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Arms embargoes in themselves are not able to achieve political goals. At least in the past, they neither stopped wars, nor did they change the political behavior of the targeted states or groups.

Traditional robot arm trajectory planning methods have problems such as insufficient generalization performance and low adaptability. This paper aims to propose a method to plan the robot arm’s trajectory using the trajectory learning and generalization characteristics of dynamic motion primitives (DMPs).

This study aligns multiple demonstration motion primitives using dynamic time warping; use the Gaussian mixture model and Gaussian mixture regression methods to obtain the ideal primitive trajectory actions. By establishing a system model that improves DMPs, the parameters of the nonlinear function are learned based on the ideal primitive trajectory actions of the robotic arm, and the robotic arm motion trajectory is reproduced and generalized.

Experiments have proven that the robot arm motion trajectory learned by the method proposed in this article can not only learn to generalize and demonstrate the movement trend of the primitive trajectory, but also can better generate ideal motion trajectories and avoid obstacles when there are obstacles. The maximum Euclidean distance between the generated trajectory and the demonstration primitive trajectory is reduced by 29.9%, and the average Euclidean distance is reduced by 54.2%. This illustrates the feasibility of this method for robot arm trajectory planning.

It provides a new method for the trajectory planning of robotic arms in unstructured environments while improving the adaptability and generalization performance of robotic arms in trajectory planning.

The purpose of this research is to automate the operations and real time monitoring and controlling of a marine loading arm.

A generic control strategy to automate the operation of manually controlled marine loading arms has been developed. This strategy employs state of the art, industry standard position sensors, PLC systems, interactive human machine interface (HMI) and integrates fail‐safe operation and emergency shutdown procedures.

This approach satisfies all the industry safety regulations and liminates the possible risks and/ or spurious trips during product loading. The overall engineering process is simpler, easier to implement and manage due to the fact the industry standard equipment and design tools have been used. Using this generic strategy, manually operated marine loading arms can be automated for effective monitoring and controlling purposes.

It is expected that engineers around the world can benefit by this approach and will be able to design similar control equipment to automate the functionality of loading arms in their organizations.

This work is the authors' own. Thoughts and designs belong to them and the ideas presented are completely original, developed, implemented and tested by them over years.

Describes some of the current research into multi‐arm robots underway at AMARC, University of Bristol, at the theoretical level, defining what constitutes a multi‐arm robot and also at the implementation level. Use is made in the laboratory of a planar, two‐arm experimental robot and a 32‐axis, four‐arm robot system. In industry a four‐arm robot for handling composites is used. AMARC has also been involved in the development of a two‐arm robot for the fish industry. Concludes that the goal of producing a multi‐arm robot which is able to conduct some complex and varied manipulation tasks is still largely a research topic.

Routine general practice (GP) care is rarely comprehensively described in clinical trials. This paper examines routine GP care within the lifestyle approach to managing panic (LAMP) study. The aim of this paper is to describe/discuss routine GP care for panic disorder (PD) patients within both study arms in the LAMP study. An unblinded pragmatic randomised controlled trial in 15 East of England GP practices (2 primary care trusts). Participants met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition criteria for PD with/without agoraphobia. Follow-up measures recorded at 20 weeks/10 months following randomisation. Control arm, unrestricted routine GP care (practice appointments, referrals and prescriptions). Trial arm, occupational therapy-led lifestyle treatment comprising lifestyle review of fluid intake, diet pattern, exercise, caffeine, alcohol and nicotine. Primary outcome measure: beck anxiety inventory. At baseline, participants attended 2-3 times more GP appointments than population average, reducing at 10 months to 1.6 times population average for routine GP care and 0.97 population average for lifestyle arm. At 10 months, 33% fewer referrals (6 referrals; 0 mental health) than at baseline (9 referrals; 2 mental health) were made for lifestyle arm patients compared with 42% increase (from 12 referrals; 8 mental health at baseline to 17 referrals; 7 mental health) in GP care arm. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors were prescribed most often. Benzodiazepines and beta-blockers were prescribed more often than tricyclic against current clinical guidelines. In conclusion, we found that PD patients at baseline were high healthcare resource users. Treatment in both study arms reduced resource use. Routine GP care requires further review for this patient group.

This historical example of the creation of the arms industry in the Connecticut River Valley in the 1800s provides new insights into the value of government venture capital (GVC) and government demand in creating a new industry. Since current theoretical explanations of the best uses of governmental venture capital are still under development, there is considerable need for further theory development to explain and predict the creation of an industry and especially those industries where failures in private capital supply necessitates governmental involvement in new firm creation. The purpose of this paper is to provide an in depth historical review of how the arms industry evolved spurred by GVC and government created demand.

This study uses abductive inference as the best way to build and test emerging theories and advancing theoretical explanations of the best uses of GVC and governmental demand to achieve socially required outcomes.

By observing this specific historical example in detail, the authors add to the understanding of value creation caused by governmental venture capital funding of existing theory. A major contribution of this paper is to advance theory based on detailed observation.

The relatively limited research literature and theory development on governmental venture capital funding and the critical success factors in startups are enriched by this abductive investigation of the creation of the historically important arms industry and its spillover into creating the specialized machine industry.

Stiffness adjusting ability is essential for soft robotic arms to perform complex tasks. A soft state enables dexterous operation and safe interaction, while a rigid state enables large force output or heavy weight carrying. However, making a compact integration of soft actuators with powerful stiffness adjusting mechanisms is challenging. This study aims to develop a piston-like particle jamming mechanism for enhanced stiffness adjustment of a soft robotic arm.

The arm has two pairs of differential tendons for spatial bending, and a jamming core consists of four jamming units with particles sealed inside braided tubes for stiffness adjustment. The jamming core is pushed and pulled smoothly along the tendons by a piston, which is then driven by a motor and a ball screw mechanism.

The tip displacement of the arm under 150 N jamming force and no more than 0.3 kg load is minimal. The maximum stiffening ratio measured in the experiment under 150 N jamming force is up to 6–25 depends on the bending direction and added load of the arm, which is superior to most of the vacuum powered jamming method.

The proposed robotic arm makes an innovative compact integration of tendon-driven robotic arm and motor-driven piston-like particle jamming mechanism. The jamming force is much larger compared to conventional vacuum-powered systems and results in a superior stiffening ability.

The disintegration of the SFRY, which had its roots in the late 1970s and 1980s (Delevic, 1998), started with the decision of the Slovenian and Croat governments in 1990 to seek independence from Belgrade. The event triggering the outbreak of war in Slovenia was the takeover of Yugoslav custom houses by the Slovenia government, which prompted the YPA to intervene militarily, pitting a well-armed conventional army against the security forces of a nascent state, largely consisting of milita-style Territorial Defense Units (Lucic & Lynch, 1996, pp. 183–185). The EC and the United States moved quickly to impose an arms embargo against Yugoslavia following the military escalation of the crisis in June 1991. This was followed by resolution 713 of the UNSC (1991) imposing a “general and complete embargo on the delivery of weapons and military equipment to Yugoslavia” on 25 September 1991. During this early stage of the conflict, there was agreement among the key international actors (USA, Russia and the EU) that the conflict in Yugoslavia had to be contained and that the breakup of the federal republic should be avoided at all costs, not least because it would set a dangerous precedent for other parts of Eastern Europe. Some permanent members of the Security Council (such as France, Russia and the United Kingdom) sympathized with the Serbian position vis-à-vis the break-away republics and while the decision to apply the arms embargo on Yugoslavia as a whole was justified by the fact that none of the republics had been recognized as a subject of international law, policymakers must have been aware that they were putting Slovenia and Croatia at a military disadvantage through this decision (Lucic & Lynch, 1996, pp. 295–300).

In the early 1990s, the single-party regime of the Mouvement Révolutionnaire Nationale pour le Développement (MRND), headed by President Juvénal Habyarimana, came under growing pressure both internally and externally. Rwanda experienced widespread destitution and famine as state revenues from coffee exports fell from an annual US $144 million in 1985 to a mere US $30 million in 1993 (Debiel, 2003, p. 166). A Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), imposed upon Rwanda by the Bretton Woods institutions in September 1991, was largely irrelevant, if not conducive, to the rising impoverishment of the Rwandan people (Chossudovsky, 1994, p. 21). Between 1989 and 1993, the proportion of the population consuming less than 1,000 calories a day doubled from 15 percent to 31 percent (Maton, 1994).

On December 24, 1989, an armed insurrection began in Liberia. Charles Taylor, a former government official, led a rebel force, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), into the north-eastern Nimba County. A breakaway faction, the Independent National Patriotic Front (INPFL), led by Prince Yormie Johnson gained control of central Monrovia – the capital – and killed the President Samuel Doe. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) intervened in August 1990, sending monitoring troops (the ECOWAS Military Observer Group, ECOMOG), and convened a national conference which elected an Interim Government of National Unity. In October 1990, ECOMOG established a neutral zone in Monrovia where Dr. Amos Sawyer was installed as Interim President in November. Various different factions and opposition groups were formed and clashes between the rebel groups and the Liberian army continued.