Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering – serie

Microprocessors play a dominant role in computer technology and have contributed uniquely in the development of many new concepts and design techniques for modem industrial systems. This contribution is excessively high in the area of robotic and manufacturing systems. However, it is the editor's feeling that a reference book describing this contribution in a cohesive way and covering the major hardware and software issues is lacking. The purpose of this book is exactly to fill in this gap through the collection and presentation of the experience of a number of experts and professionals working in different academic and industrial environments. The book is divided in three parts. Part 1 involves the first four chapters and deals with the utilization of microprocessors and digital signal processors ( DSPs ) for the computation of robot dynamics. The emphasis here is on parallel computation with particular problems attacked being task granularity, task allocation/scheduling and communication issues. Chapter I, by Zheng and Hemami, is concerned with the real-time multiprocessor computation of torques in robot control systems via the Newton-Euler equations. This reduces substantially the height of the evaluation tree which leads to more effective parallel processing. Chapter 2, by D'Hollander, examines thoroughly the automatic scheduling of the Newton-Euler inverse dynamic equations. The automatic program decomposition and scheduling techniques developed are embedded in a tool used to generate multiprocessor schedules from a high-level language program.

In view of the importance of system identification, the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) and the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS) hold symposia on this topic every three years. Interest in continuous time approaches to system identification has been growing in recent years. This is evident from the fact that the of invited sessions on continuous time systems has increased from one in the 8th number Symposium that was held in Beijing in 1988 to three in the 9th Symposium in Budapest in 1991. It was during the 8th Symposium in August 1988 that the idea of bringing together important results on the topic of Identification of continuous time systems was conceived. Several distinguished colleagues, who were with us in Beijing at that time, encouraged us by promising on the spot to contribute to a comprehensive volume of collective work. Subsequently, we contacted colleagues all over the world, known for their work in this area, with a formal request to contribute to the proposed volume. The response was prompt and overwhelmingly encouraging. We sincerely thank all the authors for their valuable contributions covering various aspects of identification of continuous time systems.

The primary objective of the book is to provide advanced undergraduate or frrst-year graduate engineering students with a self-contained presentation of the principles fundamental to the analysis, design and implementation of computer controlled systems. The material is also suitable for self-study by practicing engineers and is intended to follow a first course in either linear systems analysis or control systerns. A secondary objective of the book is to provide engineering and/or computer science audiences with the material for a junior/senior-level course in modern systems analysis. Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 have been designed with this purposein rnind. The emphasis in such a course is to develop the rnathernatical tools and methods suitable for the analysis and design of real-time systems such as digital filters. Thus, engineers and/or computer scientists who know how to program computers can understand the mathematics relevant to the issue of what it is they are programrning. This is especially important for those who may work in engineering and scientific environments where, for instance, programrning difference equations for real-time applications is becorning increasingly common. A background in linear algebra should be an adequate prerequisite for the systems analysis course. Chapter 1 of the book presents a brief introduction to computer controlled systems. It describes the general issues and terminology relevant to the analysis, design, and implementation of such systems.

This book contains a selection of papers presented at the "European Robotics and Intelligent Systems Conference" (EURISCON '91) held in Corfu. Greece (June 23-28. 1991). It is devoted to the analysis. design and applications of technological systems with built-in intelligence achieved through appropriate blending of mathematical, symbolic. sensing. computer processing. and feedback control concepts. methods and software / hardware tools. System intelligence includes human-like capabilities such as learning. observation. perception. interpretation. reasoning. planning. decision making. and action. Integrated intelligent decision and control systems obey Saridis' prinCiple of Increasing Precision with Decreasing Intelligence (IPDI). and have a hierarchical structure with three basic levels. namely Organization. Coordination. and Execution Levels. As we proceed from the organization to the execution level. the precision about the jobs to be completed increases and accordingly the intelligence reqUired for these jobs decreases. As an example. it is mentioned here that in an intelligent robotic system the organization tasks can be realized using a neural net. the coordination tasks by a Petri net. and the execution tasks by local sensors and actuators. The field of intelligent systems is a new interdisciplinary field with continuously increasing interest and expansion. It is actually the outcome of the synergetic interaction and cooperation of classical fields such as system theory. control theory. artificial intelligence. operational research. information theory. electronics. communications. and others.

Robotics is a modern interdisciplinary field that has emerged from the marriage of computerized numerical control and remote manipulation. Today's robotic systems have intelligence features and are able to perform dextrous and intelligent human-like actions through appropriate combination of learning, perception, planning, decision making and control. This book presents advanced concepts, techniques and applications reflecting the experience of a wide group of specialists in the field. Topics include: kinematics, dynamics, path planning and tracking, control, mobile robots, navigation, robot programming and sophisticated applications in the fields of manufacturing, medicine and other areas.

This book is devoted to the study of fuzzy reasoning as applied to decision-making and control processes. It contains a collection of contributions covering a wide range of topics within the field. It contains 21 papers, written by 34 contributors and is divided into five parts. Part 1 involves four chapters providing background material together with useful techniques for the validation of fuzzy knowledge bases and the software representation of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic. Part 2 presents an overview of neuro-fuzzy expert systems along with an important case study, and a neural network model which is suitable for fuzzy reasoning. Part 3 presents the state of the art of fuzzy controllers, including design and implementation aspects. This part starts with a chapter on the demystification of fuzzy control and includes critical evaluations of fuzzy controllers, along with new types of fuzzy controllers such as the sliding mode fuzzy controller.Part 4 involves a chapter on fuzzy parameter and state estimation, which is of fundamental importance in a variety of applications, a chapter on fuzzy reasoning as used in rule-based systems, and a chapter on computing the multivariable shape of an n-D pattern class. Finally, Part 5 presents six important applications dealing with industrial robotic systems, mechanical systems, manipulators with artificial rubber muscles, Petri nets, biomedical engineering, and non-destructive fruit collection. The book is suitable for researchers and practitioners, as well as for teachers and students in related master and doctoral courses.

Tbis book is basicaUy concemed with approaches for improving safety in man-made systems. We caU these approaches, coUectively, fault monitoring, since they are concemed primarily with detecting faults occurring in the components of such systems, being sensors, actuators, controUed plants or entire strucutures. The common feature of these approaches is the intention to detect an abrupt change in some characteristic property of the considered object, by monitoring the behavior of the system. This change may be a slow-evolving effect or a complete breakdoWD. In tbis sense, fault monitoring touches upon, and occasionaUy overIaps with, other areas of control engineering such as adaptive control, robust controller design, reIiabiIity and safety engineering, ergonomics and man-macbine interfacing, etc. In fact, a system safety problem, could be attacked from any of the above angles of view. In tbis book, we don't touch upon these areas, unless there is a strong relationship between the fauIt monitoring approaches discussed and the aforementioned fields. When we set out to write tbis book, our aim was to incIude as much material as possible in a most rigorous, unified and concise format.Tbis would incIude state-of-the-art method as weil as more cIassical techniques, stilI in use today. AB we proceeded in gathering material, however, it soon became apparent that these were contradicting design criteria and a trade-off had to be made. We believe that the completeness vs.

Intelligent systems of the natural kind are adaptive and robust: they learn over time and degrade gracefully under stress. If artificial systems are to display a similar level of sophistication, an organizing framework and operating principles are required to manage the resulting complexity of design and behaviour. This book presents a general framework for adaptive systems. The utility of the comprehensive framework is demonstrated by tailoring it to particular models of computational learning, ranging from neural networks to declarative logic. The key to robustness lies in distributed decision-making. An exemplar of this strategy is the neural network in both its biological and synthetic forms. In a neural network, the knowledge is encoded in the collection of cells and their linkages, rather than in any single component. Distributed decision-making is even more apparent in the case of independent agents. For a population of autonomous agents, their proper co-ordination may well be more instrumental for attaining their objectives than are their individual capabilities.This book probes the problems and opportunities arising from autonomous agents acting individually and collectively. Following the general framework for learning systems and its application to neural networks, the co-ordination of independent agents through game theory is explored. Finally, the utility of game theory for artificial agents is revealed through a case study in robotic co-ordination. Given the universality of the subjects - learning behaviour and co-ordinative strategies in uncertain environments - this book should be of interest to students and researchers in various disciplines, ranging from all areas of engineering to the computing disciplines; from the life sciences to the physical sciences; and from the management arts to social studies.

This book represents a thoroughly comprehensive treatment of computational intelligence from an electrical power system engineer's perspective. Thorough, well-organised and up-to-date, it examines in some detail all the important aspects of this very exciting and rapidly emerging technology, including: expert systems, fuzzy logic, artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms and hybrid systems. Written in a concise and flowing manner, by experts in the area of electrical power systems who have had many years of experience in the application of computational intelligence for solving many complex and onerous power system problems, this book is ideal for professional engineers and postgraduate students entering this exciting field. This book would also provide a good foundation for senior undergraduate students entering into their final year of study.

The field of Intelligent Control has expanded rapidly in recent years with many theoretical and practical results that go beyond those of classical controls. This work presents a collection of contributions that cover a range of topics within the field, including the latest issues of human-machine systems, linguistic communication systems, and automatic verification of intelligent control software. Divided into three parts, the book covers: intelligent control surveys; intelligent control methods; and intelligent control applications. Part one contains four chapters providing general overviews of intelligent control, fuzzy and neural control, and their industrial applications. Part two presents a set of important methods with emphasis on neural, fuzzy and neurofuzzy control concepts and techniques. Finally, part three deals with the application of intelligent control to robotic manipulators, automatic power generation control, manufacturing systems, and welding processes. The book should be of interest to the researcher and practitioner in the field, as well as to teachers and students in related postgraduate programmes.

Focusing on the issues of remote control of manipulators in a free workspace, this text presents recent data on remote control for telerobots. The primary emphasis is on a systematic presentation of the materials using a comparatively few, not well-publicized, examples as illustrations, a systematic presentation of materials on the quantitative evaluation of quality of remote manipulation systems with practical implementation using test stands, a presentation of the author's own descriptions of remote-control systems, and the adaptive co-ordinate-parameter control method for telerobots. The data and ideas described in the book can be useful in the remote-control field, and also in the adjacent fields of robotics and automation. To that end, the book has been designed both to be informative in its field and as source material for researchers and engineers working in these fields, as well as graduate and undergraduate students with a corresponding specialization.

This text presents a collection of 23 contributions that cover a well-selected repertory of topics within the autonomous systems field. Intelligent autonomous systems (IAS) are finding new applications in industrial production, health-care service and other sectors of modern life. The book is divided into three distinct parts: general concepts, architectures and technologies; mobile, walking and snake-like robots; and applications. The first part contains seven chapters dealing with the requirements, architectures and implementation of intelligent/sensor-based autonomous systems and robots, while part two presents 11 contributions covering the design, path-planning, navigation, and motion-planning and control of mobile robots including legged robots and snake-like robots. Finally, part three involves five important applications, namely cellular manufacturing, robotic wheelchairs, robotic excavators, robotic explorers and autonomously controlled vehicles on the highway.

The use of flexible sigmoid functions makes artificial neural networks more versatile. This volume determines learning algorithms for sigmoid functions in several different learning modes using flexible structures of neural networks with new derivation algorithms. The book is aimed at electrical, electronic, and mechanical control and systems engineers concerned with intelligent control who wish to explore neural network approaches. Here, for readers who are unfamiliar with neural network computing, is a concise introduction to the main existing types of flexible neural networks. This work will be an aid to new research in which high abilities in artificial neural networks in intelligent control design and development can be achieved.

In an ever-increasingly competitive/deregulated environment, power utilities need efficient and effective tools to ensure that electrical energy of the desired quality can be provided at the lowest cost. These usually form highly constrained optimization problems. This work presents major modern optimization methods applied to power systems, including: simulated annealing, tabu search, genetic algorithms, neural networks, fuzzy programming, Lagrangian relaxation, interior point methods, ant colony search and hybrid techniques. Various applications and case studies are presented to demonstrate the potential and procedures of applying such techniques in solving complex power system optimization problems.

The field of Intelligent Systems has expanded enormously in the two decades up to 1999, with many theoretical and practical results available - the outcome of the synergetic merging of classical fields such as system theory, artificial intelligence, information theory, soft computing, operations research, linguistic theory and others. This book presents a collection of contributions that cover a wide range of topics within the field. It contains 47 contributions with an emphasis on computational and processing issues and is structured in four parts, as follows: Part I - Computer-aided intelligent systems and tools; Part II - Information extraction from texts, natural language interfaces and intelligent retrieval systems; Part III - Image processing and video-based systems; and Part IV - Applications. Particular topics treated include: planning; problem solving; information extraction from texts; natural language interfaces; audio retrieval systems; multi-agent systems; image compression, image and segmentation, and human face recognition.Applications include: peri-urban road network extraction; analysis of structures; climatic sensor signal analysis; aortic pressure assessment; hospital laboratory planning; fatigue analysis using electromyographic signals; forecasting in power systems. The book can serve as a reference pool of knowledge that may inspire and motivate researchers and practitioners for further developments and modern-day applications.

This book formalizes multiple abstraction (arranging knowledge hierarchically using more than one hierarchy) based on graphs, and studies in-depth its implications in path search, graph isomorphism, and in the automatic construction of multi-hierarchical structures. It also describes its application as a model of the large-scale space environment of mobile robots, including real mobile robots and a well-known computational model of the human cognitive map: the Spatial Semantic Hierarchy. This book is intended for PhD students and in general for robotics, computer science, and artificial intelligence researchers.

Intelligent Systems involve a large class of systems which posses human-like capabilities such as learning, observation, perception, interpretation, reasoning under uncertainty, planning in known and unknown environments, decision making, and control action. The field of intelligent systems is actually a new interdisciplinary field which is the outcome of the interaction, cooperation and synergetic merging of classical fields such as system theory, control theory, artificial intelligence, information theory, operational research, soft computing, communications, linguistic theory, and others. Integrated intelligent decision and control systems involve three primary hierarchical levels, namely organization, coordination and execution levels. As we proceed from the be performed organization to the execution level, the precision about the jobs to increases and accordingly the intelligence required for these jobs decreases. This is in compliance with the principle of increasing precision with decreasing intelligence (IPOI) known from the management field and theoretically established by Saridis using information theory concepts. This book is concerned with intelligent systems and techniques and gives emphasis on the computational and processing issues. Control issues are not included here. The contributions of the book are presented in four parts as follows.

This book contains thirty timely contributions in the emerging field of Computational Intelligence (CI) with reference to system control design and applications. The three basic constituents ofCI are neural networks (NNs). fuzzy logic (FL) I fuzzy reasoning (FR). and genetic algorithms (GAs). NNs mimic the distributed functioning of the human brain and consist of many. rather simple. building elements (called artificial neurons) which are controlled by adaptive parameters and are able to incorporate via learning the knowledge provided by the environment, and thus respond intelligently to new stimuli. Fuzzy logic (FL) provides the means to build systems that can reason linguistically under uncertainty like the human experts (common sense reasoning). Both NNs and FL I FR are among the most widely used tools for modeling unknown systems with nonlinear behavior. FL suits better when there is some kind of knowledge about the system. such as, for example, the linguistic information of a human expert. On the other hand. NNs possess unique learning and generalization capabilities that allow the user to construct very accurate models of nonlinear systems simply using input-output data. GAs offer an interesting set of generic tools for systematic random search optimization following the mechanisms of natural genetics. In hybrid Computational Intelligence - based systems these three tools (NNs, FL, GAs) are combined in several synergetic ways producing integrated tools with enhanced learning, generalization. universal approximation. reasoning and optimization abilities.

Fuzzy logic provides a unique method of approximate reasoning in an imperfect world. This text is a bridge to the principles of fuzzy logic through an application-focused approach to selected topics in Engineering and Management. The many examples point to the richer solutions obtained through fuzzy logic and to the possibilities of much wider applications. There are relatively few texts available at present in fuzzy logic applications. The style and content of this text is complementary to those already available. New areas of application are presented in a graded approach in which the underlying concepts are first described. The text is broadly divided into two parts which treat Processes and Materials and also System Applications. The level enables a selection of the text to be made for the substance of a senior undergraduate level course. There is also sufficient volume and quality for the basis of a postgraduate course. A more restricted and judicious selection can provide the material for a professional short course.

This text provides a strong coverage of both the theoretical and application aspects of neural networks, fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms and hybrid intelligent techniques in robotics. Specific emphasis in the research work is given on the development of new efficient learning rules for robotic connectionist training and synthesis of neural learning algorithms for low-level control in the domain of robotic compliance tasks. The book contains several different examples of applications based on neural and hybrid intelligent techniques. The book: provides the theoretical background an a survey of most up-to-date developments in this rapidly growing application area of intelligent control of robotic systems; focuses on research in connectionist and hybrid intelligent techniques, directly applicable to control or making use of modern control theory in robotics; takes a new approach to the synthesis of learning and classification of control laws for robotic compliance tasks, together with the appropriate application examples.This text should be useful to a wide audience of engineers, ranging from undergraduate and graduate students, new and advanced academic researchers, to the practitioners (mechanical and electrical engineers, computer and systems scientists).

As robots are becoming more and more sophisticated the interest in robot dynamics is increasing. Within this field, contact problems are among the most interesting, since contacts are present in almost any robot task and introduce serious complexity to system dynamics, strongly influencing robot behavior. The book formulates dynamic models of robot interaction with different kinds of environment, from pure geometrical constraints to complex dynamic environments. It provides a number of examples. Dynamic modeling is the primary interest of the book but control issues are treated as well. Because dynamics and contact control tasks are strongly related the authors also provide a brief description of relevant control issues. The book will be of interest to engineers working in research and development in robotics and automation and to both graduate and postgraduate students. The work will also be valuable to readers involved in manufacturing, robotics, automation, computer and control engineering.

Fuzzy logic is a relatively new concept in science applications. Hitherto, fuzzy logic has been a conceptual process applied in the field of risk management. Its potential applicability is much wider than that, however, and its particular suitability for expanding our understanding of processes and information in science and engineering in our post-modern world is only just beginning to be appreciated. Written as a companion text to the author’s earlier volume "An Introduction to Fuzzy Logic Applications", the book is aimed at professional engineers and students and those with an interest in exploring the potential of fuzzy logic as an information processing kit with a wide variety of practical applications in the field of engineering science and develops themes and topics introduced in the author’s earlier text.

Human-Like Biomechanics is a comprehensive introduction into modern geometrical methods to be used as a unified research approach in two apparently separate and rapidly growing fields: mathematical biomechanics and humanoid robotics. The book contains six Chapters and an Appendix.

Several consistent solutions for cooperative system control have recently been identified by the authors of the current monograph. This was achieved by solving three separate tasks that are essential for solving the problem of cooperative manipulation as a whole. The first task is related to the understanding of the physical nature of cooperative manipulation and finding a way for a sufficiently exact characterization of cooperative system statics, kinematics and dynamics. After successfully completing this task, in the frame of the second task, the problem of coordinated motion of the cooperative system is solved. Finally, as a solution to the third task, the control laws of cooperative manipulation are synthesized. The starting point in dealing with the above three tasks of cooperative manipulation was the assumption that the problem of force uncertainty in cooperative manipulation can be resolved by introducing elastic properties into the cooperative system, at least in the part where force uncertainty appears. In static and dynamic analysis of the elastic structure of cooperative systems the finite element method is applied. In contrast to the procedure used in the major part of the available literature where deformation work is expressed by deviations from the unloaded state of fixed elastic structure, in this monograph the deformation work is expressed by internal forces as a function of the absolute coordinates of contacts of mobile elastic structure. Coordinated motion and control in cooperative manipulation are solved as the problem of coordinated motion and control of a mobile elastic structure, taking into account the specific features of cooperative manipulation. Coordinated motion and control laws in cooperative manipulation are synthesized on the basis of a non-linear model where the problem of uncertainty is solved, which is not the case in the available literature. Simple examples demonstrate the consistent procedure of  mathematical modeling and synthesis of nominal coordinated motion, as well as control of the cooperative system. This book will be useful to a wide audience of engineers, ranging from undergraduate and graduate students, new and advanced academic researchers, to practitioners (mechanical and electrical engineers, computer and system scientists). It is intended for readers whose work involves manufacturing, industrial, robotics, automation, computer and control engineering, and who wish to find out about this important new technology and its potential advantages for control engineering applications.

Geometrical Dynamics of Complex Systems is a graduate-level monographic textbook. Itrepresentsacomprehensiveintroductionintorigorousgeometrical dynamicsofcomplexsystemsofvariousnatures. By'complexsystems',inthis book are meant high-dimensional nonlinear systems, which can be (but not necessarily are) adaptive. This monograph proposes a uni?ed geometrical - proachtodynamicsofcomplexsystemsofvariouskinds:engineering,physical, biophysical, psychophysical, sociophysical, econophysical, etc. As their names suggest, all these multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems have something in common: the underlying physics. However, instead of dealing with the pop- 1 ular 'soft complexity philosophy', we rather propose a rigorous geometrical and topological approach. We believe that our rigorous approach has much greater predictive power than the soft one. We argue that science and te- nology is all about prediction and control. Observation, understanding and explanation are important in education at undergraduate level, but after that it should be all prediction and control.The main objective of this book is to show that high-dimensional nonlinear systems and processes of 'real life' can be modelled and analyzed using rigorous mathematics, which enables their complete predictability and controllability, as if they were linear systems. It is well-known that linear systems, which are completely predictable and controllable by de?nition - live only in Euclidean spaces (of various - mensions). They are as simple as possible, mathematically elegant and fully elaborated from either scienti?c or engineering side. However, in nature, no- ing is linear. In reality, everything has a certain degree of nonlinearity, which means: unpredictability, with subsequent uncontrollability.

If we try to describe real world in mathematical terms, we will see that real life is very often a high–dimensional chaos. Sometimes, by ‘pushing hard’, we manage to make order out of it; yet sometimes, we need simply to accept our life as it is. To be able to still live successfully, we need tounderstand, predict, and ultimately control this high–dimensional chaotic dynamics of life. This is the main theme of the present book. In our previous book, Geometrical - namics of Complex Systems, Vol. 31 in Springer book series Microprocessor– Based and Intelligent Systems Engineering, we developed the most powerful mathematical machinery to deal with high–dimensional nonlinear dynamics. In the present text, we consider the extreme cases of nonlinear dynamics, the high–dimensional chaotic and other attractor systems. Although they might look as examples of complete disorder – they still represent control systems, with their inputs, outputs, states, feedbacks, and stability. Today, we can see a number of nice books devoted to nonlinear dyn- ics and chaos theory (see our reference list). However, all these books are only undergraduate, introductory texts, that are concerned exclusively with oversimpli?ed low–dimensional chaos, thus providing only an inspiration for the readers to actually throw themselves into the real–life chaotic dynamics.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have seen unprecedented levels of growth in military and civilian application domains. Fixed-wing aircraft, heavier or lighter than air, rotary-wing (rotorcraft, helicopters), vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned vehicles are being increasingly used in military and civilian domains for surveillance, reconnaissance, mapping, cartography, border patrol, inspection, homeland security, search and rescue, fire detection, agricultural imaging, traffic monitoring, to name just a few application domains. When initially introduced during World War I, UAVs were criticized heavily as being unreliable and inaccurate, and only a handful of people recognized at that early stage their potential and (future) impact on cha- ing the battlefield. To nobody’s surprise, about a century later, the total market for UAVs will reach within a few years more than $16 billion, with the US Depa- ment of Defense (DOD) being the champion in funding initiatives, - search and development, as well as procurement. Europe, as a continent, is a very distant second player, expected to spend about €2 billion in research and development, and procurement.

1. Background This textbook is an introduction to and exploration of a number of core topics in the ?eld of applied mechanics. Mechanics, in both its theoretical and applied contexts, is, like all scienti?c endeavors, a human construct. It re?ects the personalities, thoughts, errors, and successes of its creators. We therefore provide some personal information about each of these individuals when their names arise for the ?rst time in this book. This should enable the reader to piece together a cultural-historical picture of the ?eld s origins and development. This does not mean that we are writing history. Nevertheless, some remarks putting individuals and ideas in context are necessary in order to make clear what we are speaking about – and what we are not speaking about. At the end of the 19th century, technical universities were established eve- where in Europe in an almost euphoric manner. But the practice of technical mechanics itself, as one of the basics of technical development, was in a desolate state, due largely to the refusal of its practitioners to recognize the in?uence of kinetics on motion. They were correct to the extend that then current mechanical systems moved with small velocities where kinetics does not play a signi?cant role. But they had failed to keep up with developments in the science underlying their craft and were unable to keep pace with the speeds of such systems as the steam engine.

During the last few years, a new area of creative media industry, namely Serious Games, has started to emerge around the world. The term serious games has become more popular for example in the fields of education, business, welfare and safety. Despite this, there has been no single definition of serious games. A key question, what the concept itself means, has stayed unsolved though most have agreed on a definition that serious games are games or game-like interactive systems developed with game technology and design principles for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment.In this book, serious games are understood as games which aim at providing an engaging, self-reinforcing context in which to motivate and educate the players. Serious games can be of any genre, use any game technology, and be developed for any platform. They can be entertaining, but usually they teach the user something. The central aim of serious games is to raise quality of life and well-being. As part of interactive media industry, the serious games field focuses on designing and using digital games for real-life purposes and for the everyday life of citizens in information societies. The field of serious games focuses on such areas as education, business, welfare, military, traffic, safety, travelling and tourism.