Hardbound. This symposium brought together end-users, managers and designers to examine and discuss the interaction between automated systems and related technologies and those working with them. It is increasingly clear that the optimum method to implement modern production processes is to involve all participants in the systems paying particular attention to the needs and abilities of end users and machine operators. The papers in this volume represent progress towards the goal of an increase in the efficiency of technology and the workforce and the realization of a skill based system of manufacturing, process and clerical work.

Paperback. These proceedings contain the papers presented at the 6th IFAC Symposium on Automated Systems Based on Human Skill (Joint Design of Technology and Organisation) held in Kranjska gora, Slovenia. The symposium theme was split into two different industry-oriented workshops. Production 2000 was an international event with the emphasis on the most recent developments in German industry. East meets West was an international gathering exchanging experiences among the different countries from Eastern Europe and the Western countries.

This Proceedings contains the papers presented at the IFAC Symposium on Automated systems based on human skill held in Aachen, Germany on 15 - 17 June, 2000. Following the previous six Symposia of the same name, the 7th Symposium brought together researchers, developers and users of control and information systems. The areas of discussion were: -the role of the individual human operator at the work place (human-machine interaction and mental models, skills, motivation, health and satisfaction, creativity in problem-solving and design, quality of working life, safety, responsibility and blame -work-groups supported by technology (human communication and co-operation, participation in decision processes, decision-support systems) -networks of groups and enterprises, (supporting networks of information, control and transportation systems, computer-supported co-operative work, modelling of enterprises) -the impact of control and information technology on society and the natural environment (issues of national strategies, employment and qualification, change, education and re-learning, the roles of trade unions, gender issues, medicine, culture, conviviality and ethics) -the Control Challenge in the 21st Century Emphasis of several discussions was on regional development in view of the global challenges. Furthermore the symbiosis of automation and information technology with art and craft enriched the symposium through the contributions of different artists.

These proceedings contain the papers presented at the 5th IFAC Symposium on Automated Systems Based on Human Skill, held in Berlin, Germany, 26-28 September 1995. The symposium, like previous ones in the series, brought together researchers, developers and users of complex human-machine systems. Discussions covered manufacturing, process control, aircraft and air traffic control, and administrative processes with an emphasis on how to design such systems and integrate both developers and users into the design process. The main issues addressed, therefore, were the joint engineering of production processes, information technology and work organisation and the possibility that this may lead to the re-definition of human operators in process automation.

I*PROMS 2005 is an online web-based conference. It provides a platform for presenting, discussing, and disseminating research results contributed by scientists and industrial practitioners active in the area of intelligent systems and soft computing techniques (such as fuzzy logic, neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, and knowledge-based systems) and their application in different areas of manufacturing. Comprised of 100 peer-reviewed articles, this important resource provides tools to help enterprises achieve goals critical to the future of manufacturing.I*PROMS is an European Union-funded network that involves 30 partner organizations and more than 130 researchers from universities, research organizations, and corporations.* State-of-the-art research results * Leading European researchers and industrial practitioners * Comprehensive collection of indexed and peer-reviewed articles in book format supported by a user-friendly full-text CD-ROM with search functionality

In the last decades robots are expected to be of increasing intelligence to deal with a large range of tasks. Especially, robots are supposed to be able to learn manipulation skills from humans. To this end, a number of learning algorithms and techniques have been developed and successfully implemented for various robotic tasks. Among these methods, learning from demonstrations (LfD) enables robots to effectively and efficiently acquire skills by learning from human demonstrators, such that a robot can be quickly programmed to perform a new task. This book introduces recent results on the development of advanced LfD-based learning and control approaches to improve the robot dexterous manipulation. First, there's an introduction to the simulation tools and robot platforms used in the authors' research. In order to enable a robot learning of human-like adaptive skills, the book explains how to transfer a human user’s arm variable stiffness to the robot, based on the online estimation from the muscle electromyography (EMG). Next, the motion and impedance profiles can be both modelled by dynamical movement primitives such that both of them can be planned and generalized for new tasks. Furthermore, the book introduces how to learn the correlation between signals collected from demonstration, i.e., motion trajectory, stiffness profile estimated from EMG and interaction force, using statistical models such as hidden semi-Markov model and Gaussian Mixture Regression. Several widely used human-robot interaction interfaces (such as motion capture-based teleoperation) are presented, which allow a human user to interact with a robot and transfer movements to it in both simulation and real-word environments. Finally, improved performance of robot manipulation resulted from neural network enhanced control strategies is presented. A large number of examples of simulation and experiments of daily life tasks are included in this book to facilitate better understanding of the readers.

These proceedings contain more than 80 of the best papers presented at the INCOM '92 Symposium, and relate to the vast changes which are occurring worldwide in manufacturing technology. Research oriented technical papers cover subjects such as: simulation of manufacturing processes; sensor based robots; information systems; general aspects of CIM and manufacturing networks.