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Experimental and Quantitative Methods in Contemporary Economics: Computational Methods in Experimental Economics (CMEE) 2018 Conference (Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics)
by Kesra Nermend Małgorzata ŁatuszyńskaContemporary economists, when analyzing economic behavior of people, need to use the diversity of research methods and modern ways of discovering knowledge. The increasing popularity of using economic experiments requires the use of IT tools and quantitative methods that facilitate the analysis of the research material obtained as a result of the experiments and the formulation of correct conclusions. This proceedings volume presents problems in contemporary economics and provides innovative solutions using a range of quantitative and experimental tools. Featuring selected contributions presented at the 2018 Computational Methods in Experimental Economics Conference (CMEE 2018), this book provides a modern economic perspective on such important issues as: sustainable development, consumption, production, national wealth, the silver economy, behavioral finance, economic and non-economic factors determining the behavior of household members, consumer preferences, social campaigns, and neuromarketing. International case studies are also offered.
Experimental Aspects of Quantum Computing
by Henry O. EverittPractical quantum computing still seems more than a decade away, and researchers have not even identified what the best physical implementation of a quantum bit will be. There is a real need in the scientific literature for a dialogue on the topic of lessons learned and looming roadblocks. This reprint from Quantum Information Processing is dedicated to the experimental aspects of quantum computing and includes articles that 1) highlight the lessons learned over the last 10 years, and 2) outline the challenges over the next 10 years. The special issue includes a series of invited articles that discuss the most promising physical implementations of quantum computing. The invited articles were to draw grand conclusions about the past and speculate about the future, not just report results from the present.
Experimental Design: From User Studies to Psychophysics
by Douglas W. Cunningham Christian WallravenAs computers proliferate and as the field of computer graphics matures, it has become increasingly important for computer scientists to understand how users perceive and interpret computer graphics. Experimental Design: From User Studies to Psychophysics is an accessible introduction to psychological experiments and experimental design, covering th
Experimental Design Research: Approaches, Perspectives, Applications
by Philip Cash Tino Stanković Mario ŠtorgaThis book presents a new, multidisciplinary perspective on and paradigm for integrative experimental design research. It addresses various perspectives on methods, analysis and overall research approach, and how they can be synthesized to advance understanding of design. It explores the foundations of experimental approaches and their utility in this domain, and brings together analytical approaches to promote an integrated understanding. The book also investigates where these approaches lead to and how they link design research more fully with other disciplines (e.g. psychology, cognition, sociology, computer science, management). Above all, the book emphasizes the integrative nature of design research in terms of the methods, theories, and units of study—from the individual to the organizational level. Although this approach offers many advantages, it has inherently led to a situation in current research practice where methods are diverging and integration between individual, team and organizational understanding is becoming increasingly tenuous, calling for a multidisciplinary and transdiscipinary perspective. Experimental design research thus offers a powerful tool and platform for resolving these challenges. Providing an invaluable resource for the design research community, this book paves the way for the next generation of researchers in the field by bridging methods and methodology. As such, it will especially benefit postgraduate students and researchers in design research, as well as engineering designers.
Experimental Games: Critique, Play, and Design in the Age of Gamification
by Patrick JagodaIn our unprecedentedly networked world, games have come to occupy an important space in many of our everyday lives. Digital games alone engage an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide as of 2020, and other forms of gaming, such as board games, role playing, escape rooms, and puzzles, command an ever-expanding audience. At the same time, “gamification”—the application of game mechanics to traditionally nongame spheres, such as personal health and fitness, shopping, habit tracking, and more—has imposed unprecedented levels of competition, repetition, and quantification on daily life. Drawing from his own experience as a game designer, Patrick Jagoda argues that games need not be synonymous with gamification. He studies experimental games that intervene in the neoliberal project from the inside out, examining a broad variety of mainstream and independent games, including StarCraft, Candy Crush Saga, Stardew Valley, Dys4ia, Braid, and Undertale. Beyond a diagnosis of gamification, Jagoda imagines ways that games can be experimental—not only in the sense of problem solving, but also the more nuanced notion of problem making that embraces the complexities of our digital present. The result is a game-changing book on the sociopolitical potential of this form of mass entertainment.
Experimental Games: Critique, Play, and Design in the Age of Gamification
by Patrick JagodaIn our unprecedentedly networked world, games have come to occupy an important space in many of our everyday lives. Digital games alone engage an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide as of 2020, and other forms of gaming, such as board games, role playing, escape rooms, and puzzles, command an ever-expanding audience. At the same time, “gamification”—the application of game mechanics to traditionally nongame spheres, such as personal health and fitness, shopping, habit tracking, and more—has imposed unprecedented levels of competition, repetition, and quantification on daily life. Drawing from his own experience as a game designer, Patrick Jagoda argues that games need not be synonymous with gamification. He studies experimental games that intervene in the neoliberal project from the inside out, examining a broad variety of mainstream and independent games, including StarCraft, Candy Crush Saga, Stardew Valley, Dys4ia, Braid, and Undertale. Beyond a diagnosis of gamification, Jagoda imagines ways that games can be experimental—not only in the sense of problem solving, but also the more nuanced notion of problem making that embraces the complexities of our digital present. The result is a game-changing book on the sociopolitical potential of this form of mass entertainment.
Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction: 14th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2023, Thessaloniki, Greece, September 18–21, 2023, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #14163)
by Avi Arampatzis Evangelos Kanoulas Theodora Tsikrika Stefanos Vrochidis Anastasia Giachanou Dan Li Mohammad Aliannejadi Michalis Vlachos Guglielmo Faggioli Nicola FerroThis volume LNCS 14163 constitutes the refereed proceedings of 14th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2023, in Thessaloniki, Greece, during September 18–21, 2023. The 10 full papers and one short paper included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 35 submissions. The conference focuses on authorship attribution, fake news detection and news tracking, noise-detection in automatically transferred relevance judgments, impact of online education on children’s conversational search behavior, analysis of multi-modal social media content, knowledge graphs for sensitivity identification, a fusion of deep learning and logic rules for sentiment analysis, medical concept normalization and domain-specific information extraction.In addition to this, the volume presents 7 “Best of the labs” papers which were reviewed as full paper submissions with the same review criteria. 13 lab overview papers were accepted and represent scientific challenges based on new datasets and real world problems in multimodal and multilingual information access.
Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction: 11th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2020, Thessaloniki, Greece, September 22–25, 2020, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #12260)
by Avi Arampatzis Evangelos Kanoulas Theodora Tsikrika Stefanos Vrochidis Hideo Joho Christina Lioma Carsten Eickhoff Aurélie Névéol Linda Cappellato Nicola FerroThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2020, held in Thessaloniki, Greece, in September 2020.*The conference has a clear focus on experimental information retrieval with special attention to the challenges of multimodality, multilinguality, and interactive search ranging from unstructured to semi structures and structured data. The 5 full papers and 2 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 9 submissions. This year, the contributions addressed the following challenges: a large-scale evaluation of translation effects in academic search, advancement of assessor-driven aggregation methods for efficient relevance assessments, and development of a new test dataset. In addition to this, the volume presents 7 “best of the labs” papers which were reviewed as full paper submissions with the same review criteria. The 12 lab overview papers were accepted out of 15submissions and represent scientific challenges based on new data sets and real world problems in multimodal and multilingual information access. * The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction: 13th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2022, Bologna, Italy, September 5–8, 2022, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #13390)
by Alberto Barrón-Cedeño Giovanni Da San Martino Mirko Degli Esposti Fabrizio Sebastiani Craig Macdonald Gabriella Pasi Allan Hanbury Martin Potthast Guglielmo Faggioli Nicola FerroThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2022, held in Bologna, Italy in September 2022.The conference has a clear focus on experimental information retrieval with special attention to the challenges of multimodality, multilinguality, and interactive search ranging from unstructured to semi structures and structured data. The 7 full papers presented together with 3 short papers in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 14 submissions. This year, the contributions addressed the following challenges: authorship attribution, fake news detection and news tracking, noise-detection in automatically transferred relevance judgments, impact of online education on children’s conversational search behavior, analysis of multi-modal social media content, knowledge graphs for sensitivity identification, a fusion of deep learning and logic rules for sentiment analysis, medical concept normalization and domain-specific information extraction. In addition to this, the volume presents 7 “best of the labs” papers which were reviewed as full paper submissions with the same review criteria. 14 lab overview papers were accepted and represent scientific challenges based on new datasets and real world problems in multimodal and multilingual information access.
Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction: 9th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2018, Avignon, France, September 10-14, 2018, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #11018)
by Patrice Bellot Chiraz Trabelsi Josiane Mothe Fionn Murtagh Jian Yun Nie Laure Soulier Eric SanJuan Linda Cappellato Nicola FerroThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the CLEF Initiative, CLEF 2018, jointly organized by Avignon, Marseille and Toulon universities and held in Avignon, France, in September 2018. The conference has a clear focus on experimental information retrieval with special attention to the challenges of multimodality, multilinguality, and interactive search ranging from unstructured to semi structures and structured data. The 13 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 39 submissions. Many papers tackle the medical ehealth and ehealth multimedia retrieval challenges, however there are many other topics of research such as document clustering, social biases in IR, social book search, personality profiling. Further this volume presents 9 “best of the labs” papers which were reviewed as a full paper submission with the same review criteria. The labs represented scientific challenges based on new data sets and real world problems in multimodal and multilingual information access. In addition to this, 10 benchmarking labs reported results of their yearlong activities in overview talks and lab sessions. The papers address all aspects of information access in any modularity and language and cover a broad range of topics in the field of multilingual and multimodal information access evaluation.
Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction: 12th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2021, Virtual Event, September 21–24, 2021, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #12880)
by K. Selçuk Candan Bogdan Ionescu Lorraine Goeuriot Birger Larsen Henning Müller Alexis Joly Maria Maistro Florina Piroi Guglielmo Faggioli Nicola FerroThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2021, held virtually in September 2021.The conference has a clear focus on experimental information retrieval with special attention to the challenges of multimodality, multilinguality, and interactive search ranging from unstructured to semi structures and structured data. The 11 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. This year, the contributions addressed the following challenges: application of neural methods for entity recognition as well as misinformation detection in the health area, skills extraction in job-match databases, stock market prediction using financial news, and extraction of audio features for podcast retrieval. In addition to this, the volume presents 5 “best of the labs” papers which were reviewed as full paper submissions with the same review criteria. 12 lab overview papers were accepted and represent scientific challenges based on new data sets and real world problems in multimodal and multilingual information access.
Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction: 10th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2019, Lugano, Switzerland, September 9–12, 2019, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #11696)
by Fabio Crestani Martin Braschler Jacques Savoy Andreas Rauber Henning Müller David E. Losada Gundula Heinatz Bürki Linda Cappellato Nicola FerroThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2019, held in Lugano, Switzerland, in September 2019.The conference has a clear focus on experimental information retrieval with special attention to the challenges of multimodality, multilinguality, and interactive search ranging from unstructured to semi structures and structured data. The 7 full papers and 8 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 30 submissions. This year, many contributions tackle the social networks with the detection of stances or early identification of depression signs on Twitter in a cross-lingual context. Further this volume presents 7 “best of the labs” papers which were reviewed as a full paper submission with the same review criteria. The labs represented scientific challenges based on new data sets and real world problems in multimodal and multilingual information access. In addition to this, 9 benchmarking labs reported results of their yearlong activities in overview talks and lab sessions.
Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction: 15th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2024, Grenoble, France, September 9–12, 2024, Proceedings, Part I (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #14958)
by Nicola Ferro Georges Quénot Giorgio Maria Di Nunzio Lorraine Goeuriot Laure Soulier Guglielmo Faggioli Philippe Mulhem Didier Schwab Petra Galuščáková Alba García Seco de HerreraThe two volume set LNCS 14958 + 14959 constitutes the proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2024, held in Grenoble, France, during September 9–12, 2024. The proceedings contain 11 conference papers; 6 best of CLEF 2023 Labs' papers, and 14 Lab overview papers accepted from 45 submissions. In addition an overview paper on the CLEF activities in the last 25 years is included. The CLEF conference and labs of the evaluation forum deal with topics in information access from different perspectives, in any modality and language, focusing on experimental information retrieval (IR).
Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction: 15th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2024, Grenoble, France, September 9–12, 2024, Proceedings, Part II (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #14959)
by Nicola Ferro Georges Quénot Giorgio Maria Di Nunzio Lorraine Goeuriot Laure Soulier Guglielmo Faggioli Philippe Mulhem Didier Schwab Petra Galuščáková Alba García Seco de HerreraThe two volume set LNCS 14958 + 14959 constitutes the proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2024, held in Grenoble, France, during September 9–12, 2024. The proceedings contain 11 conference papers; 6 best of CLEF 2023 Labs' papers, and 14 Lab overview papers accepted from 45 submissions. In addition an overview paper on the CLEF activities in the last 25 years is included. The CLEF conference and labs of the evaluation forum deal with topics in information access from different perspectives, in any modality and language, focusing on experimental information retrieval (IR).
Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction: 7th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2016, Évora, Portugal, September 5-8, 2016, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #9822)
by Norbert Fuhr Paulo Quaresma Teresa Gonçalves Birger Larsen Krisztian Balog Craig Macdonald Linda Cappellato Nicola FerroThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference of the CLEF Initiative, CLEF 2016, held in Toulouse, France, in September 2016.The 10 full papers and 8 short papers presented together with 5 best of the labs papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 36 submissions. In addition to these talks, this volume contains the results of 7 benchmarking labs reporting their year long activities in overview talks and lab sessions. The papers address all aspects of information access in any modality and language and cover a broad rangeof topics in the fields of multilingual and multimodal information access evaluation.
Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction: 8th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF 2017, Dublin, Ireland, September 11–14, 2017, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #10456)
by Gareth J.F. Jones, Séamus Lawless, Julio Gonzalo, Liadh Kelly, Lorraine Goeuriot, Thomas Mandl, Linda Cappellato and Nicola FerroThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference of the CLEF Initiative, CLEF 2017, held in Dublin, Ireland, in September 2017.The 7 full papers and 9 short papers presented together with 6 best of the labs papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. In addition, this volume contains the results of 10 benchmarking labs reporting their year long activities in overview talks and lab sessions. The papers address all aspects of information access in any modality and language and cover a broad range of topics in the field of multilingual and multimodal information access evaluation.
Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction: 6th International Conference of the CLEF Association, CLEF'15, Toulouse, France, September 8-11, 2015, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #9283)
by Josiane Mothe Jacques Savoy Jaap Kamps Karen Pinel-Sauvagnat Gareth J. F. Jones Eric SanJuan Linda Cappellato Nicola Ferro Ina WolfThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference of the CLEF Initiative, CLEF 2015, held in Toulouse, France, in September 2015. The 31 full papers and 20 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 68 submissions. They cover a broad range of issues in the fields of multilingual and multimodal information access evaluation, also included are a set of labs and workshops designed to test different aspects of mono and cross-language information retrieval systems.
Experimental Learning in Production Management: IFIP TC5 / WG5.7 Third Workshop on Games in Production Management: The effects of games on developing production management 27–29 June 1997, Espoo, Finland (IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology)
by Riitta Smeds Jens O. RiisThis book is based on the presentations at the Third Workshop on Games in Production Management, The Effects of Games on Developing Production Management, held in Espoo, Finland, June 27-29, 1997. The workshop was organized by the Special Interest Group on Games of IFIP Working Group 5.7, which is coordinated by Professor Jens Riis. The Special Interest Group aims to enhance learning in production management in academia and in industry, through the development, application and research of simulation games. Currently, the Special Interest Group is developing a catalogue of games in production management, which will be available on the Internet. The two previous workshops of the Special Interest Group were held in Aalborg and in Sf/lnderborg, and a workshop and exhibition of simulation games was arranged in connection with the APMS '96 Conference in Kyoto in November 1996. In these workshops, various simulation games have been presented, experimented, and discussed, and experiences exchanged. As a result, a network of researchers and teachers interested in games has been created. The third workshop with participants from ten countries further expanded and strengthened the network, and created ideas for potential joint research projects in simulation for learning in production management. The workshop was sponsored by the IFIP Working Group 5.7 on Computer Aided Production Management Systems, Helsinki University of Technology, the Finnish Graduate School of Industrial Management, and the City of Espoo, which we gratefully acknowledge.
Experimental Methods for the Analysis of Optimization Algorithms
by Thomas Bartz-Beielstein Marco Chiarandini Luís Paquete Mike PreussIn operations research and computer science it is common practice to evaluate the performance of optimization algorithms on the basis of computational results, and the experimental approach should follow accepted principles that guarantee the reliability and reproducibility of results. However, computational experiments differ from those in other sciences, and the last decade has seen considerable methodological research devoted to understanding the particular features of such experiments and assessing the related statistical methods. This book consists of methodological contributions on different scenarios of experimental analysis. The first part overviews the main issues in the experimental analysis of algorithms, and discusses the experimental cycle of algorithm development; the second part treats the characterization by means of statistical distributions of algorithm performance in terms of solution quality, runtime and other measures; and the third part collects advanced methods from experimental design for configuring and tuning algorithms on a specific class of instances with the goal of using the least amount of experimentation. The contributor list includes leading scientists in algorithm design, statistical design, optimization and heuristics, and most chapters provide theoretical background and are enriched with case studies. This book is written for researchers and practitioners in operations research and computer science who wish to improve the experimental assessment of optimization algorithms and, consequently, their design.
Experimental Research in Earthquake Engineering: EU-SERIES Concluding Workshop (Geotechnical, Geological and Earthquake Engineering #35)
by Fabio Taucer Roberta ApostolskaIn this volume, top seismic experts and researchers from Europe and around the world, including the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) in the USA, present the most recent outcome of their work in experimental testing, as well as the results of the transnational access activities of external researchers who have used Europe's seven largest and most advanced seismic testing facilities in the framework of the Seismic Engineering Research Infrastructures for European Synergies (SERIES) Project financed by the European Commission in its 7th Framework Programme (2007-2013). This includes EU’s largest reaction wall facility, EU's four largest shaking table laboratories and its two major centrifuges. The work presented includes state-of-the-art research towards the seismic design, assessment and retrofitting of structures, as well as the development of innovative research toward new fundamental technologies and techniques promoting efficient and joint use of the research infrastructures. The contents of this volume demonstrate the fruits of the effort of the European Commission in supporting research in earthquake engineering.
Experimental Research in Evolutionary Computation: The New Experimentalism (Natural Computing Series)
by Thomas Bartz-BeielsteinThis book introduces the new experimentalism in evolutionary computation, providing tools to understand algorithms and programs and their interaction with optimization problems. It develops and applies statistical techniques to analyze and compare modern search heuristics such as evolutionary algorithms and particle swarm optimization. The book bridges the gap between theory and experiment by providing a self-contained experimental methodology and many examples.
Experimental Robotics: The 13th International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics #88)
by Jaydev P. Desai Gregory Dudek Oussama Khatib Vijay KumarThe International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER) is a series of bi-annual meetings, which are organized, in a rotating fashion around North America, Europe and Asia/Oceania. The goal of ISER is to provide a forum for research in robotics that focuses on novelty of theoretical contributions validated by experimental results. The meetings are conceived to bring together, in a small group setting, researchers from around the world who are in the forefront of experimental robotics research. This unique reference presents the latest advances across the various fields of robotics, with ideas that are not only conceived conceptually but also explored experimentally. It collects robotics contributions on the current developments and new directions in the field of experimental robotics, which are based on the papers presented at the 13the ISER held in Québec City, Canada, at the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac, on June 18-21, 2012. This present thirteenth edition of Experimental Robotics edited by Jaydev P. Desai, Gregory Dudek, Oussama Khatib, and Vijay Kumar offers a collection of a broad range of topics in field and human-centered robotics.
Experimental Robotics: The 14th International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics #109)
by M. Ani Hsieh Oussama Khatib Vijay KumarThe International Symposium on Experimental Robotics (ISER) is a series of bi-annual meetings which are organized in a rotating fashion around North America, Europe and Asia/Oceania. The goal of ISER is to provide a forum for research in robotics that focuses on novelty of theoretical contributions validated by experimental results. The meetings are conceived to bring together, in a small group setting, researchers from around the world who are in the forefront of experimental robotics research. This unique reference presents the latest advances across the various fields of robotics, with ideas that are not only conceived conceptually but also explored experimentally. It collects robotics contributions on the current developments and new directions in the field of experimental robotics, which are based on the papers presented at the 14th ISER held on June 15-18, 2014 in Marrakech and Essaouira, Morocco. This present fourteenth edition of Experimental Robotics edited by M. Ani Hsieh, Oussama Khatib, and Vijay Kumar offers a collection of a broad range of topics in field and human-centered robotics.
Experimental Robotics: The 18th International Symposium (Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics #30)
by Oussama Khatib Marcelo H. Ang JrThis book presents scientific and practical developments in the emerging trends of human-centric robotics in unstructured environments, covering Human–Robot Collaboration, Mobile Robotics and Manipulation, Field Robotics, Aerial Robotics, Humanoids, and Autonomous Driving. It offers insights into the latest scientific and technological development in robot–human interactions, advanced autonomy, and robust designs for real-world applications. This edition's approach is characterized by strong scientific developments backed by practical applications, offering detailed case studies and experimental data that support the theoretical foundations of robotic technology. By emphasizing the application side of research, it encourages readers to consider not only, theoretical advancements in robotics but also the implications and opportunities for real-world integration.
Experimental Robotics: The Eleventh International Symposium (Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics #54)
by Oussama Khatib Vijay Kumar George PappasBy 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, neuros- ences, 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.