There has been a growing interest during the 1990s in the use of multiple sensors to increase the capabilities of intelligent machines and systems. This text is a compendium of some of the most important and influential work that has appeared in this area. In addition, it contains comprehensive introductory material and an extensive survey and review of related research. The volume should be useful to everyone interested in the development of more intelligent machines and systems through the synergistic use of multiple sensors.

The fusion of information from sensors with different physical characteristics, such as sight, touch, sound, etc., enhances the understanding of our surroundings and provides the basis for planning, decision-making, and control of autonomous and intelligent machines. The minimal representation approach to multisensor fusion is based on the use of an information measure as a universal yardstick for fusion. Using models of sensor uncertainty, the representation size guides the integration of widely varying types of data and maximizes the information contributed to a consistent interpretation. In this book, the general theory of minimal representation multisensor fusion is developed and applied in a series of experimental studies of sensor-based robot manipulation. A novel application of differential evolutionary computation is introduced to achieve practical and effective solutions to this difficult computational problem.

The ?eld of multi-sensor fusion and integration is growing into signi?cance as our societyisintransitionintoubiquitouscomputingenvironmentswithroboticservices everywhere under ambient intelligence. What surround us are to be the networks of sensors and actuators that monitor our environment, health, security and safety, as well as the service robots, intelligent vehicles, and autonomous systems of ever heightened autonomy and dependability with integrated heterogeneous sensors and actuators. The ?eld of multi-sensor fusion and integration plays key role for m- ing the above transition possible by providing fundamental theories and tools for implementation. This volume is an edition of the papers selected from the 7th IEEE International Conference on Multi-Sensor Integration and Fusion, IEEE MFI‘08, held in Seoul, Korea, August 20–22, 2008. Only 32 papers out of the 122 papers accepted for IEEE MFI’08 were chosen and requested for revision and extension to be included in this volume. The 32 contributions to this volume are organized into three parts: Part I is dedicated to the Theories in Data and Information Fusion, Part II to the Multi-Sensor Fusion and Integration in Robotics and Vision, and Part III to the Applications to Sensor Networks and Ubiquitous Computing Environments. To help readers understand better, a part summary is included in each part as an introduction. The summaries of Parts I, II, and III are prepared respectively by Prof. Hanseok Ko, Prof. Sukhan Lee and Prof. Hernsoo Hahn.

This book addresses the techniques for modeling and integration of data provided by different sensors within robotics and knowledge sources within machine intelligence. Leaders in robotics and machine intelligence capture state-of-the-art technology in data sensor fusion and give a unified vision of the future of the field, presented from both the theoretical and practical angles.

In the last few years the scientific community has realized that obtaining a better understanding of interactions between natural systems and the man-made environment across different scales demands more research efforts in remote sensing. An integrated Earth system observatory that merges surface-based, air-borne, space-borne, and even underground sensors with comprehensive and predictive capabilities indicates promise for revolutionizing the study of global water, energy, and carbon cycles as well as land use and land cover changes. The aim of this book is to present a suite of relevant concepts, tools, and methods of integrated multisensor data fusion and machine learning technologies to promote environmental sustainability. The process of machine learning for intelligent feature extraction consists of regular, deep, and fast learning algorithms. The niche for integrating data fusion and machine learning for remote sensing rests upon the creation of a new scientific architecture in remote sensing science that is designed to support numerical as well as symbolic feature extraction managed by several cognitively oriented machine learning tasks at finer scales. By grouping a suite of satellites with similar nature in platform design, data merging may come to help for cloudy pixel reconstruction over the space domain or concatenation of time series images over the time domain, or even both simultaneously. Organized in 5 parts, from Fundamental Principles of Remote Sensing; Feature Extraction for Remote Sensing; Image and Data Fusion for Remote Sensing; Integrated Data Merging, Data Reconstruction, Data Fusion, and Machine Learning; to Remote Sensing for Environmental Decision Analysis, the book will be a useful reference for graduate students, academic scholars, and working professionals who are involved in the study of Earth systems and the environment for a sustainable future. The new knowledge in this book can be applied successfully in many areas of environmental science and engineering.

The emerging technology of multisensor data fusion has a wide range of applications, both in Department of Defense (DoD) areas and in the civilian arena. The techniques of multisensor data fusion draw from an equally broad range of disciplines, including artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, and statistical estimation. With the rapid evolut

Advanced robotics describes the use of sensor-based robotic devices which exploit powerful computers to achieve the high levels of functionality that begin to mimic intelligent human behaviour. The object of this book is to summarise developments in the base technologies, survey recent applications and highlight new advanced concepts which will influence future progress.