Luc Jaulin - Böcker

At the core of many engineering problems is the solution of sets of equa­ tions and inequalities, and the optimization of cost functions. Unfortunately, except in special cases, such as when a set of equations is linear in its un­ knowns or when a convex cost function has to be minimized under convex constraints, the results obtained by conventional numerical methods are only local and cannot be guaranteed. This means, for example, that the actual global minimum of a cost function may not be reached, or that some global minimizers of this cost function may escape detection. By contrast, interval analysis makes it possible to obtain guaranteed approximations of the set of all the actual solutions of the problem being considered. This, together with the lack of books presenting interval techniques in such a way that they could become part of any engineering numerical tool kit, motivated the writing of this book. The adventure started in 1991 with the preparation by Luc Jaulin of his PhD thesis, under Eric Walter's supervision. It continued with their joint supervision of Olivier Didrit's and Michel Kieffer's PhD theses. More than two years ago, when we presented our book project to Springer, we naively thought that redaction would be a simple matter, given what had already been achieved . . .

Mobile Robotics presents the different tools and methods that enable the design of mobile robots; a discipline booming with the emergence of flying drones, underwater robots mine detectors, sailboats robots and robot vacuum cleaners.

Illustrated with simulations, exercises and examples, this book describes the fundamentals of modeling robots, developing the actuator concepts, sensor, control and guidance. Three-dimensional simulation tools are also explored, as well as the theoretical basis for reliable localization of robots within their environment.

Illustrates simulation, corrected exercises and examples Explores different tools and methods to enable you to design mobile robots Features three-dimensional simulation tools as well as the theoretical explanation

Mobile Robotics presents the different tools and methods that enable the design of mobile robots; a discipline booming with the emergence of flying drones, underwater mine-detector robots, robot sailboats and vacuum cleaners. Illustrated with simulations, exercises and examples, this book describes the fundamentals of modeling robots, developing the concepts of actuators, sensors, control and guidance. Three-dimensional simulation tools are also explored, as well as the theoretical basis for the reliable localization of robots within their environment. This revised and updated edition contains additional exercises and a completely new chapter on the Bayes filter, an observer that enhances our understanding of the Kalman filter and facilitates certain proofs.

In order to enable a better understanding of the key concepts of automation, this book develops the fundamental aspects of the field while also proposing numerous concrete exercises and their solutions. The theoretical approach that it presents fundamentally uses the state space and makes it possible to process general and complex systems in a simple way, involving several switches and sensors of different types. This approach requires the use of developed theoretical tools such as linear algebra, analysis and physics, generally taught in preparatory classes for specialist engineering courses.

Localization for underwater robots remains a challenging issue. Typical sensors, such as Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers, cannot be used under the surface and other inertial systems suffer from a strong integration drift. On top of that, the seabed is generally uniform and unstructured, making it difficult to apply Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) methods to perform localization. Reliable Robot Localization presents an innovative new method which can be characterized as a raw-data SLAM approach. It differs from extant methods by considering time as a standard variable to be estimated, thus raising new opportunities for state estimation, so far underexploited. However, such temporal resolution is not straightforward and requires a set of theoretical tools in order to achieve the main purpose of localization. This book not only presents original contributions to the field of mobile robotics, it also offers new perspectives on constraint programming and set-membership approaches. It provides a reliable contractor programming framework in order to build solvers for dynamical systems. This set of tools is illustrated throughout this book with realistic robotic applications.

This book is about guaranteed numerical methods based on interval analysis for approximating sets, and about the application of these methods to vast classes of engineering problems. Guaranteed means here that inner and outer approximations of the sets of interest are obtained, which can be made as precise as desired, at the cost of increasing the computational effort. It thus becomes possible to achieve tasks still thought by many to be out of the reach of numerical methods, such as finding all solutions of sets of non-linear equations and inequality or all global optimizers of possibly multi-modal criteria.The basic methodology is explained as simply as possible, in a concrete and readily applicable way, with a large number of figures and illustrative examples. Some of the techniques reported appear in book format for the first time. The ability of the approach advocated here to solve non-trivial engineering problems is demonstrated through examples drawn from the fields of parameter and state estimation, robust control and robotics. Enough detail is provided to allow readers with other applications in mind to grasp their significance.An in-depth treatment of implementation issues facilitates the understanding and use of freely available software that makes interval computation about as easy as computation with floating-point numbers. The reader is even given the basic information needed to build his or her own C++ interval library.The CD-ROM contains a trial version of Sun Microsystems' Forte Developer 6 for use with Solaris SPARC Platform Edition 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8.

Partially based on contributions presented at the conference Quantitative Monitoring of Underwater Environment, MOQESM, held on October 11-12, 2016, Brest, France, this book includes carefully revised and extended chapters presented at the conference, together with original papers not related to the event.

An autonomous sailboat robot is a boat that only uses the wind on its sail as propelling force, without remote control or human assistance to achieve its mission. This involves autonomy in energy (using batteries, solar panels, turbines...), sensor data processing (compass, GPS, wind sensor...), actuators control (rudder and sail angle control...) and decision making (embedded computer with adequate algorithms). Although robotic sailing is a relatively new field of research, several applications exist for this type of robots: oceanographic and hydrographic research, maritime environment monitoring, meteorology, harbor safety, assistance and rescue in dangerous areas...Over the last decade, several events such as the Microtransat challenge, the WRSC/IRSC and SailBot have been set up to stimulate research and development around robotic sailing. These proceedings cover the current and future academic and technology challenges raised by the development of autonomous sailboat robots presented at the WRSC/IRSC (World Robotic Sailing Championship/International Robotic Sailing Conference) 2013, in Brest, France, 2-6 September 2013.

With contributions from leading experts in the field of robotic sailing, this volume of papers from the sixth International Robotic Sailing Conference covers the current and future academic and technology challenges in developing autonomous sailboat robots.

This volume constitutes the results of the International Conference onUnderwater Environment, MOQESM’14, held at “Le Quartz” Conference Center in Brest,France, on October 14-15, 2014, within the framework of the 9thSea Tech Week, International Marine Science andTechnology Event. The objective of MOQESM'14 was to bring together researchers fromboth academia and industry, interested in marine robotics and hydrography withapplication to the coastal environment mapping and underwater infrastructuressurveys.The common thread of the conference is the combination of technicalcontrol, perception, and localization, typically used in robotics, with the methods of mappingand bathymetry.The papers presented in this book focus on two main topics.Firstly, coastal and infrastructure mapping is addressed, focusing notonly on hydrographic systems, but also on positioning systems, bathymetry, and remote sensing. Theproposed methods rely on acoustic sensors such as side scan sonars, multibeam echo sounders,phase-measuring bathymetric sonars, as well as optical systems such as underwater laser scanners.Accurate underwater positioning is also addressed in the case of the use of a singleacoustic beacon, and the latest advances in increasing the vertical precision of Global NavigationSatellite System (GNSS) are also presented.Most of the above mentioned works are closely related to autonomousmarine vehicles. Consequently, the second part of the book describes someworks concerning the methodsassociated with such type of vehicles. The selected papers focus on autonomous surface orunderwater vehicles, detailing new approaches for localization, modeling, control, mapping, obstacledetection and avoidance, surfacing, and software development. Some of these works imply acoustics sensing aswell as image processing. Set membership methods are also used in some papers.The applications of the work presented in this book concern inparticular oceanography, monitoring of oil and gas infrastructures, and military field.

This  book reports on findings at the intersection between two related fields, namely coastal hydrography and marine robotics. On one side, it shows how the exploration of the ocean can be performed by autonomous underwater vehicles; on the other side, it shows how some methods from hydrography can be implemented in the localization and navigation of such vehicles, e.g. for target identification or path finding. Partially based on contributions presented at the conference Quantitative Monitoring of Underwater Environment, MOQESM, held on October 11-12, 2016, Brest, France, this book includes carefully revised and extended chapters presented at the conference, together with original papers not related to the event. All in all, it provides readers with a snapshot of current methods for sonar track registration, multi-vehicles control, collective exploration of underwater environments, optimization of propulsion systems, among others. More than that, the book is aimed as source of inspiration and tool to promote further discussions and collaboration between hydrographers, robotic specialists and other related communities.