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Discusses the merits of using soft actuation systems to create compliant robot mechanisms and the problems associated with controlling such robots.

The police often ask witnesses and victims to construct a facial composite of people they have seen committing a crime. Research has suggested, however, that these images are of poor quality due to memory decay, the face construction method used and the presence of the external facial features (hair, ears, face shape). In the current work, the role of the most important external feature, hair, was explored. Participants were shown an unfamiliar target face and constructed a composite of it 24 hours later using a modern recognition‐based system and one of three types of hair: exact, similar or poor match to the target. Better‐matching hair was found to help participants construct a more identifiable central region of the face (eyes, brows, nose, mouth). The results highlight the importance of accurate hair at the start of the construction session. Implications for police practice are discussed.

An accident of architecture has placed Pisa upon the tourist map along with such evocative names as Rome, Florence, Galileo and Fibonacii, to say nothing of Buozzi and Giovanni. As the venue for the 5th International Conference on Advanced Robotics, ICAR, Pisa has an atmosphere that is as far removed from sensor fusion and mobile robotics, as Los Angeles is from Italian Renaissance art. Yet this contrast serves only to emphasise the technological steps made, and being made, in many areas of robotics.

Existing devices such as robots and machine tools rely on motion generators that have been developed almost entirely from existing technology, e.g. electric motors, hydraulic/pneumatic cylinders. Consequently, modern machines are attempting to perform increasingly complicated tasks by relying on ever more complex computer programs to compensate for the deficiencies of the device actually performing the task. In chemical plants, for example, sophisicated control software is still directing valves designed and built at the inception of the plant process. Similarly, today's factory automation systems are aiming to achieve more and more difficult tasks on the assumption that a suitable “intelligent” computer program will enable existing devices to perform these tasks efficiently.

A car capable of self‐diagnosis, a central heating system that actually keeps your house at a constant temperature, a pointer able to pick out individual atoms and a temperature sensor capable of detecting temperature changes that last only eight millionths of a second were just some of the revelations made at the Institute of Physics' Sensors Conference held in Edinburgh, 23–25 September 1991.

Research suggests that memory for unfamiliar faces is pictorial in nature, with recognition negatively affected by changes to image-specific information such as head pose, lighting and facial expression. Further, within-person variation causes some images to resemble a subject more than others. Here, the purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of target-image choice on face construction using a modern evolving type of composite system, EvoFIT.

Participants saw an unfamiliar target identity and then created a single composite of it the following day with EvoFIT by repeatedly selecting from arrays of faces with “breeding”, to “evolve” a face. Targets were images that had been previously categorised as low, medium or high likeness, or a face prototype comprising averaged photographs of the same individual.

Identification of composites of low likeness targets was inferior but increased as a significant linear trend from low to medium to high likeness. Also, identification scores decreased when targets changed by pose and expression, but not by lighting. Similarly, composite identification from prototypes was more accurate than those from low likeness targets, providing some support that image averages generally produce more robust memory traces.

The results emphasise the potential importance of matching a target's pose and expression at face construction; also, for obtaining image-specific information for construction of facial-composite images, a result that would appear to be useful to developers and researchers of composite software.

This current project is the first of its kind to formally explore the potential impact of pictorial properties of a target face on identifiability of faces created from memory. The design followed forensic practices as far as is practicable, to allow good generalisation of results.

The purpose of this study is to biomedically assess biscuits designed to reduce selected risk factors for coronary heart disease, in particular serum homocysteine and glucose.

In this study, one of the countries leading jam sandwhich biscuits was significantly modified, with particular attention being paid to sugar, fat and salt concentration. A traditional biscuit was converted to a functional food by the addition of vitamin B₁₂, Folic Acid, Vitamin C and Prebiotic fibre, while reducing salt and sugar.

The results obtained from a clinical trial demonstrated that serum homocysteine and blood glucose were significantly decreased (P < 0.05) when the modified product and the traditional biscuit were compared. These findings confirm that a health promoting biscuit can be produced commercially, and have similar organoleptic properties as the standard high fat, high sugar and salt product.

These findings could have significant implications to the biscuit industry, as producers of products traditionally associated with poor health. This study shows that biscuit formulations can be modified significantly, and that the resultant dough yield biscuits which can be produced under commercial conditions, be organoleptically acceptable and reduce risk factors associated with coronary heart disease.

Moving into the twenty‐first century, there is no reason why biscuit consumption should be associated with poor health. Recipe and processing modifications are possible, thanks to new and innovative raw materials and an understanding of dough rheology.