Coordination of Distributed Energy Resources in Microgrids: Optimisation, control, and hardware-in-the-loop validation provides a structured overview of research into techniques for managing microgrids with distributed energy resources (DERs). The DERs including distributed generators, energy storage systems, and flexible loads are posing both challenges and opportunities to microgrids' security, planning, operation, and control. Advanced operation and control techniques are needed to coordinate these components in the microgrids and maintain power quality, as well as keeping the system economically feasible.

Industrial automation is driving the development of robot manipulators in various applications, with much of the research effort focussed on flexible manipulators and their advantages compared to their rigid counterparts. This book reports recent advances and new developments in the analysis and control of these robot manipulators.

The ever increasing utilisation of robotic manipulators for various applications in recent years has been motivated by the requirements and demands of industrial automation. Among these, attention is focused more towards flexible manipulators, due to various advantages they offer compared to their rigid counterparts. Flexural dynamics have constituted the main research challenge in modelling and control of such systems; research activities have accordingly concentrated on the development of methodologies to cope with this.

The general purpose of ventilation in buildings is to provide healthy air for breathing by both diluting the pollutants originating in the building and removing the pollutants from it. Building ventilation plays a strong role for the good health, comfort, security and productivity of inhabitants, workers and visitors. Many new challenges with energy and pollution implications have arisen, including the identification and control of contaminant sources, fast building design requirements, online demand, sustainability and climate change adaptation.

This book provides a practical and comprehensive analysis of control systems for boilers and HRSGs (heat-recovery steam generators) in a variety of applications from waste-to-energy plants through to combined-cycle gas-turbine power stations (CCGTs).

To ensure stable operation of a power system, it is necessary to analyse the power system performance under various operating conditions. Analysis includes studies such as power flow and both steady-state and transient stability. To perform such studies requires knowledge about the models used to represent the various components that constitute an integrated power system. In situations where there is a risk of loss of stability, it is necessary to apply controls that can ensure stable and uninterrupted supply of electricity following a disturbance.

Robot-assisted healthcare offers benefits for repetitive, intensive and task specific training compared to traditional manual manipulation performed by physiotherapists. However, a majority of existing rehabilitation devices use rigid actuators such as electric motors or hydraulic cylinders which cannot guarantee the safety of patients; novel soft robots combining soft and compliant actuators with stiff skeletons offer a better alternative. This book focuses on the development of these soft robotics for rehabilitation purposes.

Thermal Power Plant Control and Instrumentation describes the systems and equipment used for measuring and controlling boilers and heat-recovery steam-generators used in land and marine power plant and in process industries. It provides a practical guide to the design, installation, operation and maintenance of these systems. Starting with descriptions of how each area of the plant operates, it shows how the relevant control systems have evolved, how they are implemented in modern systems and how to evaluate the merits of alternative approaches.

Wearable exoskeletons are electro-mechanical systems designed to assist, augment, or enhance motion and mobility in a variety of human motion applications and scenarios. The applications, ranging from providing power supplementation to assist the wearers to situations where human motion is resisted for exercising applications, cover a wide range of domains such as medical devices for patient rehabilitation training recovering from trauma, movement aids for disabled persons, personal care robots for providing daily living assistance, and reduction of physical burden in industrial and military applications. The development of effective and affordable wearable exoskeletons poses several design, control and modelling challenges to researchers and manufacturers. Novel technologies are therefore being developed in adaptive motion controllers, human-robot interaction control, biological sensors and actuators, materials and structures, etc.