This volume contains papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) on "Sensors and Sensory Systems for Advanced Robots", which was held in Maratea, Italy, during the week Apri I 28 - May 3, 1986. Participants in the ARW, who came from eleven NATO and two non-NATO countries, represented an i nternat i ona I assortment of d i st i ngu i shed research centers in industry, government and academia. Purpose of the Workshop was to rev i ew the state of the art of sensing for advanced robots, to discuss basic concepts and new ideas on the use of sensors for robot control and to provide recommendations for future research in this area, There IS an almost unanimous consensus among invest i gators in the fie I d of robot i cs that the add i t i on of sensory capabi I ities represents the "natural" evolution of present industrial robots, as wei I as the necessary premise to the development of advanced robots for nonindustrial app I i cat ions. However, a number of conceptua I and techn i ca I problems sti I I challenge the practical implementation and widespread appl ication of sensor-based robot control techn i ques. Cruc i a I among those prob I ems is the ava i lab iii ty of adequate sensors.

Robots have come a long way thanks to advances in sensing and computer vision technologies and can be found today in healthcare, medicine and industry. Researchers have been looking at providing them with senses such as the ability to see, smell, hear and perceive touch in order to mimic and interact with humans and their surrounding environments.

Advanced robotics describes the use of sensor-based robotic devices which exploit powerful computers to achieve the high levels of functionality that begin to mimic intelligent human behaviour. The object of this book is to summarise developments in the base technologies, survey recent applications and highlight new advanced concepts which will influence future progress.

Design of intelligent robots is one of the most important endeavors in robotics research today. The key to intelligent robot design lies in sensory systems for robotic control and manipulation. In an unstructural environment, robotic sensing translates measurements and characteristics of the environment and working objects into useful information. A robotic system is usually equipped with a variety of sensors to perform redundant sensing and achieve data fusion. This book contains revised versions of papers presented at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in Florida in September 1989 within the activities of the NATO Special Programme on Sensory Systems for Robotic Control. The fundamental issues addressed in this volume were: - Theory and techniques, including knowledge-based systems, geometrical fusion, Boolean fusion, probabilistic fusion, feature-based fusion, error-estimation approach, and Markov process modeling. - General concepts, including microscopic redundancy at the sensory element level, macroscopic redundancy at the sensory system level, parallel redundancy, and standby redundancy. - Implementation and application, including robotic control, sensory technology, robotic assembly, robot fingers, sensory signal processing, sensory system integration, and PAPIA architecture. - Biological analogies, including neural nets, pattern recognition, low-level fusion, and motor learning.

The successful implementation of applications in spatial reasoning requires paying attention to the representation of spatial data. In particular, an integrated and uniform treatment of different spatial features is necessary in order to enable the reasoning to proceed quickly. Currently, the most prevalent features are points, rectangles, lines, regions, surfaces, and volumes. As an example of a reasoning task consider a query of the form "find all cities with population in excess of 5,000 in wheat growing regions within 10 miles of the Mississippi River. " Note that this query is quite complex. It requires- processing a line map (for the river), creating a corridor or buffer (to find the area within 10 miles of the river), a region map (for the wheat), and a point map (for the cities). Spatial reasoning is eased by spatially sorting the data (i. e. , a spatial index). In this paper we show how hierarchical data structures can be used to facilitate this process. They are based on the principle of recursive decomposition (similar to divide and conquer methods). In essence, they are used primarily as devices to sort data of more than one dimension and different spatial types. The term quadtree is often used to describe this class of data structures. In this paper, we focus on recent developments in the use of quadtree methods. We concentrate primarily on region data. For a more extensive treatment of this subject, see [SameS4a, SameSSa, SameSSb, SameSSc, SameSga, SameSgbj.

This book contains the written record of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Traditional and Non-Traditional Robotic Sensors held in the Hotel Villa del Mare, Maratea, Italy, August 28 - September 1, 1989. This workshop was organized under the auspicies of the NATO Special Program on Sensory Systems for Robotic Control. Professor Frans Groen from the University of Amsterdam and Dr. Gert Hirzinger from the German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR) served as members of the organizing committee for this workshop. Research in the area of robotic sensors is necessary in order to support a wide range of applications, including: industrial automation, space robotics, image analysis, microelectronics, and intelligent sensors. This workshop focused on the role of traditional and non-traditional sensors in robotics. In particular, the following three topics were explored: - Sensor development and technology, - Multisensor integration techniques, - Application area requirements which motivate sensor development directions. This workshop'brought together experts from NATO countries to discuss recent developments in these three areas. Many new directions (or new directions on old problems) were proposed. Existing sensors should be pushed into new application domains such as medical robotics and space robotics.

This new edition of the bestselling Measurement, Instrumentation, and Sensors Handbook brings together all aspects of the design and implementation of measurement, instrumentation, and sensors. Reflecting the current state of the art, it describes the use of instruments and techniques for performing practical measurements in engineering, physics, chemistry, and the life sciences; explains sensors and the associated hardware and software; and discusses processing systems, automatic data acquisition, reduction and analysis, operation characteristics, accuracy, errors, calibrations, and the incorporation of standards for control purposes. Organized according to measurement problem, the Second Edition: Consists of 2 volumes Features contributions from 240+ field experts Contains 53 new chapters, plus updates to all 194 existing chapters Addresses different ways of making measurements for given variables Emphasizes modern intelligent instruments and techniques, human factors, modern display methods, instrument networks, and virtual instruments Explains modern wireless techniques, sensors, measurements, and applications A concise and useful reference for engineers, scientists, academic faculty, students, designers, managers, and industry professionals involved in instrumentation and measurement research and development, Measurement, Instrumentation, and Sensors Handbook, Second Edition provides readers with a greater understanding of advanced applications.

This volume contains a series of papers originally presented at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) entitled Kinematic and Dynamic Issues in Sensor Based Control. The workshop, one of a series concerned with topics in sensory robotics, took place at II Ciocco, Castelvecchio di Pascoli, Italy in October 1987. Attendance was by invitation only and the majority of participants are recognised leaders in their field- some from the robotics community, others with a more general control background. The main topics of interest were grouped into eight sessions represented by the eight main sections of the book: 1: Modelling Techniques: General Kinematic and Dynamic Issues 2: Sensor Signal Processing 3: Force Control 4: Further Control Topics 5: Vision Based Control 6: Further Kinematic and Dynamic Issues 7: Computational Issues 8: Learning from Sensor Input Also included are brief reports of the roundtable discussions which sought to determine important future directions of research in this area. My thanks to all those who made the workshop possible: The NATO Scientific Affairs Division and the panel on Sensory Systems for Robotic Control who provided most of the financial support; the workshop committee, Dr. B. Espiau, Dr. P. Coiffet, Dr. P.

The NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Mathematics Education and Technology was held in Villard-de-Lans, France, between May 6 and 11, 1993. Organised on the initiative of the BaCoMET (Basic Components of Mathematics Education for Teachers) group (Christiansen, Howson and Otte 1986; Bishop, Mellin-Olsen and van Dormolen 1991), the workshop formed part of a larger NATO programme on Advanced Educational Technology. Some workshop members had already participated in earlier events in this series and were able to contribute insights from them: similarly some members were to take part in later events. The problematic for the workshop drew attention to important speculative developments in the applications of advanced information technology in mathematics education over the last decade, notably intelligent tutoring, geometric construction, symbolic algebra and statistical analysis. Over the same period, more elementary forms of information technology had started to have a significant influence on teaching approaches and curriculum content: notably arithmetic and graphic calculators; standard computer tools, such as spreadsheets and databases; and computer-assisted learning packages and computer microworlds specially designed for educational purposes.