Robotic vision, the combination of robotics and computer vision, involves the application of computer algorithms to data acquired from sensors. The research community has developed a large body of such algorithms but for a newcomer to the field this can be quite daunting. For over 20 years the author has maintained two open-source MATLAB (R) Toolboxes, one for robotics and one for vision.

They provide implementations of many important algorithms and allow users to work with real problems, not...

This easy-to-follow textbook provides a modern, algorithmic introduction to digital image processing. It concentrates on practical applications and working implementations whilst also presenting important formal details and the necessary mathematics.

Awarded the Literature Prize of the VCIThis comprehensive textbook describes the synthesis, characterization and technical and engineering applications of polymers. Polymers are unique molecules and have properties different from any other class of materials. We encounter them in everyday life, not only in the form of the well-known, large-volume plastics such as PE or PP or the many other special polymers, some of which are very specifically modified but also in nature as polymeric biomolecu...

This student-friendly textbook encourages the development of programming skills through active practice by focusing on exercises that support hands-on learning. The Python Workbook provides a compendium of 186 exercises, spanning a variety of academic disciplines and everyday situations. Solutions to selected exercises are also provided, supported by brief annotations that explain the technique used to solve the problem, or highlight a specific point of Python syntax.

This enhanced new editio...

Ensuring optimal diets and nutrition for the global population is a grand challenge fraught with many contentious issues. To achieve food security for all and protect health, we need functional, equitable, and sustainable food systems. Food systems are highly complex networks of individuals and institutions that depend on governance and policy leadership. This book explains how interconnected food systems and policies affect diets and nutrition in high-, middle-, and low-income countries. In ...

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 with ca...

Now in its 6th Edition, this highly acclaimed textbook provides sanitation information needed to ensure hygienic practices and safe food for food industry personnel as well as students. It addresses the principles related to contamination, cleaning compounds, sanitizers, cleaning equipment. It also presents specific directions for applying these concepts to attain hygienic conditions in food processing or food preparation operations.

New in this edition:

Updated chapters on the fundamentals o...