bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
From Blümchenkaffee to Wiener Melange: Schools, Identity, and the Birth of the “Austria-as-Victim” Myth, 1945–55
Authors: Utgaard Peter
Published: March 2009

When the lastAllied soldier left Austria in the fall of 1955, Austrians could look back on ten years of profound change. Austria had been reborn in the spring of 1945 with the provisional government's declaration of independence, but from the beginning, Austria was faced with a material crisis and a crisis of identity. In those lean years following the war Austrians drankBlümchenkaffee, coffee so weak that one could see through it to the floral designs on the bottom of coffee cups. By 1955, the physical rebuilding of Austria, greatly assisted by Marshall Plan aid, was largely complete and the shortages of food and fuel were mostly a memory.1Simultaneously, Austrian political leaders and educators had laid the groundwork for a new Austrian identity based on a mixture of tradition, Austrian uniqueness vis-à-vis Germany, democratic values, and the myth of “Austria-as-victim.” The time ofBlümchenkaffeewas coming to an end. Austrian coffee was now richly brewed, and more and more Austrians could afford to drinkWiener Melange—strong coffee mixed with steamed milk and often served with sugar and a small glass of water on the side.
Conflicting Constructions of Memory: Attacks on Statues of Joseph II in the Bohemian Lands after the Great War
Authors: Wingfield Nancy Meriwether
Published: March 2009

In the wake of independence in October 1918, the leaders of Czechoslovakia designated a multitude of national symbols for the nascent state, among them a flag, an anthem, an emblem, coinage, holidays, and stamps. Czech (and Slovak) art, drama, literature, and music commemorated new heroes and resurrected national historic figures ignored under Austria-Hungary. In this break with the past, national memory helped legitimate the new Czechoslovakia through celebration of the anti-Habsburg leaders in the struggle for independence and through denigration of former Habsburg rulers. Some nationalist Czechs, particularly the Czech legionnaires who had served in the Czechoslovak Army Abroad during World War I, were not content with the simple construction or reconstitution of Czech national symbols, but demanded in addition the destruction of numerous symbols of Habsburg rule. Thus, physical representations of the Habsburg past, many of which were to be found in the German-populated border regions of the Bohemian lands, became targets of their opprobrium.
The Molding of Engelbert Dollfuß as an Agrarian Reformer
Authors: Rath R. John
Published: March 2009

Engelbert Dollfuss has not been enshrined in history as a popular political figure. The National Socialists vilified him as a Satanic evildoer who embodied everything they hated. Dollfuß's widow and two children found it imperative to flee to Switzerland immediately after the Anschluss and eventually went to Canada, where Mrs. Dollfuß and their daughter remained until 1956. Their son still lives there.
Bureaucracy, Officials, and the State in the Austrian Monarchy: Stages of Change since the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Heindl Waltraud
Published: March 2009

Five years ago, an odd discussionwas underway on the HABSBURG listserv, triggered by the following question: “Was Habsburg bureaucracy sloppy?” The debate that followed was characterized by a remarkable intensity and an equally notable superficiality, leading to the conclusion that too little research on this topic has been done so far. For this reason, I am very obliged to theAustrian History Yearbookfor this opportunity to clarify several important duties and functions of bureaucracy in general and the unique attributes of Habsburg bureaucracy in particular.
Power and Professionalism
Authors: Sked Alan
Published: March 2009

Professor heindl is to be thankedfor providing us with an excellent overview of the history of the imperial civil service during the last century and a half of the Habsburgmonarchy. She must also be thanked for providing us with an interesting historiographyof both the Austrian and Prussian bureaucracies, although, she has to confess, at least in theAustrian case, there remains an almost endless list of unanswered questions about these people,ranging from their social and economic background, to the nature and extent of their cooperationon different levels, to their political biases and national leanings, not to mention, of course, their treatment of ordinary citizens.
Arbeitspflichtin Postwar Vienna: Punishing Nazis vs. Expediting Reconstruction, 1945–48
Authors: Berg Matthew Paul
Published: March 2009

Even before the warin Europe ended formally on 8 May 1945, there could be no serious misconceptions—either among defeated and liberated peoples or among the victorious Allied powers—as to how complex the challenges of reconstructing physical infrastructure and social networks would be.1This was particularly true in urban areas within what had been Germany's 1938 borders, where the impact of air raids had reduced many areas to rubble and had damaged the rail and road connections that supplied foodstuffs and other necessities. In Berlin and other cities, images of people clearing debris from lunar landscapes dominated the popular imagination in the late 1940s and over the following decades. Indeed, when images of immediate postwar reconstruction have been invoked, it would appear as if there existed a heroic, unbroken connection between the initiative of these largely female volunteers (Trümmerfrauen) and the economic miracle associated overwhelmingly with largely male labor in West Germany a decade later. If a remarkable preparedness to come to terms with the exigencies of the present manifested itself during the initial postwar months, historians have subsequently offered insights into how problematic a consistent and thorough confrontation with the Nazi past proved to be during the later 1940s and beyond.
Comments
Authors: Höbelt Lothar A.
Published: March 2009

Even though Szabo maintatins that the history of Habsburg naval armaments is of little interest to the miliatry specialist, his article offers several interesting parallels to the history of the Austrian navy in later years. The close connection between Austrian maritime affairs and those of the Habsburg-ruled Italian state of Tuscany under Pietro Leopoldo in the 1770's, was replaced by the dominance in Austrian maritime matters of Venice, whose port and fleet the Habsburgs inherited, first in 1797, and then again in 1814, agter the fall of Napoleon's kingdom of Italy.
Organic Social Thought and Mitteleuropa: Albert Schäffle's Response to Modernization in Central Europe
Authors: Gentry Robert J.
Published: March 2009

The reinvigoration of German nationalism in 1859 aroused public interest in the problem of giveing concrete political organization to a growing German national consciousness which developed in the wake of the Austro-Sardinian War. A sense of anxiety led statesmen and publicists of every shade of opinion and from every German state carefully to weigh their particularist interests and political goals against their perceptions of German national interests. Diplomatic and military failures during the war had cast a shadow over the images of Austria and the Confederation. In the face ofkleindeutschdemands for immediate political unification under the leadership of Prussia, the advocates ofgroβdeutschreform and the promoters of the Mitteleuropa concept defended the existing Confederation and Austria's role in German civic life. The question of Germany's future fractured political barriers. Liberals joined both the kleindeutsch and the grofideutsch camps; some condemned the Confederation, while others defended it. And while some liberals rejected Austria's place in Germany, others made it central.
Hans Eibl: A Religious Nature in a Psychopolitical Idiom
Authors: Geehr Richard
Published: March 2009

In few Austrians were preoccupations with post-empire culture and politics stronger than in Hans Eibl, Richard von Kralik's most enthusiastic disciple. Like may young Austrians who had wintnessed the crumbling of the Habsburg empire, Eibl longed for vanished glories, for an all-encompassing Germanic community, and for a leader who combined regenerative religious qualities with political greatness. Though Eibl himself tried to fill these needs with a synthesis of religion and politics, he fell victim to his own endeavors. Given his personality and professional specialization, as well as him mentors, plus the instability of the First Republic, it perhaps could not have been otherwise.
The Slovenes and the Habsburg Monarchy
Authors: Zwitter Fran
Published: March 2009

An important fact to keep in mind in studying the Slovenian nationality problem in the nineteenth-century Habsburg monarchy is the lack of coincidence between ethnic and administrative boundaries. Instead of living together in a single province, the Slovenes formed a significant percentage of the population of each of more than a half dozen different administrative subdivisions of the Austrian empire. Approximately half of them lived in provinces with a non-Slovenian majority. According to the official survey made by Carl Joseph von Czoernig, which was based on the 1846 census for the Austrian lands and that of 1850 for the kingdom of Hungary, there were 428,000 Slovenes and Serbo-Croatians (92 percent of the total population) in Carniola. There were 363,000 Slovenes (36 percent of all the inhabitants) in Styria; 96,000 (30 percent), in Carinthia;1 128,000 (67 percent), in Gorica (Görz); 25,000 (31.5 percent), in Trieste; and 32,000 (14 percent), in Istria. In addition, 45,000 Slovenes lived in the border areas that were added to the Transleithanian half of the dual monarchy after 1867 and 27,000 in the province of Venetia, which belonged to the Habsburg empire until 1866.
“Whether Race or Conviction Should Be the Standard”: National Identity and Liberal Politics in Nineteenth-Century Austria
Authors: Judson Pieter M.
Published: March 2009

In the last decade historical writing on the Habsburg monarchy has begun to stress the contingent, constructed, and historically determined qualities of nineteenth-century nationalist ideologies. This reexamination of nationalism questions long-held assumptions about what it actually meant to define one's community identity in terms of belonging to a particular nation. It also suggests that as a historical process, the rise of nationalisms creates spaces where conflicts of a non-nationalist nature can be fought out within a community.
In Search of “That Semi-Mythical Waif: Hungarian Liberalism”: The Culture of Political Radicalism in 1918–1919
Authors: Gluck Mary
Published: March 2009

In contemporary discussions of the new, post-Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, Hungary is often given pride of place as the most “liberalized” society in the region. Although this perception is based on undeniable political and economic facts, it is also nourished by long-established historical traditions and myths. During the revolutions of 1848–49, Hungarians were also hailed by European opinion as the champions of liberty and heroic resistance to oppression. Over half a century later, in the wake of the political and military collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, Hungary once again staged a series of dramatic revolutions which earned it the reputation of being part of a political avant-garde. And in 1956, Hungarians yet again assumed the mantle of political idealism and revolutionary self-sacrifice in the face of foreign despotism.
Enlightenment from Below: German-Hungarian Patriots in Eighteenth-Century Hungary
Authors: Szelényi Balázs A.
Published: March 2009

Paradox and Contradiction often characterized the formation and evolution of national identity in the Hungarian Kingdom. Starting in the mid nineteenth century, an explosion occurred in efforts to recover supposedly ancient “ethnic” memory as historians, linguists, and archeologists produced one great breakthrough after another, revolutionizing their conceptions of the past. At the same time, an equally strong forgetting of the complex multicultural and multiethnic reality of the region also transpired.1The parallel processes of recovering and forgetting intensified after the end of World War I. By the 1930s and 1940s, Slovak historians had reconstructed their history on the foundations of the Great Moravian Empire, Romanian textbooks became dominated by the Daco-Roman continuity thesis, and Hungarian historical narratives were almost exclusively concerned with the history of the Magyars. While historians did occasionally write books that were not biased in favor of their respective ethnic-national groups, they remained marginalized and, most importantly, the mass of students learning history at the middle, high school, and university levels were only superficially introduced to the role other ethnic groups played in their history.
“Our gratitude has no limit”: Polish Nationalism, Dynastic Patriotism, and the 1880 Imperial Inspection Tour of Galicia
Authors: Unowsky Daniel
Published: March 2009

For almost three weeks the scenes repeated themselves: cannon fire, chiming church bells, massive crowds, peasant bands on horseback, school girls in white dresses laying flowers along the emperor's path, torchlight parades, mountaintop bonfires, city illuminations, serenades, court dinners, aristocratic balls, early morning prayers at cathedrals and synagogues. During Francis Joseph's 1880 inspection tour of Galicia,2today divided between Poland and Ukraine, millions of Galicians either saw the emperor, talked with someone who did, read about his visit in the paper, or heard abąout it at a village reading hall or gathering, or from the local priest
Astra and the Appeal of the Nation: Power and Autonomy in Late-Nineteenth-Century Transylvania
Authors: Dunlap Tanya
Published: March 2009

An Enthusiastic Group of Romanians gathered in Sibiu at the 1905 annualassembly of Astra, the largest Romanian cultural association in Transylvania, to celebrate their nation and their future. Moved by the gathering and the festivities, the editor of the association's paper,Transilvania, expressed a hope he and thousands of his compatriots shared: “Never before has this people been in a more favorable position as a superiorethnic element, as an important factor of civilization, and as a gifted nation with vitality, character, and great talents that guarantee it a bright future and a distinguished place among the peoples of eastern Europe.”1Like many prominent Romanians of his time, the editor firmlybelieved that his nation would enjoy equal status with other European national groups in the near future. Equal standing had been a central goal of theRomanian intellectuals and clergy who founded the Transylvanian Associationfor Romanian Literature and the Culture of the Romanian People, or Astra, in 1861. Since the eighteenth century, Romanian elites in Transylvania had worked to obtain recognition for their national community so that they couldparticipate fully in the political life of the region. Two centuries later Astra members still hoped they were on the verge of forming a Romanian nation that could achieve the right to control its own destiny.
Municipal Activism in Late-Nineteenth-Century Prague: The House Numbered 207-V and Ghetto Clearance
Authors: Giustino Cathleen M.
Published: March 2009

There was always much that was ordinary about the house numbered 207-V up to the time of its disappearance from Prague's built landscape in 1905. Like many other buildings sheltering some of the city's most underprivileged residents, this place had no artistic worth; no one had contemplated hanging a plaque on its exterior to commemorate a well-known person having slept inside its walls; no published material pointed out any history-altering event that took place behind or in front of its doors. The ordinariness of house 207-V becomes even greater when its final years are situated within the history of a common process taking place, with some exceptions, throughout nineteenth-century Central Europe. Many of the structure's last experiences were part of the growth of what German historians of Germany have called the “Leistungsverwaltung,” and what Austrian historians of Austria- Hungary have called “die aktive Stadt.”1 These two different lab ls are used to describe the fact that during the course of the nineteenth century, a great many Central European cities expanded tremendously, not only in terms of their territoriesś populations, but also in terms of the number and extent of public projects that their municipal governments managed. The public projects included, among others, gas and electric works, transportation lines, sewers, baths, parks, libraries, museums, market halls, slaughterhouses,
Review of doctoral research in second-language teaching and learning in the United States (2006–2007)
Authors: Motha Suhanthie
Published: March 2009

This review highlights recent doctoral research in the United States completed between the spring of 2006 and the fall of 2007 in the areas of language teaching and language learning. Topics of particular interest included language policy, second/foreign language pragmatics, computer-mediated communication, non-native-speaking teachers, academic genre teaching and usage, applied learner corpus analysis, new approaches to corrective feedback, on-line corpora and reference tools, language ideologies, conversation analysis, task complexity, affordances and opportunities in language learning, phonological acquisition, U.S. resident L2 adolescents (sometimes referred to as Generation 1.5 students), language socialization, input processing and parsing, and reconceptualizations of private speech.
3D Navigational Path Planning
Authors: Rao T.M. , Arkin Ronald C.
Published: March 2009

The problem of path planning for a mobile robot has been studied extensively in recent literature. Much of the work in this area is devoted to the study of path planning for an earth-bound robot in two dimensions. In this paper, we explore the problem for a robot that can fly in three dimensional space or crawl on 3D surfaces or use a combination of both. We assume that the obstacles can be modeled as polyhedral objects.
Cascade control of hydraulically actuated manipulators
Authors: Sepehri N. , Dumont G.A.M. , Lawrence P.D. , Sassani F.
Published: March 2009

A fundamental study on the control of hydraulically actuated robots is presented. Dynamic modelling is performed in both time-domain and frequency-domain. It is shown that the inclusion of hydraulic elements increases the order of the system. Hydraulic compliance is the most effective factor in this regard.

Three distinct control strategies are applied. Their performances are evaluated and compared. All three methods are exemplified with a two link hydraulic robot in a computer simulation. The robot has the same hydraulic configuration as many existing industrial manipulators. The simulation program is written in ACSL (Advanced Continuous Simulation Language) running on a VAX 11/750.
A closed-loop inverse kinematic scheme for on-line joint-based robot control
Authors: Siciliano Bruno
Published: March 2009

A computationally fast inverse kinematic scheme is derived which solves robot's end-effector (EE) trajectories in terms of joint trajectories. The inverse kinematic problem (IKP) is cast as a control problem for a simple dynamic system. The resulting closed-loop algorithms are shown to guarantee satisfactory tracking performance. Differently from previous first-order schemes which only solve for joint positions and velocities, we propose here newsecond order tracking schemeswhich allow the on-line generation of joint position + velocity + acceleration (PVA) reference trajectories for any computed torque-like controller in sensor-based robot applications. The algorithms do explicitly solve the IKP for both EE position and orientation. Simulation results for asix-degree-of-freedom PUMA-like geometry demonstrate the effectiveness of the scheme, even near singularities.
Developments in robot grippers for soft fruit packing in New Zealand
Authors: Tedford J.D.
Published: March 2009

The heavy reliance which New Zealand places on its primary industries makes it important that every effort be made to automate these industries to improve their productivity. This presents many unique problems, especially when consideration is given to the use of robots in the horticultural sector for the handling of soft fruit for export. As part of this process, fruit must be individually packed in trays without the risk of damage. This is currently achieved through labour-intensive manual handling and for this reason a range of specialised robot grippers have been developed. These, to varying degrees, overcome many of the problems associated with the harsh handling which occurs when conventional industrial robot grippers are used.
Robotic handling and packaging of poultry products
Authors: Khodabandehloo K.
Published: March 2009

This paper presents the findings of a research programme leading to the development of a robotic system for packaging poultry portions. The results show that an integrated system, incorporating machine vision and robots, can be made feasible for industrial use. The elements of this system, including the end-effector, the vision module, the robot hardware and the system software are presented. Models and algorithms for automatic recognition and handling of poultry portions are discussed.
Mobile robot using ultrasonic sensors: study of a degraded mode
Authors: Blazevic P. , Delaplace S. , Fontaine J. G. , Rabit J.
Published: March 2009

In this paper, we develop a method for mobile robot control using ultrasonic sensors to determine displacement constraints between two parallel planes. Robot control has been simulated for this situation. Results obtained by simulation and experimentation are presented. A degraded mode which considers the use of one valid ultrasonic sensor is studied. In this case, a new model is developed and new results are analyzed.
Use of vision in dispensing control and inspection of adhesives
Authors: Sun C.-M. , Sezgin O.S. , Forrest A.K. , Davies B.L.
Published: March 2009

A prototype system utilizing a vision technique to monitor the parameters of adhesive beads or sealants is presented. The system uses a structured light technique to investigate adhesive beads and extract information about the shape of the bead from binary images. The geometrical model of the bead, the relationship between this model and the shape of a line of light on the image are investigated. The models for calculating the parameters of the bead and the height of the camera are analyzed. Control strategies are suggested.
Optimal trigonometric robot joint trajectories
Authors: Simon Dan , Isik Can
Published: March 2009

Interpolation of a robot joint trajectory is realized using trigonometric splines. This original application has several advantages over existing methods (e.g. those using algebraic splines). For example, the computational expense is lower, more constraints can be imposed on the trajectory, obstacle avoidance can be implemented in real time, and smoother trajectories are obtained. Some of the spline parameters can be chosen to minimize an objective function (e.g. minimum jerk or minimum energy). If jerk is minimized, the optimization has a closed form solution. This paper introduces a trajectory interpolation algorithm, discusses a method for path optimization, and includes examples.
A nonlinear iterative learning method for robot path control
Authors: Bien Zeungnam , Hwang Dong-Hwan , Oh Sang-Rok
Published: March 2009

An iterative learning control method is proposed for a class of non-linear dynamic systems with uncertain parameters. The method, in which non-linear system model is used, employs the model algorithmic control concept in the iteration sequence. A sufficient condition for convergency is provided. Then the method is shown to be applicable to continuous-path control of a robot manipulator.
Motion planning for multiple robots with multi-mode operations via disjunctive graphs
Authors: Lin Chi-Fang , Tsai Wen-Hsiang
Published: March 2009

A new approach to motion planning for multiple robots with multi-mode operations is proposed in this paper. Although sharing a common workspace, the robots are assumed to perform periodical tasks independently. The goal is to schedule the motion trajectories of the robots so as to avoid collisions among them. Rather than assigning the robots with different priorities and planning safe motion for only one robot at a time, as is done in most previous studies, an efficient method is developed that can simultaneously generate collision-free motions for the robots with or without priority assignment. Being regarded as a type of job-shop scheduling, the problem is reduced to that of finding a minimaximal path in a disjunctive graph and solved by an extension of the Balas algorithm. The superiority of this approach is demonstrated with various robot operation requirements, including “non-priority”, “with-priority”, and “multicycle” operation modes. Some techniques for speeding up the scheduling process are also presented. The planning results can be described by Gantt charts and executed by a simple “stop-and-go” control scheme. Simulation results on different robot operation modes are also presented to show the feasibility of the proposed approach.
Rigid Body dynamics and decoupled control architecture for two strongly interacting manipulators
Authors: Unseren M.A.
Published: March 2009

A rigid body dynamical model and control architecture are developed for the closed chain motion of two structurally dissimilar manipulators holding a rigid object in a three-dimensional workspace. The model is first developed in the joint space and then transformed to obtain reduced order equations of motion and a separate set of equations describing the behavior of the generalized contact forces. The problem of solving the joint space and reduced order models for the unknown variables is discussed. A new control architecture consisting of the sum of the outputs of a primary and secondary controller is suggested which, according to the model, decouples the force and position-controlled degrees of freedom during motion of the system. The proposed composite controller enables the designer to develop independent, non-interacting control laws for the force and position control of the complex closed chain system.
A curvilinear snake arm robot with gripper-axis fibre-optic image processor feedback
Authors: Taylor W. K. , Lavie D. , Esat I. I.
Published: March 2009

A curvilinear robot constructed from a number of modular flexible sections of fixed length and diameter but independently controlled radius and direction of curvature has been equipped with an optical fibre image guide transmitting images from between the gripper jaws to the remote TV camera of Microvision-100, a microcomputer controlled real-time DMA-based vision System that is easily trained to recognise the shape, position and orientation of components. The gripper position and orientation is controlled by feedback from the vision System, the action taken depending on component recognition and inspection for defects. Redundant degrees of freedom enable the curvilinear robot to avoid obstacles and work in confined spaces.
Planning in a Continuous Domain—An Introduction
Authors: Salter Richard M.
Published: March 2009

Much of the work of Artificial Intelligence concerns the representation and symbolic manipulation of various domains. One problem shared by existing systems is their limitation to discrete states and state changes, brought about by the linking of declarative states with points in time. With this identification, models of continuous processes must forego such declarative states, resulting in a loss of decomposability that limits the amount of complexity that can be handled by a given amount of computation.

In this paper we develop a model for robot problem solving over a domain of continuous actions. The proposed world model consists of a vector of piecewise defined functions of time, i.e. functions that can be represented using finite sets of expressions and finite partitions of time intervals. The critical points of these functions are represented symbolically as discrete events. The goal is represented as a point through which the world model vector must thread at some point in model time. World model functions are transformed by adding events at various discrete points in time which transform the trajectories in the direction of the goal. As events are added, formulas relating the event times are added to the description of the world. The result is a partial order of events which represents a plan for “forcing” the world function to achieve the goal.

The relationships between this model and the classical problem-solving systems (e.g. STRIPS) are utilized in order to produce a planning procedure. This procedure is applied to a robot problem which can be solved using the model. We conclude by presenting an analysis and prospectus of considerations for an actual implementation of these ideas.
A robot simulation system based on kinematic analyses
Authors: Nemec B. , Lenarčič J.
Published: March 2009

A robot simulation system has been developed to assist in the design of robots, layouts and robot task planning. A general type of robot manipulator can be stimulated taking into consideration the geometrical and kinematical model of the robot. The work cell with multiple robots and its industrial environment is displayed on CRT by a 3-D computer graphic system. Examples and a description of the mathematical algorithm for the kinematic modelling are also included.
A new method for calculating the Jacobian for a robot manipulator
Authors: Lenarčič Jadran
Published: March 2009

A new method for calculating the Jacobian for a general n degree-of-freedom robot manipulator is presented and compared with some known other methods. The computational efficiency of the method is estimated in terms of the number of multiplications, additions/subtractions, trigonometric functions required, and the execution time on a VAX 11/750 computer. It is shown that the new method proposed in this paper is one of the most efficient when applied on a robot manipulator with successively parallel or rectangular joint rotations.
FMS in CIM (Flexible Manufacturing Systems in Computer Integrated Manufacturing)
Authors: Ranky Paul G.
Published: March 2009

Computer Integrated Manufacture (CIM) is concerned with providing computer assistance, control and high level integrated automation at all levels of the manufacturing industries, including the business data processing system, CAD, CAM and FMS, by linking islands of automation into a distributed processing system. The technology applied in CIM makes intensive use of distributed computer networks and data processing techniques, Artificial Intelligence and Database Management Systems. FMS in this aspect plays the role of a highly efficient and “ready to react to random requests” manufacturing facility (e.g. machining, test, assembly, welding, etc.) in this “total concept”. (Figure 1)
Production scheduling and operational control of flexible manufacturing systems
Authors: Bonfioli M. , Garetti M. , Pozzetti A.
Published: March 2009

Only hardware and software flexibility combined can yield the overall system flexibility required in newly designed FMSs in which the expected part mix is quite large and continually changing.

The paper shows how modular design and integration are fundamental steps in software design for the management and control of FMSs. The main subsystems of a control system, built up by putting together a number of standardized modules requiring little or no customization, are also described. An experimental control system designed according to these criteria is also presented.
Grouping problem in scheduling flexible manufacturing systems
Authors: Kusiak Andrew , Vannelli† Anthony , Kumar‡ K. Ravi
Published: March 2009

In this paper the problem of grouping parts and fixtures in Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs) is discussed. A network formulation of the grouping problem is presented. Based on this formulation an efficient heuristic algorithm is developed. The importance of grouping of parts and fixtures in FMSs as well as some of the computational results are discussed.
The induced vibration touch sensor – a new dynamic touch sensing concept
Authors: Patterson Robert W. , Nevill Gale E.
Published: March 2009

This report describes a new touch sensing concept in which active, exploratory touching resembles the manner in which humans use their fingertips. The concept utilizes the vibrations produced during sliding motion of the sensor to provide information for characterizing objects and features. The sensing system consists of a textured compliant artificial “skin”, a transduction element, and means for recognizing items of interest.

A relatively simple prototype was fabricated and tested for a range of potentially useful tactile tasks. Results from these experiments demonstrate the promise of the concept. The prototype sensor is shown to be effective at recognizing feature size and shape, patterns of features, feature orientation, feature position, and surface texture.
Flexible production organization of workpiece movement
Authors: Coudurier J. F.
Published: March 2009

The flexible turning cell developed at CETIM has enabled us, among other things, to investigate how the movement of workpieces could be organized in flexible production cells.

The very design of flexible cells leads to the following questions about the manufacturing process to be considered: – type of product, – type of operational side, – type of management/control, – type of data transmission.

These questions are answered by calling upon group technology for both the product and operational sides, and upon simulation to define precisely the operational side, and the type of management/control and data transmission system to be used.

For simple cells (i.e. those with few work-stations) the system can be analyzed in detail without resorting to simulation. Thus equipment limitations such as those set by robot control can be taken into account to analyze the possibilities to interlink numerous different paths.

With this approach simpler real-time operation can be implemented. It also permits handling operations on different types of workpieces (i.e. of different shape and sequence) simultaneously.
On the use of deformation matrices in artificial vision Systems
Authors: Jumarie Guy
Published: March 2009

At present, the procedure which is most widely used to identify an object consists of displacing its image in order that it be as close as possible to a reference pattern, and then to make a decision based upon the value of an Euclidean distance. This decision may be either in a deterministic framework or in a statistical one. The transformations so involved are translation and rotation. It is shown that, if one takes for granted the invariance of the amount of information involved by the object considered as an informational source, then there is another class of transformations, referred to as deformation, which should be also taken into account. The question is examined, and its consequences in the design of artificial vision are outlined in both the deterministic and stochastic cases.
Low cost tactile gripper using silicone rubber sensor array
Authors: Kah-Bin Lim , Yoon-Song Chong
Published: March 2009

A low cost tactile sensor using commercially available conductive silicone rubber has been developed. It comprises a two dimensional array arranged in 3 mm centre-to-centre distance. Each sensor element has a zero-force resistance of about 0.3 kohm and it has a logarithmic characteristic curve of resistance versus force. An 8 × 8 prototype tactile sensor array over an area of 3 cm × 3 cm has been fabricated and mounted on the gripper of a robot for testing and evaluation. The associated software has also been developed. The limitations of the sensor are also discussed.
Dynamic behaviour of a SCARA robot with links subjected to different velocity trajectories
Authors: Ibrahim M. Y. , Cook C. , Tieu K.
Published: March 2009

The dynamics of a mechanical manipulator have the inherent characteristics of being highly non-linear and strongly coupled due to the interaction of the inertial, centripetal, coriolis and gravitational forces.

These characteristics produce difficulties in predicting the dynamic behaviour of a given manipulator's structure. These interactive forces depend largely on the geometrical configuration and operational conditions of a manipulator. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the dynamics behaviour under different conditions in order to obtain an optimal design.

This paper presents a study of the dynamics behaviour of a robot's arm with particular reference to the mechanical manipulator being designed by the AEAC. A computer software package has been developed to facilitate the investigation of the potential dynamics behaviour of a robot's arm and provides the designer with useful information for the real time control of high performance robots. This package also enables the designer to closely monitor the implications of his design.

The software of this package is based on the Lagrangian model, taking advantage of the recursive formulation. A brief description of the types of velocity trajectories used in this study is also included in this paper.

The software for the modelling was written inFORTRAN 77in single precision and run on a UNIVAC operating system.
A new control method for motor vehicles for the severely handicapped
Authors: Suzuki Yoshitaka , Niinomi Sigeru , Saitoh Yoshiyuki , Hatakeyama Takuroh , Tsuchiya Kazuo
Published: March 2009

This report deals with the development of new control vehicles for the bedridden, physically handicapped person who needs a help-system for carrying things to the bedside from the stock in the room. This new control method is characterized by a unit loop system on the drive track. This unit loop system was constructed to execute three actions: stop, backward and right forward movement, under the control of a on-board microcomputer.

This control method is used in small rooms. It also enables one to increase the driving area of a vehicle without reprogramming and adjusting the control mechanism.
Effect of sensor size in robotic tactile sensor arrays
Authors: Groot A. W. De
Published: March 2009

The degree to which a binary tactile (or visual) image matches the original object is limited by the resolution of the sensor array. Given this fundamental limitation it is still possible to minimize the error in the image formed by the interconnection of the centers of activated sensors along the object's edge. This is achieved by a suitable choice of the physical size of each sensor within the limits of the pixel size. An empirical investigation shows that normally a sensor area of about 50% of the square of the resolution yields an optimal result.
Intelligent robot programming: you can't get there from here – a viewpoint
Authors: Rock S.T.
Published: March 2009

The goal of a sophisticated robot programming system is the ability to accept natural language input, such as English, and be able to convert this to a series of robot commands that will achieve the desired robot movement. This paper first examines what is meant by the concept of natural language understanding. Then a bottom-up development of a model of a robot system identifies the levels of control in a robot system and the role of software at each of these. This is related to the various models of software hierarchy that have been proposed by different authors and an essential deviation from these at the object level (or sub-task level) is identified. Finally, a new route is proposed that should be taken in defining the levels of software if intelligent programming of robots is to be achieved.
Consistent impulse conditions in Lagrangian system dynamics
Authors: Cotsaftis M. , Vibet C.
Published: March 2009

The general problem of including impulse effects in Lagrangian dynamics is discussed. A self-consistent method is developed, and a block-diagram representation, including initial conditions, is introduced that displays the feature of the method. Example of a collision of two dissimilar robots is provided for illustration.
Development of a pneumatic vibratory wrist for robotic assembly
Authors: Jeong Kyu Won , Cho Hyung Suck
Published: March 2009

In this paper a pneumatic vibratory wrist operated with a PWM controller is developed for robotic assembly. In the vibratory assembly system, the vibratory wrist can perform random search motion of a hole to compensate the position error at the early stage of an insertion process. Since the vibration characteristics of the wrist, such as the amplitude and trajectory of the vibration, are critical to assembly performance, they are experimentally investigated for various system controller parameters. In addition, a series of insertion experiments are performed to evaluate the assembly performance of the proposed wrist. The results show that within a wide range of operating conditions the wrist vibration can effectively compensate for large positioning errors when this wrist is used for a chamferless peg-in-hole task.
A new generation of pneumatic servos for industrial robots
Authors: Pu J. , Weston R. H.
Published: March 2009

This paper reports on a continuation of research activities at the Loughborough University of Technology (LUT) which are aimed at evolving second generation pneumatic drives and provides an introduction to various aspects which must be considered in the design and use of industrial pneumatic servo-driven robots. The paper illustrates how a new generation of fast and accurate pneumatic servo drives, demonstrating excellent performance/cost characteristics, will become available and will rival electric and hydraulic counterparts in many areas of industrial control.
Collision-free path generation for a mobile robot by an artificial transformation of obstacle spaces
Authors: Ozaki H. , Shimadzu T. , Mohri A.
Published: March 2009

This paper presents a new method to generate a smooth collision-free path of a mobile robot. The path is generated as follows: First, the obstacle spaces are artificially contracted to obtain an initial collision-free path which leads the mobile robot from the start point to the goal; then the path is iteratively modified to avoid the obstacle spaces which are gradually restored (this is carried out in consideration of the index introduced to evaluate the correctness of the path), in the final step, all the obstacle spaces are fully restored and the obtained path becomes a desirable collision-free one. The proposed method is effectively applied to an example of planning planar movements of a mobile robot.
Statically balanced direct drive manipulator
Authors: Kazerooni H.
Published: March 2009

A practical architecture, using a four-bar-linkage, is considered for the University of Minnesota direct drive rotot. This statically-balanced direct drive robot has been constructed for stability analysis of the robot in constrained maneuvers.2–6As a result of the elimination of the gravity forces (without any counter weights), smaller actuators and consequently smaller amplifiers were chosen. The motors yield acceleration of 5 g at the robot end point without overheating. High torque, low speed, brush-less AC synchronous motors are used to power the robot. Graphite-epoxy composite material is used for the construction of the robot links. A 4-node parallel processor has been used to control the robot. The dynamic tracking accuracy-with the feedforward torque method as a control law- has been derived experimentally.
A numerical algorithm for solving robot inverse kinematics
Authors: Gupta K. C. , Singh V. K.
Published: March 2009

An extension of the inverse kinematics algorithm by Gupta and Kazerounian is presented. The robot kinematics is formulated by using the Zero Reference Position Method. Euler parameters and the related vector forms of the spatial rotation concatenation have been used to improve the efficiency of the velocity Jacobian computation. The joint rates are formally integrated by using a modified predictor-corrector method particularized to robot inverse kinematics – it is a strict descending,p(1)c(0 –n), variable step algorithm. The definitions of the rotational error and overall error measure have been revised. Depending upon the convergence criteria used, these modifications reduce the overall computational time by 20%.
Haptic Perception with an Articulated, Sensate Robot Hand
Authors: Stansfield Sharon A.
Published: March 2009

In this paper we present a series of haptic exploratory procedures, or EPs, implemented for a multi-fingered, articulated, sensate robot hand. These EPs are designed to extract specific tactile and kinesthetic information from an object via their purposive invocation by an intelligent robotic system. Taken together, they form an active robotic touch perception system to be used both in extracting information about the environment for internal representation and in acquiring grasps for manipulation. The theory and structure of this robotic haptic system is based upon models of human haptic exploration and information processing.

The haptic system presented utilizes an integrated robotic system consisting of a PUMA 560 robot arm, a JPL/Stanford robot hand, with joint torque sensing in the fingers, a wrist force/torque sensor, and a 256 element, spatially-resolved fingertip tactile array. We describe the EPs implemented for this system and provide experimental results which illustrate how they function and how the information which they extract may be used. In addition to the sensate hand and arm, the robot also contains structured-lighting vision and a Prolog-based reasoning system capable of grasp generation and object categorization. We present a set of simple tasks which show how both grasping and recognition may be enhanced by the addition of active touch perception.
Compliance Control and Stability Analysis of Cooperating Robot manipulators
Authors: Kazerooni H.
Published: March 2009

The work presented here is the description of the control strategy of two cooperating robots. A two–finger hand is an example of such a System. The control method allows for position control of the contact point by one of the robots while the other robot controls the contact force. The stability analysis of two robot manipulators has been investigated using unstructured models for dynamic behavior of robot manipulators. For the stability of two robots, there must be some initial compliance in either robot. The initial compliance in the robots can be obtained by a non-zero sensitivity function for the tracking controller or a passive compliant element such as an RCC.
A Closed Form 3D Self-Positioning algorithm for a mobile robot using vision and guide-marks
Authors: Bien Zeungnam , Kwon Ho Yeol , Youn Jeongnam , Suh Il Hong
Published: March 2009

In this paper, the 3D self-positioning problem of a mobile robot is investigated under the assumption that there are given a set of guide points along with camera vision as the detection mechanism. The minimal number of guide points is discussed to determine the position and orientation of a mobile robot via a single or multiple camera system. For practical application, a closed form 3D self-positioning algorithm is proposed using a stereo camera system with triple guide points. It is further shown that a double triangular pattern is an effective guide-mark that is robust against measurement noise in feature extraction. Then, by simulation, the sensitivity of positioning errors due to image errors are analyzed. It is experimentally shown that the proposed method with triple guide points works well for a walking robot equipped with a stereo camera in laboratory environment.