanical device design and more.

Product Description: The beginning of the 21st century can be characterized as the” time-delay boom” leading to numerous important results. The purpose of this book is two-fold, to familiarize the non-expert reader with time-delay systems and to provide a systematic treatment of modern ideas and techniques for experts...read more

Product Description: Artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms and the ant colony optimization algorithm have become a highly effective tool for solving hard optimization problems. As their popularity has increased, applications of these algorithms have grown in more than equal measure...read more

Product Description: Real-time model predictive controller (MPC) implementation in active vibration control (AVC) is often rendered difficult by fast sampling speeds and extensive actuator-deformation asymmetry. If the control of lightly damped mechanical structures is assumed, the region of attraction containing the set of allowable initial conditions requires a large prediction horizon, making the already computationally demanding on-line process even more complex...read more

Robust control mechanisms customarily require knowledge of the system’s describing equations which may be of the high order differential type.  In order to produce these equations, mathematical models can often be derived and correlated with measured dynamic behavior.  There are two flaws in this approach one is the level of inexactness introduced by linearizations and the other when no model is apparent.  Several years ago a new genre of control systems came to light that are much less dependent on differential models such as fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms. Both of these soft computing solutions require quite considerable a priori system knowledge to create a control scheme and sometimes complicated training program before they can be implemented in a real world dynamic system.Michie and Chambers’ BOXES methodology created a black box system that was designed to control a mechanically unstable system with very little a priori system knowledge, linearization or approximation.  All the method needed was some notion of maximum and minimum values for the state variables and a set of boundaries that divided each variable into an integer state number.  The BOXES Methodology applies the method to a variety of systems including continuous and chaotic dynamic systems, and discusses how it may be possible to create a generic control method that is self organizing and adaptive that learns with the assistance of near neighbouring states. The BOXES Methodology introduces students at the undergraduate and master’s level to black box dynamic system control , and gives lecturers access to background materials that can be used in their courses in support of student research and classroom presentations in novel control systems and real-time applications of artificial intelligence. Designers are provided with a novel method of optimization and controller design when the equations of a system are difficult or unknown. Researchers interested in artificial intelligence (AI) research and models of the brain and practitioners from other areas of biology and technology are given an insight into how AI software can be written and adapted to operate in real-time.

Product Description: Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) have seen unprecedented levels of growth during the last decade in both military and civilian domains. It is anticipated that civilian applications will be dominant in the future, although there are still barriers to be overcome and technical challenges to be met...read more