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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.

The concepts of critical theory and complexity merit criticism. Growth of knowledge merits paradigmatic sacrifices. The erosion of orthodox establishments and an on‐going re‐structuring of research communities make the sciences of management susceptible to the influences of critical social scientists. A change of paradigms ceased to be a threatening emergency so vividly evoked by Kuhn. The new complex world of overlapping research networks is less hierarchic, more mobile, and not easily centralized. In boundary‐less correlations all critical research paradigms are subjected to a networking and re‐networking at all times. Postmodernist anarchism (“anything goes”) is presently giving rise to the theories of organisational learning. The latter express a methodological compromise with respect to the paradigms and a political compromise with respect to the governance structures. The underlying tensions motivate an ongoing search for a sustainable compromise between a critical thrust of research and a managerial need for governance, accountability and control.

The dramatic growth and international scope of knowledge‐intensive business services (KIBS) are evident in emerging markets such as China and India. Nations, like firms, seek to capitalize on their available resources and capabilities (e.g. people, technology, skills) in order to build and maintain core competencies in certain industry sectors. This paper has the following objectives: to discuss the classification of KIBS, to marshal conceptual and statistical evidence on KIBS in major emerging markets, to compare and contrast selected major emerging markets in regard to their KIBS activities, and to discuss policy implications.

In this conceptual paper, extant literature is reviewed and discussed pertaining to the KIBS sectors. Several existing data sources are used to assess the comparative performance of major emerging markets in the KIBS sectors.

The emphasis is on finding comparative longitudinal statistics that are useful for comparison and contrast among major emerging markets. The analysis indicates that while the major emerging markets are building competitive advantage by focusing on knowledge‐intensive business services, their progress differs sharply. For example, China shows the lead, followed by India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Turkey, and Indonesia. Smaller nations lag behind these in most indicators. It is evident that leading major emerging nations have not reached parity with highly industrialized countries.

The results show ranking and contribution of various major nations in the global knowledge economy, but additional time series and analysis are needed to assess comparative rankings. However, the classification and the indicators illustrated here offer a panoramic, comparative picture over the past decade. Using international business theories, research can develop statistical models to explain foreign market entry strategies of knowledge‐intensive service firms.

The paper is of value to managers considering entry and/or expansion into major emerging markets in various sub‐sectors of knowledge‐intensive sectors. The specific industry and function pursued by a firm need to be identified and matched up with host nation characteristics (e.g. more software design and pharmaceutical research in India v. more manufacturing design and R&D facility in China). The paper also provides guidelines to policy makers to sustain their country's competitive advantage in the KIBS sectors.

The paper looks at knowledge‐intensive business services in major emerging markets. It offers both conceptual contributions and statistical evidence that key nations differ in their activities in regard to such high‐level and complex service offerings.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the reviews of past research work on various in-pipe robotic systems and their operations. This investigation has been focussed on the implemented methodologies for performing in-pipe cleaning and inspection tasks.

This work has been concentrated on review of various sensors used in robots to perform in-pipes inspection operation for determining flaws/cracks, corrosion-affected areas, blocks and coated paint thickness. Various actuators like DC motors, servo motors, pneumatic operated and hydraulic operated are discussed in this review analysis to control the motion of various mechanical components of the robot.

In the current analysis, categorisation of various pipe cleaning robots according to their mechanical structure has been addressed. A lot of information has been gathered regarding the control of in-pipe robots for performing inspection and cleaning tasks.

In this paper, various in-pipe cleaning and inspection techniques have been studied. Necessary information provided regarding different types of in-pipe robots like PIG, wall-pressed, walking, wheel and inchworm. This investigation provides a through literature on various types of sensors like ultrasonic, magnetic, touch, light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, X-ray, etc., that have been used for inspection and detection of flaws in the pipe.