Internet Info 1994 March/Internet Info CD-ROM (Walnut Creek) (March 1994).iso/answers/comp/robotics-faq/part1

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From: [e-mail] (Kevin Dowling)
Subject: comp.robotics Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) part 1/2
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Archive-name: robotics-faq/part1
Last-modified: Thu Feb 24 23:56:56 1994

This is part 1 of 2 of the comp.robotics Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ) list. This FAQ addresses commonly asked questions relating to
robotics.

____________________________________________________________________________
This FAQ was compiled and written by Kevin Dowling with numerous
contributions by readers of comp.robotics. Acknowledgements are listed
at the end of the FAQ.

This post, as a collection of information, is Copyright 1993 Kevin
Dowling. Distribution through any means other than regular Usenet
channels must be by permission. The removal of this notice is
forbidden.

This FAQ may be referenced as:
Dowling, Kevin (1993) "Robotics: comp.robotics Frequently Asked
Questions" Usenet news.answers.  Available via anonymous ftp from
rtfm.mit.edu in pub/usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/part1 and
part2. 70+ pages.

Please send changes, additions, suggestions and questions to:
Kevin Dowling                tel:    [phone]
Robotics Institute            fax:    [phone]
Carnegie Mellon University        net:    [e-mail]
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

___________________________________________________________________________
    This FAQ's purpose is to provide a resource of information,
pointers, and a guide to robotics related questions. If the expires
date above is more than two months old you should obtain a new copy.
See the section on Where to Find This FAQ.

Table of Contents:    [use +++ to search quickly]

Part 1
    +++Where to find this FAQ and comp.robotics archives
    +++Related FAQ's
    +++What is Robotics?
    +++Robotics Related Organizations
    +++Robotics Associations of Many Countries
    +++Robot Societies
    +++Conferences and Competitions
    +++Robotics Publications

    +++Mobile robot companies
    +++Manipulator companies
    +++Small Inexpensive Robots
    +++Architectures for Robots

    +++Organizations doing robotics
    +++Graduate programs in robotics

Part 2
    +++Sensors
    +++Imaging for Robotics
    +++Wireless communication
    +++Suppliers and sources for parts
    +++Hero Robots
    +++Puma Manipulators
    +++Simulators
    +++Real-Time Operating Systems

    +++Survey of Robot Development Environments
    +++What is the miniboard?
    +++Books

    +++Acknowledgements

_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Where to find this FAQ and comp.robotics archives:

If you haven't done so, new users on the net should read
news.announce.newusers. In particular, the following posts are a good
idea:
    -A Primer on How to Work With The Usenet Community
    -Answers to Frequently Asked Questions About Usenet
    -Hints on Writing Style for Usenet

This FAQ is currently posted to comp.answers, news.answers and
comp.robotics.  All posts to news.answers are archived and are
available via anonymous FTP, uucp and e-mail from the following
locations:

FTP:
    FTP is a way of copying file between networked computers. If
    you need help in using or getting started with FTP, send
    e-mail to [e-mail] with
        send usenet/news.answers/ftp-list/faq
    as the body of the message.

    location:  rtfm.mit.edu [18.70.0.209]
    directory: /pub/usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq
    filenames: part1, part2

    location:  ftp.uu.net [137.39.1.9]
    directory: /archive/usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq
    filenames: part1.Z, part2.Z [use uncompress]

    location:  nic.switch.ch [130.59.1.40]
    directory: info_service/Usenet/periodic-postings
    filenames: [Check info_service/Usenet/00index]

    location:  ftp.cs.cmu.edu [128.2.206.173]
    directory: /user/nivek/ftp/robotics-faq
    filenames: part1, part2

UUCP:    [Does anyone use this? - if no answer I will delete from FAQ]
    location:  uunet!/archive/usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/
    filenames: part1.Z, part2.Z

E-mail:
    Send email to [e-mail] containing these lines:
    send usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/part1
    send usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/part2

Mosaic:
    I would like to convert the FAQ to html format and add many
html links for robotics work such as Umass' hhtp server (See Graduate
programs section). In this way, GIF's, MPEGS, technical reports could
be made easily accessible. Is there someone who might assist in this
task? Otherwise I'll wait for a wysiwyg html editor...

comp.robotics archives:
    You can find a dozen or more sites in the US, Europe and Japan
that store the FAQ and archives for comp.robotics by using the
Internet search programs, Archie or Wais.

One location is:
    location:  wilma.cs.brown.edu:
    filenames:  pub/comp.robotics/
In addition to the FTP archive maintained at wilma.cs.brown.edu, there
are a couple of other mechanisms available:
- the comp.robotics archive at wilma is also available as a WAIS
  source (called "comp.robotics.src"), and hence it is also available
  to WWW browsers, via the appropriate WAIS gateway.
- Moises Lejter maintains a mailing list of individuals who would
  rather receive comp.robotics via Email as a daily digest of all
  messages posted to comp.robotics in each 24-hour period.  Anyone
  interested should send email directly to <[e-mail]>

____________________________________________________________________________
+++Related FAQ's

There are a number of newsgroups with topics related to robotics.
These include comp.realtime, comp.ai, sci.electronics, sci.virtual worlds

Most regularly posted FAQ's can be found at rtfm.mit.edu (rtfm is an
acronym for Read The ... Manual, or at least something close to
that...)

    location:  rtfm.mit.edu [18.70.0.209]
    directory: /pub/usenet/news.answers/<newsgroup>
    where <newsgroup> is the name of a given newsgroup.

For sci.virtual-worlds:
    locations: milton.u.washington.edu
    directory: public/virtual-worlds
    filenames:  cheap-vr

____________________________________________________________________________
+++What is Robotics?

    A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move
material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various
programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks"
                Robot Institute of America, 1979

Obviously this was a committee-written definition. It's rather dry and
uninspiring. Better ones might include:
    Force through intelligence.
    Where AI meet the real world.

Webster says:
    An automatic device that performs functions normally ascribed
    to humans or a machine in the form of a human.

Where did the word robot come from?
The word 'robot' was coined by the Czechloslovakian playwright Karel
Capek (pronounced "chop'ek") from the Czech word for worker or serf.
Capek was reportedly several times a candidate for the Nobel prize for
his works and very influential and prolific as a writer and
playwright. Mercifully, he died before the Gestapo got to him for his
anti-Nazi sympathies in 1938.

The use of the word Robot was introduced into his play R.U.R.
(Rossum's Universal Robots) which opened in Prague in January 1921.
The play was an enormous success and productions soon opened
throughout Europe and the US. R.U.R's theme, in part, was the
dehumanization of man in a technological civilization. The robots were
created through chemical means and weren't described as mechanical in
nature.

There is some evidence that the word robot was actually coined by
Karl's brother Josef, a writer in his own right. But I cannot find
the article I once read on this subject. [I believe it was in SigART
in the late 1970's - if anyone has this reference please send a pointer]

The word 'robotics' was coined by Isaac Asimov, the prolific science
and science fiction writer, in a number of his robot stories. First
use was probably back in the late 30's or early 40's.

The first real modern robots were the Unimates developed by George
Devol and Joe Engleberger in the late 50's and early 60's. The first
patents were by Devol for parts transfer machines. Engleberger created
the company and was the first to market robots. As a result,
Engleberger has been called the 'father of robotics.'

____________________________________________________________________________
+++Robotics Related Organizations:
    There are a number of organizations and societies related to
robotics. Some are related specifically to industry, several to
academia and a number of hobbyist groups. In addition, a number of the
groups, such as the ASME or IEEE, are very large organizations and
robotics is one of many sub-disciplines in their respective fields.

Advanced Robot Technology Research Association (Japan)
Kikai-shinko Bldg
3-5-8 Shiba-Kohen, Minato-ku, Tokyo
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
Has joint research programs with member companies.
Members are 20 or so Japanese companies including:
Ishikawajima-Harima, Oki Electric, Kawasaki Heavy Industry, Kobe
Steel, Komatsu, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Toshiba, JGC, NEC,
Hitachi, Fanuc, Fujitsu, Fuji, Matshushita Research Institute, Mitsui,
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric, Yaskawa

American Society of Mechanical Engineers, (ASME)
345 E. 47th Street
New York, NY 10017
Mechanical Engineering magazine, like the IEEE's Spectrum, is an
excellent general publication on aspects of mechanical engineering.
There are often publications on robotics and the ASME sponsors a
number of other publications and conferences that are relevant to
robotics. The ASME also has a BBS service, MechEng, with an email server. send email to <[e-mail]> with 'send info' in the body.

Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems (AUVS)
1735 North Lynn Street
Suite 950
Arlinton, VA 22209-2022
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
Promoting worldwide advancement of unmanned vehicle systems.
Membership includes subscription to Unmanned Systems magazine, AUVS
News Bulletin, regional seminars, annual symposium and trade show, and
other opportunities. AUVS also sponsors an annual aerial Robotics
Competition. See Conference announcements for more details.
Student membership: $15/year
Educational Institutions/Libraries $100/year
Individual: $40/year
Corporate memberships also available.

Center for Autonomous and Man-controlled Robotic and Sensing Systems
Charles Jacobus, CAMRSS director
ERIM
PO Box 8618
Ann Arbor, MI 48107
tel: [phone] X2457
Member companies include: Ball Aerospace, Coulter Electronics, ERIM,
Fairchild, Ford Aerospace, Geospectra, Grumman, Industrial Technology
Institute, KMS Fusion, Michigan State, UofM.

American Insitute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
370 L'Enfant Promenade, SW
Washington, DC 20024
tel: [phone]
tel: [phone] (Technical Information Service)
Conferences and publications, several cover automation technologies
for servicing on the ground and in space as well as exploration.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Service Center
445 Hoes Lane
Piscataway, NJ 08854-4150
tel: [phone]
tel: 800.678.IEEE
A large organization with hundreds of publications including journals,
transactions, Spectrum, sponsoring conferences, workshops and meetings.
   IEEE membership is $95 regular ($23 students)
   For membership in the IEEE Computer Society, add $22.
   $20 for IEEE Expert (Intelligent Systems and their Applications)
   $12 for Transactions on Neural Networks
   $12 for Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics
   $15 for Transactions on Robotics and Automation
   $19 for Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
   $24 for Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine IntelligenceIEEE

The International Society for Optical Engineering, (SPIE)
P.O.Box 10
Bellingham, Washington 98227-0010.
SPIE has publications, meetings and conferences in the
field of intelligent robots, mobile robots, teleoperation,
machine vision, etc.

The Material Handling Institute
8720 Red Oak Blvd, Suite 201
Charlotte, NC 28217
  Primary robotics focus is on AGV's.

National Service Robots Association (NSRA)
900 Victors Way
PO Box 3724
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
tel: [phone]
An organization devoted to robots other than on the factory floor.

Robotics Industry Association (RIA)
(same address as NSRA)

Society of Manufacturing Engineers, (SME)
One SME Drive
PO Box 930
Dearborn, MI  48121
tel: [phone]

Utility/Manufacturer Robot Users group (UMRUG)
Contact: Harry T. Roman
MC: 16-H
Public Service Electric and Gas Company
80 Park Plaza
PO Box 570
Newark, NJ 07101
tel: [phone]

+++Robotics Associations of Many Countries
______________________________________________________________________________

Compilied from a list provided by the British Robot Association.
Alphabatized by English spelling of country.

Australian Robot Association Inc
G.P.O. Box 1527
SYDNEY 2001
New South Wales
Australia
Contact: Mr Michael Kassler
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Osterreichisches Forschungszentrum
Seibersdorf GmbH
Hauptabteilung Fertigungstechnik und Automation
A-2444 SEIBERSDORF
Austria
Contact: Mr Erwin Fugger
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

SOBRACON - Sociedade Brasileira de Comando
Numerico, Automazacao e Computacao Grafica
Rua General Jardim, 645-7 andar, cjto.72
01223 011 - Sao Paulo, SP
Brazil
Contact: Mr. Arnaldo Pereira Ribeiro
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

British Robot Association (BRA)
BRA Aston Science Park
Love Lane
Birmingham B7 4BJ
England
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Meetings, newsletters, information, contacts, sponsor of several
  events in the UK.  Individual and Student rate is 60 pounds UK.

"Robot" Interindustry Research and Production Association
(MNTK "Robot")
Izmailovskaya sq.,7
MOSCOW - Russia
CIS
Contact: Mr. Vladimir P Stepanov
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

China Society of Industrial
Automation & Automated Industries
8, 7F, Tun Hwa N. Rd.
TAIPEI - China
Contact: Mr. Chen, Chen-Chang
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Danish Industrial Robot Association (DIRA)
Teknologiparken
DK-8000 AARHUS C
Denmark
Contact: Mr. John Nielsen
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Robotics Society in Finland
c/o Suomen Automaation Tuki Oy
Asemapaallikonk. 12 C
FIN-00520 HELSINKI
Finland
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
Contact: Mr. Hannu Lehtinen
e-mail: [e-mail]

Fachgemeinschaft MHI im VDMA
P.O. Box 71 08 64
D-6000 FRANKFURT (MAIN) 71
Germany
Contact: Mr. Berndt Knoerr
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

IPA
Nobelstrasse 12
D-7000 STUTTGART 80
Germany
Contact: Mr Rolf D Schraft
tel:[phone]
fax: [phone]

Association Francaise de Robotique
Industrielle (AFRI)
Tour 66
4, Place Jussieu
F-75252 PARIS CEDEX 05
France
Contact: Mr. Arnauld Laffaille
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Hungarian Robotics Association
c/o Tungsram T.H. Co.Ltd.
Centre of Robotics and Automation
H-1340 Budapest
IV., Vaci ut 77
Hungary
Contact: Dr. Jozsef K. Tar
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Government of India
Ministry of Science & Technology
Dept. of Science & Technology
Technology Bhavan
New Mehrauli Road
New Delhi-110 016
India
Contact: Mr. A.N.N. Murthy, Director
tel: [phone], 654-793
fax: [phone]

SIRI - Associazione Italiana di Robotica
c/o ETAS Periodici
Via Mecenate 91
I-20138 MILANO
Italy
Contact: Mr Daniele Fabrizi
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Japan Industrial Robot Association
c/o Kikaishinko Bldg
3-5-8, Shibakoen, Minato-Ku
TOKYO
Japan
Contact: Mr Kanji Yonemoto
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

KIST - Korea Institute of Science and Technology
P.O. Box 131, Cheongryang
Seoul
Korea
Contact: Mr. Chun Sik-lee
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Meininger Automation bv
P.O. Box 743
NL-2280 AS RIJSWIJK
Netherlands
Contact: Mr Jack B Eijlers
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Federation of Norwegian Engineering Industries (TBL)
Box 7072 - H
N-0306 OSLO 3
Norway
Contact: Mr Johan Ulleland
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Polish Federation of Engineering Associations (NOT)
Czackiego Str 3/5
PL-00950 WARSZAWA
Poland
Contact: Mr. Kazimierz Wawrzyniak
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Singapore Industrial Automation Association (SIAA)
151 Chin Swee Road
#03-13 Manhattan House
SINGAPORE 0316
Singapore
Contact: Mr Stephen Teng
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

MVVZ Robot
Nam. Legionarov 3
CZ-080 01 PRESOV
Slovakia
Contact: Mr Vladimir Cop
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

"J. Stefan" Institute
Jamova 39
61000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
Contact: Mr Jadran Lenarcic
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone], 273-677

Asociacion Espanola de Robotica
Rambla de Catalunya 70, 3r 2a
E-08007 BARCELONA
Spain
Contact: Mr Luis Basanez
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Swedish Industrial Robot Association (SWIRA)
Box 5506
S-114 85 STOCKHOLM
Sweden
Contact: Mr Thomas Hardenby
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Schweizerische Gesellschaft fur
Automatik, Arbeitsgruppe Robotik
Postgasse 17
CH-3011 BERN
Switzerland
Contact: Mr Charles Giroud
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

British Robot Association (BRA)
Aston Science Park, Love Lane
Aston Triangle
BIRMINGHAM B7 4BJ
United Kingdom
Contact: Mr. Donald Pitt
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Robotic Industries Assoc (RIA)
P.O. Box 3724
ANN ARBOR, MI 48106
USA
Contact: Mr. Donald A. Vincent
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Secretariat of IFR
c/o Sveriges Verkstadsindustrier
Box 5506
S-114 85 STOCKHOLM
Swden
Contact: Mr Lennart Djupmark
     Mrs Kerstin Teglof Delgado
tel: [phone] or
     [phone]
fax: [phone]

__________________________________________________________________________
+++Robot Societies

The original computer club in Silicon Valley was the Homebrew computer
club, out of which evolved a major portion of the personal computer
industry. In that spirit, if not the hope for history repeating
itself, a number of robotics societies and clubs have sprung up.

[This list as posted had several typos - if you find an error please
let me know - nivek]

Atlanta Hobby Robotics Association
P.O. Box 2050
Stone Mountain, GA 30086
    There is also a robotics bbs in Atlanta, although I'm not sure
it is directly connected with the AHRA. bbs: Robots R4U 404.978.7300

Austin Robotics Group
608 Garden Path Cove
Round Rock, TX 78736
tel: [phone]

Connecticut Robotics Society
P.O. Box 127
Canaan CT 06018
tel: [phone]

The Dallas Personal Robotics Group
P.O. Box 1626
Hurst, TX 76053

LA Area Robotics and Automation Group
<[e-mail]>
Los Angeles, CA
    If you wish to subscribe to the <la-ragroup> mailing list,
please send a message to:
        [e-mail]
with a blank Subject: line and the body of the message reading:
        subscribe la-ragroup <First Name> <Last Name>
[David Lee                              e-mail: [e-mail]]

Robot Society of Southern CA
10471 S. Brookhurst
Anaheim, CA 92804
tel: [phone]

Robotics Club of Maryland
Computer Science Dept.
A.V. Williams Bldg. (115)
University of Maryland
College Park, Md.  20742-3255
contact: Stephen Klueter, President
net: <[e-mail]>

The Robotics Society of America
PO Box 1205
Danville, CA 94526-1205
tel:[phone]
fax: [phone]
bbs: 415.648.6427 8N1
net: <[e-mail]>
    Subscription to SFRSA "Magazine" The normal subscription rate
will be $25 for 12 monthly issues.

Seattle Robotics Society
P.O. Box 30668
Seattle, WA 98103-0668
tel: [phone]
    SRS also operates a bbs: 206.633.2905

Triangle Amateur Robotics Club
P.O. Box 17523
Raleigh, NC 27619
tel: [phone]
net: [e-mail] (Rodney Radford)
tel: [phone] x7703
hme: 919.469.9359
Meets first Monday of every month at 7:30pm on NCSU campus (110 Clark Lab)

A related group:
MicroMechanics Information Clearinghouse
Requests to join list are sent to: <[e-mail]>
FTP site:
    location: mems.isi.edu
    directory: /pub/prm, /pub/prospero, /pub/mems, /pub/papers

WWW-URL:    http://mems.isi.edu/mems

Robot related performance art:
-----------------------------
Survival Research Laboratories
1458-C San Bruno Ave.
San Francisco, CA  94110
tel/fax: [phone]
contact: SRL director Mark Pauline
net: <[e-mail]>
    Survival Research Laboratories is a not-for-profit machine-
performance art group conceived of and founded by Mark Pauline in
November 1978.  Since its inception SRL has operated as an
organization of creative technicians dedicated to re-directing the
techniques, tools, and tenets of industry, science, and the military
away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or
warfare.  Since 1979, SRL has staged over 45 mechanized presentations
in the United States and Europe.  Each performance consists of a
unique set of ritualized interactions between machines, robots, and
special effects devices, employed in developing themes of
socio-political satire.  Humans are present only as audience or
operators.

    Survival Research Laboratories is now available for
email and time-restricted Gopher and anonymous FTP access from
0000-0600 PST daily. [NOTE TIME RESTRICTION!]:
    location:  srl.org
    directory: /pub/SRLImageBank, /pub/SRLInfo
The directory holds scanned-in photographs and video images of SRL
shows in GIF format; /pub/SRLInfo has news. Image file sizes range
from 70 to 250 Kbytes, but our link speed is only 9600 baud; please be
patient. Always select BINARY mode before FTP file transfers.
Filenames can be specified in upper or lower case.  Comments or
questions to [e-mail].

__________________________________________________________________________
+++Conferences and Competitions

There are a wide variety and number of conferences related to robotics
and automation. Some are focused on industrial applications, many are
researchy in nature and most are a mixture of both. Proceedings
should be available in most good libraries or by interlibrary loan.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


1994 IEEE National Telesystems Conference (NTC '94)
San Diego, CA May 26-27, 1994

Areas of interest include:
    Dual-use technology applications
    Advanced technology for Telesystems
    Aircraft Navigation/Landing Systems
    Communications Systems and Networks
    Satellite Communication Systems
    Space Navigation Systems
    Telemetry and Remote Sensing
    Telerobotics/Unmanned Vehicles
    Tethered Systems and RPV's

Bob Bolger
Publicity Chair
ARINC Research Corporation
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
net: [e-mail]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

         MVA'94: IAPR Workshop on Machine Vision Applications
                         December 13-15, 1994
                           Kawasaki, Japan

The International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) announces
the 4th IAPR International Workshop on Machine Vision Applications to
be held in Kawasaki on December 13-15, 1994.

The workshop is sponsored by the IAPR Technical Committees 6, 8, and
10.  The purpose of the workshop is to bring together researchers and
practitioners from both academia and industry, and to exchange their
knowledge and stimulate each other through intensive discussions on
the following research topics:

Main Topic: Machine Vision and its Applications
     Machine Vision Algorithms
          Feature extraction,  Range data / 3D shapes,  Motion / Image
          sequence analysis, Neural  network applications, Color image
          analysis,  AI-based vision,   Human  interface,  and related
          technologies.

     Special Purpose Architectures
          Intelligent  sensors,  VLSI image processor chips, Massively
          parallel  processing,  Architectures  for  3D  and/or motion
          processing,  Image  processing systems, Software environment
          for image processor, and related technologies.

     Industrial Applications
          Factory automation, Disaster prevention and rescue, Security
          control,  Navigation,  Mobile robots, Civil and construction
          engineering,       Agriculture/Forestry/Fishery,       Other
          applications, and related technologies.

     Document, Map and Line Drawing Processing
          Document  image  processing, Drawing recognition, Multimedia
          database,   Map   and   engineering  drawing  database,  Map
          processing  and  map-based  systems,  3D reconstruction from
          maps or drawings, and related technologies.

    The workshop will include several invited talks and about 100
papers for oral and poster presentations on the above topics.  All
presentations will be in English.  Those who wish to present a paper
are requested to submit four copies of a 500-1000 word extended
abstract with at least one main figure by June 15, 1994 to:
           Prof. Mikio Takagi
           Institute of Industrial Science
           University of Tokyo
           7-22-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106, Japan
           FAX: [phone]

    The abstract should contain the following in its first page.
           1) Title of the paper
           2) Author name(s) and his/her(their) affiliation(s)
           3) A person's name and address to be contacted,
              also, phone and fax numbers, Email address if available
           4) Answers to the following questions:
              a) What is the original contribution of this work?
              b) Why should this contribution be considered important?

Authors of papers that are accepted will be notified by August 1,
1994. Final camera-ready papers are due by October 1, 1994.

Notice: International Technical Exhibition on Image Technology and
Equipment will be held in Tokyo, near the workshop site, on December
7-9, 1994. All participants for the workshop are encouraged to visit
the exhibition.

For further information, please contact:
    Prof. Mikio Takagi
    Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo
    7-22-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106, JAPAN
    PHONE: [phone]  FAX: [phone]
    EMAIL: [e-mail]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Call for Abstracts & Call for Exhibitors
ANS 6th Topical Meeting on Robotics and
Remote Systems

February 5-10, 1995
Monterey, California USA

Sponsored by:
AMERICAN NUCLEAR SOCIETY
Robotics and Remote Systems Division
and the Northern California Section

Cosponsored by
o Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
o Electric Power Research Institute
o The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
o British Nuclear Energy Society

You are invited to submit extended abstracts for review and
consideration for the ANS Sixth Topical Meeting on Robots and Remote
Systems.  The theme of this Topical is "Robots in the Environment,"
and emphasis will be placed on robot technology and applications in a
variety of remote environments, including nuclear, environmental
remediation, underwater and space.  Sessions are arranged in four
primary interest areas or "tracks" so that no two papers in a track
are presented concurrently.  The tracks and topics of interest for
this abstract solicitation are listed below.

APPLICATIONS
    Nuclear power and fuel cycle
    Environmental Restoration
    Waste Management
    Remote Manufacturing and Processing
    Laboratory Automation
    Manipulator Applications
    Medical Application

HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS
    Hardening and Survivability Technologies
    Undersea
    Space
    Law Enforcement
    Emergency Response and HazMat Handling
    Military

CONTROL SYSTEMS
    Control Systems and Architectures
    Virtual Reality Application to Remote Systems
    Sensors and Machine Vision
    Human Factors and the Human/Machine Interface
    Artificial Intelligence and Smart Systems
    Remote Viewing and Telepresence

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
    Autonomous Systems and Mobility
    Mechanical Design and Special Tooling
    Manipulator R&D
    Remote Engineering

The ANS 6th Topical Meeting on Robotics and Remote Systems Symposium,
sponsored by the American Nuclear Society, will be held at the Hyatt
Regency Monterey in Monterey, California, just minutes from the
beautiful California central coast.
 Updates in the various technology areas will be featured as well as
several new special interest sessions which have proven popular in
recent years.  Both oral and poster papers will be presented, and
submissions of your original work are requested.  We encourage
papers/presentations from European and Pacific Rim countries.

Technical Sessions
Both oral presentations and poster sessions will be featured for the four-day
conference

Send Abstracts on new and innovative work to:

Program Chairman
Scott A. Couture
ANS 6th Topical on Robotics and
Remote Systems
P.O. Box 10333
Pleasanton, CA  94588
Phone: [phone]/FAX [phone]

INSTRUCTIONS FOR ABSTRACT PREPARATION AND MAILING ____________________
Abstracts of new and innovative work are solicited.  Submission format is an
extended typed abstract of at least 500-900 words.  Please send the original
and three copies to the program chairman.

ABSTRACT DEADLINE - APRIL 1, 1993 - SEND TO:
6th Topical Meeting on Robotics and Remote Systems
Attn:  Scott Couture, Technical Program Chair
P.O. Box 10333     Pleasanton, CA  94588

Acceptance Categories:
Papers may be accepted for:
1.    Oral presentations for a specified time (20-35 minutes, nominal)
2.    Poster presentation with the author expected to be in attendance to explain
his or her paper and to answer questions.
All papers accepted for the ANS 6th Topical Meeting on Robotics and Remote
Systems are eligible for publication in the ANS Transactions issue for the
Symposium subject to formal review and acceptance procedures.


Return this information sheet

Sixth Topical Meeting on Robotics and Remote Systems
February 5-10, 1995, Monterey, California
___  I am interest edin attending this Topical Meeting.  Please send additional
information as it becomes available.
___  I am interested in presenting a paper at this Topical Meeting.

Tentative title of paper:
___  I am interested in presenting a poster session
___  I am interested in Exhibit Space for this Topical Meeting.

Name:
Affiliation:
Address:
City/State/Zip

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

        ***     SAIT          IEEE       ***
            *** WESTERN CANADIAN ROBOT GAMES ***
            ***   Third Annual Competition   ***
            ***         April 9, 1994        ***

In the interest of promoting science and technology to the public and foster
enthusiasm and creativity amongst students, the Western Canadian Robot Games
committee holds an annual robotic contest in a  centralized western location.
This email message is sent to you in the hopes you may pass it on to suitable
instructors, professors, staff and students to invite them to our next contest!

If you would like to be included on our mailing list or receive our brochure,
please provide me with an email or postal address.

          To all robotic enthusiasts and tinkerers!
                   ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE!
                       JOIN THE FUN!
         Bring your robot to our third annual contest

The IEEE student branch at SAIT challenge all SUMO alumni, students,
instructors, and inventive individuals to design and enter your robots in
one or both of our contests:

               ROBOTIC SUMO WRESTLING
                and
                           ATOMIC HOCKEY

                            Form a team!
                    Fill out the attached application!
            Prove your 'metal' in the furnace of competition!
                        There is NO ENTRY FEE!

                        ROBOTIC SUMO WRESTLING:
                  The Tradition Continues

This contest matches your own creation with another robot in the field
of combat where brute strength and cat-like reflexes combine to create
the ultimate battle!  The challenge is to create a robot whose sole
purpose is to push, throw, flip, drag, or otherwise move your opponent
out of a five foot diameter circular ring within 3 minutes.

In the tradition of an ancient Japanese contest of similar name, SUMO
wrestling robots can use any trick the creator conceives to get the job
done, within the following limits:

*   No robot may be used which is a physical threat to other contestants
    or the audience. (i.e., Explosions, fire, bullets, mace etc...)

*   Robots must fit within a 9" x 9" square when the competition begins,
    but may expand to a larger size after battle starts. Height is
    unrestricted at all times.

*   Robots must be 11 pounds or less in weight.

*   After the battle is over, contestants are responsible for cleaning up
    any debris in the ring to the satisfaction of the judges.

There are two separate classes to SUMO robotic wrestling:

                    Autonomous and Remote-Control.

Remote Control  robots may be a radio or wired-remote control and  may be
operated by a biological (human, usually).

Autonomous Robots must carry on-board all power and intelligence required
to seek and conquer the enemy.

Each robot class will be awarded its own prize!
(Prizes will also be awarded for the most humorous entry)

                             ATOMIC HOCKEY

You have never seen the NHL like this before!  A head-to-head game of robot
mayhem played out on an atomic scale as each competitor fights for the
opportunity to gather more protons than his opponent while avoiding the ever
present electrons!

Played out in a 5 foot diameter circular ring lined with a 2 inch high wall,
the robots must locate and gather Ping-Pong balls (protons) and deposit them
in their own goal (the nucleus) within a three minute period while their
opponents do the same.  Each proton carries a score of +1 point.

Unfortunately, the ring also contains an equal number of small metal balls
(electrons) worth -1 point each.  Each electron in your nucleus reduces your
score by one point, so be careful to avoid them (or at least put them in your
opponent's nucleus)!

*   Robots are to be a maximum of 9" x 9" square with unlimited height and
    have no weight restriction.

*   Robots must not pose any physical threat to biologicals (see SUMO rules).

*   Autonomous robots may put any signaling device they wish in their nucleus
    to help the robot locate the goal.

*   Aggressive and devious play between robots is encouraged, so long as no
    damage occurs to the ring or room.

As with Robotic SUMO Wrestling, there are two categories:  Autonomous and
Remote Controlled ( Radio or Tethered )

For a complete rule set for both competitions and application information,
please email, phone, fax, or (gasp) write to me at:

Craig Maynard
Instructor, Electrical/Electronics Department,
Southern Alberta Institute of Technology
1301-16th Ave NW
Calgary, Alberta
T2M-0L4
Phone [phone]  Fax [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          Artificial Life IV
                    An Interdisciplinary Workshop
                   on the Synthesis and Simulation
                          of Living Systems

                             organized by:
                             Rodney Brooks
                    MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
                             July 6-8, 1994
                           MIT, Cambridge, MA

                            CALL FOR PAPERS

                        Proceedings Editors:
                        Rodney Brooks, MIT AI Lab
                        Pattie Maes, MIT Media Lab

We are happy to invite contributions for the Fourth Artificial Life
Workshop, to be held at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 6-8,
1994.

Artificial Life complements the traditional Biological sciences,
concerned with the analysis of living organisms, by attempting to
synthesize phenomena normally associated with natural living systems
within computers and other "artificial" media. By extending the
empirical foundation upon which the science of Biology rests beyond
the carbon-chain based life that has evolved on Earth, Artificial Life
can contribute to Theoretical Biology by locating "life-as-we-know-it"
within the larger context of "life-as-it-could-be."

The three previous workshops in this series were held in Santa Fe, New
Mexico.  Next year's workshop is intended to continue in the spirit of
the earlier events, encouraging people with a broad range of
backgrounds to share and exchange opinions, ideas, and techniques.

Contributions may made in the following categories: PAPER (30 minutes
for presentation and questions); DEMONSTRATION, which includes robots,
computer demos and/or videos (please give time estimate).

Some PAPER contributions may be accepted as POSTERs.  Presentations of
posters may include a computer display (BYOC).

Authors of PAPERs should send 4 copies of a full paper, not to
exceed 14 pages of 12pt single spaced text to the address below by
March 15, 1994 (you get to work all weekend then send it express on
Monday the 14th...).  No papers will be accepted for review after
March 15th.  Authors will be notified of the status of their
contributions by April 15, 1994.  Contributions should include an
email address, telephone and fax numbers on the cover page.

Proprietors of DEMONSTRATIONs should send a maximum four page abstract
describing their contribution to the same address by March 15th.
DEMONSTRATIONs will be held on Thursday afternoon, July 7th, and will
incorporate an ``Artificial 4-H show''.

All accepted PAPERs will be included in the proceedings which will be
available to all registered participants at the workshop.  Some
POSTERs may be included in the proceedings, and some DEMONSTRATIONs
will be included in a companion videotape.  There will be a very tight
production schedule on the proceedings and camera ready copy will be
absolutely due by Friday May 13th.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

        * Self-organization and emergent functionality
        * Definitions of life
        * Origin of life
        * Self-reproduction
        * Computer viruses
        * Synthesis of "the living state"
        * Evolution and population genetics
        * Coevolution and ecological dynamics
        * Growth, development and differentiation
        * Organization and behavior of social and colonial organisms
        * Animal behavior
        * Global and local ecosystems and their interactions
        * Autonomous agents (mobile robots and software agents)
        * Collective intelligence ("swarm" intelligence)
        * Theoretical biology
        * Philosophical issues in Alife (from Ontology to Ethics)
        * Formalisms and tools for Alife research
        * Guidelines and safeguards for the practice of Alife

Papers should be sent to:

                        Rodney Brooks/Alife IV
                        MIT Artificial Ingelligence Lab
                        545 Technology Square
                        Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

                        [e-mail]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                 Conference Announcement and FINAL Call For Papers
                         FROM ANIMALS TO ANIMATS
    Third International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB94)
                     Brighton, UK, August 8-12, 1994

        The object of the conference is to bring together researchers in
        ethology, psychology, ecology, cybernetics, artificial intelligence,
        robotics, and related fields so as to further our understanding of
        the behaviors and underlying mechanisms that allow animals and,
        potentially, robots to adapt and survive in uncertain environments.

        The conference will focus particularly on well-defined models,
        computer simulations, and built robots in order to help characterize
        and compare various organizational principles or architectures
        capable of inducing adaptive behavior in real or artificial animals.

        Contributions treating any of the following topics from the
        perspective of adaptive behavior will receive special emphasis.

   Individual and collective behavior   Autonomous robots
   Neural correlates of behavior        Hierarchical and parallel organizations
   Perception and motor control         Emergent structures and behaviors
   Motivation and emotion               Problem solving and planning
   Action selection and behavioral      Goal directed behavior
    sequences                           Neural networks and evolutionary
   Ontogeny, learning and evolution      computation
   Internal world models                Characterization of environments
    and cognitive processes             Applied adaptive behavior

       Authors should make every effort to suggest implications of their
       work for both natural and artificial animals.  Papers which do not
       deal explicitly with adaptive behavior will be rejected.

Submission Instructions

  Authors are requested to send five copies (hard copy only) of a full paper
  to the Program Chair (Dave Cliff). Papers should not exceed 10 pages
  (excluding the title page), with 1 inch margins all around, and no smaller
  than 10 pt (12 pitch) type (Times Roman preferred). LaTex template
  available by email, see below. This is same format as SAB90 and SAB92.
  Each paper must include a title page containing the following: (1) Full
  names, postal addresses, phone numbers, email addresses (if available),
  and fax numbers for each author, (2) A 100-200 word abstract, (3) The
  topic area(s) in which the paper could be reviewed (see list above).
  Camera ready versions of the papers, in two-column format,  will be
  required after acceptance.  Computer, video, and robotic demonstrations
  are also invited.  Please contact Phil Husbands to make arrangements for
  demonstrations.  Other program proposals will also be considered.


Conference committee

    Conference Chair:

Philip HUSBANDS        Jean-Arcady MEYER         Stewart WILSON
School of Cognitive    Groupe de Bioinformatique The Rowland Institute
 and Comp. Sciences    Ecole Normale Superieure    for Science
University of Sussex   46 rue d'Ulm              100 Cambridge Parkway
Brighton BN1 9QH, UK   75230 Paris Cedex 05      Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
[e-mail]  [e-mail]        [e-mail]

   Program Chair:      David CLIFF
                       School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
                       University of Sussex
                       Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
                       e-mail: [e-mail]

   Financial Chair:    P. Husbands, H. Roitblat
   Local Arrangements: I. Harvey, P. Husbands

Program Committee

  M. Arbib, USA            R. Arkin, USA            R. Beer, USA
  A. Berthoz, France       L. Booker, USA           R. Brooks, USA
  P. Colgan, Canada        T. Collett, UK           H. Cruse, Germany
  J. Delius, Germany       J. Ferber, France        N. Franceschini, France
  S. Goss, Belgium         J. Halperin, Canada      I. Harvey, UK
  I. Horswill, USA         A. Houston, UK           L. Kaelbling, USA
  H. Klopf, USA            L-J. Lin, USA            P. Maes, USA
  M. Mataric, USA          D. McFarland, UK         G. Miller, UK
  R. Pfeifer, Switzerland  H. Roitblat, USA         J. Slotine, USA
  O. Sporns, USA           J. Staddon, USA          F. Toates, UK
  P. Todd, USA             S. Tsuji, Japan          W. Uttal, USA
  D. Waltz, USA.

Official Language: English
Publisher: MIT Press/Bradford Books

Conference Information
  The conference will be held in the centre of Brighton, on the South Coast.
  This is a resort town, less than one hour from London, only 30 mins from
  London Gatwick airport. A number of invited speakers will be giving tutorial
  talks in  subject areas covered by the conference. Through sponsorship,
  conference fees will be kept to a minimum and there should also be some
  travel grants available. We have made arrangements for the Proceedings to
  be available at the conference, which requires efficient processing of
  submitted papers; hence if possible first submissions should be made using
  LaTex template available by email.

Email Information
  Email [e-mail] with subject line "Subscribe mail-list"
  to be put on our mailing list and be sent further information about
  conference arrangements when available.
  Email [e-mail] with subject line "LaTex template"
  to be sent LaTex template for camera-ready and for initial submissions.

Important Dates
===============

         JAN 5, 1994:    Submission deadline
         MAR 10:         Notification of acceptance or rejection
         APR 10:         Camera ready revised versions due
         MAY 1:          Early registration deadline
         JUL 8:          Regular registration deadline
         AUG 8-12:       Conference dates

General queries to: [e-mail]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

SPIE Mobile Robots IX
3-4 October 1994
Hynes Convention Center
Boston, MA

First day - major theoretical aspects of mobile, autonomous, and
remotely controlled systes. Second day - working systems and their
design, integration, and appliation. This includes autonomous systems
for factory floors, guided path, roads, fence following, and other
uses.

For information contact:
    Wendell Chun
    Martin Marietta Astronautics
    303.971.7945
    net: [e-mail]

------------------------------------------------

2nd Annual International Unmanned Ground Vehicle Robotics Competition
May 20-22, 1994 at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan

        $10,000.00 Prize

Prize money to the university teams for the best Autonomous Unmanned
Ground Vehicles
All Terrain (ATV) Class
Outdoor Natural Terrain Course
Sponsor: Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems
Host: AUVS Great Lakes Chapter


[The National AUVS Convention is held nearby at Cobo Hall in Detroit
on May 23-25, 194]

For Information please contact:
    Paul Lescoe
    Robotics Office
    Army-Tank Automotive Command
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone]
    net: [e-mail]

    Dr. Ka C. Cheok or Barbara Dhalman
    Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering
    Oakland University
    248 Dodge Hall
    Rochester, MI 48309-4401
    tel: [phone] or 313.370.2177
    fax: [phone]

    Candy McLellan
    School of Engineering and Computer Science
    Oakland University
    tel: [phone]


End of 2nd International UGV Competition Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CALL FOR PAPERS
SYMPOSIUM ON AUTONOMOUS UNDERWATER VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY
July 19-20 1994

The IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society is sponsoring a symposium on
Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Technology to be held in the
Boston, MA. area  at the Cambridge Center Marriott Hotel on
July 19-20 1994.  The objective of the Symposium is to disseminate
knowledge of recent technological advances in the field, to be a
focus for the current state of the art including identification of
technology shortfalls and to provide a forum for discussion of
new relevant ideas.

TOPICS
The Symposium will focus on topics that are related to the
AUTONOMOUS OPERATION OF UNDERWATER VEHICLES.  These
include but are not limited to :
    Sensors and Multi-Sensor Fusion
    Communications and Telemetry
    Navigation
    Imaging Techniques and Systems
    Modeling and Simulation Methods
    Mission Control and Software Architectures
    Energy Systems
    Autonomous Manipulation
    Vehicle Design and Control
    Launch and Recovery Techniques and Issues
    Multiple Cooperating Vehicles
The Symposium will include a VIDEO PROCEEDINGS Session and visits to
area technical attractions including the C. S. Draper Laboratories.

ABSTRACTS
Prospective authors should submit a proposed title and an abstract
(300-500 words) with a cover sheet containing title author(s) names,
addresses with one author named as the point of contact including
phone and fax numbers.  Since acceptance is by review of abstracts,
it would be helpful if authors would describe the problem addressed
solutions obtained and its importance to the subject of the
conference.  Abstracts should be submitted to :
    Professor A. J. Healey, Technical Program Chairman
    Department of Mechanical Engineering
    Naval Postgraduate School
    Monterey, CA 93943  Ph. 408-656-3462 Fax: [phone]
        [e-mail]

DEADLINES
The following deadlines have been established and it is important
that authors adhere closely to these dates.

    Abstracts Due:                November 8 1993
    Notice of Acceptance            January 15 1994
    and Authors Kits Distributed
    Full Paper Manuscript (Camera Ready)    April 15 1994

INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC ENGINEERS
OCEANIC ENGINEERING SOCIETY

---End of SYMPOSIUM ON AUTONOMOUS UNDERWATER VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
xxxxxx    PerAc'94 Lausanne   xxxxxxx
    From perception to action

A state of the art conference on perceptive processing, artificial life,
autonomous agents, emergent behaviours and micro-robotic systems

Lausanne, Switzerland, 7-9 september 1994

    Swarm intelligence
    Micro-robotics
    Evolution, genetic processes
    Competition and cooperation
    Learning machines

    Self organization
    Active perception
    Sensory/motor loops
    Emergent behavior
    Cognition

----------------------------------------------
|    Call for Papers, Call for Posters       |
|  Call for Demonstrations, Call for Videos  |
|                 Contest                    |
----------------------------------------------

Contributions can be made in the following categories:

-- Papers -- (30 to 45 minutes). 2-page abstracts should be submitted
by February 1, 1994.  The conference will have no parallel sessions,
and a didactically structured program.  Most of the papers will be
solicited.  The submitted abstracts should attempt a synthetic
approach from sensing to action.  Selected authors will have to adapt
their presentation to the general conference program and prepare a
complete well-structured text before June 94.

-- Posters -- 4-page short papers that will be published in the
proceedings and presented as posters are due for June 1, 1994. Posters
will be displayed during the whole Conference and enough time will be
provided to promote interaction with the authors. A jury will
thoroughly examine them and the two best posters will be presented as
a paper in the closing session (20' presentation).

-- Demonstrations --  Robotic demonstrations are considered as posters.
In addition to the 4-page abstract describing the scientific interest of
the demonstration, the submission should include a 1-page requirement for
demonstration space and support.

-- Videos --  5 minute video clips are accepted in Super-VHS or VHS
(preferably PAL, NTSC leads to a poorer quality). Tapes together with
a 2-page description should be submitted before June 1, 1994. Clips will be
edited and distributed at the conference.

-- Contest -- A robotic contest will be organized the day before the
conference.  Teams participating to the contest will be able to follow
the conference freely.  The contest will consist in searching for and
collecting or stacking 36mm film cans.  One or several mobile robots
or robotic arms can be used for this task.  The rules and preliminary
registration forms will be sent upon request by air-mail only as soon
as definitive (end of October 93).


For further information:
Prof J.D. Nicoud, LAMI-EPFL, CH-1015 Lausanne
fax ++41 21 693-5263, Email [e-mail]

Program Committee and referees (September 93)

L. Bengtsson, Uni Halmstad, S. -- R. Brooks, MIT, Cambridge, USA.
P. Dario, Santa Anna, Pisa, I. -- J.L. Deneubourg, ULB, Bruxelles, B
R. Eckmiller, Uni, D|sseldorf, D. -- N. Franceschini, Marseilles, F
T. Fukuda, Uni, Nagoya, JP. -- S. Grossberg, Uni, Boston, USA
J.A. Meyer, Uni, Paris, F. -- R. Pfeifer, Uni, Z|rich, CH
L. Steels, VUB, Brussels, B. -- A. Treisman, Uni, Princeton, USA
F. Varela, Polytechnique, Paris, F. -- E. Vittoz, CSEM, Neuchbtel, CH

J. Albus, NIST, Gaithersburg, USA. -- D.J. Amit, Uni, Jerusalem, Israel
X. Arreguit, CSEM, Neuchbtel, CH. -- H. Asama, Riken, Wako, JP
R. Beer, Case Western, Cleveland, USA. -- G. Beni, Uni, Riverside, USA
P. Bourgine, Cemagref, Antony, F. -- Y. Burnod, Uni VI, Paris, F
J.P. Changeux, Inst. Pasteur, Paris, F. -- D. Cliff, Uni Sussex, Brighton, UK
Ph. Gaussier, LAMI, Lausanne, CH. -- P. Husbands, Uni Sussex, Brighton, UK
O. Kubler, ETH, Z|rich, CH. -- C.G. Langton, Santa Fe Inst, USA
I. Masaki, MIT, Cambridge, USA. -- E. Mazer, LIFIA, Grenoble, F
M. Mataric, MIT, Cambridge, USA . -- H. Miura, Uni, Tokyo, JP
S. Rasmussen, Los Alamos, USA. -- G. Sandini, Uni, Genova, I
T. Smithers, Uni, San Sebastian, E. -- J. Stewart, Inst. Pasteur, Paris, F
L. Tarassenko, Uni, Oxford, UK. -- C. Touzet, EERIE, Nnmes, F
P. Vershure, NSI, La Jolla, USA.

End of PerAc'94 Lausanne
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AIAA/NASA CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS IN FIELD, FACTORY, SERVICE,
AND SPACE (CIRFFSS '94)
March 21-24, 1994
Houston, TX
"SHARING TECHNOLOGY IN THE NATIONAL INTEREST"

The AIAA/NASA Conference on Intelligent Robots for Factory, Field,
Service, and Space is a major national event in intelligent robotics.
It provides a unique forum for engineers and scientists from industry,
government, and academia, and >from a wide range of development and
user environments, to exchange knowledge of the state of the art,
unfulfilled requirements, and current research directions.  The
conference goals are a) to develop a shared technology base among the
researchers, developers and users of intelligent robots, b) to
understand the commonality and the differences among the requirements
for applications in the different environments of space, service,
field, and factory, and c) to increase the efficiency and synergy of
ongoing efforts.  Papers are invited that cover all aspects of the
development, and use of intelligent robots.

CIRFFSS '94 is organized in cooperation with the American Association
for Artificial Intelligence, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society,
National Service Robot Association, Robotic Industries Association,
SPIE-The International Society for Optical Engineering, AIAA Space
Automation and Robotics Technical Committee, Clear Lake Council of
Technical Societies, AIAA Houston Section, and the IEEE Galveston Bay
Section.

TECHNOLOGY TRACKS: Papers are solicited that describe the technology
of building intelligent robotic systems, especially surveys of the
state of the art, subsystem concepts, experimental results in
different environments, system and subsystem metrics, and comparison
of different approaches.

Robotic Sensing, Vision, and Perception: Visible, radar, sonar,IR and
laser sensors, innovative systems; and perception algorithms,
architecture, and integration methods.

Planning, Reasoning, and Control: Behavioral and subsumption methods,
deliberative planners, reasoning architectures, combination and
mediation of planning, and reasoning and control elements

Systems Technology and Architectures: Methods for allocating
functions, system and software architectures, and approaches to
modularity and reuse.


APPLICATION TRACKS: Papers are solicited that describe designs and
uses of intelligent robots, especially those related to concepts,
design experiments, operational experience, and requirements.

Factory: Assembly, transport, inspection, warehousing, and
manufacturing.

Field: Underwater, explosive handling, hazardous environments,
military applications, autonomous land vehicles, construction, very
cold environments, mining, and drilling.

Space: On-orbit servicing and assembly, planetary exploration and
operations, spacecraft inspection, and ground-based operations.

Service: Health care, security systems, cleaning systems,
residential/office, facility maintenance, and others.

VIDEO TAPES:  Are encouraged in all areas.

Papers should be submitted to the:
Program Chairman:
Dr. Lawrence P. Seidman
The MITRE Corporation
1120 NASA Road 1
Houston, TX  77058-3320
tel:  [phone]
fax:  [phone]
Email:  [e-mail]

Address other conference inquires:
Conference Chairman:
Dr. Jon D. Erickson
NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center
Mail Code ER
Houston, TX  77058
tel:  [phone]
fax:  [phone]
Email:  [e-mail]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IROS '94
                  FIRST  ANNOUNCEMENT
            INTERNATIONAL  WORKSHOP
                                   on
                   INTELLIGENT
                         ROBOTIC
                   SYSTEMS '94

             Grenoble,  France,  11-15  July  1994
                 CALL  FOR  PAPERS
This workshop is organized by :

LIFIA                  Laboratory of Fundamental Informatics
                       and Artificial Intelligence, Institute of
               Informatics and Applied Mathematics of
                       Grenoble, Grenoble, France

IPPT-PAN               Institute of Fundamental Technological
                       Research, Polish Academy of Sciences,
                       Warsaw, Poland

THEME  AND  TOPICS
The theme for this year workshop will be combining perception and
action. The workshop will combine invited lectures by established
researchers with original presentations by junior scientists about
research in progress. Topics included  :

      o   Learning and Control;
      o   Neural Network and Fuzzy Techniques for Control;
      o   Active and Real Time Computer Vision;
      o   Integration and Control of Perception and Action;
      o   Planning and Plan Execution for Perception and Action;
ORGANISERS
General Chairman      James L.Crowley, LIFIA IMAG, France,
                      46 av.  Felix Viallet, 38031 Grenoble Cedex,
                      Tel.:[phone] fax:[phone],
                      E-mail:  [e-mail]

Chairman              Adam Borkowski, IPPT PAN, Poland,
of the Programme      21 Swietokrzyska Str., 00-049 Warsaw,
Committee             Tel.  : [phone] ext 250
                      fax   : [phone],
                  E-mail:  [e-mail]

Co-Chairman           Artur Dubrawski, IPPT PAN, Poland,
of  the  Programme    21 Swietokrzyska Str., 00-049 Warsaw,
Committee           Tel.  : [phone] ext 250
              fax   : [phone],
              E-mail:  [e-mail]

Secretary             Patrick Reignier, LIFIA - IMAG, France,
                      46 av.  F'elix Viallet, 38031 Grenoble Cedex,
                      Tel.:[phone] fax:[phone],
                      E-mail:  [e-mail]

                      Olivier Causse, Lab.  of Image Analysis, DK,
                      Fr.  Bajers Vej 7 D, DK-9220 Aalborg
                      Tel.:[phone] fax:[phone],
                      E-mail:  [e-mail]

The event is organised in cooperation with the CEC Human Capital and
Mobility Network SMART and the Committee for Automatics and Robotics
of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

LOCATION
The event will take place at Grenoble, in the heart of the French
Alps. Grenoble has many convenient railway and bus connections from
all over France. International flights to Paris or Lyon would be
suitable.

LANGUAGE
The conference language will be English

SUBMISSION
Persons wishing to submit a paper should send an extended abstract of
approximately four pages to the programme chairman (Professor A.
Borkowski, address before)

TIMETABLE
- Extended abstracts must be received by the programme chairman by
  January 15 1994.
- Notification of acceptance will be sent before February  28  1994.
- Full papers (8 pages) must be received before April 30 1994

All accepted papers will be published in the Proceedings of the
Workshop. Detailed information regarding programme, conference fee,
accomodation will be given in the second annoucement issued
in January 1994.

End of IROS '94 description
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Many annual conferences are held and here are a few of them:

Annual International Conference of IEEE on Robotics and Automation
(ICARA)

Annual Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

Annual Symposium on Industrial Robots

International Symposium of Robotics Research

Autonomous Intelligent Systems

International Conference on Computer Vision

British Machine Vision Conference

IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Conference

IMAC/SICE International Symposium on Robotics, Mechatronics and
    Manufacturing Systems.

American Association for Artificial Intellignece (AAAI)
    Probably the largest and most prestigious conference
  on AI. Now sponsoring a robot competition at the annual AAAI
  conference.

Competitions:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are a number of robot gatherings where robot builders can bring
their creations to show and compete with others.

Hong-Kong ping pong competitions:
    Contact:    Robin Bradbeer <[e-mail]>

BEAM robot olympics:
    Contact:    Mark Tilden <[e-mail]>
    Articles on the BEAM Olympics:

    Dewdney, A.K. Photovores: intelligent robots are constructed
    from castoffs. Scientific American Sept 1992, v267, n3, p42(1)

    Maylon, John.  At the Robot Olympics.  Whole Earth Review.
    Spring 1992, pp 80-84.

    Smit, Michael C., and Mark Tilden, Beam Robotics. Algorithm,
    Vol. 2, No. 2, March 1991, Pg 15-19

International Robot Games
    September 23 - 25 1993 (DELAYED!!!)
    Glasgow, Scotland
    Organised by
    The Turing Institute
Following the success of the First Olympic event which took place in
September 1990, the Turing Institute is now in the process of organizing
the second event in  the series. This will take place in Glasgow,
Scotland from 23rd-25th September 1993.

Robot Contest sponsored by the Science Center of Connecticut.
April 17th, 1994. Open to everyone.
$1000 prize. For more information and rules contact:
    Jake Mendelssohn, SCoC
    950 Trout Brook Drive
    West Hartford, CT 06119
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone]
    Prodigy: KJRP71A

___________________________________________________________________________
+++Robotics Publications:

There are a number of academic journals and trade magazines devoted to
robotics.  There are no magazines currently devoted to the hobbyist or
designer of robotic mechanisms. In the 1980's Robotics Engineering
(nee Robotics Age) lasted for 7-8 years but folded. The one difficulty
I noted as a subscriber was that the magazine attempted to address the
hobbyist, the curious and those whose work was devoted to robotics
without successfully catering to all groups.

This list of periodical covers the academic journals, the trade
magazines devoted to both robotics and relevant sub-areas, and the
lone newsletter for hobbyists.

Automation in Construction
    Publisher: Elsevier Science Publisher B. V., Amsterdam.
    Desk Editor: Erik de Vries
    The Editor of the journal is
    Dr. T. Michael Knasel
    10324 Lake Avenue
    Cleveland, OH 441102-1239.
    fax: [phone].

<NEW>
Autonomous Robots
ISSN 0929-5593
Kluwer Academic Publishers
Journal Dept
PO Box 358, Accord Station
Hingham, MA 02018-0358
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
subscription: $50/individual
Vol 1, 1994 (2 issues)
Editor-in-chief
George Bekey <[e-mail]>

Industrial Robot
    ISSN 0143-991X
    Quarterly, $145/year
    MCB University Press Ltd.
    62 Toller Lane
    Bradford, West Yorkshire
    England, BD8 9BY
    tel: [phone],
    fax: [phone]
    --in the US
    MCB University Press Ltd.
    PO Box 10812
    Birmingham, AL 35201-0812
    tel: [phone] (1-205-995-1567),
    fax: [phone]

Institute of  Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
    The IEEE has a formidable array of journals, transactions and
    magazines. Here are a few that are relevant to robotics work:
    IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation
    IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics
    IEEE Control Systems Magazine
    IEEE Computer Magazine
    IEEN Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
    IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics
    Cost: Have to join IEEE and then subscribe. Student rates are
    much less expensive than non-student rates.

International Journal of Robotics and Automation
    Published 4 times annually. ISSN 0826-8185
    ACTA Press, PO Box 354, CH-8053, Zurich, Switzerland or ACTA
    Press, PO Box 2481, Anaheim, CA 92814.
    Subscriptions: $165 US or 313.50 SFr. ($12 US or 22.80 SFr postage and
    handling). A special rate is available to members of IASTED.

International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR)
    MIT Press
    28 Carleton Street
    Cambridge, MA 02142
    Cost: $50/year to individuals

Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems
    Three issues per volume, $58.50 per volume (individual)
    Kluwer Academic Publishers Group
    PO Box 322,
    3300 AH Dordrecht,
    The Netherlands
    --in the US:
    PO Box 358
    Accord Station,
    Hingham, MA 02018-0358

Journal of Robotic Systems
    G. Beni and S. Hackwood, editors
    College of Engineering
    University of California, Riverside
    Riverside, CA 92521-0425
    Publisher:
    Interscience Division
    Professional, Reference, and Trade Group
    John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
    605 Third Ave.
    New York, NY 10158

Mechatronics (Mechanics, Electronics, Control)
    Editors-in-Chief:
    Dr. R. W. Daniel
    Department of Engineering Science,
    University of Oxford,
    Parks Road,
    Oxford, OX1-3PJ
    United Kingdom:
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone]

    Professor J. R. Hewit
    Engineering Design Institute
    Department of Mechanical Engineering,
    University of Technology, Loughborough
    Leicestershire, LE11 3TU
    UNITED KINGDOM
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone])

    Published by Pergamon Press Ltd, Headington Hill Hall, Oxford
    OX3 0BW UK.  1993 subscription rates: 193 pounds Sterling (US
    $312) Personal subscription rates for those whose library
    subscribes at a regular rate are available on request.
    Subscription rates for Japan are available on request.

Robot (Japanese)
    Industrial Robots and Application Systems
    published bimonthly
    Japan Industrial Robot Association (JIRA)
    Kikai-Shinko Building
    3-5-8, Shiba-Kohen,
    Mina To-ku
    Tokyo, Japan
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone]

Robot Explorer
    'The newsletter of motile systems'
    ISSN: 1060-4375
    Appropriate Solutions
    145 Grove Street
    PO Box 458
    Peterborough, NH 03458-0458
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone]
    net: [e-mail]
    $14.95/year in the US, $29.95 to the rest of the world.

Robotica
    International Journal of Information, Education and Research
    in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
    Quarterly publication, US $179 per year!
    Cambridge University Press
    The Edinburgh Building
    Shaftesbury Road,
    Cambridge CB2 2RU (UK)
    in the US:
    Cambridge University Press
    Journals Department
    40 West 20th Street
    New York, NY 10011-4211

Robotics and Autonomous Systems
    -- In Europe --
    Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.
    Journals Department
    PO Box 211, 100 AE Amsterdam
    The Netherlands
    Editors in Chief:
    Prof. F.C.A. Groen
    University of Amsterdam
    Faculty of Mathematics and CS
    Dept. of Computer Systems
    Kruislaan 403
    1098 SJ Amsterdam
    The Netherlands
    net: <[e-mail]>

    -- In the US and Canada --
    Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc.
    Journal Information Center
    655 Avenue of the Americas
    New York, NY 10010
    Editor in Chief
    Prof. T.C. Henderson
    University of Utah
    Dept. of Computer Science
    3160 Merrill Engineering Bldg.
    Salt Lake City, UT 84112 USA
    net: <[e-mail]>

Robotics Today
    Published by:
    Society of Manufacturing Engineers
    One SME Drive
    PO Box 930
    Dearborn, MI 48121
    tel: [phone]

Robotics World
    "The end-user's magazine of flexible automation"
    Published quarterly
    Communication Channels
    6255 Barfield Road
    Atlanta, GA 30328
    tel: [phone]
    They also publish the Robotics World Directory $49.95

    Don't have addresses for:
Advanced Robotics (in english)
    published by
    International Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan
Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing

Useful and relevant trade magazines:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Usually free, mostly ads or industry news. Many articles
written by advertisers. Great sources of product information. Our lab
at CMU receives 50-60 trade magazines and journals per month and while
no one reads all of the articles, pointers are passed on to people
around the lab. This keeps the group abreast of new products and
developments.

Advanced Imaging
    445 Broad Hollow Rd.
    Melville, NY 11747
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone]
    Subscription free to qualified professionals, $50/yr otherwise.

ComputerCraft
    CQ Communications
    76 N. Broadway
    Hicksville, NY 11801
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone]
    cost: $18.97/yr
    ISSN: 1055-5072

Computer Applications Journal
    Circuit Cellar Inc.
    4 Park St. Suite 20
    Vernon, CT 06066
    Subscriptions: P.O. Box 7694
    Riverton, NJ 08077
    tel: [phone]
    cost: $21.95/yr
    ISSN: 0896-8985
    Excellent for those building hardware, programming
    microcontrollers, etc. Also a very good source for companies
    who have products in these areas.

Design News
    Cahners Publishing Co.
    275 Washington Street
    Newton, MA. 02158
    News and Applications for design engineers.
    Cost: Free to qualified recipients; otherwise - ?

EE Times
    CMP Publications, Inc.
    600 Community Drive
    Manhasset, NY  11030
    Cost: Free to qualified recipients (in the U.S.); otherwise -
    $159/yr    (U.S. & Foreign)

Electronic Design
    Penton Publishing Inc
    1100 Superior Ave
    Cleveland, OH 44114-2543
    611 Route #46 West
    Hasbrouck Heights, NJ 07604
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone]
    cost: $95.00/yr (free if qualified)
    ISSN: 0013-4872

Electronics Now (formerly Radio Electronics)
    Gernsback Publications Inc
    Subscription Dept
    Box 55115
    Boulder, CO 80321-5115
    500-B Bi-County Boulevard
    Farmingdale, NY 11735
    tel: [phone]
    cost: $19.97/yr
    ISSN: 0033-7862

Embedded Systems Programming
    Miller Freeman
    600 Harrison St.
    San Francisco, CA 94107
    tel: [phone] (customer service)
    tel: [phone]
    bbs: 415.905.2689.
    $49.95 for 12 issues

Machine Design
    Penton Publishing Inc.
    1100 Superior Ave.
    Cleveland, OH 44114-2543
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone]
    Cost: Free to qualified recipients in the U.S.; otherwise -
    $100.00/yr in U.S.; $140/yr in Canada; $160/yr - all other
    Foreign

Midnight Engineering 'Journal of Personal Product Development'
    Published by William E Gates, [No, not him...]
    111 E. Drake Road
    Suite 7041
    Fort Collins, CO 80525
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone]
    One-year (6 issues) $24, canada and mexico $29, other foreign
    $49 (airmail) Perhaps marginal for this list but focus is on
    "resources and insight for the entrepreneurial engineer"
    Issues and articles on developing hardware, software,
    micro-controllers, product development, marketing, patenting
    issues, startups, etc etc. Excellent if you need this info.

Modern Materials Handling
    44 Cook Street
    Denver, CO  80206-5800
    tel: [phone]
    Trade magazine covering productivity solutions for
    manufacturing, warehousing and distribution.  Typically
    includes articles on factory automation, etc.  Cost: Free to
    qualified recipients; otherwise - $75 for US subscribers.

Motion Control
    Tower Media Corp.
    800 Roosevelt Rd.
    Bldg. C, Suite 206
    Glen Ellyn, IL  60137
    Trade magazine for Motion Control applications and Technology.
    Cost: Free to qualified recipients in the U.S.; otherwise -
    $50/yr in U.S. $90/yr foreign subscriptions.

NASA Tech Briefs
    Associated Business Publications Co., Ltd.
    41 E. 42nd St.
    New York, NY  10017-5391
    Contains useful technology transfer information which very
    often includes robotics research performed at various NASA
    centers.  Cost: Free to qualified recipients; otherwise -
    $75.00/yr in the U.S., $150.00/yr for Foreign subscriptions

Nuts and Volts
    430 Princeland Court
    Corona, CA 91719
    tel: [phone]
    Electronics classifieds and ads. Lots of devices and products
    relevant for robot builders. Often features articles on robot
    building as well by Karl Lunt.

Sensors
    Helmers Publishing
    174 Concord Street
    PO Box 874
    Peterborough, NH 03458-0874
    tel: [phone]
    Trade magazine devoted to sensing devices. Publishes directory.
    Cost: Free to qualified subscribers, $55/yr otherwise

    [To add]
GPS World (Global Positioning System related)
RF Design
Sea Technology
Laser Focus
POB (surveying profession)
Broadcast Engineering (TV and radio engineering)

Other sources:
--------------
Thomas Register
    Thomas Publishing Company
    One Penn Plaza
    New York, NY 10117-0139
    tel: [phone]
    fax: [phone]
    About $250 for a 20-odd volume encyclopedia of US industry.
Concentration on heavier industries - but still an amazing source for
information. No company or lab building products should be without
one. Available on CD-ROM for a much higher price.

EEM - The 'Thomas Register' for Electrical engineers.
[Address to add]
_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Mobile robot companies:

There are a small number of companies targeting the research community
for the mobile robot market. TRC, RWI, and Cybermotion have all sold
and are selling mobile devices for research and real
applications. There are a number of Automatic Guided Vehicle companies
as well and their primary applications are factory operations.
Companies manufacturing Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGV) are listed at
the end of this section.

Bell and Howell
Mailmobile Company
81 Hartwell Avenue
Lexington, MA 02173-3127
tel: [phone]
  Mailmobiles were developed by Lear-Siegler in the mid-70's for the
  industrial cleaning market. They left this market and
  Bell & Howell, the audio-visual company,  was refocusing on office
  automation products and picked
  up this product from Lear-Siegler. There are three models of
  Mailmobile, the Packmobile, the Sprint and the Trailmobile. About 3000
  systems sold and about 2000 probably in operation. They use a chemical
  trail that floureseces under UV light. Payloads up to a couple of
  hundred kg.  Some systems have been operating for over 15 years.

Branch & Associates Pty Ltd
1153 Tasman Highway
Cambridge, Tasmania 7170
Australia (operating in Europe, Asia and America)
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
contact: Alex Vail, Division Manager
    Since 1979, specialist in autonomous navigation and guidance;
products and technology for applications, research, and teaching.
Conquerer series of fully autonomous AGV's, mapping system,
non-accumulated error, accuracy 1cm, 1 degree, no environmental
modifications, $12K - $25K.
    Fander: research and educational mobile robot. $5.5K includes
everything: built-in software demonstrates in real situations numerous
exmaples of roboti mobility technologies for teaching, research and
teaching manual, stand-alone and remote PC modes, real time graphics.


Cybermotion
5457 Jae Valley Road
Roanoke, VA 24014
tel: [phone]
  John Holland's company. Mobile K2 bases making use of ingenious
  torque-tube synchronous drive system. Security markets and research
  platforms, manipulators for base as well. Map building software too.

Cyberworks
31 Ontario Street
Orillia, Ontario
L3V 6H1 Canada
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Primary product are 'building blocks' for mobile robot
  development including controllers, sensors, softare and chassis'.

Denning Mobile Robotics Inc. [DENNING IS OUT OF BUSINESS]
21 Concord Street
Wilmington, MA 01887
tel: [phone]
  Mobile robots - synchronous drive bases for research platforms.
  Building automated camera platforms for newsrooms, working on
  floor cleaning machines with an industrial partner.
  Denning also has a number of products including a position scanner,
  and IR beacons.  A Denning floor scrubber is working in a post
  office in Pittsburgh, Denver and Washington, and at a UPS site.

IS Robotics
4353 Park Terrace Drive            Suite 6, 22McGrath Hwy
Westlake Village, CA 91361 USA        Somerville, MA 02143
tel: [phone]            tel: [phone]
net: <[e-mail]>            fax: [phone]
  T-1: tracked robot approx 50cm x 36cm. $5k
  R-2: Wheeled machine. Gripper with 7.5cm opening, 18cm lift, 1kg
       lift force. $7K
  Ghengis II: Six-legged machine with whisker bump sensors and force
        detection on legs. About $2k.
  Use the ubiquitous MC68HC11E2 microcontrollers. Robots include IR
  and bump sensing for obstacle detection. Pyro sensors and color
  camera with pan-tilt are optional.

Kentree
Kilbritten,
Co. Cork, Ireland
tel: [phone], 49808
fax: [phone]
Teleoperated bomb disposal vehicles in a range of sizes.

mecos Robotics AG
Technopark
Pfingstweidstrasse
CH-8005 Zurich
Switzerland
tel: + 41 1 445 11 35
fax: + 41 1 445 11 34
email: [e-mail]
Contact: S. J. Vestli
  Company formed as a spin off of the Institute of Robotics, ETH
  (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). "mecos Robotics"
  specialises in modular and adaptive robot manipulators and
  robot vehicles (mobile robots). All "mecos Robotics" systems
  uses the same type of controller, a VME based computer. This
  system comes with high level development tools, and for
  research institutions the systems have the advantage of being
  open. The overall goals of all "mecos Robotics" systems are
  flexility and modularity.

  The mobile robot program from "mecos Robotics" follows this
  principle. The physical size and the mechanical configuration
  can be altered. The standard configuration has three wheels
  with air tyres and independant suspension. One wheel is used
  for steering and propulsion (imagine a kids tricycle).  The
  overall size is 0.7 m (W) * 1.0 m (L) * 0.5 m (H). The price
  depends on configuration and starts around the 70.000,- Swiss
  Franks mark.

Nomadic Technologies
1060-B Terra Bella Avenue
Mountain View, CA 94043
tel: [phone] ext. 203
fax: [phone]
net: [e-mail]
  Nomad 200 is an integrated mobile robot system with four
  sensing modules including tactile, infrared, ultrasonic, and
  2D laser.  Integrated software development package for the
  host computer includes a graphic interface, robot simulator
  and a library of motion planning, motion control and sensory
  data interpretation functions. Geared toward teaching and
  research in Robotics and AI. The Nomad utilizes a synchronous
  steering system (ala Cybermotion and RWI). Speeds up to .5
  meters/second and onboard battery power.
    Nomad 200 Mobile  Base                $10,000
    Nomad 200 Control System            $ 6,000
    Sensus 100 Tactile Sensing System        $ 1,500
    Sensus 200 Fixed Sonar System            $ 2,500
    Sensus 500 Structured Light Vision System    $ 7,000
    RF Modem Kit                    $ 2,000
    Digital Compass                    $   450

Real World Interface (RWI)
P.O. Box 270
Dublin, NH 03444
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Small synchronous drive bases, primarily for research
  purposes. Approx $6K

Remotec
114 Union Valley Road
Oak Ridge, TN 37830
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  The ANDROS line of teleoperated mobile robots. These were
  designed to be useful in the nuclear industry and in other
  hazardous applications, and are very rugged. You can hose them
  down. Available in a range of sizes, with a variety of
  optional attachments, such as video cameras, arms, etc.

TAG Technology
5 Bowlands Mill,
Alnwick, Northumberland, NE661LN, UK
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
Frank - a tracked vehicle. Cost $UK 2000 - 5785 depending on
functionality.

TRC
15 Great Pasture Road
Danbury, CT 06810
tel: [phone]
  Labmate research platform - $7500, plus additional optional
  sensors etc. Other products for hospital markets and floor
  cleaning machines.  (Helpmate and RoboKent respectively)


Visual Inspection Technologies
27-2 Ironia Road
Flanders, NJ 07836-9124
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
 VIT specializes in remote visual and ultrasonic testing but sells or
rents a small tracked rover for inspection work. Products include
ROVVER, SPOT, and PIPECAT vertical pipe crawler. VIT also makes
miniature remote pan and tilt devices.

Yamazaki Construction Company, Tokyo Japan.
Intelligent Robot Lab
Kaika Building
2-7-1 Sotokanda
Chiyoda-ku 101 Tokyo
Japan
tel: [phone]
  LR1 robot - small research robot, basically a VME cage on
  wheels with some ultrasonic sensors and a nice constant force
  suspension. Has shown up at IEEE R&A conferences $30K.

RoboSoft SA
      ,        ,
6, allee Paul Cezanne
93360 Neuilly Plaisance
FRANCE
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

AGV Companies
-------------
AGV Products
9307-E Monroe Road
Charlotte, NC 28270-1485
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Controls and components for AGV's. Supplier of Schabmuller
  motor-in-wheel drives.

Apogee Robotics
2643 Midpoint Drive
Fort Collins, CO 80525
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Standard and custom-designed AGV's

BT Systems
7000 Nineteen Mile Road
Sterling Heights, MI 48314
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Automated Handling Systems (Formerly Volvo Automated Systems)

Caterpillar Industrial
5960 Heisley Road
Mentor, OH 44060
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

  Manufacturer and distributor of fork lift trucks and guided
  vehicles. Cat's SGV's use rotating laser scanner and barcodes
  as opposed to traditional wire-guided systems.

Control Engineering Company
Jervis Webb Company
34375 W. Twelve Mile Road
Farmington Hills, MI 48331-5624
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]

Eaton-Kenway
515 East 100 South
PO Box 45425
Salt Lake City, UT 84145-0425
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  AGV's and integrated systems

Elwell-Parker
4205 St. Clair Avenue
Cleveland, OH
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Designs/manufactures rider style, electric, fork and platform
  mobile material handling equipment. Line includes AGV's, high
  tonnage capacity. Mobile cranes, explosion proof forklifts.

Eskay Corporation
563 West 500 South
Bountiful, UT 84010
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Automated material handling systems including AGVS.

Fata Automation
37050 Industrial Road
Livonia, MI 48150
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Sales and service of AGVs.

FMC Corporation
400 Highpont Drive
Chalfont, PA 18914
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  AGVs, Automated Handling Systems, Consulting, Trolley and
  Power and Free Converyors, Tow lines, Integrated Systems and
  Controls, Roll Handling Equipment.

IDAB Incorporated
1 Enterprise Parkway, Suite 300
PO Box 8157
Hampton, VA 23666
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Automatic handling systems and AGV's

Litton Industrial Automation
2300 Litton Lane
Hebron, KY 41048
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Full service material handling company.

Mannesmann Demag Corporation
29201 Aurora Road
Cleveland, OH 44139-1895
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Overhead cranes, wire rope and chain hoists, AGV systems,
  automatic storage and retrieval systems, monorail, aircraft
  maintenance equipment.

Mentor AGVS Products
8500 Station Street
PO Box 898
Mentor, OH 44060
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  AGV systems and automated transfer cars.

Munck Automation Technology
315 E Street
Hampton, VA 23661
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Manufacturer and integrator of automated material handling
  systems. AGVS of many configurations (unitload, forklift,
  towing)

The Raymond Corporation
South Canal Street
PO Box 130
Greene, NY 13778
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Material handling equipment.

Roberts Sinto Corporation
3001 West Main Street
PO Box 40760
Lansing, MI 48901-7960
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  MGV's (Mechanically guided vehicles)

Professional Materials Handling Co, Inc.
4203 Landmark Drive
Orlando, FL 32817
tel: [phone]
  Steinbock fork trucks. Wire guided, use regenerative braking.

_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Manipulator companies:

Adept Technology
150 Rose Orchard Way
San Jose, CA 95134
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  High speed direct-drive and harmonic-drive SCARA style arms. 0.001"
  (.025mm) repeatabiliy. Payloads from 4-25kg Can be used in clean room
  and food applications as well. Adept sells vision systems and
  controllers also.

Antenen Research
PO Box 95
Hamilton, OH 45012
tel: [phone]
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  New and used robots for manufacturing, research and
  training. Used at savings of 40% - 70%. Also lots of parts and
  accessories.

Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), Vesteraas, Sweden
ABB Robotics
2487 South Commerce Drive
New Berlin, WI 53151
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Now own Cinncinatti Milacron robotics group, Graco and
  Trallfa. Many types of larger industrial robots.

Comau - Italy
Via Rivalta 30
10095 Grugliasco
Torino, Italy
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
    A variety of industrial manipulators ranging in payloads from 6kg to 125kg. All electric AC drives. One of the novel designs is a 6DOF, 12kg payload robot The SMART-3 6.12 R. It uses a carbon fibre forearm, absolute resolver feedback and 0.15mm repeatability.

CRS Plus,
PO Box 163, Station A
830 Harrington Court
Burlington, Ontario
Canada L7R 3Y2
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Sells several manipulators. 5-DOF around $25K, 6DOF around $33K.
  Sell end-effectors as well (electric, vacuum and penumatic)
  Wrist can be bought separately. Controllers use RAPL, a VAL-like
  language. Fairly open architecture. 3Kg payloads +/- 0.05mm
  repeatability.

Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd.
24402 Sinacola Court
Farmington Mills, MI 48331
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Kawasaki was the first Japanese mfg to lead in the production
  of industrial robots.  They licensed the former Unimation line
  of robots and now make about a dozen types of electric arms
  for welding, painting and assembly.

Kraft Telerobotics
11667 W. 90th Street
Overland Park, KS 66214
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Nice telerobotic arms for underwater work.

mecos Robotics AG
Technopark
Pfingstweidstrasse
CH-8005 Zurich
Switzerland
tel: + 41 1 445 11 35
fax: + 41 1 445 11 34
net: <[e-mail]>
Contact: E. Nielsen
  Spin-off of the Institute of Robotics, ETH (Swiss Federal
  Institute of Technology). modular and adaptive robot
  manipulators and robot vehicles (mobile robots). All "mecos
  Robotics" systems use a VME based computer as controller.  The
  system comes with high level development tools, and are open
  systems.  The manipulator's mechanical configuration can be
  changed at will (number and type of joints, length of links,
  etc.)  Manipulators use linear aluminum extrusions with
  integral motions for joints. The controller accounts for
  configuration changes. With this principle of modularity and
  flexibilty hybrid force / position controllers have been
  realised on "mecos Robotics" arms. Price depending on
  configuration (50.000,- Swiss Franks and upwards).

Motoman [Hobart/Yaskawa]
3160 MacArthur Boulevard
Northbrook, IL 60062-1917
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Large industrial manipulators for welding, painting, palletizing,
  dispensing, etc. Can be floor, ceiling or wall mount units. Payloads
  for the 8 robots in the K-series range from 3kg to 100kg and
  repeatability of 0.1 to 0.5 mm over that same range. They are vertical
  jointed-arm type manipulators. (i.e. 4 bar linkage to reduce arm
  intertias). 3 S-series robots are SCARA-type manipulators with
  payloads of 50-60kg and varying workspace sizes

  Yaskawa also has bought the rights to RobotWorld, Vic Schienman's unique
  gantry design robot system. This system allow a number of mobile
  modules in the same workspace to zip around at speeds up 80"/sec (3G
  accel). RAIL and C can be used in a multilevel programming
  environment. 0.002" Accuracy, 0.0005" repeatability. Neat stuff.

Salisbury Robotics, Inc.
20 Pemberton St.
Cambridge, MA 02140
tel: [phone]
net: <[e-mail]>
  Sells the three-fingered Salisbury hand and force sensing fingertips.
  Contact: Ken Salisbury,

Sarcos Research Corporation
390 Wakara Way,
Suite 44, Salt Lake City, Utah 84108
tel: [phone]
  Spinoff of University of Utah's Center for Engineering Design (CED).
  Teleoperated systems,  manipulators. Audio-animatronic work as well.
  Beautiful force reflecting work and systems. High performance and
  small hydraulic valves and actuators.

Schilling
1632 Da Vinci Court
Davis, CA  95616
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Electro-mechanical engineering and manufacturing company
  specializing in telerobotics.  Various remote manipulator and
  telerobotic manipulator systems.

Sony Corporation of America
Factory Automation Division
542 Route 303
Orangeburg, NY 10962
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Several SCARA type manipulators including a double armed
  manipulator.  This model is used for the assembly of 8mm
  camcorders!

Robotics Research Corp.
P.O. Box 206
Amelia, OH  45102
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  RRC offers a variety of dexterous manipulators which can be
  operated individually or in dual-arm mode.  Their second
  generation, denoted the "i-Series", is lighter and provides
  great dexterity.  They are currently building
  "spaceflight-qualified" manipulators for NASA (GSFC) using
  this new generation of their product.  They have also been
  doing some work developing sensor-based automatic obstacle
  detection and avoidance technology which uses a patented
  algorithm with arm-mounted sensors. They have also built two
  massively-redundant 17-DOF Anthropomorphic systems for Grumman
  and JPL to serve as testbeds for researching "man-equivalent"
  robots for space applications.

UMI Microbot
[no longer in business in the US]
In the UK:
Oxford Intelligent Machines, UK
tel: [phone]
Originally known as the Microbot teachmover. A small cable driven
manipulator for desktop robotics. Excellent teaching tool.  Original
design by John Hill (now at SRI) Microbot was bought out by the
British company UMI two years ago. In May, 1991 they moved from
Silicon Valley to Detroit, MI. As of Early 1994, only the UK company was still in business.

USA Robot
PO Box 4018
Portland, ME 04101
tel: [phone]
  Maxym production robots for business. Simple accurate 3D
  linear motions coupled with power tooling. Workspaces up to
  60cmx120cmx15cm. IBMPC software for designing parts and
  production path. Units come with 2200W Porter- Cable router
  and vacuum foot.  This is not a machine like the giant
  production turning and routing machines used by large
  furniture makers but is a nice small machine for small
  production shops.

Western Space and Marine
111 Santa Barbara St.
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  Telerobotic manipulators for space and undersea applications.

Zebra Robotics
Jeff Kerr
Menlo Park
tel: [phone]
  Small manipulators with integral force control.

Zymark Corp
Hopkinton, MA
Robots for laboratory automation. Zymate

Other companies: (no addresses, yet)
    International Submarine Engineering (ISE)
    Robotic Systems International (RSI)
    Furukawa
    Sumitomo
    Chubu
    Beckman Biomark
    HP ORCA

_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Small Inexpensive Robots
    One of the most common discussions on the net are related to
finding, building and working on small and low cost robots. There are
a few small robots on the market and a number of construction kits
that robots can be built from such as Lego, FischerTechnik and
Capsula. None of these require large investments. These systems are at
most a few hundred $US and can run on a desktop.

Aleph Technology
Parc Heliopolis
16 rue du Tour de l'eau
BP 295-38407
Saint Martin d'Heres cedex, France
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
Small, turtle robot for education. 17000FF

Angelus Research
6344 Sugar Pine Circle
Angelus Oaks, CA
tel: [phone].
  A small differentially-steered mechanism (no casters!) utilizing a
  68HC11 controller w/ 32K RAM and RS-232 interface. Four visible
  collision sensors (range 3-12 inches depending on ambient light) and
  two whiskers. On-board battery (Pb- acid and built in charger)
  monitors current as well for stall current. Software included with
  easy-to-use command set. A lot of features for a very affordable
  device. $395, controller board available separately and basic kit
  available for $325

Capsula
  Capsula is a robot construction set. Looks like a series of bubbles
  connected together. Some intriguing modules including IR control,
  voice commands, motorized clutches etc. Edmund Scientific sells this
  as do many toy stores.

FischerTechnik
Model Technology
2420 Van Layden Way
Modesto, CA 95356
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
----In the UK:
Economatics Ltd
Epic house
Darnell Road
Attercliffe
Sheffield
United Kingdom
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
telex: 5 47 095 ECOMAT G
  Like Lego, Fischertechnik is a european-developed construction kit
  but much more comprehensive in scope. Electro-mechanical parts
  galore including a wide variety of switches, relays, slip rings,
  contacts, etc. Many types of building block units as well and
  computer interfaces available.  More expensive than Lego. Model
  Technology, listed above, is one distributor. See also the Robot
  Explorer in the publications section.

Khepera Support Team
LAMI - DI - EPFL
INF Ecublens
1015 Lusanne
Switzerland
tel: ++41 21 693.52.65
fax: ++42 21 693.52.63
net: <[e-mail]>
contact: Franscesco Mondada

  A VERY small mobile robot. Motorola 68331 Processor with 256K RAM
  and 256 or 512K ROM. Serial port. Six 10bit analog inputs. DC motor
  powered with incremental encoders.  Eight IR proximity and light
  sensors. NiCd batteries. Additional capabilities can be added by
  using stackable K-extension bus.  Software environments: Calm
  assembler (PC or MAC), Gnu C compiler (on all machines supported by
  GNU) and LabView (PC, Mac or Sun).
  Size: 55mm diameter, 30mm high
  Weight: 70grams
  Cost: 3000 Swiss Francs [About $2K US]
  Vision and Gripper modules under development.
  Reference:
    Mondada et al. Mobile Robot Miniaturisation: A Tool for
    Investigation in Control Algorithms. Third International
    Symposium on Experimental Robotics, Kyoto, Japan, Oct 28-30,
    1993

LEGO
Lego Dacta
555 Taylor Road
PO Box 1600
Enfield, CT 06083-1600
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  LEGO Dacta is the educational branch of the LEGO company. Dacta
  sells the LEGO Technic product line. These are the geared and
  motorized versions for the LEGO system.

  Use anonymous ftp to obtain a list of a variety of lego information
  and application programs from:
    location:    earthsea.stanford.edu
    directory:    /pub/lego
    filenames:    <see below>

    Directory Structure: ~ftp/pub/lego/
    CAD/    contains several languages for specifying models
    faq/    contains latest faq sheet for alt.toys.lego
    games/  Rules for games using lego people and pieces
    images/ Pictures and drawings of sets and instructions
    sets/   Database listings of lego sets and catalog numbers
    upload/ Place your files here!

  Lego kits recommended for robotics work include:
  1038 Technical Universal Buggy - dual drive vehicle. $60
  1032 Technic II w/ motorized transmission - $76
  9605 Technic Resource Set - general parts kits - $200

  Lego-to-Mac software:
    Paradigm Software    617.576.7675
    Bots             415.949.2126
  MIT has papers on LEGO projects available via FTP from:
    site:    kame.media.mit.edu.
    dir:    pub/el-memos
    file:    memo8.* "LEGO/LOGO: Learning Through and About Design"

Meccano/Erector
    There are several mechanical construction systems available.
The best source of info I've seen is a list put together by Colin
Hinz:
    location:    psych.toronto.edu
    directory:    /ftp/pub/
    filenames:    meccano
    The German model train company, Maerklin makes a Meccano
compatible construction set. They also have a 1007 Robotic Arm kit and
programmable controller as well. ~$300 You may be able to order it
through a local train and hooby shop.

Mondotronics
524 San Anselmo Ave.,
#107
San Anselmo, CA 94960
tel: [phone]
     800.374.5764
fax: [phone]
net: <[e-mail]>
  A number of muscle wire (nitinol) projects including a small walking
  machine.  Book and sample kit with 1m each of 50, 100 and 150 um
  wire, enough to build all 14 projects in the book.

OWI (Movit robots)
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
Available from:
    Kelvin Electronics     800.645.9212
    Pitsco          800.835.0686
    Edmund Scientific (See Robot Parts section for address)
  These are small toy-like robots that reflexively respond to
  obstacles, sounds or light depending on the model. They're cute and
  show what can be done with a relatively small amount of hardware.
  Edmund also has a Robotic Technology Curriculum with lessons and
  tests featuring the Movit robots. Curriculum is $65 from Edmund
  Scientific.

QuikShut (?)
Circuit Specialists Inc
PO Box 3047
Scottsdale, AZ 85271-3047
tel: [phone]
tel: [phone]
  Sold by Circuit Specialists for $259. Appears to be a nice low cost
  5 axis arm for education. IBM (or compatible) interface, kit
  including all components and board, power supply kit, software
  package, logic probe and experiments and instructions. If anyone has
  information as to who actually makes this please send me email.

Stiquito
  A small nitinol-based mobile robot is available from Indiana
  University in a technical report and as a kit. Send your request for
  the report with payment to:
    Computer Science Department
    215 Lindley Hall
    Indiana University
    Bloomington, IN  47405
  To receive the technical report only:
    Send  $5.00 PRE-PAID and add ATTN: TR363A
  To receive the technical report and a complete kit:
    Send $15.00 PRE-PAID and add ATTN: TR 363A Squito Kit

Tomy Armatron
  Sold by Radio Shack in the US, the Armatron was a popular small
  plastic manipulator and later a mobile version was sold.  A number
  of articles appeared in the hobbyist press regarding linking the
  Armatrons to computers.  The mobile version is still being sold in
  Japan and is called the "GO ROBO ARM" You might be able to pick one
  up at a flea market or garage sale. Buy it - they are neat clever
  devices and fun.

_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Other organizations doing robotics:
What companies and government laboratories are doing robotics work?
This list is a small fraction of companies and other organizations
that are actively working in robotics. By searching through
proceedings of conferences, by noting member companies of many of the
organizations listed in previous FAQ sections a significant number of
companies can be generated. Industrial robotics is used widely
throughout a number of companies. Most large aerospace companies have
groups working in or looking into robotics. Martin Marietta (Denver),
Rockwell International (Downey, CA), Boeing (Seattle) to name a
few. Mitre Corporation of McLean VA and Houston TX, is also doing
quite a bit in robotics.

Advanced Robotics Research Centre
Salford, UK.
  The Advanced Robotics Research Ltd (incorporating the National
  Advanced Robotics Research Centre, UK) is a joint UK Government and
  UK Industries funded research organisation involved in the research
  of enabling technologies for the advanced robotics systems.

Mechanical Engineering Lab (MEL)
Tsukuba City
  Kazuo Tanie: Robotics and cybernetics

NASA Centers
------------
  There are a number of NASA Centers that are researching and using
robotics for lab prototypes, flight, ground servicing and many other
applications.

NASA Jet Propulsion Labs (JPL)
Pasadena, CA
  Hazardous-environment robots, teloperation, control, space and
  planetary missions. Currently responsible for MESUR Pathfinder
  rover.
  Contacts: Tony Bejczy, Chuck Weisbin, Brian Wilcox, Larry Mathies,
  Henry Stone, Rajiv Desai.

NASA Ames Research Center (ARC)
Moffett Field, CA
Contact: Butler Hine III <[e-mail]>
     Terry Fong <[e-mail]>
  Telepresence and virtual user interfaces, vision (optical and parallel
  processing), free-flyers, task planning, agents. Ames has recently
  fielded a underwater vehicle in the Antarctic. The Teleoperated
  Remotely Operated Vehicle (TROV) purpose is to assess the capabilities
  of telepresence and virtual environments for performing remote
  scientific field work.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)
Greenbelt, MD 20771
Contact: Stephen Leake <[e-mail]>
  Since the cancellation of the Flight Telerobotic Servicer
  (FTS), the Robotics Lab has been concentrating on work in the
  area of automated space craft servicing.  The goal is to
  replace or supplement Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) with
  teleoperated or semiautonomous robotic systems for external
  vehicle maintenance. Current project includes a robot to
  assist in second Hubble servicing mission.

NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC)
Houston, TX
Contact: Charles Price
  More of an operations house but lots of shuttle RMS work. A number
  of robot projects including testing of space station manipulator
  systems happens at JSC.

NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC)
Robotics Group
Contact: Bill Jones
  Like JSC, KSC is an operations house with responsibility to keep
  shuttles flying and integrate payloads. There is a small but
  growing robotics group that is emplacing ground support robotics
  applications. Recent work includes filter inspector for launch pad
  payload areas, shuttle radiator inspector and a mobile system for
  thermal protection system tasks.

NASA Langley Research Center, (LaRC)
Hampton, VA
Contact: Jack Pennington - vision, inspection, 3-D sensors

National Laboratories
---------------------
The US National Laboratories are large complexes with a number of
robotics efforts. One current focus is the enormous and costly cleanup
of the weapons complexes throughout the country. Remediation, removal
and cleanup of hazardous materials will require hundreds of billions
of $$$ and many years. Robotics will be a key in much of this.

Sandia National Laboratories,
Albuquerque, NM
  Sandia is a DOE National Laboratory with a substantial program in
  robotics at its Intelligent Systems and Robotics Center. The Center
  has interests in manufacturing, hazardous material handling, site
  remediation, and research to support these
  applications. Consequently areas of focus include assembly planning,
  robotic interfaces, control theory, motion planning, sensor
  fusion, sensor development, mobile vehicles, telemanagement, mobile
  vehicles, and so on. At the time of writing (2/15/93) the center has
  nearly 100 full-time staff with degrees in computer science,
  mechanical engineering, mathematics, electrical engineering, as well
  as a few in other fields. The mix is about 30% PhD, 40%MS, and 30%
  BS. Recent hires have come from Cornell, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU,
  Illinois, Penn, ... The center operates over 20 fully equipted labs
  including robots from Puma, Adept, GCA, Cincinnati Millacron, and
  Schilling.  The virtual reality lab includes stereoscopic viewers
  from Fake Space, audio, speech recognition and synthesis, and big
  boxes from SGI to drive the graphics. In addition to the normal
  complement of departmental computing we have use of other compute
  resources at Sandia including a 1000 node N-cube, a 1000+node Intel
  Paragon, several crays, a CM-200 (16K procs).
    Contacts: Randy Brost, Pat Xavier, Sharon Stansfield, Pang
    Chen, David Strip, Jim Novak, Ray Harrigan, Pat Eicker, Bob
    Anderson.

Oak Ridge National Lab
ORNL/CESAR
PO Box 2008, MS-6364
Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6364
tel: [phone]
Contact: Alex L. Bangs <[e-mail]>
  Center for Engineering Systems Advanced Research (CESAR)
  Research in mobile and manipulator robotics, including redundant
  and multiple manipulators, cooperating mobile robots, parallel
  vision systems, sensor fusion, real-time quantitative reasoning
  and behavior based control, and machine learning. Current
  applications include robots for nuclear power stations,
  environmental restoration and waste management, material
  handling, and space exploration.
  Researchers: Alex Bangs, Marty Beckerman, Judd Jones, Reinhold Mann,
    Ed Oblow, Francois Pin, Michael Unseren

Redzone Robotics
2425 Liberty Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15222-4639
tel: [phone]
fax: [phone]
  A spin-off of CMU, Redzone has focused on hazwaste and nuke
  manipulator applications but is also developing mobile
  applications. Primarily protoypes and not multiple unit
  manufacturing.

Southwest Research Institute
San Antonio, TX
Robotics and Automation Department
  Some large systems for servicing aircraft (painting, spraying,
  deriveting etc)

+++Architectures for Robots
______________________________________________________________________________

A robot 'architecture' primarily refers to the software and hardware
framework for controlling the robot. A VME board running C code to
turn motors doesn't really constitute an architecture by itself. The
development of code modules and the communication between them begins
to define the architecture.

Robotic systems are complex and tend to be difficult to develop. They
integrate multiple sensors with effectors, have many degrees of
freedom and must reconcile hard real-time systems with systems which
cannot meet real-time deadlines [Jones93]. System developers have
typically relied upon robotic architectures to guide the construction
of robotic devices and for providing computational services (e.g.,
communications, processing, etc.) to subsystems and components. These
architectures, however, have tended thus far to be task and domain
specific and have lacked suitability to a broad range of applications.
For example, an architecture well suited for direct teleoperation
tends not to be amenable for supervisory control or for autonomous
use.

One recent trend in robotic architectures has been a focus on
behavior-based or reactive systems. Behavior based refers to the fact
that these systems exhibit various behaviors, some of which are
emergent [Man92]. These systems are characterized by tight coupling
between sensors and actuators, minimal computation, and a
task-achieving "behavior" problem decomposition.

The other leading architectural trend is typified by a mixture of
asynchronous and synchronous control and data flow. Asychronous
processes are characterized as loosely coupled and event-driven
without strict execution deadlines. Synchronous processes, in
contrast, are tightly coupled, utilize a common clock and demand hard
real-time execution.

Subsumption/reactive references
-------------------------------
Arkin, R.C., "Integrating Behavioral, Perceptual, and World Knowledge
in Reactive Navigation", Robotics & Autonomous Systems, 1990

Brooks, R.A., "A Robust Layered Control System for a Mobile Robot",
IEEE Journal of Robotics and Automation, March 1986.

Brooks, R.A., "A Robot that Walks; Emergent Behaviors from a Carefully
Evolved Network", Neural Comutation 1(2) (Summer 1989)

Connell, J.H., "A Colony Architecture for an Artificial Creature", MIT
Ph. D. Thesis in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1989.

Erann Gat, et al, "Behavior Control for Robotic Exploration of
Planetary Surfaces" To be published in IEEE R&A. FTPable.
    site:         robotics.jpl.nasa.gov
    location:     pub/gat
    filename:    bc4pe.rtf

Insect-based control schemes
----------------------------
Randall D. Beer, Roy E. Ritzmann, and Thomas McKenna, editors, Biological
Neural Networks in Invertebrate Neuroethology and Robotics, Academic Press,
1993.

Hillel J. Chiel, et al, "Robustness of a Distributed Neural Network
Controller for Locomotion in a Hexapod Robot," IEEE Transactions on
Robotics and Automation, 8(3):293-303, June, 1992.

Joseph Ayers and Jill Crisman, "Biologically-Based Control of
Omnidirectional Leg Coordination," Proceedings of the 1992 IEEE/RSJ
International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 574-581.

Asynchronous/synchronous (i.e., "traditional", "top-down", etc.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Amidi, O., "Integrated Mobile Robot Control", CMU-RI-TR-90-17,
Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 1990.

Albus, J.S., McCain, H.G., and Lumia, R., "NASA/NBS Stanford Reference
Model for Telerobot Control System Architecture (NASREM)" NIST
Technical Note 1235, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD, July 1987.

Butler, P.L., and Jones, J.P., "A Modular Control Architecture for
Real-Time Synchronous and Asynchronous Systems", Proceedings of SPIE
Applications of Artificial Intelligence 1993, Orlando, FL, 1993.

Fong, T.W., "A Computational Architecture for Semi-autonomous Robotic
Vehicles", AIAA Computing in Aerospace conference, AIAA 93-4508, 1993.

Lin, L., Simmons, R., and Fedor, C., "Experience with a Task Control
Architecture for Mobile Robots", CMU-RI-TR 89-29, Robotics Institute,
Carnegie Mellon University, December 1989.

Schneider, S.A., Ullman, M.A., and Chen, V.W., "ControlShell: A
Real-time Software Framework", Real-Time Innovations, Inc., Sunnyvale,
CA 1992.

______________________________________________________________________________
+++Graduate Program in Robotics:

Any good four-year school undoubtedly offers robotics courses within
engineering programs. Departments of mechanical and electrical
engineering and computer science are all good candidates for
coursework in Robotics. However, a number of schools have established
track records and a focus on robotics and those are listed here.

The list is not exhaustive and a number of entries are incomplete, but
it's a good starting point for those interested in graduate programs.

---Student Who's Who

An additional source of information is the graduate student guide
compiled by Ron Kube. It is a list of graduate students, their
university, and their areas of research. The list is updated monthly
and can be found at
    location:    ftp.cs.ualberta.ca
    directory:    /pub/kube
    filename:    whoswho

UNITED STATES-------

Boston University
  Dept. of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering:
  John Baillieul:  Control of Mechanical Systems and Mathematical
    System Theory.
  Pierre Dupont:  Robot Kinematics and Dynamics, Friction Compensation
    in Robotics.
  Ann Stokes:  Theoretical Dynamics and Control.
  Matt Berkemeier:  Legged Robots, Robot Control.

California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
  Pasadena, CA
    Joel Burdick - serpentine manipulation, control

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
  The Robotics Institute is a 150 person organization that offers
  a PhD in Robotics but students from other programs (engineering and
  computer science mostly) do research in the Institute as well. Lots
  of mobile robot work, computer integrated manufacturing, rapid
  prototyping, sensors, vision, navigation, learning and architectures.
  Program is taking a set of qualifiers and a program of research
  leading to a thesis and the degree.

  Facilities include about a dozen mobile systems with more under
  design and construction. Many manipulator systems and lots of
  compute cycles/person. Faculty include:
    Takeo Kanade - Vision and Autonomous Systems Center
    Pradeep Khosla - Advanced Manipulator Laboartory
    Matt Mason - Manipulation Laboratory
    Tom Mitchell - Learning Robots Lab
    Hans Moravec - Mobile Robots Lab
    Mel Seigel - Sensors Laboratory (non vision)
    Steve Shafer - Calibrated Imaging Laboratory
    Red Whittaker - Field Robotics Center
    and many others.....
        Graduate program contact:
        Graduate Admissions Coordinator
        The Robotics Institute
        Carnegie Mellon University
        Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Colorado School of Mines
Mobile Robotics/Machine Perception Laboratory
Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
    The Colorado School of Mines is a state university,
internationally renowned in the energy, materials, and resource
fields, attracting outstanding students in a broad range of science
and engineering disciplines.  The School of Mines is strongly
committed to quality teaching and research. CSM provides an attractive
campus environment, a collegial atmosphere, relatively small size
(3000 students, about 30% in graduate programs), and an ideal location
in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains 13 miles from downtown Denver
and an hour from most ski areas.

    The Dept. of Mathematical and Computer Sciences offers BS, MS,
and PhD degrees under the department title.  With a faculty of 18
tenured and tenure track members, the department annually receives
roughly a million dollars in grants; 116 undergraduate students and 70
graduate students are currently enrolled in ou r degree programs.  The
computer science group within the department has a strong focus in AI
(symbolic and neural nets) and database and parallel processing syst
ems. The Mobile Robotics/Machine Perception Laboratory is a facility
devoted to basic and interdisciplinary research, technology transfer,
and hands-on education in artificial intelligence through robotics.
Research and technology transfer efforts concentrate on the reduction
of human risk in hazardous situations, stewardship of the environment,
and/or improvement of the quality of life throug h better
manufacturing processes. Research in the MR/MP laboratory is supported
by NSF, ARPA, NASA, and local industries.

    For more information, please send email to Dr. Robin R.
Murphy, [e-mail].  Include a brief summary of your
educational (with GPA) and work experience, what your research
interests are, and GRE scores.

Cornell
  Ithaca, NY
  Mechanical Engineering
    Sam Landsberger
    Jeff Koechling
    Bruce Donald

Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA
Georgia Institute of Technology Robotics Activities
     Application study areas:
     Servo control and low level coordination
     Machine intelligence and high level control
     Design, sensors and actuators
     Human/machine interface

Robot applications are in areas such as manufacturing {K. Lee} poultry
processing {W.  Daley, G. McMurray, J.C. Thompson} and nuclear waste
inspection and cleanup {R.  Arkin, W. Book, S. Dickerson, T. Collins,
A. Henshaw} are underway.

        Several robotics researchers are regularly involved in a
student aerial robot design competition in which concurrent
engineering concepts are being used to tailor the characteristics of
the system.{D. Schrage} This competition, held at Georgia Tech and
sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems, has been
won by Georgia Tech entries for two of the three years it has been
held.
--Current research topics and researchers:
Long arm control {W. Book}
Parallel actuation of manipulators {K. Lee}
3DOF  direct drive actuator {K. Lee}
Special purpose end-effectors {R. Bohlander, H.  Lipkin}
Parallel processing computer architectures for  robot sensing and control.
{R.  Bohlander, C. Alford, T. Collins, A. Henshaw}
Laser generated ultrasound to sense structure of materials {C. Ume}
Gallium arsenide based rad-hard electronics. {W. Hunt}
Autonmous vehicles positioning {S. Dickerson}
Collision avoidance techniques {R. Arkin, W. Book}
Flexible arm control {W. Book}
Two arm coordinated motion.{Alford, Vachtsevanos}
Advanced feedback control, learning control, bounded uncertainty
approach, applications to rigid and flexible manipulators, force
control . {N Sadegh, Y Chen, W. Book}
Architectures, Framework for reactive control and hierarchical planning, vision
feedback, fuzzy logic application {Arkin, D. Lawton, G Vachtsevanos}
Human Computer Interaction {M Kelly, H. Lipkin}

Harvard
    Roger Brockett

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science both have strong
  robotics efforts. Asada, Slotine, Brooks, Raibert and others
  are known and respected for their work in direct-drive arm, control
  techniques, architectures, running machines etc.

New York University (NYU)
  Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
    Richard Wallace - vision

North Carolina State Univerisity
Raleigh, NC
  Professor Ren Luo
  919.515.5199

Purdue
 Avi Kak: Vision and mobile robots
 Antti Koivo: Manipulation
 Mirek Skibiniewski: Construction Robotics

Rennsalear Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
  Center for Intelligent Robotic Systems for Space Exploration (CIRSSE)
    George Saridis
    Arthur Sanderson
    Jon Wenn
  Appro. 20 PhD and 30 MS students working in the center. Path
  planning and multi-arm control are current focus.

Stanford University
  Palo Alto, CA
  Mechanical Engineering:
    Bernard Roth (kinematics of manipulators)
    Mark Cutkosky: destrous manipulation and concurrent manufacturing
    Larry Liefer (rehabilitation, user interfaces)
  CS Department:
    Nils Nilsson
    Mike Genesereth
    Jean-Claude Latombe (path planning and geometric reasoning)
    Leo Guibas (geometric reasoning)
    Tom Binford (vision)
    Yoav Shoham (agents)
    Oussama Khatib
  Aerospace Robotics Laboratory:
    Bob Cannon (teleoperation, free flyers, space robotics,
    flexible manipulators)

University of California at Berkeley
  Faculty in Robotics at UC Berkeley
    Dept. of EE&CS:
    Prof. J. Canny: motion planning
    Prof. R. Fearing: tactile sensing, dextrous manipulation
    Prof. J. Malik: computer vision
    Prof. S. Sastry: multi-fingered hands, control
  Dept. of Optometry/EE&CS:
    Prof. L. Stark: telerobotics
  Dept. of Mechanical Engineering:
    Prof. R. Horowitz: control of robotic manipulators
    Prof. H. Kazerooni: man-robotic systems
    Prof. M. Tomizuka: control of robotic manipulators
    Richard Muller - micro mechanisms

University of Kansas
Space Technology Center (Telerobotics)

University of Kentucky
Center for Robotics and Manufacturing Systems
(founded 1990)

University of Massachusetts
Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics
Computer Science Department
Mosaic -  http://piglet.cs.umass.edu:4321/lpr.html
Faculty:
    Rod Grupen
    Robin Popplestone
  The lab is equipped with two General Electric P-50 robots, two GE
  A4s, a Zebra Zero, and a Denning mobile platform.  In addition, the
  P-50s are fitted with a 4-fingered Utah/MIT and a 3-fingered
  Stanford/JPL* dexterous hand, respectively.  The lab includes
  VxWorks distributed VME controllers and an experimental real-time
  kernel (Spring kernel).  Research conducted at the lab includes:
    o controller composition for coordinating multiple robots
    o grasp planning
    o geometric reasoning for robust assembly & fine motion control
    o learning for admittance control & path optimization
    o biological models of motor planning
    o proprioceptive, tactile, & visual model acquisition
    o trajectory planning, coarse reaching
    o state-space decomposition
  The laboratory also engages in collaborative research with the
  Computer Vision (A. Hanson, E. Riseman, directors) and Adaptive
  Networks (A. Barto, director) groups within the department.

University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
  Elec. Eng. and CS, relevant to robotics
  includes machine vision, systems and control, multiple cooperating
  agents (arms and mobile), and application of SOAR to robots (arms and
  mobile). (in conjunction with SOAR groups at CMU and elsewhere)
  Contacts:    Johann Borenstein <[e-mail]>
        Yorem Koren <[e-mail]>

University of Pennsylvania.
  UPenn offers Masters and PhD programs in Robotics and Robotics related
  fields of study. These programs are offered through the Departments of
  Computer and Information Science, Systems Engineering, and Mechanical
  Engineering and Applied Mechanics. The bulk of the robotics research
  is conducted in the inter-disciplinary General Robotics and Active
  Sensory Perception (GRASP) laboratory. Active areas of research are
  Telerobotics, Multiple Arm Control, Robotic Vision, Learning Control,
  Multi-agent Robotics and Mechanical Design. Leading Faculty members
  are Drs. R. Bajcsy and R.P. Paul.

University of Southern California (USC)
  USC has a new MS Program called: Master of Science in Computer
  Science with specialization in Robotics & Automation
    Beginning in Fall, 1993, this new MS program seeks to prepare
  students for a career in the application of Computer Science to
  design, manufacturing, and robotics. It also serves as an
  introduction to this area for students who wish to pursue advanced
  studies and research leading to a Ph.D.  A major goal is to produce
  a steady stream of graduates who are qualified to tackle challenging
  problems in the development of software for CAD/CAM (Computer-Aided
  Design and Manufacturing) and robotics.
    There is a strong focus on designing and building within the
  program Exposure to the practical aspects (and difficulties) of
  robotics and automation is strongly encouraged through laboratory
  work, and an optional thesis, conducted in collaboration with
  industry and research laboratories.
    For additional information, a complete set of degree requirements,
  and application materials, contact our Student Coordinator:
     Ms. Amy Yung
    Computer Science Department
    University of Southern California
    Los Angeles, CA 90089-0781
    tel: [phone]
    net: <[e-mail]>
  Faculty include:
  George Bekey : Assembly planning, design for assembly,
                 neural nets for robot control, autonomous robots.
  Ken Goldberg : Motion planning, grasping, machine learning.
  Sukhan Lee : Assembly planning, sensor-based manipulation.
  Gerard Medioni: Computer vision.
  Ramakant Nevatia: Computer vision.
  Keith Price: Computer vision.
  Aristides Requicha: Geometric modeling, geometric uncertainty,
            planning for manufacture and inspection

  About twenty other faculty member associated with the Institute for
  Robotics and Intelligent Systems and many others associated with
  USC's Information Sciences Institute (ISI).
  Brochure can be obtained from:
    Ken Goldberg, Asst Professor
    IRIS, Dept of Computer Science
    Powell Hall Room 204
    University of Southern California
    Los Angeles, CA 90089-0273
    Internet: [e-mail]

University of Maryland
  Space Systems Laboratory. Facilties include a large neutral bouyancy tank,
  and a number of free-flying teleoperators used underwater in the
  NBT. Much teleoperations research.
    Dave Akin - director
  Dave has flown shuttle experiments and his research is in the areas
  of teleoperation, control, man-machine interaction and is one of the
  very few in the robotics community to fly hardware in space.

The University of Texas at Arlington
  F.L. Lewis
  Automation and Robotics Research Institute
  University of Texas at Arlington
  7300 Jack Newell Blvd S
  Ft. Worth, TX 76118
  tel: [phone]
  fax: [phone]
  UT Arlington is located in the heart of the Dallas / Ft. Worth
  metroplex.  The EE department current has 33 faculty and the CSE
  department has 20 faculty.  Participating students will also be able
  to conduct research at the Automation and Robotics Research Institute
  located in Ft. Worth.


University of Wisconsin-Madison
   Mechanical Engineering & Electrical Engineering:
   Roland Chin         - machine vision, pattern recognition
   Neil Duffie         - teleoperation, autonomous systems, sensors
   Robert Lorenz       - actuators and sensors, robot control algorithms
   Vladimir Lumelsky   - motion planning, real-time sensing and navigation
   Computer Science:
   Charles Dyer        - machine vision
   Wisconsin Center for Space Robotics and Automation (WCSAR) -
   Interdepartmental NASA center: work is done on various applications
   of robotic systems for space.

University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
Steve Jacobsen
Center for Engineering Design
3176 MEB
  Hands, manipulators, biomedical applications, teleoperation. Micro
  electro-mechanical systems design.

Yale University - Vision and Robotics Group
  There is a broad spectrum of research activities in vision and
  robotics at Yale.  The members of this group include faculty from
  Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Psychology, Neuroscience,
  and the Yale Medical School. Active areas of research include
  machine vision, humanand computer object recognition, geometric
  reasoning, mobile robotics, sensor-based manipulation, control of
  highly dynamic nonlinear systems, planning, and learning.  There is
  also a wide spectrum of interdisciplinary work integrating robotics
  and machine vision.
  Faculty:
  James S. Duncan: Geometric/physical models for analysing biomedical
    images.
  Gregory D. Hager: Sensor-based/task-directed decision-making and
    planning.
  David J. Kriegman: Model-based object recognition, mobile robot
    navigation.
  Drew McDermott: Planning and scheduling reactive behavior, knowledge
    representation, cognitive mapping.
  Eric Mjolsness: Neural network approaches to vision and visual
    memory.
  Pat Sharpe: Computational models of hippocampal spatial learning.
  Michael J. Tarr: Behavioral and computational approaches to visual
    cognition.
  Kenneth Yip: Automated reasoning about complex dynamical systems.

CANADA------------

McGill University
  Department of Biomedical Engineering
  3775 University Street
  Montreal, Quebec, Canada
  H3A 2B4
  Faculty: Ian Hunter and John Hollerbach
  Interests include: Master-slave manipulators for precise surgery

University of Alberta
Edmontom, Alberta
Canada T6H 2H1
  Center for Machine Intelligence and Robotics
  Robotics Research Laboratory, Department of Computing Science
  Ron Kube

UNITED KINGDOM--------------



University of the West of England at Bristol
    [I had some email from David Eastlake on this in Jan but no
followup - please send when you can. Thanks - nivek]

Bristol University
  Mr Khodlebandelhoo
  Bi arm research
  Path planning for redundant robots
  Wall climbing robots

Hull University, UK
  Prof Alan Pugh
  Garment Manufacturing
  Arm/controller design

University of Oxford
Robotics Research Group
  The Robotics Group currently comprises about seventy academics,
  postdoctoral research staff, overseas visitors, and graduate
  students.  A broad range of topics in advanced robotics is studied
  in collaboration with industry and government establishments
  throughout Europe.
    Robot Design and Control
  A number of projects are concerned with the design and control of
  compliant robot arms.
    Parallel Architectures
  Real-time sensor-based control of systems such as robot vehicles is
  a topic of increasing interest.  For low bandwidth sensors such
  sonar, the emphasis is on Transputer architectures.  For high
  bandwidth sensors such as vision, hybrid SIMD/MIMD architectures are
  being developed.  A rapidly growing effort is concerned with the
  design, implementation, and application of neural networks.  Digital
  and hybrid digital/analog chips have been designed and are being
  fabricated.  Algorithms and TTL circuits have been constructed for
  text-to-speech synthesis.
    Vision and Active Vision
  The theory and applications of vision accounts for approximately
  one-third of the laboratory's effort.  Current projects include edge
  detection and texture segmentation and the computation of visual
  motion by a parallel algorithm that estimates the optic flow field.
    Sensors and Sensor Integration
  Includes laser rangefinder development in addition to analog and
  digital sonar sensors, as well as infrared rangers, have been
  developed for the AGV project (below).
    Autonomous Guided Vehicles
  Work on a research prototype of a fielded industrial AGV cuts across
  many of the separate themes of the laboratory's work.  The goal of
  the initial project is to equip the AGV with sonar, infrared, laser
  ranging, trinocular stereo, and model-based vision sensors to enable
  it to avoid unexpected obstacles and to locate pallets.

Reading University, UK
  Prof Kevin Warwick
  Using neural nets in robotics and novel control algorithms.

Salford University
    Dr D.P.Barnes
    Dept. Of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
    Mobile Robots Research Group.
  Autonomous mobile robot system with a behaviour-based architecture are
  designed and built with the intent to study the processes of
  cooperation with and without communication. Such an approach has led
  us up a number of paths with present work in behaviour synthesis and
  evolutionary robotics.  Expertise in: Robotics, Sensors,
  Communication, Connectionist Systems, Genetic Algorithms and Genetic
  Programming.  Possible studies in PhD and MSc work and courses at
  undergraduate level.
    Dr D.Caldwell
    Dept Of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
  Multi-Functional Tactile Sensing and Feedback (Tele-taction)
  Tele-presence of an operator with a full mobile robot with two
  manipulator arms, stereo vision and sound. Tactile sensing
  datagloves are used to control the manipulators and video camera is
  used to move head (!).  Expertise: Manipulators, Sensors,
  Tele-presence. Possible studies at PhD and MSc and courses at
  undergraduate level.
    Advanced Robotics Research Centre
  Ultrasonic wrist sensor for collision avoidance
  Controller design
  Stereo Vision
    Dr Francis Nagy
  Speech Control of a Puma-560
  Control of an 'Inverted Pendulum'
  Miniature tactile sensors

University of Surrey
  Mechatronic Systems and Robotics Research Group
  contacts:
  Prof G A Parker ([e-mail])
  John Pretlove    ([e-mail])
  Primary Areas of Research activity:
  3D co-ordinate tracking system for robot metrology
  Neural networks and expert systems for vision and inspection
  Active stereo vision for real-time robot arm guidance
  Design of controllable stereo vision systems.
  Open architecture Puma controller
  Mobile robots
  We also offer MSc courses and undergraduate courses in automation,
  control, mechanical engineering and CIM.

FRANCE-------------
University of Paris
  INRIA (Nice) just started a Phd program in Robotics.

SWITZERLAND--------
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
  The Institute of Robotics
  Postgrad diploma in Mechatronics
  The Institute of Robotics at the Swiss Federal Institute of
  Technology (ETH) constitutes about 40 members of staff (including
  Ph.D. students). The main research theme is Intelligent Interactive
  Mechines. That is to say developing intelligent robots that in
  cooperation with man solves difficult tasks.  The institute takes
  its students from the departments of Electrical Engineering,
  Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. Robotics lectures and
  project work is offered to undergraduate students. In addition there
  is the "Nachdiplom" in mechatronics (somewhere near a M.Sc.) where
  robotics is a central theme. For further details on the "Nachdiplom"
  see below. Finally there are about 30 Ph.D. students curently
  registered working on a variety of themes and projects.  Institute
  facilities include: several different robot arms including the in
  house developed modular robot arm (MODRO), mobile vehicles including
  the in house developed modular mobile robot, walking machines,
  supercomputing facilities, dedicated vision and signal processing
  hardware, etc.
  The head of the group is Professor G. Schweitzer.
  Address:
    Institute of Robotics
    ETH-Center, LEO,
    8092 Zurich
    Switzerland
    tel: [phone] (secretary)
    fax: [phone].
The "Nachdiplom" in mechatronics runs over two semesters plus
three months project/thesis work. The lectures covers:
robotics, mobile robotics, micro robots, computer based
kinematics and dynamics of multibody systems, control
theory, magnetic bearings, real time software techniques,
information processing with neural networks, computer
vision, and artificial intelligence. The fees are 2400,-
Swiss Franks, founding is available. Contact:
    H.-K. Scherrer
    Mechatronics postgraduate course
    ETH-Centre, LEO B3
    8092 Zurich
    Switzerland
    net: <[e-mail]>

___________________________________________________________________________
End of part1

--

aka: Kevin Dowling            Carnegie Mellon University
tel: [phone]            The Robotics Institute
adr: [e-mail]            Pittsburgh, PA 15213
--

aka: Kevin Dowling            Carnegie Mellon University
tel: [phone]            The Robotics Institute
adr: [e-mail]            Pittsburgh, PA 15213