ROMANSY 14. Theory and practice of robots and manipulators. Proceedings of the fourteenth CIMS-IFToMM symposium, Udine, Italy, July 1--4, 2002 (Q1417214)

[The articles of this volume will not be indexed individually.] This volume is dedicated to Professor Adam Morecki who has died recently and whose name and RoManSy symposia are so closely related in the minds of the roboticists all over the world. The book begins with the Adam Morecki memorial session by K. Kȩdzior, C. Rzymkowski and M. Vukobratovič. After that, Keynote Lectures of Prof. M. Hiller H. Van Brussel and A. Takanishi are given. In this framework, the topics are: mechanics, motion control, sensing and programming, synthesis and design, applications, legged locomotion and biomechanical aspects, considered in 57 papers by 62 authors from 21 countries. The term robotics is understood to include also locomotion systems, exoskeletal and prosthetic devices, and, more generally, all robotized systems. We have to mention briefly some authors with their contributions: In the chapter -- Mechanics: M. Hiller with papers about the combined wheeled and legged robot ALDURO and modelling of human joints, and many papers of Italian authors with works on parallel manipulators; J. McPhee, ``Inverse dynamic analysis of parallel manipulators with 3 or 6 degrees of freedom''. In the chapter -- Motion Control: B. Heimann and co-authors with the paper ``Control of the omnidirectional mobile robot MARGe''; D. Katič and M. Vukobratovič, ``Advanced control of robot compliance tasks using hybrid intelligent paradigms''; D. Oetomo, M. H. Ang jun., R. Jamisola and O. Khatib, ``Integration of torque controlled arm with velocity controlled base''; M. Vukobratovič and co-authors, ``How to apply hybrid position/force control to robots interacting with dynamic environment''; etc. In the chapter -- Sensing and Programming: The paper of the Italian authors M. Dalla Valle, P. Gallina, A. Rossi and M. Sonego, ``A catadioptric system for 3D optical measurements''; K. Tanaka and J. Takeno, ``The highest end 3D transmission system for remote control''; etc. In the chapter -- Synthesis and Design: Here again scientists from around the world have reported their latest investigations and we have to mention the one by M. Karouia and J. M. Herve, ``A family of novel orientational 3-DOF parallel robots''. In the chapter -- Legged Locomotion: This chapter is very interesting, with the fact that knowledge from mathematics, biomechanics and robotics interact in a nice way. Quite interesting are the papers ``Design and realization of jogging Johnie'' by M. Gienger, K. Löffler and F. Pfeiffer; ``The significance of leg mass in modeling quadrupedal running gaits'' by J. Schmiedeler, R. Siston and K. Waldron -- and also the paper by K. Zimmerman, I. Zeidis and J. Steigenberger, ``Mathematical model of worm-like motion systems with finite and infinite degree of freedom''. At the end of this volume, one finds the chapter -- Biomechanical Aspects: This chapter consists mainly of some papers by Japanese scientists in the area of humanoid robots, and others which are very close to human-robot interaction. As a conclusion, this volume embraces a lot of advanced investigations in the area of robotics, and because of the present and future tendencies concerning the robotized systems, it includes quite naturally many of the latest studies on technical devices in wheeled and legged robots mechanics and control and should be considered as a valuable addition to the existing literature in this field.