Human-like behavior of robot arms: general considerations and the handwriting task—Part II: the robot arm in handwriting

This paper (Part II) investigates the motion of a redundant anthropomorphic arm during the writing task. Two approaches are applied. The first is based on the concept of distributed positioning which is suitable to model the “writing” task before the occurrence of fatigue symptoms. The second approach uses the concept of “virtual fatigue” (VF) which is a variable that dynamically behaves in a way analogous to the biological fatigue. VF enables the arm to reconfigure itself and take postures appropriate for the current level of fatigue. The study includes the analysis of legibility and inclination of handwriting, and a set of simulation results that show most practical aspects of robot human-like performance.     

Non-linear mechanic and electric behavior of a robot axis with a “harmonic-drive” gear

This paper presents a study of a complete robot axis including the electrical and the mechanical parts. The motorization of the robot arm presented here has been carried out using a DC motor, a “harmonic-drive” type gear system and three control loops (current, speed and position). Each component is studied and modeled taking into account non-linearities such as current limitation, backlash, low rigidity and non-linear friction. The results obtained through computation of the model are compared with measurements on the real arm (motor current and speed) using speed and position loops.     

21 CFR Part 11: How Does it Affect Laboratory Automation Software Developers?

Just what is “21 CFR Part 11”?Do I need to consider it when designing lab automation software? Sure, I store data electronically, but my “official” copy is a signed hardcopy stored in my documentation control system, so Part 11 doesn't apply to me, right?These and similar questions are being asked with increasing frequency during the development process for both off-the-shelf and custom lab automation software. This article presents a brief overview of the FDA regulation concerning the use of electronic records and electronic signatures and a guide for software analysts and developers.     

Planning as incremental adaptation of a reactive system

The importance of solving the problem of integrating deliberative (“planning”) capabilities and reactive capabilities when building robust, ‘real-world’ robot systems is becoming widely accepted (Bresina and Drummond, 1990; Fraichard and Laugier, 1991; McDermott, 1991). This paper presents a solution to this problem: cast planning as the incremental adaptation of a reactive system to suit changes in goals or the environment. Our application domain is a manufacturing problem - robotic kitting. This paper represents an advance on existing work in two ways: It presents and formally examines an architecture that incorporates the benefits of a deliberative component without compromising the reactive component. Secondly, it provides the first set of performance statistics in the literature for this class of system. In our approach, the reactive system (the reactor) is a real-time system that continually interacts with the environment, and the planner is a separate and concurrent system that incrementally ‘tunes’ the behavior of the reactor to ensure that goals are achieved. We call this the planner-reactor approach. The reactor is described using a formal framework for representing flexible robot plans, the model (Lyons, 1990; Lyons and Arbib, 1989). Thus, the behavior of the reactor, and the rules by which the reactor can be modified, become open to mathematical analysis. We employ this to determine the constraints the planner must abide by to make safe adaptations and to ensure that incremental adaptations converge to a desired reactor. We discuss our current implementation of planner and reactor, work through an example from the kitting robot application, and present implementation results.     

Parallel OLAP with the Sidera server

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) has become a primary component of today’s pervasive Decision Support systems. As the underlying databases grow into the multi-terabyte range, however, single CPU OLAP servers are being stretched beyond their limits. In this paper, we present a comprehensive model for a fully parallelized OLAP server. Our multi-node platform actually consists of a series of largely independent sibling servers that are “glued” together with a lightweight MPI-based Parallel Service Interface (PSI). Physically, we target the commodity-oriented, “shared nothing” Linux cluster, an architecture that provides an extremely cost effective alternative to the “shared everything” commercial platforms often used in high-end database environments. Experimental results demonstrate both the viability and robustness of the design.     

Teaching programming: A spiral approach to syntax and semantics

Coupling the recently proposed syntactic/semantic model of programmer behavior [1] with classic educational psychological theories yields new insights to teaching programming to novices. These new insights should make programming education more natural to students. alleviate “computer shock” (the analog of “math anxiety” [2]) and promote the development of widespread “computer literacy”.The spiral approach is the parallel acquisition of syntactic and semantic knowledge in a sequence which provokes student interest by using meaningful examples, builds on previous knowledge, is in harmony with the student's cognitive skills, provides reinforcement of recently acquired material and develops confidence through successful accomplishment of increasingly difficult tasks. The relationship of structured programming and flowcharts to the spiral approach is discussed.     

Integrated planning information systems: Context, design requirements, and prospects

This research contributes to the theoretical basis for appropriate design of computer-based, integrated planning information systems. The research provides a framework for integrating relevant knowledge, theory, methods, and technology. Criteria for appropriate system design are clarified. The requirements for a conceptual system design are developed based on “diffusion of innovation” theory, lessons learned in the adoption and use of existing planning information systems, current information-processing technology (including expert system technology), and methodology for evaluation of mitigation strategies for disaster events. Research findings focus on the assessment of new information systems technology. Chief among these findings is the utility of case-based reasoning for discovering and formalizing the meta rules needed by expert systems, the role of the “diffusion of innovation” theory in establishing design criteria, and the definition of client interests served by integrated planning information systems. The work concludes with the selection of a prototyping exercise. The prototype is developed in a forthcoming technical paper (Masri & Moore, 1994).     

PLANET: A simulation approach to PERT

PLANET is a modification of PERT which permits use of arbitrary activity duration distributions in Monte-Carlo simulations which provide approximate distributions for completion times for project milestones and which identifies three classes of slacks for activities: total slack, free slack, and incremental slack (a new concept). The concept of “critical path” is supplemented by that of “probability of criticality” for each activity. This provides an improved basis for reallocation of resources using a “rob Peter to pay Paul” principle. The algorithms used are designed to have running times linearly proportional to the size of the underlying PERT network so PLANET should execute efficiently, even on large networks.     

High-payload climbing and transitioning by compliant locomotion with magnetic adhesion

This paper presents a new climbing robotic mechanism for high-payload climbing and wall-to-wall transitioning. Payload capacity and transition ability are very important in climbing-robot applications for heavy industries and construction industries. The proposed robotic platform consists of three magnetic tread-wheel modules that are connected by links with two compliant joints. The front compliant joints are passive type with a torsion spring, and the rear compliant joints are active type with torque-controlled motors. A torque-controlled tail is attached at the end of the third module. Various transitions are achieved by the compliant joints, which change shape depending on the external conditions. High payloads are achieved by the large contact area of three magnetic tread-wheel modules. Detailed design issues are presented with analyses of the design parameters. The robot can perform two internal and two external transitions against gravity and every possible transition in the side surface driving direction. The robot can carry 10 kg payloads on vertical surfaces and on a ceiling. The ability to overcome a 30 mm diameter obstacle on vertical surfaces is also verified by experiments. The proposed robotic platform is going to be used in heavy industries.     

Teaching e-commerce Web page evaluation and design: a pilot study using tourism destination sites

This study explores a teaching method for improving business students’ skills in e-commerce page evaluation and making Web design majors aware of business content issues through cooperative learning. Two groups of female students at a Japanese university studying either tourism or Web page design were assigned tasks that required cooperation to investigate whether a minimum of formal training and interaction between the two groups would result in an increase in the “design” students’ awareness of content issues in page design, and an improvement in the “tourism” students’ ability to evaluate Web pages related to tourism. The results showed only slight improvements, suggesting that either the amount of cooperative learning must be increased or some formal instruction must be introduced.     

Critical success factors revisited: success and failure cases of information systems for senior executives

The literature suggests the existence of critical success factors (CSFs) for the development of information systems that support senior executives. Our study of six organizations gives evidence for this notion of CSFs. The study further shows an interesting pattern, namely that companies either “get it right”, and essentially succeed on all CSFs, or “get it completely wrong”, that is, fall short on each of the CSFs. Among the six cases for which data were collected through in-depth interviews with company executives, three organizations seemed to manage all the CSFs properly, while two others managed all CSFs poorly. Only one organization showed a mixed scorecard, managing some factors well and some not so well. At the completion of the study, this organization could neither be judged as a success, nor as a failure. This dichotomy between success and failure cases suggests the existence of an even smaller set of “meta-success” factors. Based on our findings, we speculate that these “meta-success” factors are “championship”, “availability of resources”, and “link to organization objectives”.     

Adaptation of maximum entropy capitalizer: Little data can help a lot

A novel technique for maximum “a posteriori” (MAP) adaptation of maximum entropy (MaxEnt) and maximum entropy Markov models (MEMM) is presented.The technique is applied to the problem of automatically capitalizing uniformly cased text. Automatic capitalization is a practically relevant problem: speech recognition output needs to be capitalized; also, modern word processors perform capitalization among other text proofing algorithms such as spelling correction and grammar checking. Capitalization can be also used as a preprocessing step in named entity extraction or machine translation.A “background” capitalizer trained on 20 M words of Wall Street Journal (WSJ) text from 1987 is adapted to two Broadcast News (BN) test sets – one containing ABC Primetime Live text and the other NPR Morning News/CNN Morning Edition text – from 1996.The “in-domain” performance of the WSJ capitalizer is 45% better relative to the 1-gram baseline, when evaluated on a test set drawn from WSJ 1994. When evaluating on the mismatched “out-of-domain” test data, the 1-gram baseline is outperformed by 60% relative; the improvement brought by the adaptation technique using a very small amount of matched BN data – 25–70k words – is about 20–25% relative. Overall, automatic capitalization error rate of 1.4% is achieved on BN data.The performance gain obtained by employing our adaptation technique using a tiny amount of out-of-domain training data on top of the background data is striking: as little as 0.14 M words of in-domain data brings more improvement than using 10 times more background training data (from 2 M words to 20 M words).     

Code Annotation for Safe and Efficient Dynamic Object Resolution

The execution time of object oriented programs can be drastically reduced by transforming “non escaping” objects into a collection of its component scalar data fields. But for languages that support dynamic linking, this kind of optimization (which we call “object resolution”) can usually only be performed at runtime, when the entire program is available for analysis. In such cases, the resulting performance increases will be offset by the additional costs that arise during the analysis and restructuring phases.In this paper, we describe work in progress, which provides an annotation technique that reduces the runtime overhead required for performing object resolutions. Our method performs a partial static escape analysis of each class at compile-time and then annotates the intermediate representation of that class with information which the just-in-time (JIT) compiler can use for object resolution. We apply this technique to the safe TSA intermediate representation, producing a simple extension to safe TSA's type system that guarantees a safe and verifiable transmission of the annotated program.     

Motion in human and machine: A virtual fatigue approach

Achieving human-like behavior of a robot is a key issue of the paper. Redundancy in the inverse kinematics problem is resolved using a biological analogue. It is shown that by means of "virtual fatigue" functions, it is possible to generate robot movements similar to movements of a human arm subject to muscle fatigue. Analytic method enabling control of robot motions in a human-like fashion is described. An example of an anthropomorphic robot arm performing a screw-driving task illustrates the method.     

The evolution of intellectual technologies: Applying product life-cycle models to MIS implementation

This article develops the theoretical construct of an “intellectual technology” (as distinct from traditional industrial technologies) as a way to explain the difficulties organizations have in implementing new computer-based applications. Building on the notions of a product and process life-cycle, this concept is used to suggest that non-traditional approaches to the implementation of computer-based applications may be necessary. The “intellectual technology” concept implies that organizations must learn to apply new applications in their particular environment, and that this learning explains the difficulty many firms have in implementing Office Automation, CAD/CAM, Decision Support Systems, and the like.     

Inventing HCI: The grandfather of the field

Brian Shackel is considered by many to be the grandfather of the field of human–computer interaction. The present paper provides a commentary to Shackel’s seminal (1997) paper on the field, “HCI: Whence and Whither” with accompanying observations of his life’s work and intellectual contributions.     

A multilingual knowledge management system: A case study of FAO and WAICENT

This paper provides a case study of a multilingual knowledge management system for a large organization. In so doing we elicit what it means for a system to be “multilingual” and how that changes some previous research on knowledge management. Some researchers have viewed multilingual as meaning a multilingual user interface. However, that is only a small part of the story. In this case we find multilingual also refers to a broad range of “multilingual,” including multilingual knowledge resources, multilingual feedback from users, multilingual search, multilingual ontologies and other concerns.     

Double-ended queues with impatience

The effect of “impatient” behaviour is studied primarily in the context of “double-ended” queues where each demands service from the other, typically taxis and passengers. Related models, single queue, and double, with a variety of mechanisms are considered. “Impatience” is to be understood in a wider context than simply becoming tired of waiting: it can arise because the customer, for some reason, runs out of time (inventory and organ transplantation), or because an alternative service becomes available (communication applications). The emphasis in this paper is theoretical but a brief numerical assessment of operational consequences is given.

Scope and purpose

The “double-ended (or synchronization) queue” is a model for a variety of service demanding/providing systems. In an orderly taxi rank at a railway station or airport, on one side a queue is formed by the arrival of stream of passengers who wait for taxis to their destinations while on the other side a queue of taxis waiting for passengers. Obviously, the two queues can never coexist. The concept of “impatience” enters when a taxi or passenger leaves the queue before receiving service.This concept of “reneging” is widely applicable. In health care, for example, organs are stored for transplantation for needful patients. Both the organs and the demands for them have limited lifetime. A similar scenario applies to perishable inventory systems. In a similar manner, the real-time communication networks admit impatient behaviour. A typical example is a processor-shared queue in data networks with random time-out periods or deadlines.The paper sets out the basics in a variety of theoretical model settings with the common feature of exponential arrival, service and impatience mechanisms. A brief discussion based on numerical calculation is given of some operational features of the models but the thrust is on the theoretical techniques needed to make meaningful operational assessments.