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Describes the experience of setting up a cooperative arm system based on individual open‐architecture controllers. Two six‐degree‐of‐freedom industrial manipulators, one of which is mounted on a moving track, are installed to realize a cooperative experimental set‐up. The main issues related to the cooperative manipulation are overviewed and its potential applications in industry are discussed. A brief description of the system’s components is given. The most relevant problems encountered in setting up the cooperative system based on individual control architectures are detailed. The result of the experience is that by using available industrial manipulators, rather than prototypes, and without re‐designing the controller hardware, it is possible to realize a cooperative manipulator system.

A key issue faced by co-operative enterprises is how to raise external equity capital without compromising member control. The purpose of this study is to examine the potential of a special type of financial instrument called a Cooperative Capital Unit (CCU) introduced into the Australian legislation to facilitate external investment while maintaining member control.

A Delphi panel and six focus groups were used to provide an understanding of the challenges associated with cooperative governance and financing and to aid the development of a conceptual framework for the implementation of CCUs.

The findings from these Delphi panel and six focus groups were used to develop a proposed framework that the authors believe will be useful in structuring equity-like instruments depending on the purposes they might serve. In particular, the authors propose a new form of cooperative ownership and equity structure that could: better align member and investor interests; provide a mechanism to strengthen one role over the other depending on the needs of the cooperative; and provide investors with a better sense of security while retaining member control.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the cooperative ownership and equity structure proposed in this study are novel and not currently found in theory or practice. The insights provided by this study should, therefore, be of interest to a wide range of stakeholders, including cooperatives; professional advisors to these businesses; government regulators; investors; and researchers.

Organizations rely on budget teams for capital investment decisions. This study examined conditions that affected budget team performance. Variables included the formulation of cooperative, competitive and independent team budget goals and the mediating effect of budget information analysis between goals and budget performance. Two antecedents to budget goal formulation were examined, the budget knowledge of individual team members and organizational feedback control. Posited hypotheses were supported. Asymmetric budget knowledge between team members significantly increased independent and competitive budget goals and decreased cooperative budget goals. Organizational controls discouraged independent and competitive goals and encouraged cooperative budget goals. Cooperative (competitive and independent) budget goals improved (hindered) budget information analysis that in turn positively (negatively) affected budget performance.

The purpose of this paper is to present a comparison study of cooperative object manipulation control algorithms. To this end, a full comprehensive survey of the existing control algorithms in this field is presented.

Cooperative manipulation occurs when manipulators are mechanically coupled to the object being manipulated, and the manipulators may not be treated as an isolated system. The most important and basic impedance control (IC) strategies for an assumed cooperative object manipulation task are the Augmented Object Model (AOM) control and the multiple impedance control (MIC) which are found based on the IC, where the former is designed based on the object movement, and the latter is designed based on the whole robot movement. Thus, the basis of these two algorithms are fully studied.

The results are fully analyzed, and it is practically verified that the MIC algorithm has the better performance. In fact, the results reveal that the MIC system could successfully perform the object manipulation task, as opposed to the AOM controller: for the same controller gains, the MIC strategy showed better performance than the AOM strategy. This means that because there is no control on the robot base with the AOM algorithm, the object manipulation task cannot be satisfactorily performed whenever the desired path is not within the robot work space. On the other hand, with the MIC algorithm, satisfactory object manipulation is achieved for a mobile robotic system in which the robot base, the manipulator endpoints and the manipulated object shall be moved.

A simple conceptual model for cooperative object manipulation is considered, and a suitable setup is designed for practical implementation of the two ICs.

The basis of these two aspects or these two algorithms is fully studied and compared which is the foundation of this paper. For this purpose, a case study is considered, in which a space free-flying robotic system, which contains two 2-degrees of freedom planar cooperative manipulators, is simulated to manipulate an object using the above control strategies. The system also includes a rotating antenna and camera as its third and fourth arm. Finally, a simple conceptual model for cooperative object manipulation is considered, and a suitable setup is designed for practical implementation of the two ICs.

This study aims to examine the relationships between the rules that a cooperative membership decides upon and members' motives for action. It considers individual self-interest in relation with motives that are consistent with the values of cooperation.

This paper comprises two parts. The first is theoretical and discusses cooperative governance's features in the context of individual motives. The second part is empirical and based on survey data from Italian multistakeholder, worker-run social cooperatives. It uses cross-sectional data gathered from 4,134 workers and 310 managers in 310 cooperatives in Italy to provide evidence of rules and individual motives. Regression analysis confirms the existence of a linkage between individual self-interest and motives.

Rules mainly, but not exclusively, play an enabling function, which implies responding to both nonmonetary and monetary individual motives. With greater articulation within institutions – through the definition of multiple rights for accessing decision-making – the authors expect increases in individual capabilities to match motives with specific organizational rules in pursuit of consistent ends. This is confirmed by the association that the authors found between individual motives and commitment.

The authors’ illustration is limited to one specific type of cooperative, the social cooperative, in which prosocial motives are expected to be stronger than in other cooperative forms, although one could say that all cooperative models emphasize procommunity and prosocial aims. Data are cross-sectional and do not allow for the identification of causality, only of statistical relations' strength.

The continuous scrutiny and adaptation of motives and means imply that cooperators communicate and engage in a learning process.

While the institutional spheres that support investor-owned organizations and self-interested profit-maximizing behavior have been analyzed, a framework that accommodates personal control rights and a richer view of individual motives is lacking. The value added from the paper is to suggest one.

This paper studies the impact of ownership structure on performance in European banking both prior and during the recent crisis. We use a panel of European banks during the period 1996–2011 and utilize random effects estimations in order to identify differences in bank performance (profitability, loan quality, and cost efficiency) due to differences in ownership structure. Both stakeholder and shareholder banks have distinct advantages, shareholder banks showing better profitability before the crisis but stakeholder banks having higher loan quality before and during the crisis. Differences in profitability and loan quality between stakeholder and shareholder banks before the crisis are especially pronounced in countries that experienced a banking crisis after 2007. There is strong a heterogeneity in performance between different stakeholder ownership groups. With the exception of private savings banks, profitability and loan quality of stakeholder banks has improved relative to that of general shareholder banks during the crisis years. The paper contributes to the previous literature by comparing pre-crisis and crisis performance and includes more refined ownership classifications. The results indicate that the survival of the stakeholder model is due to its competitive advantages. Our findings provide support for those arguing that the diversity of organizational structures is worth preserving. Ownership pluralism should become a policy objective in the banking industry.

The purpose of this paper is to give an updated overview over the development of employee-ownership in Italy, France, Spain including Mondragon, the UK and the US with relatively many employee-owned firms. How have the barriers for employee-ownership been overcome in these countries?

The overview is based on updated descriptions of the development of employee-ownership included in this special issue. The analysis follows the structure of overcoming five barriers: the organization problem; the problem of entry and exit of employee-owners; the startup and takeover problem; the capital- and the risk problem.

Italy, France and Spain have overcome the barriers by specific legislation for worker cooperatives, this includes rules for entry and exit of employee members. Cooperative support organizations play an important role for monitoring and managing the startup problem and for access to capital. The Mondragon model includes individual ownership elements and a group structure of cooperatives. The EOT and ESOP models are well suited for employee takeovers, financing are eased by tax advantages and they are all-employee schemes. While the EOT has no individual risks, the ESOP model has the possibility for capital gains for employees but also the risk of losing these gains.

Comprehensive and updated overview of the development in employee-ownership in the five countries to identify successful formats of employee-ownership for implementation in countries with few employee-owned firms.

To address the problem that the current train operation mode that train selects one of several offline pre-generated control schemes before the departure and operates following the scheme after the departure, energy-saving performance of the whole metro system cannot be guaranteed.

A cooperative train control framework is formulated to regulate a novel train operation mode. The classic train four-phase control strategy is improved for generating specific energy-efficient control schemes for each train. An improved brute force (BF) algorithm with a two-layer searching idea is designed to solve the optimisation model of energy-efficient train control schemes.

Case studies on the actual metro line in Guangzhou, China verify the effectiveness of the proposed train control methods compared with four-phase control strategy under different kinds of train operation scenarios and calculation parameters. The verification on the computation efficiency as well as accuracy of the proposed algorithm indicates that it meets the requirement of online optimisation.

Most existing studies optimised energy-efficient train timetable or train control strategies through an offline process, which has a defect in coping with the disturbance or delays effectively and promptly during real-time train operation. This paper studies an online optimisation of cooperative train control based on the rolling optimisation idea, where energy-efficient train operation can be realised once train running time is determined, thus mitigating the impact of unpredictable operation situations on the energy-saving performance of trains.

This paper aims to propose cooperative control strategies for dual-arm robots in different human–robot collaborative tasks in assembly processes. The authors set three different regions where robot performs different collaborative ways: “teleoperate” region, “co-carry” region and “assembly” region. Human holds the “master” arm of dual-arm robot to operate the other “follower” arm by our proposed controller in “teleoperation” region. Limited by the human arm length, “follower” arm is teleoperated by human to carry the distant object. In the “co-carry” region, “master” arm and “follower” arm cooperatively carry the object to the region close to the human. In “assembly” region, “follower” arm is used for fixing the object and “master” arm coupled with human is used for assembly.

A human moving target estimated method is proposed for decreasing efforts for human to move “master” arm, radial basis functions neural networks are used to compensate for uncertainties in dynamics of both arms. Force feedback is designed in “master” arm controller for human to perceive the movement of “follower” arm. Experimental results on Baxter robot platform show the effectiveness of this proposed method.

Experimental results on Baxter robot platform show the effectiveness of our proposed methods. Different human-robot collaborative tasks in assembly processes are performed successfully under our cooperative control strategies for dual-arm robots.

In this paper, cooperative control strategies for dual-arm robots have been proposed in different human–robot collaborative tasks in assembly processes. Three different regions where robot performs different collaborative ways are set: “teleoperation” region, “co-carry” region and “assembly” region.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the frame of a missile formation cooperative control system, and present an optimal keeping controller of a missile formation in the cooperative engagement.

A missile relative motion model is established directly based on the kinematics relationships in the relative coordinated frame, following that is the detailed process of designing an optimal formation controller, which is analyzed through the small disturbance linearized method and transforming control variables method, respectively, these two methods both have themselves properties. The equations and control variables are intuitive during the linearized analysis, but errors brought by the linearized method are unavoidable, which will reduce the control precision. As for the transforming method, the control accuracy is greatly increased although the control form is a little complex, so in this paper the transforming control variable method is mainly researched to design an optimal formation controller. Considering the states of a leader as input perturbation variables, we design an optimal formation controller based on the linear quadric theory, which has quadric optimal performances of the missile flight states and control quantity. In order to obtain a higher accurate solution, the precise integration algorithm is introduced to solve the Riccati Equation that significantly affects the accuracy of an optimal control problem.

The relative motion model established directly in the relative coordinate frame has intuitive physical significance, and the optimal controller based on this relative motion model is capable of restraining the invariable or slowly varying perturbation brought by the velocity of a leader and the input perturbations caused by the maneuver of the leader, at the same time this optimal controller can implement formation reconfiguration and keeping to an expected states rapidly, steadily and exactly; the steady errors can be greatly decreased by analyzing the relative motion model through transforming control variables method compared to the small disturbance linearized operation.

The main frame of a missile formation cooperative engagement system can be found in this paper, which shows a clear structure and relations of each part of this complex system. The relations between each subsystem including the specific input and output variables can also be used to guide and restrict how to design each subsystem. The emphasis of this paper is on designing an optimal formation keeping controller which can overcome slowly varying or invariable perturbations and implement quadric optimal keeping control rapidly, stably and accurately.

This paper provides a new method to analyze the missile relative motion model. The proposed proportional and integral (PI) optimal controller based on this model, and utilizing the Precise Integration Algorithm to solve this optimal controller are also new thoughts for formation control problems.