The purpose of this paper is to describe a system which utilizes an interactive robotic device to help in the educational process of very young disabled children. Within the System the child's performance is monitored and evaluated on line, providing a current prescription for progress to more or less advanced learning levels. The robotic Systems developed at Purdue University during research on this concept are described as well as the prototype Systems to monitor progress of the students

Dynamic equations of chain structured robotic manipulators with compliant links and joints are developed in a non-recursive symbolic form. A program is developed in REDUCE to automate the symbolic expansion of these equations for any given chain structured manipulator. The symbolic non-recursive form of dynamic model is particularly suitable for controller synthesis and real-time control implementations. The link flexibility is included in the formulation using assumed mode shapes. The mode shapes and the parameters that are functions of the mode shapes are kept in symbolic form so that once a symbolic model is generated, different types of mode shapes can be studied using the same model. Because of the structural similarity between the developed equations and the well known rigid manipulator equations, the computer automated symbolic expansion capability presented here are likely to be utilized widely by many other researchers in the area who are already familiar with rigid manipulator problems.

The mass balancing of robotic manipulators has been shown to have favorable effects on their dynamic characteristics. In actual practice, however, since conventional manipulators have flexibility at their joints, the improved dynamic properties obtainable for rigid manipulators may be influenced by those joints flexibilities. This paper investigates the effects of the joints flexibility on the dynamic properties and the controlled performance of a balanced robotic manipulator. The natural frequency distribution and damping characteristics were investigated through frequency response analyses. To evaluate the dynamic performance a series of simulation studies of the open-loop dynamics were made for various trajectories, operating velocities, and joint stiffnesses. These simulations were also carried out for the balanced manipulator with a PD controller situated inside the motor control loop. The results show that, at low speed, the joints flexibility does but little influence the performance of the balanced manipulator, but at high speed it tends to render the balanced manipulator susceptible to vibratory motion and yields large joints deformation errors.

This paper presents at first a static and kinematic analysis of closed chains mechanisms which permits to deduce different possible fully parallel architectures. Then we focus on a particular parallel architecture with C5 links designed to perform precise assembly tasks. A general modeling of this C5 parallel robot is presented. Two typical assembly tasks in the automotive industry are also proposed; the first one uses the C5 links parallel robot as a left-hand device, while the second one uses it as the terminal tool of a sequential manipulator.

This paper presents a framework for the design of a hierarchical Simulator of a robotized sequential technological process. The framework employs concepts of discrerte event simulation modelling. The Simulator consists of two layers: the Simulator of a robot and technological process, and the interpreter and planner of robot tasks. A format specification of both layers is presented. The proposed simulation approach is expected to result in significant improvements in the robot task plan generation and in higher efficiency of a technological process.

The description is provided for the design and implementation of a system capable of simulating the motions of a quadruped walking robot. The system aims to investigate the feasibility of the robot's walking cycle. This is achieved by considering the robot's stability and more specifically the position of its centre of gravity in relation to its supporting legs. The robot is modelled as a solid body connected to four jointed limbs which are moved through a series of gaits, their positions being calculated at a set of discrete intervals. The resulting information is displayed using a graphical module to present an image of the moving robot and indicate its centre of gravity and support pattern. The complete system indicates the stability of the robot throughout a user-defined gait cycle and is both portable and adaptable.

The system is implemented on a HLH Orion and an Atari 1040ST in the C programming language and is aimed at providing support for the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Edinburgh University where the particular robot is being built.

This paper considers the use of memory models and machine intelligence, to dynamically update a computer based representation of the occupancy of a small building. The input to the model is derived from very simple, single bit, movement sensors in each room of the premises.I It will be shown that the information derived from these sensors can provide adequate data for a building control scheme.

Short and Long Term memory models of man will be briefly reviewed. Working models for Short and Long Term memory will be discussed, which have evolved from the earlier work but which have been tuned to fit the machine level constraints of this type of application.

A review of the performance of a working pilot installation will be given. A performance measure will be derived and initial figures using this measure will be presented.

Traditionally, most industrial robots are programmed by teaching. Automatic planning of robotic tasks has many potential benefits for flexible automation. It allows the user to describe a task to the robot programming system in a formal and natural manner, and reduces the time required to generate and update robot programs. Two main levels of abstraction in describing robot tasks can be identified. Robot-level programming is based on robot movements and actions, as detailed by the programmer. Object-level or task-level programming allows the user to describe assembly tasks in terms of operations performed on objects being manipulated instead of specifying the individual motions of the robot end-effector. However, commercially available robot-level programming languages still fall short of the robot user's need to programme complex tasks and consequently are not widely used in industry. There is an increasing need for integrating sensors feedback into the robot system to provide better perception and for improving the capacity of the robot to reason and make decisions intelligently in real-time. Task-level programming represents the highest level of abstraction and is the most attractive, as it uses reasoning capabilities provided by Artificial Intelligence. To date, no system of this class has been completely implemented in industry. This paper reviews the progress made in robot programming and task planning systems in the last twenty years, and discusses the current research trends.