Manipulation using dextrous robot hands has been an exciting yet frustrating research topic for the last several years. While significant progress has occurred in the design, construction, and low level control of robotic hands, researchers are up against fundamental problems in developing algorithms for real-time computations in multi-sensory processing and motor control. The aim of this book is to explore parallels in sensorimotor integration in dextrous robot and human hands, addressing the basic question of how the next generation of dextrous hands should evolve. By bringing together experimental psychologists, kinesiologists, computer scientists, electrical engineers, and mechanical engineers, the book covers topics that range from human hand usage in prehension and exploration, to the design and use of robotic sensors and multi-fingered hands, and to control and computational architectures for dextrous hand usage. While the ultimate goal of capturing human hand versatility remains elusive, this book makes an important contribution to the design and control of future dextrous robot hands through a simple underlying message: a topic as complex as dextrous manipulation would best be addressed by collaborative, interdisciplinary research, combining high level and low level views, drawing parallels between human studies and analytic approaches, and integrating sensory data with motor commands. As seen in this text, success has been made through the establishment of such collaborative efforts. The future will hold up to expectations only as researchers become aware of advances in parallel fields and as a common vocabulary emerges from integrated perceptions about manipulation.

Bionics evolved in the 1960s as a framework to pursue the development of artificial systems based on the study of biological systems. Numerous disciplines and technologies, including artificial intelligence and learningdevices, information processing, systems architecture and control, perception, sensory mechanisms, and bioenergetics, contributed to bionics research. This volume is based on a NATO Advanced Research Workshop within the Special Programme on Sensory Systems for Robotic Control, held in Il Ciocco, Italy, in June 1989. A consensus emerged at the workshop, and is reflected in the book, on the value of learning from nature in order to derive guidelines for the design of intelligent machines which operate in unstructured environments. The papers in the book are grouped into seven chapters: vision and dynamic systems, hands and tactile perception, locomotion, intelligent motor control, design technologies, interfacing robots to nervous systems, and robot societies and self-organization.

One of the most important problems in the field of engineering and technology is the development of so-called intelligent systems, which can perform various intellectual tasks. This book is dedicated to the current progress of research in this vast field and specifically explores the topics of robotics, mechatronics and manufacturing systems.

The simple task of grasping objects has been studied for centuries by scientists, therapists and engineers who have tried to understand and duplicate the versatility of the human hand. Using an interdisciplinary approach and new framework for looking at prehension, the authors uncover the subleties of the amazing interaction between the hand and the brain. They draw from such diverse fields as experimental psychology, kinesiology, robotics, neural networks, artificial intelligence, neuropsychology and rehabilitation. A triangle strategy is presented, starting from conceptual models that suggest both experimental and computational models. Chapters describe the multiple postures established by the hand, phases in the dynamic process of reaching for, grasping and manipulating various objects, and the constraints acting on such activity.Appendices provide the complete anatomy of the upper limb, the basics of computational modelling, and the fundamentals of prosthetic and dextrous robot hands. The ultimate goal of this book is to develop a common vocabularly for multidisciplinary researchers who strive to understand a system as complex as the hand under the control of the human brain.

Intelligent robotics has become the focus of extensive research activity. This effort has been motivated by the wide variety of applications that can benefit from the developments. These applications often involve mobile robots, multiple robots working and interacting in the same work area, and operations in hazardous environments like nuclear power plants. Applications in the consumer and service sectors are also attracting interest. These applications have highlighted the importance of performance, safety, reliability, and fault tolerance. This volume is a selection of papers from a NATO Advanced Study Institute held in July 1989 with a focus on active perception and robot vision. The papers deal with such issues as motion understanding, 3-D data analysis, error minimization, object and environment modeling, object detection and recognition, parallel and real-time vision, and data fusion. The paradigm underlying the papers is that robotic systems require repeated and hierarchical application of the perception-planning-action cycle. The primary focus of the papers is the perception part of the cycle. Issues related to complete implementations are also discussed.

Machines will gradually become programmed using computers which have the knowledge of how the objects in the world relate to one another. This book capitalizes on the fact that products which are manufactured can be designed on the computer and that information about the product such as its physical shape provide powerful information to reason about how to develop the process plan for their manufacture. This book explores the whole aspect of using the principles of how parts behave naturally to automatically generate programs that govern how to produce them. The last decade saw tremendous work on how machines can be programmed to perform a variety of tasks automatically. Robotics has witnessed the most work on programming techniques. But it was not until the emergence of the advanced CAD system as a proper source of information representation about objects which are to be manipulated by the robot that it became viable for automated processors to generate robot programs without human interface. It became possible for objects to be described and for principles about how they interact in the world to be developed. The functions which the features designed into the objects serve for the objects can be adequately represented and used in reasoning about the manufacturing of the parts using the robot. This book describes the necessary principles which must be developed for a robot to generate its own programs with the knowledge of the world in the CAD system.