Download or read book Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems written by Guowei Cai and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems explores the research and development of fully-functional miniature UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) rotorcraft, and provides a complete treatment of the design of autonomous miniature rotorcraft UAVs. The unmanned system is an integration of advanced technologies developed in communications, computing, and control areas, and is an excellent testing ground for trialing and implementing modern control techniques. Included are detailed expositions of systematic hardware construction, software systems integration, aerodynamic modeling; and automatic flight control system design. Emphasis is placed on the cooperative control and flight formation of multiple UAVs, vision-based ground target tracking, and landing on moving platforms. Other issues such as the development of GPS-less indoor micro aerial vehicles and vision-based navigation are also discussed in depth: utilizing the vision-based system for accomplishing ground target tracking, attacking and landing, cooperative control and flight formation of multiple unmanned rotorcraft; and future research directions on the related areas.

Download or read book Airpower in Afghanistan 2005 10 written by Dag Henriksen and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Vision based Localization and Attitude Estimation Methods in Natural Environments written by Bertil Grelsson and published by Linköping University Electronic Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last decade, the usage of unmanned systems such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) has increased drastically, and there is still a rapid growth. Today, unmanned systems are being deployed in many daily operations, e.g. for deliveries in remote areas, to increase efficiency of agriculture, and for environmental monitoring at sea. For safety reasons, unmanned systems are often the preferred choice for surveillance missions in hazardous environments, e.g. for detection of nuclear radiation, and in disaster areas after earthquakes, hurricanes, or during forest fires. For safe navigation of the unmanned systems during their missions, continuous and accurate global localization and attitude estimation is mandatory. Over the years, many vision-based methods for position estimation have been developed, primarily for urban areas. In contrast, this thesis is mainly focused on vision-based methods for accurate position and attitude estimates in natural environments, i.e. beyond the urban areas. Vision-based methods possess several characteristics that make them appealing as global position and attitude sensors. First, vision sensors can be realized and tailored for most unmanned vehicle applications. Second, geo-referenced terrain models can be generated worldwide from satellite imagery and can be stored onboard the vehicles. In natural environments, where the availability of geo-referenced images in general is low, registration of image information with terrain models is the natural choice for position and attitude estimation. This is the problem area that I addressed in the contributions of this thesis. The first contribution is a method for full 6DoF (degrees of freedom) pose estimation from aerial images. A dense local height map is computed using structure from motion. The global pose is inferred from the 3D similarity transform between the local height map and a digital elevation model. Aligning height information is assumed to be more robust to season variations than feature-based matching. The second contribution is a method for accurate attitude (pitch and roll angle) estimation via horizon detection. It is one of only a few methods that use an omnidirectional (fisheye) camera for horizon detection in aerial images. The method is based on edge detection and a probabilistic Hough voting scheme. The method allows prior knowledge of the attitude angles to be exploited to make the initial attitude estimates more robust. The estimates are then refined through registration with the geometrically expected horizon line from a digital elevation model. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first method where the ray refraction in the atmosphere is taken into account, which enables the highly accurate attitude estimates. The third contribution is a method for position estimation based on horizon detection in an omnidirectional panoramic image around a surface vessel. Two convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are designed and trained to estimate the camera orientation and to segment the horizon line in the image. The MOSSE correlation filter, normally used in visual object tracking, is adapted to horizon line registration with geometric data from a digital elevation model. Comprehensive field trials conducted in the archipelago demonstrate the GPS-level accuracy of the method, and that the method can be trained on images from one region and then applied to images from a previously unvisited test area. The CNNs in the third contribution apply the typical scheme of convolutions, activations, and pooling. The fourth contribution focuses on the activations and suggests a new formulation to tune and optimize a piecewise linear activation function during training of CNNs. Improved classification results from experiments when tuning the activation function led to the introduction of a new activation function, the Shifted Exponential Linear Unit (ShELU).

Download or read book Genetic Algorithms in Search Optimization and Machine Learning written by David Edward Goldberg and published by Addison-Wesley Professional. This book was released on 1989 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gentle introduction to genetic algorithms. Genetic algorithms revisited: mathematical foundations. Computer implementation of a genetic algorithm. Some applications of genetic algorithms. Advanced operators and techniques in genetic search. Introduction to genetics-based machine learning. Applications of genetics-based machine learning. A look back, a glance ahead. A review of combinatorics and elementary probability. Pascal with random number generation for fortran, basic, and cobol programmers. A simple genetic algorithm (SGA) in pascal. A simple classifier system(SCS) in pascal. Partition coefficient transforms for problem-coding analysis.

Download or read book Multisensor Attitude Estimation written by Hassen Fourati and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been an increasing interest in multi-disciplinary research on multisensor attitude estimation technology driven by its versatility and diverse areas of application, such as sensor networks, robotics, navigation, video, biomedicine, etc. Attitude estimation consists of the determination of rigid bodies’ orientation in 3D space. This research area is a multilevel, multifaceted process handling the automatic association, correlation, estimation, and combination of data and information from several sources. Data fusion for attitude estimation is motivated by several issues and problems, such as data imperfection, data multi-modality, data dimensionality, processing framework, etc. While many of these problems have been identified and heavily investigated, no single data fusion algorithm is capable of addressing all the aforementioned challenges. The variety of methods in the literature focus on a subset of these issues to solve, which would be determined based on the application in hand. Historically, the problem of attitude estimation has been introduced by Grace Wahba in 1965 within the estimate of satellite attitude and aerospace applications. This book intends to provide the reader with both a generic and comprehensive view of contemporary data fusion methodologies for attitude estimation, as well as the most recent researches and novel advances on multisensor attitude estimation task. It explores the design of algorithms and architectures, benefits, and challenging aspects, as well as a broad array of disciplines, including: navigation, robotics, biomedicine, motion analysis, etc. A number of issues that make data fusion for attitude estimation a challenging task, and which will be discussed through the different chapters of the book, are related to: 1) The nature of sensors and information sources (accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, GPS, inclinometer, etc.); 2) The computational ability at the sensors; 3) The theoretical developments and convergence proofs; 4) The system architecture, computational resources, fusion level.

Download or read book The War That Must Never Be Fought written by George P. Shultz and published by Hoover Press. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the nuclear dilemma from various countries' points of view: from Japan, Korea, the Middle East, and others. The final chapter proposes a new solution for the nonproliferation treaty review.

Download or read book Peace Works written by Frederick D. Barton and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-04-20 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bosnia, Rwanda, Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria - a quarter-century of stumbles in America’s pursuit of a more peaceful and just world. American military interventions have cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars, yet we rarely manage to enact positive and sustainable change. In Peace Works: America's Unifying Role in a Turbulent World, ambassador and global conflict leader Rick Barton uses a mix of stories, history, and analysis for a transformative approach to foreign affairs and offers concrete and attainable solutions for the future. Drawing on his lifetime of experience as a diplomat, foreign policy expert, and State Department advisor, Rick Barton grapples with the fact that the U.S. is strategically positioned and morally obligated to defuse international conflicts, but often inadvertently escalates conflicts instead. Guided by the need to find solutions that will yield tangible results, Barton does a deep analysis of our last several interventions and discusses why they failed and how they could have succeeded. He outlines a few key directives in his foreign policy strategy: remain transparent with the American public, act as a catalyzing (not colonizing!) force, and engage local partners. But above all else, he insists that the U.S. must maintain a focus on people. Since a country’s greatest resource is often the ingenuity of its local citizens, it is counterproductive to ignore them while planning an intervention. By anchoring each chapter to a story from a specific conflict zone, Barton is able to discuss opportunities pursued and missed, areas for improvement, and policy recommendations. This balance between storytelling and concrete policy suggestions both humanizes distant stories of foreign crises, and provides going-forward solutions for desperate situations. The book begins and ends in Syria – the ultimate failure of our current approach to foreign policy, and with devastating consequences.

Download or read book NATO s Gamble written by Dag Henriksen and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected for the 2008 Royal Air Force Reading List In this revealing work, Dag Henriksen discloses the origins and content of NATO's strategic and conceptual thinking on how the use of force was to succeed politically in altering the behavior of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). The air campaign, known as Operation Allied Force, was the first war against any sovereign nation in the history of NATO and the first major combat operation conducted for humanitarian purposes against a state committing atrocities within its own borders. This book examines the key political, diplomatic, and military processes that shaped NATO and U.S. management of the Kosovo crisis and shows how air power became the main instrument in their strategy to coerce the FRY to accede to NATO's demands. The book further shows that the military leaders set to execute the campaign had no clear strategic guidance on what the operation was to achieve and that the level of uncertainty was so high that the officers selecting the bombing targets watched NATO's military spokesman on CNN for guidance in choosing their targets. Henriksen argues that structures preceding the Kosovo crisis shaped the management to a much greater degree than events taking place in Kosovo and that the air power community's largely institutionalized focus on high-intensity conflicts, like the 1991 Gulf War, hampered them from developing strategies to fit the political complexities of crises. Because fighting and wars in the lower end of the intensity spectrum are likely to surface again, study of the Kosovo crisis offers lessons for future international conflicts in which the combination of force and diplomacy will play a very significant role.

Download or read book Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat written by Wayne Hughes and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major revision updates Wayne Hughes's 1986 landmark study that is credited with providing decision makers a sound foundation for battle planning and tactical thinking. The book integrates the historical evolution of tactics, analysis, and fleet operations, and today it can serve as a primer for anyone who wants to learn how navies fight and win. This second edition includes much new material on combat in the missile age and reflects the reconfiguration of many tactics for littoral operations after the fall of the Soviet Union. Hughes recreates famous battles to show how tactics have changed through the ages and the ways in which they have remained unchanged. He covers tactical interaction between land and sea, the sensory revolution of WWII, secret weapons and maritime surprise, the role in battle of leadership and morale, and the importance of surface warships in today's U.S. fleet. He suggests that naval tactics, unlike ground combat, are dominated by the offense and concludes that the great tactical maxim must be attack effectively first. A new chapter traces the evolution of missile tactics at sea and includes details of attacks on ships. Many changes emphasize joint operations and coastal combat. The already extensive appraisal of command and control and information warfare is further expanded to cover modern naval operations and the character of modern salvo warfare. In the tradition of Mahan and Clauswitz, this classic text incorporates literature, politics, and a knowledge of human nature. Indispensable reading for all those interested in naval tactics, it is also a valuable reference for wargamers

Download or read book WealthTech written by Patrick Schueffel and published by IAP. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book “WealthTech: Wealth and Asset Management in the Fintech Age” is the primary resource for the wealth and asset management technology revolution. It examines the rise of financial technology and its growing impact on the wealth and asset management industry. Written by thought leaders in the global WealthTech space, this volume offers an analysis of the current tectonic shifts happening in wealth and asset management and aggregates diverse industry expertise into a single informative book. It provides practitioners such as wealth managers, bankers and investors with the answers they need to capitalize on this lucrative market. As a primer on WealthTech it offers academics clear insight into the repercussions of profoundly changing business models. It furthermore highlights the concept of the ongoing democratization of wealth management towards a more efficient and client-centric advisory process, free of entry hurdles. This book aggregates facts, expertise, insights and acumen from industry experts to provide answers on various questions including: Who are the key players in WealthTech? What is fueling its exponential growth? What are the key technologies behind WealthTech? How do regulators respond? What are the risks? What is the reaction of incumbent players? This book not only seeks to answer these questions but also touches on a series of related topics: • Get up to speed on the latest industry developments • Understand the driving forces behind the rise of WealthTech • Realize the depth and breadth of WealthTech • Discover how investors react to the growth in WealthTech • Learn how regulators influence the evolution of WealthTech business models • Examine the market dynamics of the WealthTech revolution • Grasp the industry’s potential and its effects on connected sectors • Build acumen on investment and entrepreneurial opportunities A unique product for the market place Digital transformation is creating game-changing opportunities and disruptions across industries and businesses. One industry where these game-changing opportunities will have profound impacts is wealth and asset management. For generations, wealth and asset management was a privileged service provided to co-operations and wealthy individuals. The informational advantages that wealth managers held vis-a -vis their clients provided a key competitive differentiator. In the current digital transformation climate, this differentiator is vanishing and the setting is changing. A top priority on the agenda for any wealth and asset manager must therefore be how to respond and prepare for the ramifications of this fast changing business environment. This book (one of the first to be published in this area) will provide the reader with a head start in adapting to this new digital environment.

Download or read book Rice Crop Quality written by United States. Federal Grain Inspection Service and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Extreme C written by Kamran Amini and published by Packt Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 823 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Push the limits of what C - and you - can do, with this high-intensity guide to the most advanced capabilities of C Key FeaturesMake the most of C’s low-level control, flexibility, and high performanceA comprehensive guide to C’s most powerful and challenging featuresA thought-provoking guide packed with hands-on exercises and examplesBook Description There’s a lot more to C than knowing the language syntax. The industry looks for developers with a rigorous, scientific understanding of the principles and practices. Extreme C will teach you to use C’s advanced low-level power to write effective, efficient systems. This intensive, practical guide will help you become an expert C programmer. Building on your existing C knowledge, you will master preprocessor directives, macros, conditional compilation, pointers, and much more. You will gain new insight into algorithm design, functions, and structures. You will discover how C helps you squeeze maximum performance out of critical, resource-constrained applications. C still plays a critical role in 21st-century programming, remaining the core language for precision engineering, aviations, space research, and more. This book shows how C works with Unix, how to implement OO principles in C, and fully covers multi-processing. In Extreme C, Amini encourages you to think, question, apply, and experiment for yourself. The book is essential for anybody who wants to take their C to the next level. What you will learnBuild advanced C knowledge on strong foundations, rooted in first principlesUnderstand memory structures and compilation pipeline and how they work, and how to make most out of themApply object-oriented design principles to your procedural C codeWrite low-level code that’s close to the hardware and squeezes maximum performance out of a computer systemMaster concurrency, multithreading, multi-processing, and integration with other languagesUnit Testing and debugging, build systems, and inter-process communication for C programmingWho this book is for Extreme C is for C programmers who want to dig deep into the language and its capabilities. It will help you make the most of the low-level control C gives you.

Download or read book U S Aircraft Carriers written by Norman Friedman and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "U.S. Aircraft Carriers Revised Edition is one of the most comprehensive references available on the entire development of U.S. Aircraft Carriers, starting in 1920, with USS Langley CV-1, continuing to Enterprise, the mass-produced Essex-class, and the large Midway-class of post-World War II. Friedman authoritatively analyzes the design and performance histories of this popular type. The long careers of the Nimitz-class and the new Ford-class are also included. Like Friedman's other design history books, U.S. Aircraft Carriers is based largely on formerly classified internal U.S. Navy records"--

Download or read book American and British Aircraft Carrier Development 1919 1941 written by Thomas Hone and published by US Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Focusing on the critical years between the two world wars, the authors trace the personal, organizational, and institutional elements that moved the U.S. and British navies along different paths of aircraft carrier development and operations. In a direct, almost conversational tone they draw on years of research to explain why and how the Royal Navy lost its once considerable lead in carrier doctrine and carrier aircraft development to the Americans." (éd.).

Download or read book Dear Black Girls written by Shanice Nicole and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-08 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dear Black Girls is a letter to all Black girls. Every day poet and educator Shanice Nicole is reminded of how special Black girls are and of how lucky she is to be one. Illustrations by Kezna Dalz support the book's message that no two Black girls are the same but they are all special--that to be a Black girl is a true gift. In this celebratory poem, Kezna and Shanice remind young readers that despite differences, they all deserve to be loved just the way they are.

Download or read book Fresh from the Farm 6pk written by Rigby and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Shadows of Asia written by Fanpro and published by Fanpro. This book was released on 2005-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: