Bruce A. Francis Livres

Focusing on advanced controller design techniques, this book addresses the adaptation of H2 and H-infinity optimization methods for digital control systems. It offers two indirect methods for designing sampled-data controllers that approximate real-world analogue plants and continuous-time performance specifications. Additionally, a direct approach in the continuous-time domain for time-varying sampled-data systems is explored. The findings are presented in a format suitable for programming, including MATLAB, making it a practical resource for engineers and researchers.

This brief describes the coordinated control of groups of robots using only sensory input – and no direct external commands. Furthermore, each robot employs the same local strategy, i.e., there are no leaders, and the text also deals with decentralized control, allowing for cases in which no single robot can sense all the others. One can get intuition for the problem from the natural world, for example, flocking birds. How do they achieve and maintain their flying formation? Recognizing their importance as the most basic coordination tasks for mobile robot networks, the brief details flocking and rendezvous. They are shown to be physical illustrations of emergent behaviors with global consensus arising from local interactions. The authors extend the consideration of these fundamental ideas to describe their operation in flying robots and prompt readers to pursue further research in the field. Flocking and Rendezvous in Distributed Robotics will provide graduate students a firm grounding in the subject, while also offering an authoritative reference work for more experienced workers seeking a brief but thorough treatment of an area that has rapidly gained in interest.

I had been a volunteer teacher for years 7-8 in the New Zealand public school system of Bible in School, but there was a move, as our country became more secular and multicultural, to eliminate Christian teaching from our schools. I had concentrated on the wisdom literature and parables of the Bible and applied it to the everyday life of my students - basically, situation ethics with the Christian Bible, as well as reason as the authority. On going back to university for more academic qualifications in this field, I discovered that there was no likelihood of any ethical system based on the teachings of any particular religion

This book has been written to offer all those working with young people a consistent system of ethical reasoning. It will also be useful to new immigrants who need to understand the basics of democratic government and the general ethical standards of the society in which they are now living. The four simple ethical principles offered here are acceptable to all main religions and are based not on the teachings of any one particular religion, but on the wisdom of the past and reason for today.

Proceedings of the workshop Control of Uncertain Systems Includes supplementary material: sn. pub/extras

This volume is the proceedings of a conference held May 6 and 7, 1994 at McGill University in Montreal in honour of Professor George on the occasion of his 60th birthday. He has devoted most of his professional life to the subject of feedback control. Invited speakers were internationally prominent researchers from the USA, Canada, UK and the Netherlands. Their papers cover various aspects of linear multivariable feedback control, nonlinear systems and the complexity of systems.