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ACCOUNTS of some comments made at the Annual National Committee meeting of the Amalgamated Engineering Union make discouraging reading. This is the only suitable adjective when speakers at that meeting state that time standards determined by time study are set on the performances of the best workers in the shop. We should have thought that with all the training that representatives have received in time study and allied subjects both from managements and unions that they would have known better than this.

Positioning is a key task in most field robotics applications but can be very challenging in GPS‐denied or high‐slip environments. The purpose of this paper is to describe a visual odometry strategy using only one camera in country roads.

This monocular odometery system uses as input only those images provided by a single camera mounted on the roof of the vehicle and the framework is composed of three main parts: image motion estimation, ego‐motion computation and visual odometry. The image motion is estimated based on a hyper‐complex wavelet phase‐derived optical flow field. The ego‐motion of the vehicle is computed by a blocked RANdom SAmple Consensus algorithm and a maximum likelihood estimator based on a 4‐degrees of freedom motion model. These as instantaneous ego‐motion measurements are used to update the vehicle trajectory according to a dead‐reckoning model and unscented Kalman filter.

The authors' proposed framework and algorithms are validated on videos from a real automotive platform. Furthermore, the recovered trajectory is superimposed onto a digital map, and the localization results from this method are compared to the ground truth measured with a GPS/INS joint system. These experimental results indicate that the framework and the algorithms are effective.

The effective framework and algorithms for visual odometry using only one camera in country roads are introduced in this paper.

Electronics in the Service of Man. It has been estimated that the current publication of technical matter is 60 million pages annually. The task of the future research worker, therefore, is likely to be a heavy one as 25 per cent of the total time to complete any future research project may be needed to find, correlate and assimilate past knowledge. But the research worker of the future will have one big aid—an electronic machine, now being developed by the Battelle Memorial Institute, Ohio, U.S.A., which may be able to scan up to five million published documents per hour and identify those relating to the specific information needed.

WORK Study is today a much over‐worked word. Like others of its kind it deserves more accurate definition than it usually gets.

The purpose of this paper is to present a two‐wheeled inverted pendulum with self‐tilt‐up motion ability. With this ability, the two‐wheeled inverted pendulum can erect without assistance, and then the vehicle can be autonomously deployed. The paper proposes an approach to achieve this self‐tilt‐up motion, which involves precessional motion.

A flywheel is mounted inside the vehicle to perform high‐speed spinning. The flywheel and body of the vehicle are forced to move around a fixed point and precessional motion occurs. As a result of the precessional motion, a moment is synchronously generated to tilt the body up to the upright position. Since no external force is applied on this two‐wheeled inverted pendulum, it is called self‐tilt‐up motion. A 3D model and a prototype are built to validate this approach.

The simulation and experimental results show that the self‐tilting‐up motion is successful.

This paper presents a self‐tilt‐up motion for a two‐wheeled inverted pendulum. With the analysis of the dynamics, simulation demonstrations and prototype development, the results show that the vehicle could perform self‐tilt‐up motion without any assistance. The principle of this self‐tilt‐up motion involves processional motion of rigid body. We also pointed out the factors that play important roles in influencing the performance of self‐tilt‐up motion and then define the switching time for the motion to switch to dynamic balance movement.

Traditional multi‐wheel robots cannot work when they overturn. However, the two‐wheeled inverted pendulums with self‐tilt‐up ability do not have this shortcoming. They can stand up to keep working even if they fall down. A two‐wheeled inverted pendulum with self‐tilt‐up ability can be applied to many places. Equipped with solar battery, it can be used as an independent explorer. This type of vehicle can be deployed in swarms for planetary detection. For example, many small two‐wheeled inverted pendulums assist a lunar rover for exploration, samples gathering, etc.

This paper aims to present a method of optimal singularity-free motion planning under multiple objectives and multiple constrains for the 6-DOF parallel manipulator, which is used as an execution mechanism for the automated docking of components.

First, the distribution characteristics of the Jacobian matrix determinant in local workspace are studied based on the kinematics and a sufficient and necessary condition of singularity-free path planning in local workspace is proposed. Then, a singularity-free motion path of the end-effector is generated by a fifth-order B-spline curve and the corresponding trajectories of each actuator are obtained via the inverse kinematics. Finally, several objective functions are defined to evaluate the motion path and an improved multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm-based on the Pareto archive evolution is developed to obtain the optimal singularity-free motion trajectories.

If the initial pose and the target pose of the end-effector are both singularity-free, a singularity-free motion path can be planned in the local workspace as long as all the values of each pose elements in their own directions are monotonous. The improved multi-objective particle swarm optimization (IMPSO) algorithm is effective and efficient in the optimization of multi-objective motion planning model. The optimal singularity-free motion path of the end-effector is verified in the component docking test. The docking result is that the movable component is in alignment with the fixed one, which proves the feasibility and practicability of the proposed motion path method to some extent.

The proposed method has a certain novelty value in kinematic multi-objective motion planning of parallel manipulators; it also increases the application prospect of parallel manipulators and provides attractive solutions to component assembly for those organizations with limited cost and that want to find an option that is effective to be implemented.

The purpose of this paper is to justify the algorithm optimization based on a consideration of its accuracy characteristics in a pure coning motion, which is widely used in optimizing strapdown attitude algorithms to describe the special angular motion of a vehicle.

Two more general angular motions of a vehicle were given: generalized vibration describing periodical motions and benign dynamic describing aperiodical motions. The algorithm performances were evaluated in these two motions.

The theoretical analysis and numerical results show that errors of the algorithm optimized in pure coning motion are null or neglectable in these two motions, and performance of the optimized algorithm in a pure coning motion is superior to that of the non-optimized algorithm.

The value of the paper lies in that the authors justify the concept optimizing strapdown attitude algorithms in a pure coning motion.

This paper aims to present a novel method for identification and classification of rotational motion for uncontrolled satellites. These processes are shown in context of close proximity orbital operations. In particular, it includes a manipulator arm mounted on chaser satellite and used to capture target satellites. In such situations, a precise extrapolation of the target’s docking port position is needed to determine the manipulator arm motion. The outcome of this analysis might be used in future debris removal or servicing space missions.

Nonlinear, and in some special cases, chaotic nature of satellite rotational motion was considered. Four parameters were defined: range of motion toward docking port, dominant frequencies, fractal dimension of the motion and its time dependencies.

The qualitative analysis was performed for presented cases of spacecraft rotational motion and for each case the respective parameters were calculated. The analysis shows that it is possible to detect the type of rotational motion.

A novel procedure allowing to estimate the type of satellite rotational motion based on fractal approach was proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with a method for gesture encoding and reproduction, particularly aiming at a text‐to‐gesture (TTG) system that enables robotic agents to generate proper gestures automatically and naturally in human‐robot interaction.

Reproducing proper gestures, naturally synchronized with speech, is important under the TTG concept. The authors first introduce a gesture model that is effective to abstract and describe a variety of human gestures. Based on the model, a gesture encoding/decoding scheme is proposed to encode observed gestures symbolically and parametrically and to reproduce robot gestures from the codes. In particular, this paper mainly addresses a gesture scheduling method that deals with the alignment and refinement of gestural motions, in order to reproduce robotic gesticulation in a human‐like, natural fashion.

The proposed method has been evaluated through a series of questionnaire surveys, and it was found that reproduced gestures by a robotic agent could appeal satisfactorily to human beings.

This paper provides a series of algorithms to treat overlapped motions and to refine the timing parameters for the motions, so that robotic agents reproduce human‐like, natural gestures.

Films Aid Machine Design. A Scottish firm of laundry engineers has perfected a system of film records as the basis on which machine design can be considered, and reports that the policy has been fully justified by results. Film records are made of a competent operator using a machine in her own manner using her own technique; this record is analysed and used as the basis of criticism from which to start building an improved unit. Slow‐motion projection allows time and motion analysis over a period of weeks when potential alterations in the technique and layout are considered.