Search

Robotic technology offers two potential benefits for future space exploration. One benefit is minimizing the risk that astronauts face. The other benefit is increasing their productivity. Realizing the benefits of robotic technology in space will require solving several problems which are unique and now becoming active research topics. One of the most important research areas is dynamics, control, motion and planning for space robots by considering the dynamic interaction between the robot and the base (space station, space shuttle, or satellite). Any inefficiency in the planning and control can considerably risk by success of the space mission. Space Robotics: Dynamics and Control presents a collection of papers concerning fundamental problems in dynamics and control of space robots, focussing on issues relevant to dynamic base/robot interaction. The authors are all pioneers in theoretical analysis and experimental systems development of space robot technology. The chapters are organized within three problem areas: dynamics problems, nonholonomic nature problems, and control problems. This collection provides a solid reference for researchers in robotics, mechanics, control, and astronautical science.

Climbing robot is a challenging research topic that has gained much attention from researchers. Most of the robots reported in the literature are designed to climb on manmade structures, but seldom robots are designed for climbing natural environment such as trees. Trees and manmade structures are very different in nature. It brings different aspects of technical challenges to the robot design. In this book, you can find a collection of the cutting edge technologies in the field of tree-climbing robot and the ways that animals climb. It provides a valuable reference for robot designers to select appropriate climbing methods in designing tree-climbing robots for specific purposes. Based on the study, a novel bio-inspired tree-climbing robot with several breakthrough performances has been developed and presents in this book. It is capable of performing various actions that is impossible in the state-of-the-art tree-climbing robots, such as moving between trunk and branches. This book also proposes several approaches in autonomous tree-climbing, including the sensing methodology, cognition of the environment, path planning and motion planning on both known and unknown environment.

Surveillance systems have become increasingly popular. Full involvement of human operators has led to shortcomings, e.g. high labor cost, limited capability for multiple screens, inconsistency in long-duration, etc. Intelligent surveillance systems (ISSs) can supplement or even replace traditional ones. In ISSs, computer vision, pattern recognition, and artificial intelligence technologies are used to identify abnormal behaviours in videos. They present the development of real-time behaviour-based intelligent surveillance systems. The book focuses on the detection of individual abnormal behaviour based on learning and the analysis of dangerous crowd behaviour based on texture and optical flow. Practical systems include a real-time face classification and counting system, a surveillance robot system that utilizes video and audio information for intelligent interaction, and a robust person counting system for crowded environments.