This book contains selected papers that address a variety of topics related to the design, development and operation of unmanned and fully autonomous sailing boats. These papers were presented in the 9th International Robotic Sailing Conference, in association with the 9th World Robotic Sailing Championship that took place in Viana do Castelo, Portugal from the 5th to 10th of September 2016. The book is divided in three parts, each focusing on key aspects of robotic sailing. The first part addresses the design, construction and validation of autonomous sailboat platforms, including their rigs, appendages and control mechanisms. The second part is devoted to the development of sensors and algorithms to enhance the performance of robotic sailing boats, in terms of their speed, course control and manoeuvring ability. Finally, the papers in the last part are dedicated to the improvement of behaviours required for the accomplishment of complex autonomous missions. Robotic sailing is a relatively new multidisciplinary area of research, with a recognized great potential for persistent ocean observation. Using the wind for boat propulsion is something mankind has been doing for centuries. Automating and optimizing the sailing process in the harsh marine environment is an ever present challenge which is now promising to bear fruit.

Robotic Sailing 2017. This book contains the peer-reviewed papers presented at the 10th International Robotic Sailing Conference which was organized in conjunction with the 10th World Robotic Sailing Championship held in Horten, Norway the 4th-9th of September 2017. The seven papers cover topics of interest for autonomous robotic sailing which represents some of the most challenging research and development areas. The book is divided into two parts. The first part contains papers which focus on the design of sails and software for the assessment and predication of sailboat performance as well as software platforms and middleware for sailboat competition and research. The second part includes algorithms and strategies for navigation and collision avoidance on local, mid- and long range. The differences in approach in the included papers show that robotic sailing is still an emerging cross-disciplinary science. The multitude of suggestions to the specific problems of prediction and simulation of sailboats as well as the challenges of route planning, anti-grounding and collision avoidance are good indicators of science in its infancy. Hence, we may expect the future to hold great advances for robotic sailing.

This book presents the cutting edge developments within a broad field related to robotic sailing. The contributions were presented during the 8th International Robotic Sailing Conference, which has taken place as a part of the 2015 World Robotic Sailing Championships in Mariehamn, Åland (Finland), August 31st – September 4th 2015. Since more than a decade, a series of competitions such as the World Robotic Sailing Championship have stimulated a variety of groups to work on research and development around autonomous sailing robots, which involves boat designers, naval architects, electrical engineers and computer scientists. While many of the challenges in building a truly autonomous sailboat are still unsolved, the books presents the state of the art of research and development within platform optimization, route and stability planning, collision avoidance, power management and boat control.

This book provides a thorough overview of cutting-edge research on electronics applications relevant to industry, the environment, and society at large. It covers a broad spectrum of application domains, from automotive to space and from health to security, while devoting special attention to the use of embedded devices and sensors for imaging, communication and control. The book is based on the 2018 ApplePies Conference, held in Pisa, Italy in September 2018, which brought together researchers and stakeholders to consider the most significant current trends in the field of applied electronics and to debate visions for the future. Areas addressed by the conference included information communication technology; biotechnology and biomedical imaging; space; secure, clean and efficient energy; the environment; and smart, green and integrated transport. As electronics technology continues to develop apace, constantly meeting previously unthinkable targets, further attention needs to be directed toward the electronics applications and the development of systems that facilitate human activities. This book, written by industrial and academic professionals, represents a valuable contribution in this endeavor.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th InternationalConference on Computational Logistics, ICCL 2017, held in Southampton,UK, in October 2017.The 38 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. They are organized in topical sections entitled: vehicle routing and scheduling; maritime logistics;synchromodal transportation; and transportation, logistics and supply chain planning.

First used in military applications, unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming an integral aspect of modern society and are expanding into the commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and surveillance sectors. With the increasing use of these drones by government officials, business professionals, and civilians, more research is needed to understand their complexity both in design and function. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice is a critical source of academic knowledge on the design, construction, and maintenance of drones, as well as their applications across all aspects of society. Highlighting a range of pertinent topics such as intelligent systems, artificial intelligence, and situation awareness, this publication is an ideal reference source for military consultants, military personnel, business professionals, operation managers, surveillance companies, agriculturalists, policymakers, government officials, law enforcement, IT professionals, academicians, researchers, and graduate-level students.

This book gathers a selection of papers presented at ROBOT 2019 – the Fourth Iberian Robotics Conference, held in Porto, Portugal, on November 20th–22nd, 2019. ROBOT 2019 is part of a series of conferences jointly organized by the SPR – Sociedade Portuguesa de Robótica (Portuguese Society for Robotics) and SEIDROB – Sociedad Española para la Investigación y Desarrollo en Robótica (Spanish Society for Research and Development in Robotics). ROBOT 2019 built upon several previous successful events, including three biannual workshops and the three previous installments of the Iberian Robotics Conference, and chiefly focused on presenting the latest findings and applications in robotics from the Iberian Peninsula, although the event was also open to research and researchers from other countries. The event featured five plenary talks on state-of-the-art topics and 16 special sessions, plus a main/general robotics track. In total, after a stringent review process, 112 high-quality papers written by authors from 24 countries were selected for publication.

This book reports on findings at the intersection between two related fields, namely coastal hydrography and marine robotics. On one side, it shows how the exploration of the ocean can be performed by autonomous underwater vehicles; on the other side, it shows how some methods from hydrography can be implemented in the localization and navigation of such vehicles, e.g. for target identification or path finding. Partially based on contributions presented at the conference Quantitative Monitoring of Underwater Environment, MOQESM, held on October 11-12, 2016, Brest, France, this book includes carefully revised and extended chapters presented at the conference, together with original papers not related to the event. All in all, it provides readers with a snapshot of current methods for sonar track registration, multi-vehicles control, collective exploration of underwater environments, optimization of propulsion systems, among others. More than that, the book is aimed as source of inspiration and tool to promote further discussions and collaboration between hydrographers, robotic specialists and other related communities.

This volume constitutes the results of the International Conference on Underwater Environment, MOQESM’14, held at “Le Quartz” Conference Center in Brest, France, on October 14-15, 2014, within the framework of the 9th Sea Tech Week, International Marine Science and Technology Event. The objective of MOQESM'14 was to bring together researchers from both academia and industry, interested in marine robotics and hydrography with application to the coastal environment mapping and underwater infrastructures surveys. The common thread of the conference is the combination of technical control, perception, and localization, typically used in robotics, with the methods of mapping and bathymetry. The papers presented in this book focus on two main topics. Firstly, coastal and infrastructure mapping is addressed, focusing not only on hydrographic systems, but also on positioning systems, bathymetry, and remote sensing. The proposed methods rely on acoustic sensors such as side scan sonars, multibeam echo sounders, phase-measuring bathymetric sonars, as well as optical systems such as underwater laser scanners. Accurate underwater positioning is also addressed in the case of the use of a single acoustic beacon, and the latest advances in increasing the vertical precision of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) are also presented. Most of the above mentioned works are closely related to autonomous marine vehicles. Consequently, the second part of the book describes some works concerning the methods associated with such type of vehicles. The selected papers focus on autonomous surface or underwater vehicles, detailing new approaches for localization, modeling, control, mapping, obstacle detection and avoidance, surfacing, and software development. Some of these works imply acoustics sensing as well as image processing. Set membership methods are also used in some papers. The applications of the work presented in this book concern in particular oceanography, monitoring of oil and gas infrastructures, and military field.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, RAAD 2017, held at the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy, from June 21-23, 2017. The conference brought together academic and industrial researchers in robotics from 30 countries, the majority of them affiliated to the Alpe-Adria-Danube Region, and their worldwide partners. RAAD 2017 covered all major areas of R&D and innovation in robotics, including the latest research trends. The book provides an overview on the advances in service and industrial robotics. The topics are presented in a sequence starting from the classical robotic subjects, such as kinematics, dynamics, structures, control, and ending with the newest topics, like human-robot interaction and biomedical applications. Researchers involved in the robotic field will find this an extraordinary and up-to-date perspective on the state of the art in this area.