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Autonomous manufacturing and cyber-physical systems are key enabling technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR4) which are currently being incorporated into the building design and construction industries. These emerging IR4 technologies have the potential to effectively improve construction affordability and productivity, address current and future building demand, and reduce the environmental impact of the built environment. However, design approaches that make use of IR4 technologies are still relatively unexplored. While automation, such as mass production, promotes standardised design solutions, design thinking that embraces varying degrees of autonomy can lead to unique and ...
This book examines philosophical aspects of the future of man and humanity, focusing on questioning what is and what constitutes “being human” in the face of scientific and technological developments and possible coexistence with machines and artificial intelligence. In this sense, the contribution of these authors is the establishment of a new discipline that analyses our technological future, which may be populated by enhanced cyborgs, avatars, and autonomous robots. This scientific-technological future brings about practically inconceivable social and philosophical consequences. Thus, this book answers the questions: What are the ethical and ontological issues and assumptions we make about humans and how will these change with time? Moreover, how should we think of human existence in this new and emerging world?
Nick Miller argues in this provocative study that to comprehend Yugoslavia's collapse, we must examine the development and nature of Serbian nationalism, and the typical approaches will not suffice. Serbia's national movement of the 1980s and 1990s, Miller suggests, was not the product of an ancient, immutable, and aggressive Serbian national identity; nor was it an artificial creation of powerful political actors looking to capitalize on its mobilizing power. In examining the work of three influential Serbian intellectuals, Miller argues that cultural processes are too often ignored in favor of political ones; that Serbian intellectuals did work within a historical context, but that they we...
Conserving and restoring freshwater and marine ecosystems are priorities addressed by several European and global conservation initiatives. Many management and conservation initiatives have been put in place to support the achievement of declared national and global conservation and sustainability goals. Nonetheless, the extent to which all these initiatives can provide lasting positive effects on conservation and restoration targets is often impaired/limited by the lack of robust baseline data and systematic monitoring, which in turn are constrained by the limited number of long-term monitoring programs and limited dedicated funding. This collection underlines the importance of monitoring in times of global change and shifting baselines and the urgency of boosting conservation strategies to ensure progression towards meeting global conservation objectives. Emphasis is given also to the socio-ecological contexts and dimensions of conservation efforts, and the potential of societal engagement in monitoring practices - a key enabling factor to turn conservation initiatives into practical actions and ecosystem protection.
Stories from the future of intelligent machines—from rescue drones to robot spouses—and accounts of cutting-edge research that could make it all possible. Tech prognosticators promised us robots—autonomous humanoids that could carry out any number of tasks. Instead, we have robot vacuum cleaners. But, as Dario Floreano and Nicola Nosengo report, advances in robotics could bring those rosy predictions closer to reality. A new generation of robots, directly inspired by the intelligence and bodies of living organisms, will be able not only to process data but to interact physically with humans and the environment. In this book, Floreano, a roboticist, and Nosengo, a science writer, bring ...
Infrastructure Robotics Illuminating resource presenting commonly used robotic methodologies and technologies, with recent developments and clear application examples across different project types Infrastructure Robotics presents state-of-the-art research in infrastructure robotics and key methodologies that enable the development of intelligent robots for operation in civil infrastructure environments, describing sensing, perception, localization, map building, environmental and operation awareness, motion and task planning, design methodologies, robot assistance paradigms, and physical human-robot collaboration. The text also presents many case studies of robotic systems developed for rea...
"The Road to War in Serbia is the first serious attempt by scholars from the former Yugoslavia to systematically explore the roots of the conflict and the ideology and propaganda that incited Serbian people to war. Based on years of research, the authors-all eminent scholars of their respective fields, who have lived through these social conflicts-highlight key issues which have date remained unknown or which have been previously neglected." "The issues dealt with include the institutional frameworks of ethnicity and nationalism; the input of the church, science, literature and sports; specific catalysts of the conflict, and the role of the political actors, students, the ruling party and the media." "The Road to War in Serbia will help to understand why and how the violent option of settling disputes and conflicts on the territory of Yugoslavia is being accepted."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
ISRR, the "International Symposium on Robotics Research", is one of robotics pioneering Symposia, which has established over the past two decades some of the field's most fundamental and lasting contributions. This book presents the results of the seventeenth edition of "Robotics Research" ISRR15, offering a collection of a broad range of topics in robotics. The content of the contributions provides a wide coverage of the current state of robotics research.: the advances and challenges in its theoretical foundation and technology basis, and the developments in its traditional and new emerging areas of applications. The diversity, novelty, and span of the work unfolding in these areas reveal the field's increased maturity and expanded scope and define the state of the art of robotics and its future direction.
Robotics: Science and Systems VIII spans a wide spectrum of robotics, bringing together contributions from researchers working on the mathematical foundations of robotics, robotics applications, and analysis of robotics systems.
The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1991 shed entirely new light on the character of their political systems. There is now a need to re-examine many of the standard interpretations of Soviet and Yugoslav politics. This book is a comparative study of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union - as multinational, federal communist states - and the reaction of European and US foreign policy to the parallel collapses of these nations. The authors describe the structural similarities in the destabilization of the two countries, providing great insight into the demise of both.