Limp materials are used in many economically impo~tant industries such as garment manufacture, shoe manufacture, aerospace (composites) and automobiles (seats and trim). The use of sensors is essential for reliable robotic handling of these materials, which are often based on naturally occurring substances such as cotton and leather. The materials are limp and have non-homogeneous mechanical properties which are often impossible to predict accurately. The applications are very demanding for vision and tactile sensing and signal processing, adaptive control systems, planning and systems integration. This book comprises the collection of papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on 'Sensory Robotics for the Handling of Limp Materials', held in October 1988 at II Ciocco, Tuscany, Italy. The aim of the workshop was to examine the state of the art and determine what research is needed to provide the theoretical and technological tools for the successful application of sensory robotics to the handling of limp materials. The meeting also acted as the first-ever forum for the interchange of knowledge between applications-driven researchers and those researching into the provision of fundamental tools. The participants were drawn from academia (20), industry (5), and other non-university research organisations (5).

Limp materials are used in many economically impo~tant industries such as garment manufacture, shoe manufacture, aerospace (composites) and automobiles (seats and trim). The use of sensors is essential for reliable robotic handling of these materials, which are often based on naturally occurring substances such as cotton and leather. The materials are limp and have non-homogeneous mechanical properties which are often impossible to predict accurately. The applications are very demanding for vision and tactile sensing and signal processing, adaptive control systems, planning and systems integration. This book comprises the collection of papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on 'Sensory Robotics for the Handling of Limp Materials', held in October 1988 at II Ciocco, Tuscany, Italy. The aim of the workshop was to examine the state of the art and determine what research is needed to provide the theoretical and technological tools for the successful application of sensory robotics to the handling of limp materials. The meeting also acted as the first-ever forum for the interchange of knowledge between applications-driven researchers and those researching into the provision of fundamental tools. The participants were drawn from academia (20), industry (5), and other non-university research organisations (5).

"This book explores some of the most recent developments in robotic motion, artificial intelligence, and human-machine interaction, providing insight into a wide variety of applications and functional areas"--Provided by publisher.

Logical concepts and methods are of growing importance in many areas of computer science. The proofs-as-programs paradigm and the wide acceptance of Prolog show this clearly. The logical notion of a formal proof in various constructive systems can be viewed as a very explicit way to describe a computation procedure. Also conversely, the development of logical systems has been influenced by accumulating knowledge on rewriting and unification techniques. This volume contains a series of lectures by leading researchers giving a presentation of new ideas on the impact of the concept of a formal proof on computation theory. The subjects covered are: specification and abstract data types, proving techniques, constructive methods, linear logic, and concurrency and logic.

This book is the result of a NATO sponsored workshop entitled "Student Modelling: The Key to Individualized Knowledge-Based Instruction" which was held May 4-8, 1991 at Ste. Adele, Quebec, Canada. The workshop was co-directed by Gordon McCalla and Jim Greer of the ARIES Laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan. The workshop focused on the problem of student modelling in intelligent tutoring systems. An intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is a computer program that is aimed at providing knowledgeable, individualized instruction in a one-on-one interaction with a learner. In order to individualize this interaction, the ITS must keep track of many aspects of the leamer: how much and what he or she has leamed to date; what leaming styles seem to be successful for the student and what seem to be less successful; what deeper mental models the student may have; motivational and affective dimensions impacting the leamer; and so ono Student modelling is the problem of keeping track of alI of these aspects of a leamer's leaming.

The advent of fast and sophisticated computer graphics has brought dynamic and interactive images under the control of professional mathematicians and mathematics teachers. This volume in the NATO Special Programme on Advanced Educational Technology takes a comprehensive and critical look at how the computer can support the use of visual images in mathematical problem solving. The contributions are written by researchers and teachers from a variety of disciplines including computer science, mathematics, mathematics education, psychology, and design. Some focus on the use of external visual images and others on the development of individual mental imagery. The book is the first collected volume in a research area that is developing rapidly, and the authors pose some challenging new questions.

This volume is based on a NATO Advanced Research Workshop on User-Centred Requirements for Software Engineering Environments held in Bonas, France, in September 1991. The workshop was organized in two halves, one dominated by discussion of usability problems in software engineering and the other by discussion of existing solutions to these problems. The papers in the volume are grouped under four themes: - Design activities and representations for design - Code representation and manipulation - Technological solutions - The impact of design methods and new programming paradigms.

Hypermedia technology needs a creative approach from the outset in the design of software to facilitate human thinking and learning. This book opens a discussion of the potential of hypermedia and related approaches to provide open exploratory learning environments. The papers in the book are based on contributions to a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held in July1990 and are grouped into six sections: - Semantic networking as cognitive tools, - Expert systems as cognitive tools, - Hypertext as cognitive tools, - Collaborative communication tools, - Microworlds: context-dependent cognitive tools, - Implementing cognitive tools. The book will be valuable for those who design, implement and evaluate learning programs and who seek to escape from rigid tactics like programmed instruction and behavioristic approaches. The book presents principles for exploratory systems that go beyond existing metaphors of instruction and provokes the reader to think in a new way about the cognitive level of human-computer interaction.

The Marktoberdorf Summer Schools on Informatics were started in 1970, with the intention to convene every second or third year a group of top researchers in computing, devoted to preach their most recent results to an elite of advanced students - young and most promising people - and prepared to stand their questions, criticism and suggestions. The themes of these Advanced Study In stitutes under the sponsorship of the NATO Scientific Affairs Division varied slightly over the years, oscillating more or less around Programming Methodo logy, as the following list shows: 1970 Data Structures and Computer Systems 1971 Program Structures and Fundamental Concepts of Programming 1973 Structured Programming and Programmed Structures 1975 Language Hierarchies and Interfaces 1978 Program Construction 1981 Theoretical Foundations of Programming Methodology 1984 Control Flow and Data Flow: Concepts of Distributed Programming 1986 Logic of Programming and Calculi of Discrete Design 1988 Constructive Methods in Computing Science 1989 Logic, Algebra, and Computation Logic, Algebra, and Computation is the theme of the summer school to which this volume is devoted. It is the tenth in succession, but it is also the first in a new series (the "blue" series) that is intended to alternate in future with the traditional (the "red" series) arrangement; in fact the tenth summer school in the "red" series with the title "Programming and Mathematical Method" , held in 1990, was the subject of celebrating both its serial number and the twenty years of Marktoberdorf Summer Schools altogether.

The book collects the contributions to the NATO Advanced Study Institute on "Speech Recognition and Understanding: Recent Advances, Trends and Applications", held in Cetraro, Italy, during the first two weeks of July 1990. This Institute focused on three topics that are considered of particular interest and rich of i'p.novation by researchers in the fields of speech recognition and understanding: Advances in Hidden Markov modeling, connectionist approaches to speech and language modeling, and linguistic processing including language and dialogue modeling. The purpose of any ASI is that of encouraging scientific communications between researchers of NATO countries through advanced tutorials and presentations: excellent tutorials were offered by invited speakers that present in this book 15 papers which sum marize or detail the topics covered in their lectures. The lectures were complemented by discussions, panel sections and by the presentation of related works carried on by some of the attending researchers: these presentations have been collected in 42 short contributions to the Proceedings. This volume, that the reader can find useful for an overview, although incomplete, of the state of the art in speech understanding, is divided into 6 Parts.