This book provides a platform for addressing human factors challenges in software and systems engineering, both pushing the boundaries of current research and responding to new challenges, fostering new research ideas in the process. This book is intended for researchers, professional software and systems engineers, and human factors and human systems integration experts to help them address societal challenges for next-generation systems with applications for meeting them. Topics include ...

Medical and Service Robotics integrate the most recent achievements in mechanics, mechatronics, computer science, haptic and teleoperation devices together with adaptive control algorithms.The book includes topics such as surgery robotics, assist devices, rehabilitation technology, surgical instrumentation and Brain-Machine Interface (BMI) as examples for medical robotics. Autonomous cleaning, tending, logistics, surveying and rescue robots, and elderly and healthcare robots are ty...

The term “haptics” refers to the science of sensing and manipulation through touch. Multiple disciplines such as biomechanics, psychophysics, robotics, neuroscience, and software engineering converge to support haptics, and generally, haptic research is done by three communities: the robotics community, the human computer interface community, and the virtual reality community.This book is different from any other book that has looked at haptics. The authors treat haptics as a new m...

People have been waiting for VR to take off for years and they have been met with disappointment—until recently. A lot of evidence is now promising a bright future for VR but investors should be knowledgeable about several things before diving in; like what the risks are, how big the market is going to be, why this strategy should be played out in the long term and who the key players are.Book Includes:IntroductionVirtual Reality RisesVi...

This LNAI 9549 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Workshop in Cultural Robotics 2015, held as part of the 24th International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication held in Kobe, Japan, in August/September 2015.A total of 12 full papers and 1 short paper were accepted from a total of 26 initially submitted.The following papers are organized into four categories. These categories are indicative of the extent to which culture has in...

Build a voice-controlled virtual assistant using speech-to-text engines, text-to-speech engines, and conversation modules. This book shows you how to program the virtual assistant to gather data from the internet (weather data, data from Wikipedia, data mining); play music; and take notes. Each chapter covers building a mini project/module to make the virtual assistant better. You'll develop the software on Linux or OS X before transferring it to your Raspberry Pi, ready for deploying in y...

Robotic automation has become ubiquitous in the modern manufacturing landscape, spanning an overwhelming range of processes and applications-- from small scale force-controlled grinding operations for orthopedic joints to large scale composite manufacturing of aircraft fuselages. Smart factories, seamlessly linked via industrial networks and sensing, have revolutionized mass production, allowing for intelligent, adaptive manufacturing processes across a broad spectrum of industries. Agains...

Man is the best thing in the World. Nature does nothing uselessly. Aristotle There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more. John Burroughs The basic purpose of development is to enlarge people’s choices. The objective of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives. Mahbub ul Hag F...

This book comprises the proceedings of the second International Conference, AsiaHaptics 2016, held in Kashiwanoha, Japan. The book treats the state of the art of the diverse haptics (touch)-related research, including scientific research of haptics perception and illusion, development of haptics devices, and applications to a wide variety of fields such as education, medicine, telecommunication, navigation, and entertainment. This work helps not only active haptic researchers, but also gen...

The Cambridge Workshops on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT) is one of the few gatherings where people interested in inclusive design, across different fields, including designers, computer scientists, engineers, architects, ergonomists, ethnographers, policymakers and user communities, meet, discuss, and collaborate. CWUAAT has also become an international workshop, representing diverse cultures including Portugal, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, Australia, China, N...

This book reports on the latest advances in concepts and further development of principal component analysis (PCA), discussing in detail a number of open problems related to dimensional reduction techniques and their extensions. It brings together research findings, previously scattered throughout many scientific journal papers worldwide, and presents them in a methodologically unified form. Offering vital insights into the subject matter in self-contained chapters that balance the theory ...

This book presents the latest scientific research related to the field of Robotics. It involves different topics such as biomedicine, energy efficiency and home automation and robotics.The book is written by technical experts and researchers from academia and industry working on robotics applications. The book could be used as supplementary material for courses related to Robotics and Domotics.