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The purpose of this paper is to describe how the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation (IFF) has developed the automatic façade‐cleaning robot SIRIUSc for use on the Fraunhofer‐Gesellschaft's headquarters, a high‐rise building in Munich, Germany.

The building has a height of 80 m, its façade an area of 4,000 m². Apart from the robot that moves along and cleans the façade, the complete, fully automated system consists of a fully automated gantry that secures, supplies energy to and, above all, positions the robot. Part of the project involved completely automating a standard gantry, which is an integral part of the complete façade‐cleaning robot system.

This paper presents an overview of the significant basic functions of the robot and the gantry, emphasizing the kinematics, the control and sensor systems for navigation and the cleaning sequence that employs the extensive fully automatic functions of the robot and gantry.

The paper presents the first freely climbing façade‐cleaning robot for vertical façades without rails effectively in use in Europe.

Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation (IFF). SIRIUS is a climbing robot meant for any vertical surface, regardless of the angle. The robot can be outfitted with tools to perform a variety of service‐sector tasks such as façade cleaning, building and ship coating, ship welding, inspection work on tanks, and so on. It is a modular system, and the robot can be adapted to almost any surface, independent of the surface material or obstacles. The robot stays attached to the surface via suction cup feet or magnetic grippers, and moves vertically on four linear guides that are coupled in two pairs. The new kinematics of the robot allow it to walk continuously in all directions. The robot overcomes obstacles by sensing their position and generating the necessary step length in order to maximize the number of suction cups attached to the surface while walking over the obstacle.

Introduction of an automated laboratory system for a new field of laboratory operation, namely cultivation and handling of live brain tissue.

The company's expertise in manual throughput was transferred to automatable methods. Processing data is used for scheduling purposes to yield efficient production of results.

Automated process has comparable survival rates and high reproducibility. Time tolerance is lower than for manual operation.

Several bottle necks of the system have been identified and are to be improved upon in future research. These are especially “handling of membrane inserts” and slow‐running procedures.

Cataloging of activity data (timestamps, parameters, etc.) allows for much easier statistical analysis and data‐mining than with manual operation data.

Tissue‐based, high‐throughput screening is a seminal field in laboratory automation.

This paper presents the design of climbing robots for glass‐wall cleaning.

A systemic analysis of the basic functions of a glass‐wall cleaning system is given based on the research of working targets. Then the constraints for designing a glass‐wall cleaning robot are discussed. The driving method, the attachment principle, mechanical structure and unique aspects of three pneumatic robots named Sky Cleaners follow. In the end a summary of the main special features is given. All three climbing robots are tested on site.

Our groups spent several years in designing and developing a series of robots named Sky Cleaners which are totally actuated by pneumatic cylinders and sucked to the glass walls with vacuum grippers in mid‐air. It was found that they can meet the requirements of glass‐wall cleaning.

The air source, cleaning liquid and control signals should be provided by the supporting vehicle stationed on the ground. Even if the robots are intelligent, the suitable working height is below 50 m because the weight of the hoses has to be taken into account when the robots work in mid‐air.

The cleaning robotic systems can avoid workers presence in a hazardous environment and realize an automatic cleaning, furthermore reduce operation costs and improve the technological level and productivity of the service industry in the building maintenance.

Sky Cleaner robots can move and do cleaning on the plane glass wall or the special curve wall with a small angle between the glasses. The first two prototypes are mainly used for research and the last one is a real product designing for cleaning the glass surface of Shanghai Science and Technology Museum.

Sheet metal forming is a process of shaping thin sheets of metal by applying pressure through male or female dies or both. In most of used sheet‐formating processes the metal is subjected to primarily tensile or compressive stresses or both. During the last three decades considerable advances have been made in the applications of numerical techniques, especially the finite element methods, to analyze physical phenomena in the field of structural, solid and fluid mechanics as well as to simulate various processes in engineering. These methods are useful because one can use them to find out facts or study the processes in a way that no other tool can accomplish. Finite element methods applied to sheet metal forming are the subjects of this paper. The reason for writing this bibliography is to save time for readers looking for information dealing with sheet metal forming, not having an access to large databases or willingness to spend own time with uncertain information retrieval. This paper is organized into two parts. In the first one, each topic is handled and current trends in the application of finite element techniques are briefly mentioned. The second part, an Appendix, lists papers published in the open literature. More than 900 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with subjects that were published in 1995‐2003 are listed.

To provide a selective bibliography for researchers working with bulk material forming (specifically the forging, rolling, extrusion and drawing processes) with sources which can help them to be up‐to‐date.

A range of published (1996‐2005) works, which aims to provide theoretical as well as practical information on the material processing namely bulk material forming. Bulk deformation processes used in practice change the shape of the workpiece by plastic deformations under forces applied by tools and dies.

Provides information about each source, indicating what can be found there. Listed references contain journal papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations on the subject.

It is an exhaustive list of papers (1,693 references are listed) but some papers may be omitted. The emphasis is to present papers written in English language. Sheet material forming processes are not included.

A very useful source of information for theoretical and practical researchers in computational material forming as well as in academia or for those who have recently obtained a position in this field.

There are not many bibliographies published in this field of engineering. This paper offers help to experts and individuals interested in computational analyses and simulations of material forming processes.

Although the percentage of female entrepreneurs has increased over the past several years, it is far below the level of males. Drawing on the theory of planned behaviour and role congruity theory, the purpose of this paper is to specify a model in which the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intention (EI) is mediated by three essential motivational constructs (i.e. attitude toward starting a business, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control (PBC)).

The study specifies and tests a meta‐analytical structural equation model. The study aggregates the results of 30 studies (n=52,367).

The study reveals a higher average EI for men compared to women. However, although significant, the gender differences in EI and the motivational constructs were small and cannot sufficiently explain the substantial differences in actually starting a business. Furthermore, moderator analyses show differences in the gender‐EI relationship between Europe and the US and between students and non‐students.

Differences between men and women seem to be a consequence of differences in turning intentions into implementation. Researchers are called upon to investigate gender differences in hindrances as a potential explanation for different implementations and when and why women give up their entrepreneurial plans. Moreover, future research should investigate further motivational processes beyond those suggested by the theory of planned behavior.

The study analyses the relationship between gender and EI and the results show a weak relationship which indicates that the higher number of male entrepreneurs cannot solely be explained by differences in motivation.

In the context of demographic and economic changes, helping mature age job seekers find employment is imperative. The purpose of this paper is to examine mature age job seekers’ proactive personality as a moderator of the relationship between age and job search intensity; and to examine job search self-efficacy as a mediator of this moderation effect. It was hypothesized that the generally negative relationships between age and job search self-efficacy and intensity are weaker among job seekers with a more proactive personality.

In total, 188 job seekers between 40 and 64 years completed an online questionnaire. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Consistent with previous research, age was negatively related to job search intensity. Proactive personality was positively related to job search intensity and moderated the relationship between age and job search intensity. Extending previous research, proactive personality also positively predicted job search self-efficacy and moderated the relationship between age and job search self-efficacy which, in turn, positively predicted job search intensity.

Potential limitations of the study include the cross-sectional design, sample selectivity, and the omission of possibly important control variables.

Practitioners, organizations, and societies concerned with helping mature age job seekers find employment could provide additional support to those with a less proactive personality and low job search self-efficacy.

This study extends previous research by showing that mature age job seekers’ job search self-efficacy mediates the moderating effect of proactive personality on the relationship between age and job search intensity.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a robotic cleaning system for applying on the glass facade of the control tower at the Guangzhou Airport, in Guangzhou, China.

Four similar robotic cleaning systems are designed for a reversed cone‐shape glass facade at the top of the control tower. One system is composed of a robot moving along and cleaning the facade, and an automatic conveyer positioning, securing, supplying energy and water to, and recycling the dirty water from the robot. An on‐board controller enables the system to work in a remote control mode or a fully automated mode under the supervision of an operator.

This paper presents how to integrate the attaching, moving, cleaning and securing functions into one robotic system for the high rise glass facade, and focuses on the kinematics, the control and sensor system and the cleaning navigation. In particular, the real time control method of the vacuum in the cup is discussed to ensure high cleaning quality and security.

Since the cleaning system proposed in this paper is a custom‐built one, the generalization of its design idea should be tested in other applications.

The paper includes the implications for the development of automatic cleaning system for the high‐rise buildings with reversed inclining glass façade.

The robotic cleaning system described in this paper is the first fully automated cleaning machine for the reversed inclining glass facade in China. It works effectively and reliably on the control tower of the Guangzhou airport.