Industrieroboter gehoren heute zum Alltag. In den letzten zehn Jahren verlagerte sich der Schwerpunkt der Neuentwicklungen weg von den Robotern selbst, hin zu alternativen Formen der kunstlichen Intelligenz, mit denen die Gerate ausgestattet werden. Dem Rechnung tragend, beschaftigt sich die zweite Auflage dieses Handbuchs vor allem mit Anwendungen und Strategien zur Problemlosung in der Industrie. Angesprochen werden Themen wie Graphiksimulatoren, objektorientierte Software, Kommunikationssysteme und Mikro- und Nanoroboter. (04/99)

eMaintenance: Essential Electronic Tools for Efficiency enables the reader to improve efficiency of operations, maintenance staff, infrastructure managers and system integrators, by accessing a real time computerized system from data to decision. In recent years, the exciting possibilities of eMaintenance have become increasingly recognized as a source of productivity improvement in industry. The seamless linking of systems and equipment to control centres for real time reconfiguring is improving efficiency, reliability, and sustainability in a variety of settings. The book provides an introduction to collecting and processing data from machinery, explains the methods of overcoming the challenges of data collection and processing, and presents tools for data driven condition monitoring and decision making. This is a groundbreaking handbook for those interested in the possibilities of running a plant as a smart asset. - Provides an introduction to collecting and processing data from machinery - Explains how to use sensor-based tools to increase efficiency of diagnosis, prognosis, and decision-making in maintenance - Describes methods for overcoming the challenges of data collection and processing

It is a privilege to be asked to introduce this important work. Such a book has long been needed. Industrial manipulators and robots have caught the attention of the general public and become very fashionable in the last few years. The casual reader of current newspapers and magazit:les or the viewer of television and films might easily conclude that the development of mechanical hands, arms and legs or other mobility devices has progressed rapidly in only the last few years. Most people are unaware of the gradual orderly succession of creative designs and painstaking refinements which have been produced over a greater number of years. That story is carefully described in this volume, together with diagrams and photographs which document in detail this elegant phase in the history of machine design. This volume together with Volume 3A constitute the most complete and comprehensive work on manipulators and teleoperators. Jean Vertut and Philippe Coiffet are well known not only as authors but also as engineers who have produced some of the finest devices in the world. Of course for the complete history of manipulators and teleoperators one must look back to the artisans who crafted the delightful clock works, mechanical puppets and toys before and during the Renaissance.

This Handbook, with contributions from leading experts in the field, provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art account of virtual environments (VE). It serves as an invaluable source of reference for practitioners, researchers, and students in this rapidly evolving discipline. It also provides practitioners with a reference source to guide