Escaping Obstacles is a motivational story of the life of a boy to a man. Overcoming tremendous adversity that was set into motion by his family, trying so desperately to break the inevitable cycle of choices his family makes, with the intention of not giving up on becoming someone. Using his own experiences of a dysfunctional childhood, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempts, Escaping Obstacles focuses on how one person can endure so much pain, and still have the motivation to become better than the odds he was dealt. Many people believe they are "the only ones with family issues." Escaping Obstacles will prove that you're not. Bart Hardwell was born in Monroe, LA in 1982, and moved to Houston, TX. In 2002 with his wife Oranda, his imagination was often his escape from his dysfunctional life. As he grew older writing became an outlet to help escape his obstacles.
This carefully edited book combines symbolic and sub-symbolic techniques to construct more robust and reliable problem solving models. This volume focused on "Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems" contains a collection of papers that were presented at the 2nd International Workshop on Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems, held in 12 - 13 November, 2007, Salamanca, Spain.
This book aims to assist individuals in seeking meaning, liberation, satisfaction, and perfection. It addresses self-imposed limitations and emphasizes utilizing time and energy effectively. It provides reasons and solutions to obstacles that hinder personal growth and enjoyment of life. The book explores practices like yoga, Pranayama, and meditation, and offers insights on diet and routines. It also highlights the importance of supportive relationships and guides readers in identifying parasitic connections. The author shares personal experiences and experiments. With the grace of the Almighty, readers are expected to attain perfection and satisfaction. The book optimizes performance and aids in navigating challenges while promoting support for others. May everyone find happiness, satisfaction, and freedom from suffering.
Contents:Editorial (H I Christensen et al.)The Harvard Binocular Head (N J Ferrier & J J Clark)Heads, Eyes, and Head-Eye Systems (K Pahlavan & J-O Eklundh)Design and Performance of TRISH, a Binocular Robot Head with Torsional Eye Movements (E Milios et al.)A Low-Cost Robot Camera Head (H I Christensen)The Surrey Attentive Robot Vision System (J R G Pretlove & G A Parker)Layered Control of a Binocular Camera Head (J L Crowley et al.)SAVIC: A Simulation, Visualization and Interactive Control Environment for Mobile Robots (C Chen & M M Trivedi)Simulation and Expectation in Sensor-Based Systems (Y Roth & R Jain)Active Avoidance: Escape and Dodging Behaviors for Reactive Control (R C Arkin et al.) Readership: Engineers and computer scientists. keywords:Active Vision;Robot Vision;Computer Vision;Model-Based Vision;Robot Navigation;Reactive Control;Robot Motion Planning;Knowledge-Based Vision;Robotics
This book presents the state of the art of computational intelligence ion engineering. It offers challenging problems for efficient modeling of intelligent systems and details different methodologies of computational intelligence with real life applications.
To stay competitive in today’s market, organizations need to adopt a culture of customer-centric practices that focus on outcomes rather than outputs. Companies that live and die by outputs often fall into the "build trap," cranking out features to meet their schedule rather than the customer’s needs. In this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. By understanding how to communicate and collaborate within a company structure, you can create a product culture that benefits both the business and the customer. You’ll learn product management principles that can be applied to any organization, big or small. In five parts, this book explores: Why organizations ship features rather than cultivate the value those features represent How to set up a product organization that scales How product strategy connects a company’s vision and economic outcomes back to the product activities How to identify and pursue the right opportunities for producing value through an iterative product framework How to build a culture focused on successful outcomes over outputs
On-Road Intelligent Vehicles: Motion Planning for Intelligent Transportation Systems deals with the technology of autonomous vehicles, with a special focus on the navigation and planning aspects, presenting the information in three parts. Part One deals with the use of different sensors to perceive the environment, thereafter mapping the multi-domain senses to make a map of the operational scenario, including topics such as proximity sensors which give distances to obstacles, vision cameras, and computer vision techniques that may be used to pre-process the image, extract relevant features, and use classification techniques like neural networks and support vector machines for the identification of roads, lanes, vehicles, obstacles, traffic lights, signs, and pedestrians. With a detailed insight into the technology behind the vehicle, Part Two of the book focuses on the problem of motion planning. Numerous planning techniques are discussed and adapted to work for multi-vehicle traffic scenarios, including the use of sampling based approaches comprised of Genetic Algorithm and Rapidly-exploring Random Trees and Graph search based approaches, including a hierarchical decomposition of the algorithm and heuristic selection of nodes for limited exploration, Reactive Planning based approaches, including Fuzzy based planning, Potential Field based planning, and Elastic Strip and logic based planning. Part Three of the book covers the macroscopic concepts related to Intelligent Transportation Systems with a discussion of various topics and concepts related to transportation systems, including a description of traffic flow, the basic theory behind transportation systems, and generation of shock waves. - Provides an overall coverage of autonomous vehicles and Intelligent Transportation Systems - Presents a detailed overview, followed by the challenging problems of navigation and planning - Teaches how to compare, contrast, and differentiate navigation algorithms
This first book-length story and study of philosopher, activist, inventor, and philanthropist Lewis Gompertz—co-founder of both the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (1824, ousted in 1832) and the Animals’ Friend Society (1832–52)—charts his struggle against likely and unlikely enemies on behalf of other species, women, the poor, apprentices, prisoners, and slaves. Outraging fearful, elitist Christians, his classic Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824) reveals influences, tenets, and indeed his own situation in attempting to formulate and live by a rational morality for others’ benefit, defying religious and structural forces that wanted far less. Power, class, philosophy, history, education, reform, and revolution all play their part in this account of his campaigning work and works (including Fragments in Defence of Animals and The Animals’ Friend periodical), exposing the racist, sectarian rhetoric and scheming he endured at a defining moment. This attritional action, by which humane progress was obstructed and for more than a century fixed, is more disturbing than has been made widely detailed until now, in this much-needed, critical introduction.
