Qu’il s’agisse de tâches de préhension versatile aux échelles du micromonde ou bien de tâches de manipulation fine ou dextre à une échelle dimensionnelle supérieure, la fonction de manipulation robotique nécessite l’utilisation de systèmes mécatroniques performants et précis. Dans la majorité des cas, ceux-ci mettent en jeu des mécanismes qui sont caractérisés par des phénomènes mécaniques de flexibilité. Ces phénomènes sont induits naturellement par l’emploi de certains composants technologiques constitutifs du système ou par la géométrie de certaines structures élancées. Il peut alors s’agir de micromanipulateurs à base de matériaux actifs, de bras manipulateurs légers, d’organes terminaux de préhension très intégrés sur le plan fonctionnel, voire de manipulateurs d’inspiration anthropomorphe. Aperçu des dernières avancées scientifiques et technologiques en la matière, cet ouvrage est destiné à toute personne intéressée par le champ de la robotique flexible et plus particulièrement par la manipulation.

With the growing maturity of information and communication technologies, systems have been interconnected within growing networks, yielding new services through a combination of the system functionalities. This leads to an increasing complexity that has to be managed in order to take advantage of these system integrations. This book provides key answers as to how such systems of systems can be engineered and how their complexity can be mastered. After reviewing some definitions on systems of systems engineering, the book focuses on concrete applications and offers a survey of the activities and techniques that allow engineering of complex systems and systems of systems. Case studies, ranging from emergency situations such as Hurricane Katrina and its crisis management or a generic scenario of a major traffic accident and its emergency response, to the establishment of a scientific basis in the Antarctic region illustrate key factors of success and traps to avoid in order to cope with such situations.

This book is devoted to analyze the vibrations of simpli?ed 1? d models of multi-body structures consisting of a ?nite number of ?exible strings d- tributed along planar graphs. We?rstdiscussissueson existence and uniquenessof solutions that can be solved by standard methods (energy arguments, semigroup theory, separation ofvariables,transposition,...).Thenweanalyzehowsolutionspropagatealong the graph as the time evolves, addressing the problem of the observation of waves. Roughly, the question of observability can be formulated as follows: Can we obtain complete information on the vibrations by making measu- ments in one single extreme of the network? This formulation is relevant both in the context of control and inverse problems. UsingtheFourierdevelopmentofsolutionsandtechniquesofNonharmonic Fourier Analysis, we give spectral conditions that guarantee the observability property to hold in any time larger than twice the total length of the network in a suitable Hilbert space that can be characterized in terms of Fourier series by means of properly chosen weights. When the network graph is a tree, we characterize these weights in terms of the eigenvalues of the corresponding elliptic problem. The resulting weighted observability inequality allows id- tifying the observable energy in Sobolev terms in some particular cases. That is the case, for instance, when the network is star-shaped and the ratios of the lengths of its strings are algebraic irrational numbers.

This volume contains a selection of the papers presented at the 11th International Workshop on Multi-Agent-Based Simulation (MABS 2010), a workshop co-located with the 9th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2010), which was held on May 10-14, 2010 in Toronto, Canada. The 11 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 26 submissions. The workshop has been an important source of inspiration for the body of knowledge that has been produced in the field of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). As illustrated by this volume, the workshop continues to bring together researchers interested in MAS engineering with researchers focused on finding efficient ways to model complex social systems in social, economic and organizational areas. In all these areas, agent theories, metaphors, models, analyses, experimental designs, empirical studies, and methodological principles all converge into simulation as a way of achieving explanations and predictions, exploring and testing hypotheses, and producing better designs and systems.

The book offers a comprehensive report on the design and optimization of a thermochemical heat storage system for use in buildings. It combines theoretical and experimental work, with a special emphasis on model-based methods. It describes the numerical modeling of the heat exchanger, which allows recovery of about two thirds of the waste heat from both solar and thermal energy. The book also provides readers with a snapshot of current research on thermochemical storage systems, and an in-depth review of the most important concepts and methods in thermal management modeling. It represents a valuable resource for students, engineers and researchers interested in thermal energy storage processes, as well as for those dealing with modeling and 3D simulations in the field of energy and process engineering.

Biomedical imaging is a fascinating research area to applied mathematicians. Challenging imaging problems arise and they often trigger the investigation of fundamental problems in various branches of mathematics. This is the first book to highlight the most recent mathematical developments in emerging biomedical imaging techniques. The main focus is on emerging multi-physics and multi-scales imaging approaches. For such promising techniques, it provides the basic mathematical concepts and tools for image reconstruction. Further improvements in these exciting imaging techniques require continued research in the mathematical sciences, a field that has contributed greatly to biomedical imaging and will continue to do so. The volume is suitable for a graduate-level course in applied mathematics and helps prepare the reader for a deeper understanding of research areas in biomedical imaging.