关键词： Robotics   Polymers   Consumer goods   Manufacturing   Collaboration   Automation   Lasers   Rubber   Robots   Manufacturing engineering   Automotive electronics   Automotive engineering   Industrial robots   Manufacturers   Automobile industry  

摘要： Cheaper robots with more functions, along with more flexible work cells and installations that facilitate robotics, are accelerating the growth of automated manufacturing facilities in the non-automotive sector. Ideas on whether robotics and automation lead to lights-out manufacturing on the shop floor, though, are mixed. While the overall number of units sold and revenue for robotics in 2018 were down, industrial robot orders actually grew 24% over the previous year in the life sciences, food and consumer goods, plastics and rubber and electronics industries, according to the Robotics Industries Association.

关键词： RELATIONISM   ARTIFICIAL intelligence   ROBOTICS & ethics  

摘要： An introduction is presented where in the editor discusses articles published within the issue on topics including ethics of AI and robotics, I-You relation, and dialogical philosophy.

关键词： Artificial intelligence   Robots   Government   Ethics   Law   Social implications of technology  

摘要： Rapidly emerging technologies, such as AI and robotics, present a serious challenge to traditional models of government regulation. These technologies are advancing so quickly that in many sectors, traditional regulation cannot keep up, given the cumbersome procedural and bureaucratic procedures and safeguards that modern legislative and rulemaking processes require. Consequently, regulatory systems will predictively fail to put in place appropriately tailored regulatory measures by the time new applications of fast-moving technologies begin to affect society. Perhaps even worse, if a regulatory system does somehow manage to rush into place new regulations for an emerging technology, they will likely be obsolete by the time the ink dries on the enactment. Given this so-called “pacing problem,” traditional regulatory approaches will either produce no regulation or bad regulation [1].

关键词： *ROBOTICS   *CONFERENCES & conventions   *AUTOMATION   *ENGINEERING   *ROBOTS   *WORK environment  

摘要： The article offers information on the activity of American Society of Mechanical Engineers in hosting Robotics in the Manufacturing Environment on December 12, 2018. Topics discussed including challenges in the integration of robotics and automation technology; challenges in the world of engineering; and importance of including robots in the workplace to rank among technologically advanced nations.

关键词： HYDROGELS   SOFT robotics   ROBOTS   VISCOELASTIC materials   SUPERPARAMAGNETIC materials   NANOPARTICLES   MAGNETIZATION  

摘要： SpineMan is designed as a prototype of a soft robotic manipulator that is constructed of alternating hard and soft segments similar to the human spine. Implementing such soft segments allows to surpass the rigidity of conventional robots and ensures safer workspaces where humans and machines can work side by side with less stringent safety restrictions. Therefore, we used a hydrogel as viscoelastic material consisting of poly(vinyl alcohol) and borax. The mechanical properties of the hydrogel were tailored by embedding silica particles of various particles sizes as well as in different mass fractions. Increased mass contents as well as larger particle sizes led to strongly enhanced rigidity with a more than doubled storage modulus of the composite compared to the pure hydrogel. Furthermore, specific functionalities were induced by the incorporation of superparamagnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles that can in principle be used for sensing robotic motion and detecting malfunctions. Therefore, we precisely adjusted the saturation magnetization of the soft segments using defined mass contents of the nanoparticles. To ensure long-time shape stability and prevention of atmospheric influences on the prepared composites, a silicone skin of specific shore hardness was used. The composites and the soft segments were characterized by oscillation measurements, cryo-SEM, bending tests and SQUID measurements, which give insights into the properties in the passive and in the moving state of SpineMan. The utilization of tailored composites led to highly flexible, reinforced and functional soft segments, which ensure stability, easy movability by springs of the shape memory alloy nitinol and prevention of total failure.

关键词： Dialogical philosophy   I-you connectedness   Pronoun I   Buber   Benveniste  

摘要： In this essay, I challenge the egocentric tradition which privileges the standpoint of an isolated individual, and propose a speech-based dialogical approach as an alternative. Considering that the egocentric tradition can be deciphered in part by analyzing the distortions undergone by pronominal discourse in the language of classical philosophy, I reexamine the pragmatics of ordinary language featuring the pronoun I in an effort to recover a more relational understanding of persons. I develop such an analysis of the deep grammar of pronominal discourse under the heading of I-you connectedness'. I-you connectedness emphasizes the communicative structure of experience, in particular the phenomenological importance of the addressee, the inseparability of I' and You', and the nature of the alternation between them. I-you connectedness is the best thematized within living speech, which is invariably oriented towards an interlocutor, and animated by mutual address. Yet, I-you connectedness extends beyond living speech to other modalities of meaning, notably thinking and writing, where one notes a similar orientation to a living, imagined, or virtual addressee. I-you connectedness extends, therefore, beyond discursive experience, and captures the deep dialogic dimension of meaning in pre-linguistic and extra-linguistic life. I briefly consider its implications for theoretical and practical issues within robotics and AI.

关键词： architectural studio education   building education   kinetic building design   robotics architecture   underrepresented minority students  

摘要： Owing to the widespread distribution of open-source robotic software and cheaper hardware, design education in architecture and engineering is evolving to emphasize interactive and dynamic geometries, using new digital media and technologies. However, ethnic minority groups are still underrepresented in technology-driven changes in architecture, and their career is at risk in the growing tech-related job markets of the architecture, construction, and engineering (ACE) industry. In this context, the paper addresses college-level pedagogical issues and learning performance related to introductory robotics education in architectural design studios for the underrepresented minority (URM) students. This article presents the organization of curriculum activities, technical experiments in learning, and teaching experiences in the largest Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) in the U.S. The academic projects presented exhibit both technical challenges and achievements for URM students to build design competency and tool fluency in a streamlined prototyping of responsive kinetic building fabrication. The effectiveness of computer-aided design (CAD) technologies (3D printing, sensing, microcontrollers, etc.) for the advancement of minority-serving design education is discussed to promote design-learning possibilities and interdisciplinary collaborations associated with science and engineering. Expectations from course objectives are compared with final outcomes to suggest efficient learning strategies and teaching solutions of kinetic architecture.

关键词： robotics  

关键词： Special issues and sections   Mechatronics   Robot sensing systems   Information management   Manufacturing processes   Automation   Information sharing  

摘要： The ten papers in this special section aim gather the latest research and development works on design, sensing, and intelligent control of robotics and mechatronics systems resulting from the emerging information sharing and design technologies.

关键词： Adaptive control   coordinated control   control allocation   mobile robot   robust control  

摘要： Four-wheel independently driven mobile robots are widely used in industrial automation, intelligent inspection, and outdoor exploration. The traditional kinematic control is usually applied for them, where only the chassis kinematics is taken into account and the robot dynamics (especially the wheel dynamics) is normally ignored. It may lead to some performance limitations such as the chattering phenomenon during robot rotating, because of the overactuation characteristic by four driving wheels. To address these problems, the integrated dynamic model is proposed, which includes chassis kinematics, chassis dynamics, wheel-ground interaction, and wheel dynamics. Subsequently, different from kinematic control, a model-based coordinated adaptive robust controller is developed, which generally consists of three-level designs for different parts of robot dynamics, and directly generates the motor driving torque commands for four wheels. The stability and tracking performance are theoretically guaranteed. Comparative experiments are carried out, and the results show the better performance of our proposed scheme.