The field of mechatronics continues to be the basis for an ever-growing list of products and techniques of great technical and commercial value. Mechatronic design can result in products which are much simpler than their intricate and costly predecessors and can make commonplace the miracles of yesterday. Machine vision has emerged from the laboratory to find real applications in areas, including vehicle guidance, robot control and agriculture. Low-cost cameras have been developed for multimedia applications - but with their ease of interfacing, they offer a whole new field of low-cost vision-based control.

From grading and preparing harvested vegetables to the tactile probing of a patient’s innermost recesses, mechatronics has become part of our way of life. This cutting-edge volume features the 30 best papers of the 13th International Conference on Mechatronics and Machine Vision in Practice. Although there is no shortage of theoretical and technical detail in these chapters, they have a common theme in that they describe work that has been applied in practice.

This book presents a specially edited selection of papers from the 10th Annual Conference of Mechatronics and Machine Vision in Practice(M2VIP 2003), which provides a forum for international experts and researchers to present and review advances in Mechatronics and Machine Vision. The conference was held in Perth,Australia, 9-11 December 2003.

The contributions for this book have been gathered over several years from conferences held in the series of Mechatronics and Machine Vision in Practice, the latest of which was held in Ankara, Turkey. The essential aspect is that they concern practical applications rather than the derivation of mere theory, though simulations and visualization are important components. The topics range from mining, with its heavy engineering, to the delicate machining of holes in the human skull or robots for surgery on human flesh. Mobile robots continue to be a hot topic, both from the need for navigation and for the task of stabilization of unmanned aerial vehicles. The swinging of a spray rig is damped, while machine vision is used for the control of heating in an asphalt-laying machine. Manipulators are featured, both for general tasks and in the form of grasping fingers. A robot arm is proposed for adding to the mobility scooter of the elderly. Can EEG signals be a means to control a robot? Can face recognition be achieved in varying illumination?"

While most books on the subject present material only on sensors and actuators, hardware and simulation, or modeling and control, Mechatronics: An Integrated Approach presents all of these topics in a single, unified volume from which users with a variety of engineering backgrounds can benefit. The integrated approach emphasizes the design and inst

This volume represents the proceedings of a prestigious international conference organized by Loughborough University which will be of interest to all those involved in this rapidly advancing field, proving to be a vital read for all who wish to be well informed of developments and advances. Also included is a CD-ROM containing all the papers that were presented at the conference. The CD-ROM has been created using Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 with Search. Acrobat Reader is a unique software application that allows the user the opportunity to view, search, download, and print information electronically generated and produced in PDF format. It has extensive search facilities by author, subject, key-words, etc. Topics covered include: Fundamental Enabling Technologies Automatic Control of Mechatronic Systems Mechatronic Components Robotics and Automation Mobile robots Integrated Mechatronic Systems Biomedical Applications Mechatronics Education