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AN incentive is a motive and it has long been accepted as axiomatic in the world of industry that the only motive which will move men to greater effort is a financial one. Wage incentive schemes operate in large sections of manufacturing industry today and any increase in a firm's productivity is almost automatically attributed to them.

The purpose of this paper is to present the design and analysis of a robotic finger mechanism for robust industrial applications.

The resultant design is a compact rigid link finger, which is adaptive to different shapes and sizes providing necessary grasping features. A number of such fingers can be assembled to function as a special purpose end effector.

The mechanism removes a number of significant problems usually experienced with tendon‐based designs. The finger actuation mechanism forms a compact and positive drive unit within the end effector's body using solid mechanical linkages and integrated actuators.

The paper discusses the design issues associated with a limited number of actuators to operate in a constrained environment and presents various considerations necessary to ensure safe and reliable operations.

The design is original in existence and developed for special purpose handling applications that offers a strong and reliable system where space and safety is of prime concern.

A new micromachining technology of mechanically fixed and thermally insulated cantilevers, bridges and islands was developed to be used for design of GaAs heterostructure based microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices. Based on the micromachining technology, two different MEMS devices were designed and analyzed. The first one was micromechanical thermal converter (MTC) and the second one was a micromechanical coplanar waveguide (MCPW). The basic electro‐thermal as well as microwave properties of the MEMS devices designed are investigated. The results obtained are also supported by simulation. The advantages of the fixed micromechanical structures in the field of design of new MEMS devices are discussed.

The Secretary of State:—

ACCORDING to historical records the earliest known drawings for an aerial machine that can be classified under the heading of helicopter were made in the fifteenth century by the world renowned Italian scientist and artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Probably the Chinese had been making their helicopter toy for some considerable time before da Vinci commenced his experiments. This toy consisted of two feathers, joined together by means of a cork or soft wood boss, to form a crude type of propeller which was pushed up a threaded stick so that upon leaving the stick the propeller rotated at high speed and continued to screw itself up in the air. When the speed of rotation decreased the propeller slowly windmilled down to the ground. A similar toy is still being sold today.

A transportable test stand for testing hydraulic appliances on aircraft which comprises a transportable frame, a reservoir for fluid under normal pressure mounted therein, three devices for supplying fluid under increased pressure; to wit, a high pressure variable flow pump associated with a motor, a low volume pressure pump adapted to be operated manually, and a hydraulic accumulator adapted to supply fluid under progressively decreasing pressure, conduits to feed fluid from said reservoir to said two first‐mentioned devices, means to feed fluid under pressure from said first‐mentioned to said third mentioned device, a plurality of pressure outlets in one of the outside walls of said frame, each including a self‐sealing coupling, a plurality of return outlets in one of the outside walls of said frame, each including a self‐sealing coupling, a free return line extending between all said return outlets and said reservoir, another return line extending between the same outlets and the same reservoir but including a flow meter, means to direct the return flow of fluid alternatingly through the first‐mentioned and the second mentioned return line, and means, operable from the outside, to connect any desired number of pressure outlets to any desired number of devices.

There are two commercially accepted methods of force control used in automated surface finishing today. The first method, “through‐the‐arm” force control, applies force using the position of all the robot axes in unison. The second method, “around‐the‐arm” force control, uses the robot for positioning motion only, and applies a controlled force through an auxiliary‐compliant end‐of‐arm tool. Discusses the theory, applicability and features of each of these two technologies.

Purpose is to design the energy harvesters and to know the limit of the application of load on the PZT material. Fatigue failures of the designed products is merely bothering the modern engineers and scientists for the research communities of all fields. Especially in the field of Micro Electromechanical Systems (MEMS), durability of low power systems is very important under the climates of both at high temperature and low temperature zones. And also continuous electrical power requirement is important for the MEMS and wireless sensor networks. Electricity is the greatest crisis in the world on one side and on the other side, durability of smart devices such as mobile phones, laptops, compact devices, computer spare parts are unrecyclicable batteries for reducing the rate of pollution in the environment.

By considering these problems, authors have taken up a research in finding the first fatigue characteristics, which are fatigue failure and durability of ferroelectric material as lead zirconate titanate, and then designed the scavenging device by using harmonically excited vibrations for getting optimum power output which is about 15.6 mW.

Under the resonance operated condition at the frequency of about 50 Hz, a prototype of scavenging device is about 90 V AC peak-to-peak voltage and the durability of scavenging device is 9.715 years.

Durability of PZT at different environmental conditions plays a very important role for the continuous function of low power devices. The output of PZT may change when the working time increases in addition with the mechanical properties.

WHERE are we going? The aim is to double our standard of living in the next 25 years and, as Sir Alexander Fleck, K.B.E., Chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd., so aptly staled recently, ‘The man who knows where he is going is the one who is most likely to arrive.’ One might venture to expand this statement by adding that he is still more likely to arrive if the cluttering debris of inefficient methods and movements are cleared away.

AT an international exhibition in Moscow during September a pavilion covering 6,500 sq. ft. displayed equipment designed to improve the organization of work. The unusual thing is that the equipment was office machinery and systems exhibited by the Business Equipment Trade Association of this country and five of its member firms. Until now the U.S.S.R. has been a negligible market for such goods, but the Soviet Union has now declared its intention to increase the automation of clerical work through installing modern equipment of the sort favoured by western countries. The report of a delegation of the Association's members put this point so strongly that, as a ‘joint under‐taking’ with the British Board of Trade, it was thought justifiable to attack this burgeoning market.