This monograph by Florian Röhrbein, Germano Veiga and Ciro Natale is an edited collection of 15 authoritative contributions in the area of robot technology transfer between academia and industry. It comprises three parts on Future Industrial Robotics, Robotic Grasping as well as Human-Centered Robots. The book chapters cover almost all the topics nowadays considered ‘hot’ within the robotics community, from reliable object recognition to dexterous grasping, from speech recognition to intuitive robot programming, from mobile robot navigation to aerial robotics, from safe physical human-robot interaction to body extenders. All contributions stem from the results of ECHORD – the European Clearing House for Open Robotics Development, a large-scale integrating project funded by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme from 2009 to 2013. ECHORD’s two main pillars were the so-called experiments, 51 small-sized industry-driven research projects and the structured dialog a powerful interaction instrument between the stakeholders. The results described in this volume are expected to shed new light on innovation and technology transfer from academia to industry in the field of robotics.

Long hours, low wages, and unsafe workplaces characterized sweatshops a hundred years ago. These same conditions plague American trucking today. Sweatshops on Wheels: Winners and Losers in Trucking Deregulation exposes the dark side of government deregulation in America's interstate trucking industry. In the years since deregulation in 1980, median earnings have dropped 30% and most long-haul truckers earn less than half of pre-regulation wages. Work weeks average more than sixty hours. Today, America's long-haul truckers are working harder and earning less than at any time during the last four decades. Written by a former long-haul trucker who now teaches industrial relations at Wayne State University, Sweatshops on Wheels raises crucial questions about the legacy of trucking deregulation in America and casts provocative new light on the issue of government deregulation in general.

Less than five years after naval aviation led the forces that defeated Imperial Japan that very organization was in serious trouble. The force had been drastically reduced and, despite the Korean War, growing sentiment supported by no less than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs argued that the new Air Force could do anything naval aviation might be required to do. Meanwhile, the naval aviation mishap rate soared. The very survival of naval aviation was at stake. It took fifty years to turn this around. Today, in spite of hot wars, cold wars, contingencies, and peacetime operations in support of friends and allies, the Navy and Marine Corps accident rate is at least as good as that of the Air Force, and it approaches that of commercial aviation. Gear Up, Mishaps Down explains that this accomplishment was achieved through dedicated and professional leadership, a focus on lessons learned from mishaps and near-mishaps, a willingness to learn from other enterprises, and by better leadership, training, maintenance, supply and more.

Transform your business idea into a high potential venture Big, bright and brilliant, Gear Up is an engaging and practical workbook for anyone looking to pursue a fresh business opportunity or grow an existing one. Developed at Harvard Business School and Stanford University, it's a bootcamp with clear, easy-to-follow steps to test your business idea, assess its potential and make it work! Based on a revolutionary 9-component framework, Gear Up offers entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, innovative executives and business students a toolkit to bring their ideas to life and transform them into high potential ventures. Gear Up offers a useable business tool for assessing the needs of a business idea and helps you create a plan of action to promote business success. By working through the chapters of the book, you get to create a winning strategy based on recommendations tried and tested by executives around the world. Gear Up offers: - A step by step guide to help you build a foundation for your business opportunity - Solid business framework formulated from entrepreneurs, academics and real life experience - A highly practical workbook with visual, full-colour design and compelling layout Gear Up also comes with educators' support materials available at gearupventures.com PowerPoint presentations with teaching notes Online course materials Course Schedule Evaluation Forms Certificate for students who complete the course Coming soon! - An innovative, interactive digital toolkit Gear Up Virtual Toolkit (powered by You Noodle): A digital platform where participants can present their enterprise idea, work through the framework, answering questions and get real-time feedback from their facilitator/educator. The tool will even generate a ready-made PowerPoint presentation at the end of the process! Gear Up Mobile App (powered by We Chat): This app allows students to answer questions from their lecturers or vote in real-time from their phones within the classroom. The app promotes student engagement and class participation.