Development of an autonomous underwater robot “Twin-Burger” for testing intelligent behaviors in realistic environments

An autonomous underwater robot named Twin-Burger was developed as a versatile test bed to establish the techniques which realize intelligent robot behaviors. The robot was designed to have necessary functions for complex tasks including cooperative task execution with other robots and divers. The first robot Twin-Burger I was completed and launched in November 1992. This paper describes hardware and software systems of the robot. Motion of the robot is controlled by sliding controllers based on simplified equations of motion which are derived from system identification experiments. Tank tests proved that the robot was able to cruise along a commanded path as a sequence of control actions generated by the sliding controllers. The Distributed Vehicle Management Architecture (DVMA) is applied to the robot as an architecture for the control software. Mission execution experiments shows that the Twin-Burger behaves appropriately according to the mission and environmental conditions.     

A Substitution Based Model for the Implementation of PROLOG——The Design and Implementation of LPROLOG

Since PROLOG has been chosen as the Fifth Generation Computer's Kernal Language,it ispresently one of the hottest topics among computer scientists all over the world.Recently,theimplementation technique and the application of PROLOG have been developed rapidly.In thispaper,a new implementation scheme for PROLOG is proposed.The scheme is based on thesubstitution of instantiated veriable values.It has many advantages,such as a higher runningspeed,less main memory requirement,and easier to be implemented.The scheme has beenimplemented by the authors on IBM4341.     

The emergence of smart service ecosystems—The role of socio-technical antecedents and affordances

As physical products are increasingly augmented with digital technology, manufacturing firms have become part of the development of so-called smart products and smart services. As such, manufacturing firms are challenged by new market participants and ecosystem partners, particularly from the software development industry, and by the dynamic nature of business relationships. While the academic literature on the distinctive characteristics of ecosystems, particularly digital ecosystems, is rich, the effect of smart service ecosystems' emergence on the foundation of smart products remains uncertain. This study reports on case study research based on 47 semi-structured interviews with four companies that participate in an industrial smart service ecosystem. Taking an affordance-theoretic perspective, we uncover the antecedents of and the process of emergent smart service ecosystems. We find that smart service ecosystems have three socio-technical antecedents: a shared worldview, structural flexibility and integrity, and architecture of participation. We explain the emergence of smart service ecosystems as the result of specialisation in shared affordances and integration of idiosyncratic affordances into collective affordances. We derive seven propositions regarding the emergence of smart services, outline opportunities for further research, and present practical guidelines for manufacturing firms.     

The Design and Implementation of “The GIS Based Mineral Resource Management Information System”

It is described in detail in this paper the entire development process of “The GIS Based Mineral Resource Management Information System” exercising software engineering principles together with GIS technology, database analysis and design techniques etc. It is designed to implement the standardization of geological data storage and management, to provide an efficient retrieval system and a visualization tool for data analysis, thus lays a solid foundation for profound exploration and utilization of geological data.     

A study of library “use studies”

A brief history of library use studies is followed by an analysis of the “Use Studies” indexed in Library Literature from 1960 to 1973. In addition to comparisons of the use studies conducted by public, college, school and special libraries, statistical comparisons are made of the use studies conducted by the United States and those conducted by other countries. Data on the types of patrons studied, the number of libraries selected for research, and the variety of uses represented in use studies appear in a series of tables. Areas in need of research are examined and summarized.     

The virtualization of human–robot interactions: a user-centric workload assessment

Virtual Reality - Interest in the virtualization of human–robot interactions is increasing, yet the impact that collaborating with either virtual or physical robots has on the human...     

Design of an H∞ controller for the Delta robot: experimental results

This paper deals with an efficient implementation of an H∞ multi-variable controller on the three degrees of freedom (DOF) parallel robot namely the ‘Delta robot’. The H∞ controller is designed by the mixed sensitivity approach in which the sensitivity function matrix S and the complementary sensitivity function matrix T are taken into account. For this purpose, a nonlinear analytical dynamic state model is developed and a tangent linearization procedure is used to obtain a multi-variable linear model around a functional point. Real-time experiments were performed to compare the centralized H∞ controller with a classical decentralized Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller. Experimental tracking results show that the performances of the PID compared to those of the H∞ decrease when the movement dynamic is increased. At high dynamic (12 Ge), it is shown that the maximum tracking error and the error around the stop positions of the H∞ are, respectively, 80 and 60% of the PID. The experiments of the load variation have proven that the H∞ is more robust than the PID. The steady-state root mean square error of the H∞ is less than 60% of the one obtained using the PID controller.     

Link and <link.library>: Resources for north‐south library development

The rapid growth of the Internet in recent years as a means of delivering information has had a number of profound effects. Information providers (such as libraries and publishers) wish to provide full text document delivery, although they often have concerns about receiving remuneration for it This is balanced by end‐users becoming aware that, despite the vast amount of ‘free’ information on the Internet, and especially the World Wide Web, ‘good’ information may require payment In parallel with this, the growing commercialisation of the Internet has resulted in the development of mechanisms and systems which support commercial transactions over open, public networks. A European funded research project, COPINET, has been investigating all these areas. Part of the COPINET project workplan was to conduct a survey of the available technologies for electronic commerce over the World Wide Web and this paper gives an overview of the main systems available. The whole domain is undergoing such rapid changes that it is almost impossible to be completely current, but most of the systems described here have been in existence for the life of the project     

Principles of transparency for autonomous vehicles: first results of an experiment with an augmented reality human–machine interface

Cognition, Technology & Work - Highly automated driving allows the driver to temporarily delegate the driving task to the autonomous vehicle. The challenge is to define the information that...     

Implementation of “impression Kizil grottoes” exhibition

Selecting Kizil grottoes as research target,this article discussed a new mode of integration of culture and science.Through a combination of website technologies HTML5 and PHP,impression·Kizil grottoes online exhibition is realized.The main functions include contents show,database connection operation,information publication and layout design,it can satisfy application requirements of dynamic website.     

Development of “STORK”, a watermelon-harvesting robot

Recently, the production of heavy fruit and vegetables has been decreasing in Japan because strenuous labor is require to harvest them. A robot would allow them to be harvested more easily. We have developed the robot “STORK” to harvest watermelons. STORK has a low mass and a long working range. The position accuracy and repeatability of the manipulator, the required vacuum, and the allowance for position error of the vacuum pad were tested.     

The future of war: could lethal autonomous weapons make conflict more ethical?

AI & SOCIETY - Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWs) are robotic weapon systems, primarily of value to the military, that could engage in offensive or defensive actions without human intervention....     

Which App? A recommender system of applications in markets: Implementation of the service for monitoring users’ interaction

Users face the information overload problem when downloading applications in markets. This is mainly due to (i) the increasing unmanageable number of applications and (ii) the lack of an accurate and fine-grained categorization of the applications in the markets. To address this issue, we present an integrated solution which recommends to the users applications by considering a big amount of information: that is, according to their previously consumed applications, use pattern, tags used to annotate resources and history of ratings. We focus this paper on the service for monitoring users’ interaction.