Experience from the DARPA Urban Challenge provides details of the types of systems, software and processes that were used to develop the complex unmanned vehicles that participated in the DARPA Urban Challenge. The vehicle developers explain how autonomous vehicle software in this race was designed and implemented. The chapters range from system and software architecture, navigation, path planning, steering, perception, engineering autonomous systems, and testing and performance evaluation. This book is based on papers from entrants in the Urban Challenge. The content is broken into five parts: an introduction to the DARPA Urban Challenge; systems and software architectures; navigation; control and sensors; and development and test. Experience from the DARPA Urban Challenge provides graduate students in robotics and engineering professionals with an insight into multiple ways of approaching the development of autonomous vehicles.

By the dawn of the new millennium, robotics has undergone a major transformation in scope and dimensions. This expansion has been brought about by the maturity of the field and the advances in its related technologies. From a largely dominant industrial focus, robotics has been rapidly expanding into the challenges of the human world. The new generation of robots is expected to safely and dependably co-habitat with humans in homes, workplaces, and communities, providing support in services, entertainment, education, healthcare, manufacturing, and assistance. Beyond its impact on physical robots, the body of knowledge robotics has produced is revealing a much wider range of applications reaching across diverse research areas and scientific disciplines, such as: biomechanics, haptics, neurosciences, virtual simulation, animation, surgery, and sensor networks among others. In return, the challenges of the new emerging areas are proving an abundant source of stimulation and insights for the field of robotics. It is indeed at the intersection of disciplines that the most striking advances happen. The goal of the series of Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR) is to bring, in a timely fashion, the latest advances and developments in robotics on the basis of their significance and quality. It is our hope that the wider dissemination of research developments will stimulate more exchanges and collaborations among the research community and contribute to further advancement of this rapidly growing field.

Innovative tools and techniques for the development and design of software systems are essential to the problem solving and planning of software solutions. Software Design and Development: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications brings together the best practices of theory and implementation in the development of software systems. This reference source is essential for researchers, engineers, practitioners, and scholars seeking the latest knowledge on the techniques, applications, and methodologies for the design and development of software systems.

In recent years, cloud computing has gained a significant amount of attention by providing more flexible ways to store applications remotely. With software testing continuing to be an important part of the software engineering life cycle, the emergence of software testing in the cloud has the potential to change the way software testing is performed. Software Testing in the Cloud: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline is a comprehensive collection of research by leading experts in the field providing an overview of cloud computing and current issues in software testing and system migration. Deserving the attention of researchers, practitioners, and managers, this book aims to raise awareness about this new field of study.

Through expanded intelligence, the use of robotics has fundamentally transformed a variety of fields, including manufacturing, aerospace, medicine, social services, and agriculture. Continued research on robotic design is critical to solving various dynamic obstacles individuals, enterprises, and humanity at large face on a daily basis. Robotic Systems: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source that delves into the current issues, methodologies, and trends relating to advanced robotic technology in the modern world. Highlighting a range of topics such as mechatronics, cybernetics, and human-computer interaction, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for robotics engineers, mechanical engineers, robotics technicians, operators, software engineers, designers, programmers, industry professionals, researchers, students, academicians, and computer practitioners seeking current research on developing innovative ideas for intelligent and autonomous robotics systems.

This book presents the state of the art, challenges and future trends in automotive software engineering. The amount of automotive software has grown from just a few lines of code in the 1970s to millions of lines in today’s cars. And this trend seems destined to continue in the years to come, considering all the innovations in electric/hybrid, autonomous, and connected cars. Yet there are also concerns related to onboard software, such as security, robustness, and trust. This book covers all essential aspects of the field. After a general introduction to the topic, it addresses automotive software development, automotive software reuse, E/E architectures and safety, C-ITS and security, and future trends. The specific topics discussed include requirements engineering for embedded software systems, tools and methods used in the automotive industry, software product lines, architectural frameworks, various related ISO standards, functional safety and safety cases, cooperative intelligent transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, and security and privacy issues. The intended audience includes researchers from academia who want to learn what the fundamental challenges are and how they are being tackled in the industry, and practitioners looking for cutting-edge academic findings. Although the book is not written as lecture notes, it can also be used in advanced master’s-level courses on software and system engineering. The book also includes a number of case studies that can be used for student projects.

Self-driving cars are no longer in the realm of science fiction, thanks to the integration of numerous automotive technologies that have matured over many years. Technologies such as adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning, lane departure warning, and V2V/V2I communications are being merged into one complex system. The papers in this compendium were carefully selected to bring the reader up to date on successful demonstrations of autonomous vehicles, ongoing projects, and what the future may hold for this technology. It is divided into three sections: overview, major design and test collaborations, and a sampling of autonomous vehicle research projects. The comprehensive overview paper covers the current state of autonomous vehicle research and development as well as obstacles to overcome and a possible roadmap for major new technology developments and collaborative relationships. The section on major design and test collaborations covers Sartre, DARPA contests, and the USDOT and the Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership-Vehicle Safety Communications (CAMP-VSC2) Consortium. The final section presents seven SAE papers on significant recent and ongoing research by individual companies on a variety of approaches to autonomous vehicles. This book will be of interest to a wide range of readers: engineers at automakers and electronic component suppliers; software engineers; computer systems analysts and architects; academics and researchers within the electronics, computing, and automotive industries; legislators, managers, and other decision-makers in the government highway sector; traffic safety professionals; and insurance and legal practitioners.

This book focuses on the methodological treatment of UML/P and addresses three core topics of model-based software development: code generation, the systematic testing of programs using a model-based definition of test cases, and the evolutionary refactoring and transformation of models. For each of these topics, it first details the foundational concepts and techniques, and then presents their application with UML/P. This separation between basic principles and applications makes the content more accessible and allows the reader to transfer this knowledge directly to other model-based approaches and languages. After an introduction to the book and its primary goals in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 outlines an agile UML-based approach using UML/P as the primary development language for creating executable models, generating code from the models, designing test cases, and planning iterative evolution through refactoring. In the interest of completeness, Chapter 3 provides a brief summary of UML/P, which is used throughout the book. Next, Chapters 4 and 5 discuss core techniques for code generation, addressing the architecture of a code generator and methods for controlling it, as well as the suitability of UML/P notations for test or product code. Chapters 6 and 7 then discuss general concepts for testing software as well as the special features which arise due to the use of UML/P. Chapter 8 details test patterns to show how to use UML/P diagrams to define test cases and emphasizes in particular the use of functional tests for distributed and concurrent software systems. In closing, Chapters 9 and 10 examine techniques for transforming models and code and thus provide a solid foundation for refactoring as a type of transformation that preserves semantics. Overall, this book will be of great benefit for practical software development, for academic training in the field of Software Engineering, and for research in the area of model-based software development. Practitioners will learn how to use modern model-based techniques to improve the production of code and thus significantly increase quality. Students will find both important scientific basics as well as direct applications of the techniques presented. And last but not least, the book will offer scientists a comprehensive overview of the current state of development in the three core topics it covers.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of 5 workshops co-located with SAFECOMP 2012, the 31st International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability, and Security, held in Magdeburg, Germany, in September 2012. The 49 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. According to the workshops covered, the papers are organized in topical sections on: next generation of system assurance approaches for safety-critical systems (Sassur), architecting safety in collaborative mobile systems (ASCoMS), dependable and secure computing for large-scale complex critical infrastructures (DESEC4LCCI), ERCIM/EWICS/cyberphysical systems (ERCIM/EWICS), and on digital engineering (IWDE).