"The Encyclopedia of Microcomputers serves as the ideal companion reference to the popular Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology. Now in its 10th year of publication, this timely reference work details the broad spectrum of microcomputer technology, including microcomputer history; explains and illustrates the use of microcomputers throughout academe, business, government, and society in general; and assesses the future impact of this rapidly changing technology."

Representations of humans in virtual environments are called Avatars. This book brings together work from a variety of relevant disciplines to detail how humans interact in computer-generated environments. It contains contributions from several key people in the field, including Microsoft Researchs Virtual World Group, and presents their findings in a way that is accessible to readers who are new to the field. Coverage details Internet-based virtual worlds that have been widely used by the public as well as networked VR systems that have been primarily used in pilot studies and research.

The aim of each volume of this series Guides to Information Sources is to reduce the time which needs to be spent on patient searching and to recommend the best starting point and sources most likely to yield the desired information. The criteria for selection provide a way into a subject to those new to the field and assists in identifying major new or possibly unexplored sources to those who already have some acquaintance with it. The series attempts to achieve evaluation through a careful selection of sources and through the comments provided on those sources.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Social Robotics, ICSR 2011, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in November 2011. The 23 revised full papers were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement from 51 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on social interaction with robots; nonverbal interaction with social robots; robots in society; social robots in education; affective interaction with social robots; robots in the home.