This open access book bridges the gap between playing with robots in school and studying robotics at the upper undergraduate and graduate levels to prepare for careers in industry and research. Robotic algorithms are presented formally, but using only mathematics known by high-school and first-year college students, such as calculus, matrices and probability. Concepts and algorithms are explained through detailed diagrams and calculations.

Elements of Robotics presents an overview of differen...

Confidence is good, but to be in control is better! Our journey to write a general introduction to control and feedback started with the realisation that in our chosen field of study the proponents have taken little time to project the main ideas outside the community of the initiated. We are constantly - minded of the fact that there is no general awareness of control engineering, or c- trol technology, despite its ubiquity when we try to introduce ourselves as control engineers. Invariably ...

Seven interviews with leading climate scientists cover both fundamental research (climate modeling, global warming, sea level change, melting of the ice caps, natural hazards) and impact assessment (adaption, mitigation, economic impacts and costs of climate change). Experts on different aspects of the topic explain their own field and give their opinion on general questions concerning climate change. The goal is to provide the reader with first-hand information on the current state of climat...

This book offers a practical guide for policy advisors and their managers, grounded in the author’s extensive experience as a senior policy practitioner in New Zealand’s Westminster-style system of government.

A key message is that effective policy advising is less about cycles, stages and steps, and more about relationships, integrity and communication. Policy making is incremental social problem solving. Policy advising is mostly learned on the job, like an apprenticeship. It starts wit...

Aviation networks play a critical role in the success of today’s airlines and airports. This book provides insight on all aspects of modern network strategies and structures, ranging from market research to hub design, operations, organization, alliances, benchmarking, and antitrust issues. Considering both the airline and the airport perspectives, the book explains the economics of connectivity or productivity-driven hub structures through basic mathematics, which helps the reader to compr...

Familiar combinations of ingredients and processing make the structures that give food its properties. For example in ice cream, the emulsifiers and proteins stabilize partly crystalline milk fat as an emulsion, freezing (crystallization) of some of the water gives the product its hardness and polysaccharide stabilizers keep it smooth. Why different recipes work as they do is largely governed by the rules of physical chemistry.

This textbook introduces the physical chemistry essential to unde...

Over a century ago, psychologists who were fascinated with religion began to study and write about it. People with a background in psychology often lack a solid understanding of the religious traditions they wish to study, and theologians may not be up to date on the latest developments in psychology.

This book is an introductory text on design science, intended to support both graduate students and researchers in structuring, undertaking and presenting design science work. It builds on established design science methods as well as recent work on presenting design science studies and ethical principles for design science, and also offers novel instruments for visualizing the results, both in the form of process diagrams and through a canvas format. While the book does not presume any prior...

Proper design of printed circuit boards can make the difference between a product passing emissions requirements during the first cycle or not. Traditional EMC design practices have been simply rule-based, that is, a list of rules-of-thumb are presented to the board designers to implement. When a particular rule-of-thumb is difficult to implement, it is often ignored. After the product is built, it will often fail emission requirements and various time consuming and costly add-ons are then re...

This handbook discusses different countries' bureaucratic, institutional, constitutional, reforms and governance system. It analyses the legislative and policy making processes and applications, local structures and functions of public administration in a given country. It presents the comparative aspects of public administration across the globe with recent developments in the field.