The last of such a workshop in the 20th Century, this workshop aims not only to summarize the state-of-the-art developments in VSS theory and applications, but also identify new promising directions perceived as being important for VSS in the 21st century. The 20th Century has witnessed the formation and consolidation of VSS theory and its applications. It has also witnessed an emerging trend of cross-fertilization and integration of VSS with other control and non-control areas such as feedback linearization, flatness, passivity based control, adaptive control, system identification, pulse width modulation, Hinf, geometric and algebraic methods, artificial intelligence, modelling and optimisation, neural networks, fuzzy logic, etc. This trend will continue and flourish in the new millennium.Special features of the book include a survey paper entitled “VSS Premise of XX Century: Evidences of a Witness” by the father of VSS theory Professor Vadim Utkin and other articles by many authoritative experts in VSS.

This book reflects the latest developments in variable structure systems (VSS) and sliding mode control (SMC), highlighting advances in various branches of the VSS/SMC field, e.g., from conventional SMC to high-order SMC, from the continuous-time domain to the discrete-time domain, from theories to applications, etc. The book consists of three parts and 16 chapters: in the first part, new VSS/SMC algorithms are proposed and their properties are analyzed, while the second focuses on the use of VSS/SMC techniques to solve a variety of control problems; the third part examines the applications of VSS/SMC to real-time systems. The book introduces postgraduates and researchers to the state-of-the-art in VSS/SMC field, including the theory, methodology, and applications. Relative academic disciplines include Automation, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Instrument Science and Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Computer Science and Technology, Transportation Engineering, Energy and Power Engineering, etc.

This book includes research papers from the 11th National Technical Symposium on Unmanned System Technology. Covering a number of topics, including intelligent robotics, novel sensor technology, control algorithms, acoustics signal processing, imaging techniques, biomimetic robots, green energy sources, and underwater communication backbones and protocols, it will appeal to researchers developing marine technology solutions and policy-makers interested in technologies to facilitate the exploration of coastal and oceanic regions.

This book and its companion volumes, LNCS vols. 5551, 5552 and 5553, constitute the proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Neural Networks (ISNN 2009), held during May 26–29, 2009 in Wuhan, China. Over the past few years, ISNN has matured into a well-established premier international symposium on neural n- works and related fields, with a successful sequence of ISNN symposia held in Dalian (2004), Chongqing (2005), Chengdu (2006), Nanjing (2007), and Beijing (2008). Following the tradition of the ISNN series, ISNN 2009 provided a high-level inter- tional forum for scientists, engineers, and educators to present state-of-the-art research in neural networks and related fields, and also to discuss with international colleagues on the major opportunities and challenges for future neural network research. Over the past decades, the neural network community has witnessed tremendous - forts and developments in all aspects of neural network research, including theoretical foundations, architectures and network organizations, modeling and simulation, - pirical study, as well as a wide range of applications across different domains. The recent developments of science and technology, including neuroscience, computer science, cognitive science, nano-technologies and engineering design, among others, have provided significant new understandings and technological solutions to move the neural network research toward the development of complex, large-scale, and n- worked brain-like intelligent systems. This long-term goal can only be achieved with the continuous efforts of the community to seriously investigate different issues of the neural networks and related fields.

Terrorist groups throughout the world have been studied primarily through the use of social science methods. However, major advances in IT during the past decade have led to significant new ways of studying terrorist groups, making forecasts, learning models of their behaviour, and shaping policies about their behaviour. Handbook of Computational Approaches to Counterterrorism provides the first in-depth look at how advanced mathematics and modern computing technology is shaping the study of terrorist groups. This book includes contributions from world experts in the field, and presents extensive information on terrorism data sets, new ways of building such data sets in real-time using text analytics, introduces the mathematics and computational approaches to understand terror group behaviour, analyzes terror networks, forecasts terror group behaviour, and shapes policies against terrorist groups. Auxiliary information will be posted on the book’s website. This book targets defence analysts, counter terror analysts, computer scientists, mathematicians, political scientists, psychologists, and researchers from the wide variety of fields engaged in counter-terrorism research. Advanced-level students in computer science, mathematics and social sciences will also find this book useful.

Components and Instruments for Distributed Control Systems provides a conceptual framework for organizing the elements of the distributed system for integration of the many diverse information processing, decision-making, and control functions that are involved in a total plant control. With the enormous progress in micro-electronics that has taken place over the past years, intelligent instruments can now be created that integrate processing once reserved for calculators. This book notes that the development of distributed micro-computing systems is linked to this progress, and their use in industry and in service areas is becoming more and more widespread. This text also emphasizes that great progress has also been made in the design of sensors and other components in the automatic control chain. This book is a useful reference for students and individuals studying instrument development and its use in distributed control.