comp.robotics Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) part 1/2

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Author: Kevin Dowling
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1993 04:40

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Archive-name: robotics-faq/part1
Last-modified: Sun Dec 5 23:38:02 1993

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 end of part2 of this 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.

Changes, additions, comments, suggestions and questions to:
Kevin Dowling tel: 412.268.8830
Robotics Institute fax: 412.682.1793
Carnegie Mellon University net: nivek@cmu.edu
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

___________________________________________________________________________
Contents:
[use +++ to search quickly]

Part 1
+++Where to find this FAQ and comp.robotics archives

+++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
+++Wireless communication
+++Suppliers and sources for parts
+++Hero Robots
+++Puma Manipulators
+++Simulators
+++Real-Time Operating Systems

+++Robot Controller Survey
+++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 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 mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu 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:
location: uunet!/archive/usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/
filenames: part1.Z, part2.Z

E-mail:
Send email to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu containing these lines:
send usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/part1
send usenet/news.answers/robotics-faq/part2

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/

Other sources:
Also check the ai-faq for additional source and questions
related to AI. Additionally sci.electronics may also provide useful
information for design, construction and debugging of robot systems.
____________________________________________________________________________
+++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

Whew! 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.
I know it when I see it.

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

Origins of the word 'robot'
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.

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]

____________________________________________________________________________
+++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: (03) 434-0532
fax: (03) 434-0217
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.

Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems (AUVS)
1101 14th Street, NW
Suite 100
Washington, DC 20005
tel: 202.371.1170
fax: 202.371.1090
Also publish Unmanned Systems Magazine.

Center for Autonomous and Man-controlled Robotic and Sensing Systems
Charles Jacobus, CAMRSS director
ERIM
PO Box 8618
Ann Arbor, MI 48107
tel: 313.994.1200 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: 202.646.7400
tel: 212.247.6500 (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: 201.981.0060
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: 313.994.6088
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: 313.271.1500

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: 201.430.6646

+++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: +61-2-959-32-39
fax: +61-2-959-46-32

Osterreichisches Forschungszentrum
Seibersdorf GmbH
Hauptabteilung Fertigungstechnik und Automation
A-2444 SEIBERSDORF
Austria
Contact: Mr Erwin Fugger
tel: +43-2254-80-22-13
fax: +43-2254-80-21-18

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: +55-11-256-1192 / 258 3320
fax: +55-11-256-94-96

British Robot Association (BRA)
BRA Aston Science Park
Love Lane
Birmingham B7 4BJ
England
tel: +44 (0)21-628 1745
fax: +44 (0)21-628 1746
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: +7-095-367-85-36
fax: +7-095-367-88-81

China Society of Industrial
Automation & Automated Industries
8, 7F, Tun Hwa N. Rd.
TAIPEI - China
Contact: Mr. Chen, Chen-Chang
tel: +886-2-751-34-68
fax: +886-2-781-77-90

Danish Industrial Robot Association (DIRA)
Teknologiparken
DK-8000 AARHUS C
Denmark
Contact: Mr. John Nielsen
tel: +45-86-14-24-00
fax: +45-86-14-43-55

Robotics Society in Finland
c/o Suomen Automaation Tuki Oy
Hameentie 6 A 15
SF-00530 HELSINKI
Finland
Contact: Mr. Kaarlo Talvinen
tel: +358-0-701-56-57
fax: +358-0-773-15-70

Fachgemeinschaft MHI im VDMA
P.O. Box 71 08 64
D-6000 FRANKFURT (MAIN) 71
Germany
Contact: Mr. Berndt Knoerr
tel: +49-69-66-03-466
fax: +49-69-66-03-459

IPA
Nobelstrasse 12
D-7000 STUTTGART 80
Germany
Contact: Mr Rolf D Schraft
tel:+49-711-970-12-00
fax: +49-711-970-13-99

Association Francaise de Robotique
Industrielle (AFRI)
Tour 66
4, Place Jussieu
F-75252 PARIS CEDEX 05
France
Contact: Mr. Arnauld Laffaille
tel: +33-1-44-27-62-12
fax: +33-1-44-27-62-14

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: +36-1-169-6144
fax: +36-1-169-6144

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: +91-11-662-260, 654-793
fax: +91-11-616-2418

SIRI - Associazione Italiana di Robotica
c/o ETAS Periodici
Via Mecenate 91
I-20138 MILANO
Italy
Contact: Mr Daniele Fabrizi
tel: +39-2-580-842-24
fax: +39-2-554-003-88

Japan Industrial Robot Association
c/o Kikaishinko Bldg
3-5-8, Shibakoen, Minato-Ku
TOKYO
Japan
Contact: Mr Kanji Yonemoto
tel: +81-3-3434-2919
fax: +81-3-3578-1404

KIST - Korea Institute of Science and Technology
P.O. Box 131, Cheongryang
Seoul
Korea
Contact: Mr. Chun Sik-lee
tel: +82-2-967-3505, 963-4497
fax: +82-2-969-1763

Meininger Automation bv
P.O. Box 743
NL-2280 AS RIJSWIJK
Netherlands
Contact: Mr Jack B Eijlers
tel: +31-70-340-17-80
fax: +31-70-340-1602

Federation of Norwegian Engineering Industries (TBL)
Box 7072 - H
N-0306 OSLO 3
Norway
Contact: Mr Johan Ulleland
tel: +47-2-46-58-20
fax: +47-2-46-18-38

Polish Federation of Engineering Associations (NOT)
Czackiego Str 3/5
PL-00950 WARSZAWA
Poland
Contact: Mr. Kazimierz Wawrzyniak
tel: +48-22-26-87-31
fax: +48-22-27-29-49

Singapore Industrial Automation Association (SIAA)
151 Chin Swee Road
#03-13 Manhattan House
SINGAPORE 0316
Singapore
Contact: Mr Stephen Teng
tel: +65-734-69-11
fax: +65-235-57-21

MVVZ Robot
Nam. Legionarov 3
CZ-080 01 PRESOV
Slovakia
Contact: Mr Vladimir Cop
tel: +42-91-235-77
fax: +42-91-231-95

"J. Stefan" Institute
Jamova 39
61000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
Contact: Mr Jadran Lenarcic
tel: +38-61-159-199
fax: +38-61-161-029, 273-677

Asociacion Espanola de Robotica
Rambla de Catalunya 70, 3r 2a
E-08007 BARCELONA
Spain
Contact: Mr Luis Basanez
tel: +34-3-215-57-60
fax: +34-3-215-23-07

Swedish Industrial Robot Association (SWIRA)
Box 5506
S-114 85 STOCKHOLM
Sweden
Contact: Mr Thomas Hardenby
tel: +46-8-783-80-00
fax: +46-8-660-33-78

Schweizerische Gesellschaft fur
Automatik, Arbeitsgruppe Robotik
Postgasse 17
CH-3011 BERN
Switzerland
Contact: Mr Charles Giroud
tel: +41-31-21-22-51
fax: +41-31-21-12-50

British Robot Association (BRA)
Aston Science Park, Love Lane
Aston Triangle
BIRMINGHAM B7 4BJ
United Kingdom
Contact: Mr. Donald Pitt
tel: +44-21-628-17-45
fax: +44-21-628-17-46

Robotic Industries Assoc (RIA)
P.O. Box 3724
ANN ARBOR, MI 48106
USA
Contact: Mr. Donald A. Vincent
tel: 1-313-994-6088
fax: 1-313-994-3338

Secretariat of IFR
c/o Sveriges Verkstadsindustrier
Box 5506
S-114 85 STOCKHOLM
Swden
Contact: Mr Lennart Djupmark
Mrs Kerstin Teglof Delgado
tel: +46-8-783-80-00 or
+46-8-783-82-08
fax: +46-8-660-33-78

__________________________________________________________________________
+++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]

Atlanta Hobby Robotics Association
P.O. Box 2050
Stone Mountain, GA 30086

Austin Robotics Group
608 Garden Path Cove
Round Rock, TX 78736
tel: 512.244.6707

Connecticut Robotics Society
P.O. Box 127
Canaan CT 06018
tel: 203.824.0542

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

Robot Society of Southern CA
10471 S. Brookhurst
Anaheim, CA 92804
tel: 714.535.8161

Seattle Robotics Society
P.O. Box 30668
Seattle, WA 98103-0668
tel: 206.782.5989

Triangle Amateur Robotics
P.O. Box 17523
Raleigh, NC 27619
tel: 919.782.8703

__________________________________________________________________________
+++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.
-----------------

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: chunw@ssv.den.mmc.com

SPIE Conference
------------------------------------------------

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: 313.574.8678
fax: 313.574.5008
net: lescoep%ccmail@tacom-enmhl.army.mil

Dr. Ka C. Cheok or Barbara Dhalman
Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering
Oakland University
248 Dodge Hall
Rochester, MI 48309-4401
tel: 313.370.2232 or 313.370.2177
fax: 313.370.4261

Candy McLellan
School of Engineering and Computer Science
Oakland University
tel: 313.370.2233

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: (408)-656-2238
healey@lex.me.nps.navy.mil

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

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 nicoud@di.epfl.ch

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: 713-335-8532
fax: 713-333-5147
Email: lseidman@mitre.org

Address other conference inquires:
Conference Chairman:
Dr. Jon D. Erickson
NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center
Mail Code ER
Houston, TX 77058
tel: 713-483-1508
fax: 713 483-7580
Email: erickson@aio.jsc.nasa.gov

-----------------------------------------------------------
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.:(33) 76574655 fax:(33) 76574602,
E-mail: Jim.Crowley@imag.fr

Chairman Adam Borkowski, IPPT PAN, Poland,
of the Programme 21 Swietokrzyska Str., 00-049 Warsaw,
Committee Tel. : (48-22) 261281 ext 250
fax : (48-22) 269815,
E-mail: abork@ippt.gov.pl

Co-Chairman Artur Dubrawski, IPPT PAN, Poland,
of the Programme 21 Swietokrzyska Str., 00-049 Warsaw,
Committee Tel. : (48-22) 261281 ext 250
fax : (48-22) 269815,
E-mail: adubr@ippt.gov.pl

Secretary Patrick Reignier, LIFIA - IMAG, France,
46 av. F'elix Viallet, 38031 Grenoble Cedex,
Tel.:(33) 76574609 fax:(33) 76574602,
E-mail: Patrick.Reignier@imag.fr

Olivier Causse, Lab. of Image Analysis, DK,
Fr. Bajers Vej 7 D, DK-9220 Aalborg
Tel.:(45) 98158522-4940 fax:(45) 98154008,
E-mail: causse@vision.auc.dk

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

Annual Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

Annual Symposium on Industrial Robots

Biannual Symposium International Symposium of Robotics Research

Biannual 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 you may
Contact: Robin Bradbeer <EERTBRAD@hk.cphk.cphkvx>

BEAM robot olympics:
Contact: Mark Tilden <mwtilden@math.uwaterloo.ca>

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: 203.231.2824
fax: 203.232.0705
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: 216.651.5136.

Industrial Robot
ISSN 0143-991X
Quarterly, $145/year
MCB University Press Ltd.
62 Toller Lane
Bradford, West Yorkshire
England, BD8 9BY
tel: (44) 274 499821,
fax: (44) 274 547143
--in the US
MCB University Press Ltd.
PO Box 10812
Birmingham, AL 35201-0812
tel: 1-800-633-4931 (1-205-995-1567),
fax: 1-205-995-1588

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: +44-865-273153
fax: +44-865-273153

Professor J. R. Hewit
Engineering Design Institute
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Technology, Loughborough
Leicestershire, LE11 3TU
UNITED KINGDOM
tel: +44-509-222936
fax: +44-509-268103)

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: (03) 3434-2919
fax: (03) 3578-1404

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: <groen@fwi.uva.nl>

-- 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: <tch@cs.utah.edu>

Robotics Today
Published by:
Society of Manufacturing Engineers
One SME Drive
PO Box 930
Dearborn, MI 48121
tel: 313.271.1500

Robotics World
"The end-user's magazine of flexible automation"
Published quarterly
Communication Channels
6255 Barfield Road
Atlanta, GA 30328
tel: 404.256.9800
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
and 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: 516.845.2700
fax: 516.845.2797
Subscription free to qualified professionals, $50/yr otherwise.

ComputerCraft
CQ Communications
76 N. Broadway
Hicksville, NY 11801
tel: 516.681.2922
fax: 516.681.2926
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: 203.875.2751
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: 201.393.6060
fax: 201.393.0204
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: 516.293.3000
cost: $19.97/yr
ISSN: 0033-7862

Embedded Systems Programming
Miller Freeman
600 Harrison St.
San Francisco, CA 94107
tel: 800.829.5537 (customer service)
tel: 415.905.2200
bbs: 415.905.2689.
$49.95 for 12 issues

Machine Design
Penton Publishing Inc.
1100 Superior Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44114-2543
tel: 216.696.7000
fax: 216.621.8469
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: 303.225.1410
fax: 303.225.1075
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: 303.388.4511
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: 800.783.4624
Electronics classifieds and ads. Lots of devices and products
relevant for robot builders. Often features articles on robot
building as well.

Sensors
Helmers Publishing
174 Concord Street
PO Box 874
Peterborough, NH 03458-0874
tel: 603.924.9631
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: 212.695.0500
fax: 212.290.7362
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: 617.674.1110
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.

Cybermotion
5457 Jae Valley Road
Roanoke, VA 24014
tel: 703.982.2641
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: 705.325.6110
fax: 705.325.8566
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: 508.658.7800
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
Westlake Village, CA 91361 USA
net: <robots@isx.com>
tel: 818.597.1900
Associated with ISX Robotics of Cambridge.
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.

mecos Robotics AG
Technopark
Pfingstweidstrasse
CH-8005 Zurich
Switzerland
tel: + 41 1 445 11 35
fax: + 41 1 445 11 34
email: mecos@ifr.ethz.ch
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: 415.988.7200 ext. 203
fax: 415.988.7201
net: nomad@robots.com
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: 603.563.8871
fax: 603.563.8872
Small synchronous drive bases, primarily for research
purposes. Approx $6K

Remotec
114 Union Valley Road
Oak Ridge, TN 37830
tel: 615.483.0228
fax: 615.483.1426
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.

TRC
15 Great Pasture Road
Danbury, CT 06810
tel: 203.798.8988
Labmate research platform - $7500, plus additional optional
sensors etc. Other products for hospital markets and floor
cleaning machines. (Helpmate and RoboKent respectively)

Yamazaki Construction Company, Tokyo Japan.
Intelligent Robot Lab
Kaika Building
2-7-1 Sotokanda
Chiyoda-ku 101 Tokyo
Japan
tel: 81-3-5256-0715
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: +33 1 4944 3035
fax: +33 1 4944 3297

AGV Companies
-------------
AGV Products
9307-E Monroe Road
Charlotte, NC 28270-1485
tel: 704.845.1110
fax: 704.845.1111
Controls and components for AGV's. Supplier of Schabmuller
motor-in-wheel drives.

Apogee Robotics
2643 Midpoint Drive
Fort Collins, CO 80525
tel: 303.221.1122
fax: 303.221.1774
Standard and custom-designed AGV's

BT Systems
7000 Nineteen Mile Road
Sterling Heights, MI 48314
tel: 313.254.5200
fax: 313.254.5570
Automated Handling Systems (Formerly Volvo Automated Systems)

Caterpillar Industrial
5960 Heisley Road
Mentor, OH 44060
tel: 216.357.2935
fax: 216.357.4410

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: 313.553.1220
fax: 313.553.1253

Eaton-Kenway
515 East 100 South
PO Box 45425
Salt Lake City, UT 84145-0425
tel: 801.530.4000
fax: 801.530.4243
AGV's and integrated systems

Elwell-Parker
4205 St. Clair Avenue
Cleveland, OH
tel: 216.881.6200
fax: 216.391.7708
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: 801.295.5315
fax: 801.299.9990
Automated material handling systems including AGVS.

Fata Automation
37050 Industrial Road
Livonia, MI 48150
tel: 313.462.0678
fax: 313.462.0997
Sales and service of AGVs.

FMC Corporation
400 Highpont Drive
Chalfont, PA 18914
tel: 215.822.4300
fax: 215.822.4342
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: 804.825.2260
fax: 804.825.9307
Automatic handling systems and AGV's

Litton Industrial Automation
2300 Litton Lane
Hebron, KY 41048
tel: 606.334.2033
fax: 606.334.2847
Full service material handling company.

Mannesmann Demag Corporation
29201 Aurora Road
Cleveland, OH 44139-1895
tel: 216.248.2400
fax: 216.248.3086
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: 216.255.4051
fax: 216.255.3430
AGV systems and automated transfer cars.

Munck Automation Technology
315 E Street
Hampton, VA 23661
tel: 804.838.6010
fax: 804.826.5651
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: 607.656.2311
fax: 607.656.9005
Material handling equipment.

Roberts Sinto Corporation
3001 West Main Street
PO Box 40760
Lansing, MI 48901-7960
tel: 517.371.2460
fax: 517.372.4930
MGV's (Mechanically guided vehicles)

Professional Materials Handling Co, Inc.
4203 Landmark Drive
Orlando, FL 32817
tel: 305.677.0040
Steinbock fork trucks. Wire guided, use regenerative braking.

_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Robot manipulator companies:

Adept Technology
150 Rose Orchard Way
San Jose, CA 95134
tel: 408.432.0888
fax: 408.432.8707
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: 800.323.9555
tel: 513.887.4700
fax: 513.887.4703
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: 414.785.3400
fax: 414.789.9235
Now own Cinncinatti Milacron robotics group, Graco and
Trallfa. Many types of larger industrial robots.

CRS Plus,
PO Box 163, Station A
830 Harrington Court
Burlington, Ontario
Canada L7R 3Y2
tel: 416.639.0086
fax: 416.639.4248
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: 313.474.6100
fax: 313.474.6101
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: 913.894.9022
fax: 913.894.1363
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: <mecos@ifr.ethz.ch>
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: 708.291.2340
fax: 708.498.2430
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: 617.661.8847
net: <jks@ai.mit.edu>
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: 801.581.0155
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: 916.753.6718
fax: 916.753.8092
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: 914.365.6000
fax: 914.365.6087
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: 513.831.9570
fax: 513.381.5802
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
12665 Richfield Ct.
Livonia, MI 48150
tel: 313.464.9500
fax: 313.464.3276
Originally known as the Microbot teachmover. A small cable
driven manipulator for desktop robotics. Excellent teaching
tool. Microbot was bought out by the British company UMI two
years ago. In May, 1991 they moved from Silicon Valley to
Detroit, MI.

USA Robot
PO Box 4018
Portland, ME 04101
tel: 207.774.3822
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: 805.963.3831
fax: 805.963.3832
Telerobotic manipulators for space and undersea applications.

Zebra Robotics
Jeff Kerr
Menlo Park
tel: 415.328.8884
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.

Angelus Research
6344 Sugar Pine Circle
Angelus Oaks, CA
tel: 714.794.8325
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: 209.575.3445
fax: 209.527.6016
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: <khepera@di.epfl.ch>
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: 800.527.8339
fax: 203.763.2466
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
[I have no address - but it seems like a candidate for this group.
Please send any contact information if you have it. Thanks]

Mondotronics
524 San Anselmo Ave.,
#107
San Anselmo, CA 94960
tel: 415.455.9330
800.374.5764
fax: 415.455.9333
net: <mondo@holonet.net>
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: 310.638.4732
fax: 310.638.8347
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.
They now also have a Robotic Technology Curriculum with lessons and
tests. Cirriculum is $65 from Edmund Scientific.

QuikShut (?)
Circuit Specialists Inc
PO Box 3047
Scottsdale, AZ 85271-3047
tel: 800.528.1417
tel: 602.464.2485
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 <hine@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov>
Terry Fong <doctor@tardis.arc.nasa.gov>
Telepresence and virtual user interfaces, vision (optical and
parallel processing), free-flyers, task planning, agents.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)
Greenbelt, MD 20771
Contact: Stephen Leake <nbssal@robots.gfsc.nasa.gov>
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: 615.574.6126
Contact: Alex L. Bangs <BangsAL@ornl.gov>
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: 412.765.3064
fax: 412.364.3069
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.

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.

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

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

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
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 <johann_borenstein@um.cc.umich.edu>
Yorem Koren <yorem_koren@um.cc.umich.edu>

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: 213.740.4499
net: <amy@pollux.usc.edu>
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: goldberg@usc.edu

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.

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
Center for Machine Intelligence and Robotics

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

Bristol Polytechnic, UK
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 (g.parker@surrey.ac.uk)
John Pretlove (j.pretlove@surrey.ac.uk)
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: (01) 256 35 84 (secretary)
fax: (01) 252 02 76.
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: <scherrer@ifr.ethz.ch>

___________________________________________________________________________
End of part1

aka: Kevin Dowling Carnegie Mellon University
tel: (412) 268-8830 The Robotics Institute
adr: nivek@ri.cmu.edu Pittsburgh, PA 15213
--

aka: Kevin Dowling Carnegie Mellon University
tel: (412) 268-8830 The Robotics Institute
adr: nivek@ri.cmu.edu Pittsburgh, PA 15213

comp.robotics Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) part 2/2

#1691

Author: Kevin Dowling
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1993 04:41

1779 lines
64479 bytes

Archive-name: robotics-faq/part2
Last-modified: Sun Dec  5 23:37:38 1993


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

Part 2 [use the +++ to assist in searching]
	+++Sensors
	+++Wireless Communication
	+++Robot Parts: Suppliers and Sources
	+++Hero Robots
	+++Puma Manipulators
	+++Simulators
	+++Real-Time Operating Systems
	+++Robot Controller Survey
	+++Microcontrollers
	+++Books

	+++Acknowledgements
____________________________________________________________________________
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.

Changes, additions, comments, suggestions and questions to:
Kevin Dowling				tel:	412.268.8830
Robotics Institute			fax:	412.682.1793
Carnegie Mellon University		net:	nivek@ri.cmu.edu
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

___________________________________________________________________________
+++Sensors:

	This list covers only the most frequently requested types of
robot sensors. These include point-range sensors, cameras, and
acoustic devices. See Sensors magazine <in periodical section of this
FAQ> directory for a large and comprehensive list. This list covers
the following: [use === to search]

	===cameras
	===inertial measurement devices
	===rangefinding devices
	===force/torque sensors, accelerometers
	===sonar sensors
	===position determination devices
	===pan/tilt mechanisms
	===shape memory devices
	===measuring linear motion

===Cameras

	There are a large number of cameras on the market and even
many consumer products such as the smaller camcorders are inexpensive
and suitable for some imaging applications. I'll try to list some
different and unusual ones here.
	Note that although some of these cameras are very small many
of them are appended to a large box of electronics via a cable that
supplies power and transmits video. For mobile applications DC power
inputs may be an issue as well.
	
Sony Component Products
  15 Essex Road,
  Paramus, NJ 07652
  tel: 201.368.5188
  fax: 201.368.3514
  Sony XC/999/999P is a nice small color CCD camera the size of a
  microphone. CCD resolution is 768Hx493V. The 999 is NTSC and the
  999P is the PAL format.  XC-75 has small camera head and separate
  electronics.

Toshiba IK-M40A -- head is 1.5" long, 5/8" diameter

Panasonic GP-KS152 -- head is 1 3/8" long, 15/32" diameter

CCTV Corporation
315 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10013
tel: 800.221.2240
fax: 212.463.9758
CCTV makes a number of small CCD surveillance cameras. Some as
small as a pack of cigarettes that sell for less than $300.

[Need address]
  CIDTech has some really nice ones with CID instead of CCD,
  especially good for machine vision, no blooming, fast image
  grabbing.

====Inertial measurement devices
	This includes such devices as accelerometers such as
accelerometers, gyros, and inertial devices used for measuring
orientation or acceleration of moving vehicles. Accelerometers are
devices for measuring the rate of change in velocity and can provide
estimations of distance or be used to detect high forces.

KVH Industries
110 Enterprise Center
Middletown, RI 02840
tel: 401.847.3327
  Nice small well-designed units that provide heading data. About $1K
  w/ RS232 adapter.

Lucas NovaSensor
1055 Mission Court
Fremont, CA 94539
tel: 510.490.9100
  Lucas makes a 1"x1"x0.5" accelerometer for about $200. Good noise
  immunity but fragile.

Humphrey
[Need Address]
 Wide variety of gyro and accelerometer devices.

BEI - Systron Donner
2700 Systron Drive,
Concord, CA 94518-1399
tel: 510.682.6161
fax: 510.671.6590
  GyroChip - a very small solid state angular rate sensor. Based a
  quartz tuning fork device - all support electronics are
  included. Max range available: +/-10 deg/sec to +/-1000 deg/sec.
  Input +/- 5VDC Output scale +/- 2.5VDC. Systron Donner also makes a
  variety of linear accelerometers and inertial measurement products.

	  Solid state six axis inertial sensor. It provides analog
  signals for 3 axis acceleration and 3 axis rate. The package is
  3"x3"x3.56, weighs ~600grams and takes +-15V unreg in (7W). Bias
  drift is on the order of 0.005 deg/sec short term (0.1deg/sec long
  term).
 	Cost is $12,000 for one or $10,000 for 2-9 (a good single axis
  rate gyro usually costs $6K+).  Various acceleration and rate range
  combinations are available (up to +- 20g).  Delivery is about 6wks.

====Laser rangefinders
-Principles
There are four basic techniques for distance measurement using electro
magetic radiation.

These are 
1 Pulse Timing
2 Phase Comparison
3 Doppler Methods
4 Interferometry 

All are used in practice for distance measurement depending on the
particular application.

Pulse timing, as the name suggests, involves measuring the round time
for a signal to be transmitted to a reflective surface and return.

This is the principle used in Radar, DME for aircraft, LORAN,
Satellite Altimetry, Airborne RADAR Altimetry, Lunar Laser Ranging
etc. Some of the newer EDM instruments used by surveyor are also using
pulse timing and accuracies of +/- 5mm are possible. Most of the
military range finders also use pulse timing.  The GPS system uses
pulse timing for coarse distance measurement.  Very Long Base
Interferometry (VLBI) is also a pulse timing technique where signals
from pulsars are timed from two or more radio telescopes and the
difference in times of arrival are converted to intercontinental
distances with a precision of a few centimetres.

Phase difference involves the use of a carrier wave which may be
modulated at different wavelengths. By measuring the diference in
phase between the transmitted signal and the received signal after it
has been reflected from the other end of the line, the distance can be
determined as an integer number (unknown) of wavelengths plus a
fraction of a wavelength which is known from the phase comparison. By
using a range of modulation frequencies the ambiguity can be
resolved. There are many applications of this technique. A wide range
of carrier frequencies are used ranging from visible through infra red
to microwave and right down to VLF. Typical instruments used by
surveyors have accuracies of +/-(1to2 mm +1to3 parts per million) and
use infra red as the carrier. Precise positioning using GPS can be
achieved by phase comparison of the carrier wave signals of the
various satellites. Accuracies in position of better than 1 part per
million can be achieved.

Doppler techniques were used in the earlier satellite positioning
systems. The received frequency of a low orbit satellite is compared
with the actual transmitted signal as a function of time. The rate of
change of frequency gives the slant range between the satellite and
the observer while the instant when the two freqencies are the same
gives the point of closest approach. By knowing the orbital parameters
of the satellite which are transmitted, the observers position can be
determined.

Interferometric methods are the same as those used in the original
Michelson Interferometer. It is used for metrology, high precision
distance measurement over short distances (up to 60 metres) and in the
definition of the metre.

	There are a variety of laser rangefinding devices that have
been built and used over the past 8 years or so for robotics. The 3D
devices are still large, power hungry and heavy but give very nice
images suitable for fast map building and navigation work. Expect to
pay over $80K for these time-of-flight devices. Most AM Lidars measure
phase shift between outgoing and reflected beams.  A mirror system
rasters the beam forming a video-camera-like image. Some devices
supply the reflectance image as well as range which is nice for
corresponding the two. Comprehensive references include:

Electronic Distance Measurement by JM Rueger, Springer-Verlag

P. Besl, ``Active, Optical Range Imaging Sensors'', Machine Vision and
Applications, v. 1, p. 127-152, 1988.

A longer version of Besl's paper appears in ``Advances in Machine
Vision: Architectures and Applications'', J. Sanz (ed.),
Springer-Verlag, 1988.

Other good surveys are Ray Jarvis' article in IEEE TPAMI v5n2 and
Nitzan's article in IEEE PAMI v10n2.

A good report on the characterization of a particular scanner is:
Experimental Characterization of the Perceptron Laser Rangefinder, In
So Kweon, Regis Hoffman, and Eric Krotkov. Carnegie Mellon University
Technical Report, CMU-RI-TR-91-1. 1991.

A number of laboratory works have also demonstrated FM or chirp
systems which can be highly accurate (e.g. high resolution elevation
maps of coins) but these are very specialized and I don`t know of
commercial devices currently.

-COMMERCIAL DEVICES
ERIM (Environmental Research Institute of Michigan)
	ERIM has built a number of custom AM laser rangefinders
including those used in the ALV (Autonomous Land Vehicle) program. CMU
and Martin Marietta have both used this systems in extensive work.
Basic system was a 128x64 2fps 20m (ambiguity interval) system.

Odetics
1515 South Manchester Ave
Anaheim, CA 92802-2907
tel: 714.758.0300
Odetics has made a number of smaller laser scanners. That is, smaller
than their larger ERIM and Perceptron brethren. I have not heard any
independent reviews of the product however.

Perceptron
23855 Research Drive
Farmington Hills, MI 48024
tel: 313.478.7710
fax: 313.478.7059
A spin-off of ERIM, Perceptron has also built a number of
AM laser rangefinders.  CMU and Caterpillar have used these for map
building and obstacle avoidance work in rough terrain navigation.
128x128 programmable up to 2048x2048 through tilt, 2fps, programmable
tilt on nodding mirror. About $90K. Prices have come down
substantially recently.

Schwarz Electro-Optics
3404 N. Orange Blossom Trail
Orlando, FL 32804
tel: 407.298.1802
fax: 407.297.1794
Schwarz makes some very nice point range laser ranging devices. These
devices are slightly bigger than a soda can. About $6-12K. CMU
experience for use in simulated unmanned air vehicle platform worked
well. Their MARS (marine angle range system) is a rotating laser
device that reflects off targets in the environment. Max range up to
1000meters using corner prisms. Accuracy +/- 1m. Erebus (Dante)
Scanner used Schwarz device as base.

Origin Instruments
854 Greenview Drive
Grand Praire, TX 750750-2438
tel: 214.606.8740
fax: 214.606.8741
The Dynasight sensor is a 3-D optical radar that provides real-time
3-D measurements of passive targets with sub-millimeter resolution.
Automatic search and track is provided, eye-safe operation and no
adjustments or alignment required. Original application was head
tracking of computer users but end- effector tracking is also viable.
Operatin range depends on target size 0.1-1.5m for 7mm target, 0.3-4m
for 25mm target and 1 to 6m for 75mm targets. RS-232 interface.
Accuracies 1mm cross range and 4mm down range, resolutions 0.1mm cross
range and 0.4mm down range.

A number of labs have built light stripe devices using projected light
LCD shutters and laser line projectors determine distance through
geometry (as opposed to directly measuring distance through
time-of-flight means) One common need is that of generating the laser
line.

LaserMax
Rochester, NY
tel: 716.272.5420
Manufactures semiconductor laser diode packages and cylindrical
lenses. Packages and small and rugged.

Hammamatsu Corp.
New Jersey
tel: 908.231.0960
fax: 908.231.1539
Hamamatsu S4282 Light Modulation Photo IC The size of a normal
transistor (approx 1/4" square).  It has 4 leads, Vcc, Gnd, Vout,
LED. All you do is attach an IR LED to the LED lead to give you an
instant IR proximity detector (the photo diode detector is built into
the part).  Two can be aimed at each other and they won't interfere
since they'll be out of phase. They have another model with a lens
over the photo diode that is claimed could be used up to 30 feet!
Hammamatsu also sells a number of photo sensors like color sensors,
position sensitive detectors, pyroelectric sensors.
	S4282-11	short range	 $7.75 single unit
	S4282-72	long range	$19.00 single unit
[from articles by Prabal K Dutta <pkdutta@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
and Shane Bouslough <shane@sbcs.sunysb.edu>]

ESP Technologies
21 LeParc Drive
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648
tel: 609.275.0356
fax: 609.275.0356
$15K LED based IR ranging system. 15cm diameter rotating scanning
device with collimated LED light beam that uses phase differences to
calculate distance. Range 0.6 to 6m. 2.5cm resolution, 15cm accuracy.

IBEO Lasertechnik
Ingenieurburo fur
Elektronik + Optik
Fahrenkron 125
D 2000 Hamburg 71
tel: 040 645 87 - 01
fax: 040 645 87 - 101
2D and 3D laser scanners. 8frame/sec, 220 degree view, 4600
points/sec. Accuracy +/- 20mm (1 sigma) from 0.5 - 500? 24W power.
System specs can be configured for variety of applications.

===Force and Torque Sensors:

Force measurement provides indications of magnitude and direction of
forces for use in manipulation or locomotion. A variety of control
schemes have been implemented in force controlled systems to allow
smooth and accurate control in situations that would otherwise be
precluded without such devices. A number of load cells and
acceleration measuring devices are described here:

Analog Devices
tel: 617.937.1426
  Analog Devices have the ADXL50 accelerometer which comes in a 10-pin
TO-5 can. It is primarily used with air-bags and has a 1994 projected
price of $5 in quantities. In the Electronic Design August 8, 1991
issue it quoted the current price as $21.75 for 1000 off quantities.

Assurance Technologies (ATI)
(formerly Lord Industrial Automation)
503D Highway 70 East
Garner, North Carolina 27529
tel: 919.772.0115
fax: 919.772.8259
  Largest supplier of multi-axis force sensors. Use silicon rather than
foil strain gages for lower strain levels and increased life. F/T
sensor ratings from +/- 15lbs to +/- 150lbs (+/- 15 in-lbs to +/- 600
in-lbs) weights are 0.4 and 2.2 lbs for the 4 available sensors.
Serial or parallel digital interface or analog interface.  ATI also
makes robotic tool-changers and an RCC device for assembly operations.
An ATI sensor is also incorporated in the Hughes SMARTee end-effector.

California Cybernetics
10322 Sherman Grove
Sunland, CA 91040
tel: 818.353.5991
fax: 818.951.3889
  Six DOF F-T devices.

Cybernet
1919 Green Road
Suite B-101
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
tel: 313.668.2567
fax: 313.668.8780
net: <heidi_jocobus@um.cc.umich.edu>
PER-force - A 6dof compact force-reflecting controller. Can be used
for teleoperationor interactive graphics applications.

Hughes STX
4400 Forbes Blvd
Lanham, MD 20706
tel: 301.794.5016
fax: 301.306.0963
A 6-dof end-effector with automatic load sensing and compensation.
Control modes include position control (cartesian with user spec-ed
poses and frames), impedence and force control modes. Programmable
behaviors (sliding, hinge, move-to-touch, guarded move, follow etc),
open architecture (VxWorks, VME, user-linakable libraries) and a lot
more. Interfaces available included RS-232, ethernet, RS-422 and SCSI.
Pretty amazing end-effector!

Interlink Electronics
1110 Mark Ave.
Carpinteria, CA 93013
	Force Sensing resistors. Article in March 1993 issue of
Electronics Now/Radio Electronics.

JR3
22 Harter Avenue
Woodland, CA 95695
tel: 916.661.3677
  6-DOF force-torque sensors. Strain gage technology. Newer packages
have all electronics built into the sensor. Make some high-force
devices as well. CMU's Ambler used JR3's on all the feet with good
success.  Complete force torque data at 8Khz, signal digitization
within sensor body, low noise susceptibility, synch serial at 2MHz,
inexpensive cabling.

===Sonar sensors
-PRINCIPLES
	The time it takes for an acoustic pulse to propagate through
air or water, reflect from the environment and return to a detector is
porportional to the distance.
	Acoustic time-of-flight devices have been around for awhile
now. The ubiquitous Polaroid device is cheap and easily integrated and
has has found wide use in robotic devices. Other companies have
developed nice complete turnkey sonar devices though and Polaroid is
no longer the only choice.

Polaroid
119 Windsor St,
Cambridge, MA 02139
tel: 800.225.1000 ordering
tel: 800.225.1618 technical assistance
Polaroid Ultrasonic Components Group offers two ultrasonic ranging kits:
Specs are:
	Distance range: 0.26 to 10.7 meters
	Resolution: Nominal +- 3mm to 3m, +-1% over entire range
	Sonar acceptance angle: approx. 20 degrees
	Power Requirement: 6VDC, 2.5 Amps (1 mS pulse), 150mA quiescent
	Weight: Transducer, 8.2gm
	        Ranging module, 18.4 gm
	Designer's Kit:
	1 transducer, 1 ranging module, electronics display 
	accurate to 1/10th meter. Cost is $169
	NEW Piezotransducer kit
	1"-50' +/- 1%
	RS-232 port and analog output
	breadboard real estate
	$299
	OEM kit: 2 transducers, 2 ranging modules. Cost is $99.

Siemans - nice complete sensor package, 5 degree cone angle

Massa - components

Texas Instruments
	Type SN28827 Sonar Ranging Module
	See TI Applications Notes D2780
	Under $50, needs only 5VDC
Not sure if these units are still manufactured but they are often in
surplus catalogs.

===Position determination
Noncontact, cabled measurement of 6DOF's. Virtual reality
applications. System ranges can be as small as a tabletop and can
extend for kilometers. All measurements are given in metric unless
spec sheets appear in English units only.  All pricing is in $US.

Useful papers to solve for transforms from positioning devices for
multiple reference frames:

Roger Tsai and Reimar Lenz,
	June 1989 IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation
C. C. Wang,
	April 1992 IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation)

Polhemus Inc
tel: 802.655.3139
fax: 802.655.1439
Burlington, VT
3Space, Isotrak, FasTrak:
Electromagnetic devices for sensing xyz and rotations remotely.
Limited to 1m or so radius. Sensitive to metallic objects in vicinity.
Approx $3k

Ascension Technology
tel: 802.860.6440
fax: 802.860.6439
The Bird. A 6d0f measuring device much like the Pohlhemus device.

Shooting Star Technology
1921 Holdom Avenue
Burnaby, B.C.
Canada V5B 3W4
tel: 604.298.8574
fax: 604.298.8580
	ADL-1 6DOF tracker. Gives position/orientation measurements up
to 240 times/second, with low latency (0.35 to 1.88 milliseconds.)

Denning Mobile Robots [DENNING APPEARS TO BE OUT OF BUSINESS]
21 Concord Street
Wilmington, MA 01887
tel: (508) 658-7800
fax: (508) 658-2492
LaserNav 2: rotating laser (Class 1 eyesafe) scans barcode targets in
area and returns target angle. This is combined with target location
to provide vehicle position and heading. RS-232 interface.

Logitech 3D Mouse		[Need Address]
Northern Digital Optotrak	[Need Address]

Caterpillar also has a rotating laser device for it's SGV products
for factory Automation. They license the Cedeglec (nee GEC) developed
technologies. 

MacLeod Technologies
315 Littleton Rd.
Chelmsford, MA 01824
tel: 508.250.4949
	Update speed: 20 hz
	position accuracy:  +/-0.05inches (1.27 mm)
	direction accuracy: +/- 0.05 degrees

	3 D reference points cover 1 acre
	1D, 2D or 3D feedback
	Cost: About $5K for positioning system	
	They claim to be able to get this kind of accuracy even while
	the robot is moving at several meters/sec.

Video systems
Selspot - used for biomechanical applications.

===Pan/Tilt devices
A common robotic need. Most pan-tilts sold today by companies such as
Pelco and Vicon are for CCTV applications for continuous scanning or
remote operation. At most these will have pots for feedback.

Directed Perception
1451 Capuchino Avenue,
Burlingame, CA 94010
tel: 415.342.9399
Small computer controlled pan-tilt unit Model PTU-46-17.5
Weighs 1kg and can support ~1.5kg camera payload.
Very nice specs: 330 deg/sec slew, 3.06 arcmin accuracy,
on-the-fly position and speed changes. 11-40VDC unregulated power input,
RS-232 interface. Can use RS-485 using RJ-11 to provide control of
multiple PT units. 
Cost: $1935 Includes PT unit, controller, cable and power supply.
	$1800 w/o power supply.

CCTV Corporation
315 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10013
tel: 800.221.2240
fax: 212.463.9758
Standard CCTV pan-tilt devices like those from Vicon and
others. Inexpensive but no computer control. $557 - $1400

CameraMan
CameraMan is a pan/tilt device built to support any camcorder
and has a wireless interface to an external remote control. 360 deg
pan and 50 deg of tilt.  The unit is made by ParkerVision and sold
through Columbia AudioVideo (and probably other suppliers)

TeleRobotics International, Inc.
7325 Oak Ridge Hwy Suite 104
Knoxville, TN 37931
tel: 615.690.5600
fax: 615.690.2913
  An all-electronic pan/tilt/zoom resampler. That is, they put a box
behind a camera with a fish-eye lens. The box has digital inputs for
pan, tilt, zoom, rotation. The box resamples the video signal and
produces an output as though the image were acquired by a camera with
those parameters. Used as an alternative to pan/tilt devices.

A number of undersea companies make pan-tilt devices as well:

Remote Ocean Systems
5111-L Santa Fe Street
San Diego, CA 92109
tel: 619.483.3902
  Underwater P/T systems, expensive $6K but very nicely packaged 

RSI Research
Sidney, BC
tel: 604.656.0101
  Underwater pan-tilts

Photosea
6377 Nancy Ridge Drive
San Diego, CA 92121
tel: 619.452.8903
  Underwater pan-tilts including Cobra, very small design.

Telemetrics
Hawthorne, NJ
tel: 201.423.0347
  Computer controlled P/T devices - fairly large though.

Zebra Kinesis
(spin-off of Zebra Robotics)
Jeff Kerr
tel: 415.328.8884
  Small Pan/tilt head.

===Shape memory materials:

Nickel-titanium alloys were first discovered by the Naval Ordinance
Laboratory decades ago and the material was termed NiTinOL. These
materials have the intriguing property that they provide actuation
through cycling of current through the materials. It undergoes a
'phase change' exhibited as force and motion in the wire.

Mondotronics
524 San Anselmo Ave.,
#107
San Anselmo, CA 94960
tel: 415.455.9330
tel: 800.374.5764
fax: 415.455.9333
net: <mondo@holonet.net>
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 book.

Memry Technologies
57 Commerce Drive
Brookfield, CT 06804
tel: 203.740.7311
fax: 203.775.2359
Memry sell a Mitsubishi developed polyurethane based Shape Memory
Polymer. The material undergoes property changes in hardness,
flexibility, elastic modulus and vapor permeability under temperature
change. Medical applications is one focus for this material.

=== Linear position measurement
Manufacturers of Magneorestrictive sensors 
for measuring linear position

Gemco Magnetek
1080 N. Crooks Road
Clawson, MI 48017-1097
tel: 313.435.0700
fax: 313.435.8120

Balluff
PO Box 937
8125 Holton Drive
Florence, KY 41042
tel: 800.543.8390
fax: 606.727.4823

MTS Systems Corporation
Sensors Division
Box 13218
Research Triangle Park, NC 27708
tel: 919.677.0100
fax: 919.677.0200

Norstat
PO Box 377
Hibernia, NJ 07842
tel: 201.586.2500
fax: 201.586.1590

____________________________________________________________________________
+++Wireless Communication
	Tethers are sometimes impractical and at best an annoyance.
Digital communication via RF and IR links is becoming cheaper and a
number of companies are providing off-the-shelf solutions. For basic
serial line communication a wide variety of radio modems are available
that use fixed frequencies or spread spectrum techniques. In many
cases they are also transparent. That is, you plug them directly into
serial ports on the robot and off-board computing directly.  Higher
bandwidths such as Ethernet or high speed synchronous serial require
different hardware. However, with high speed serial communication you
may even be able to SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocal) instead of
using a LAN-based device.

Video:
	For regular frame rate video over relatively short distances
it's hard to beat the price and availability of several consumer
products in the $100 range. Check local stores or place like the
Sharper Image (Rabbit is one of the companies making these units)
Microwave systems require line-of-site communication, licensing, and
are expensive.

Ethernet:
	There are some related articles in the Feb/93 Byte Magazine.

Proxim Inc.
295 North Barnardo Ave.
Mountain View, CA  94043
tel: 415.960.1630
fax: 415.964.5181
A product announcement for wireless LAN board on p.68 in May/92 Byte Magazine
	Price: $495
	Range: 800 ft.
	Data Rate: 242 Kbps
	Channels: 3

Telesystems SLW
85 Scarsdale Road, Suite 201
Don Mills, Ontario, Canada
ARLAN radio LAN
	We've used ARLAN with CMU's Ambler work. It's an ethernet
  bridge and it smart about routing traffic across the repeater. The
  620 is about $5K. Can be used without a license in the US. (spread
  spectrum) 6 miles.

Motorola Radio-Telephone Systems Group, Arlington Heights, ILL
tel: 708.632.5000
  AltairNet: 18GHz-based system design for wireless, indoors
  networking.  The boxes are fairly large, about the size of a
  shoebox, and are relocatable but not portable. Problem is that is
  really isn't for mobile applications.  Area is really like swiss
  cheese. Not a problem for fine adjustment in stationary applications
  but a big problem for mobile devices.

NCR sells the WaveLAN, which has about a 1Mbit/sec data rate.  Not
exactly "ethernet", but interfaceable to most networks using MS-DOS
boxes as routers.

Tetherlink in California is experimenting with a 2Mbit/sec cellular
system that is designed for roving portables. [Need address]

O'Neil and GRE America provide bidirectional 19.2Kps RS-232 links that
you can run a terminal emulator or SLIP over, range about 100 ft.
[need addresses]

Hamtronics, Inc.
65-D Moul Rd.
Hilton, NY  14468-9535
tel: 716.392.9430
fax: 716.392.9420
  1200 and 9600 baud units/modules for a few hundred dollars.

Cylink
310 N. Mary Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
tel: 408.735.5800
fax: 408.735.6643
  AirLink - series of highspeed synch or async modems to 256kb/s.
Interfaces include V.11, RS-232, EIA-530. Spread spectrum device
operating in 902-928Mhz range.

Monicor Electronics
Fort Lauderdale, FL
tel: 305.979.1907
  Two-card OEM set for use in palmtops and handheld computing. System
310 board set transmits at 1mW to 2W for a range of 3 to 3km range.
Priced at $660 in quantity. 

A number of articles have also been posted about the modification of
inexpensive walkie-talkies for wireless communication. Typical
bandwidths are limited to about 1200 baud. This may be sufficient for
simple command-level control of a mobile mechanism. 
____________________________________________________________________________
+++Robot Parts: Suppliers and Sources
  Many inquiries on comp.robotics are of the form: Where can I find X?
where X might be motors, gears, fasteners, connectors etc. The
following companies carry a wide selection of electronics and
mechanical parts. With the possible exception of computing these
companies should have all you need to build robot mechanisms.

Also see the file regularly posted to sci.electronics and a number of
the radio newsgroups:
	site: 		rtfm.mit.edu
	directory:	pub/usenet/sci.electronics/
	filename:	My_List_of_Mail_Order_Electronics_Companies

All Electronics Corp.
P.O. Box 567
Van Nuys, CA 91408
tel: 800.826.5432
  Electronics parts.

Allied Devices
2365 Milburn Avenue, 
PO Box 502
Bladwin, NY 11510
tel: 516.223.9100
fax: 516.223.9172
  Standard precision mechanical components

American Science and Surplus
tel: 708.475.8440

C&H Sales
2176 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA
tel: 818.796.2628
tel: 800.325.9465
  Surplus parts. Motors etc.

Digi-Key Corp.		
701 Brooks Avenue South
P.O. Box 677
Thief River Falls, MN 56701-0677	
tel: 800.344.4539
  Distributor of electronics components and semiconductors.

Edmund Scientific
101 E. Gloucester Pike
Barrington, NJ 08007-1380
tel: 609.573.6250 order
tel: 609.573.6260 customer service
  Lots of optics, science and educational items. A little high priced,
but nice selection.

Graymark
Box 5020
Santa Ana, CA 92704
tel: 800.854.7393
  Robot and electonics kits, tools and instruments.

Herbach and Rademan Co.
18 Canal St.
P.O. Box 122
Bristol, PA 19007-0122
tel: 800.848.8001 (orders)
tel: 215.788.5583 (office)
fax: 215.788.9577 (fax)
  Electro-mechanical "surplus" parts, equipment and insturments.

Marlin P. Jones
tel: 407.848.8236

McMaster-Carr Supply Company
PO box 440
New Brunswick, NJ 08903-0440
tel: 908.329.3200
fax: 908.329.3772
  An amazing catalog of hundreds of thousands of parts. Lots of
mechanical things but not much for electronics or computing.

MECI
tel: 800.344.4465

Mendelson Electronics Co., Inc
tel: 800.422.3525

Newark Electronics
500 N. Pulaski St.
Chicago, IL 60624-1019
tel: 312.784.5100 (check locally)
  Major distributor of electronics components and equipment (1200+
pages) with branches throughout the US.

Nordex
50 Newton Road
Danbury, CT 06810-6216
tel: 203.792.9050
  Gears, cams, universals etc.

PIC Design
PO Box 1004
Benson Road
Middlebury, CT 06762-1004
tel: 800.243.6125 (except CT)
tel: 203.758.8272
  Bearings, clutches, brakes, couplings, tools, belts, pulleys, gears
etc.

Radio Shack
  Electronic parts and kits. Local retail stores in just about every
city)

SECS, Inc.
520 Homestead Avenue
Mt. Vernon, NY 10550
tel: 914.667.5600
 Gears and gear assemblies, belt drives, couplings, bearings, small
parts.

Seitz
Box 1398
Torrington, CT 06790
tel: 203.243.5115
  Drive components, gears etc.

Servo Systems
115 Main Road
PO Box 97
Montville, NJ 07045-9299
tel: 201.335.1007
fax: 201.335.1661
  Surplus pieces and prices, motors, actuators, geardrives,
controllers, robots, encoders, transducers, amplifiers.

Small Parts Inc.
6891 NE Third Ave
PO Box 381966
Miami, FL 33238-1966
tel: 305.557.8222
fax: 305.751.6217
  Lots of neat small supplies including: materials, metal stock,
fasteners, tools etc.

Stock Drive Products
2101 Jericho Turnpike
Bobx 5416
New Hyde Park, NY 11042-5416
tel: 516.328.3300
fax: 516.326.8827
  Great set of handbooks of thousands of components.

Winfred M. Berg
499 Ocean Ave., 
East Rockaway, LI, NY 11518
tel: 516.599.5010
  Precision Mechanical Components

Any technical library should have catalogs from the larger
distributors. These include McMaster-Carr, Grainger, Allied, Newark,
etc.

____________________________________________________________________________
+++Hero robots:

Heros are no longer being made but Heath (Zenith) still offers some
replacement parts.  They had about 8 years of sales: 4,000 Hero Jr's,
3,000 Hero 2000's, 14,000 assembled Hero 1's. Ones with less
capability didn't do as well but higher priced ones did ok in the
market. Service and maintainability are a problem due to the sheer
number of bolts, pulleys, boards, sensors, cables etc. Used ones can
be picked up cheap - caveat emptor.

Heathkit [has gone out of business]
Benton Harbor, MI
order line (800) 253-0570
tech line (616) 982-3980
_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Puma manipulators:

Pumas are probably the most common robot in university laboratories
and one of the most common assembly robots. Designed by Vic Schienman
many years ago, the Puma (Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly)
was produced for many years by Unimation (later purchased by
Westinghouse and sold at a loss later to Staubli, a Swiss company)
Found in many university labs as well.

Staubli Automation
211 Overlook Drive
Sewickly, PA 15143
tel: 412.741.1740

Staubli Unimation Ltd
Unit G, Stafford Park 18
Telford, Shropshire, TF3 3Ax
UK


PUMA singularities:
The PUMA has three singularities: the ``alignment'' singularity (wrist
is as close to the axis of joint 1 as it can get), the ``elbow''
singularity (elbow is fully extended or folded up; the latter is not
possible because of joint limits), and the wrist singularity (the axes
of joints 4 and 6 are aligned).

The angles corresponding to these depend on the Denavit-Hartenburg
(DH) parameter assignment.  For the PUMA, the definitions given in [1]
are perhaps the most commonly used Using these, and letting A2, A3,
D3, and D4 denote the translational DH offsets, the singularities
occur when the following are true:

Alignment:	D4*sin(ang2+ang3) + A2*cos(ang2) - A3*cos(ang2+ang3) == 0

Elbow:		sin(ang3 - atan2(A3,D4)) == 0

Wrist:		sin(ang5) == 0

Typical offset values for the PUMA 560 are

A2 =  431.80
D3 =  149.09
A3 =  20.32
D4 =  433.070	

[information provided by John Lloyd <lloyd@curly.mcrcim.mcgill.edu>]

Trident Robotics and Research, Inc.
2516 Matterhorn Drive
Wexford, PA 15090-7962
(412) 934-8348 
email: <robodude@cmu.edu>
A board for replacing the PUMA LSI/11 controller with the CPU of your
choice: The board is basically an I/O board with D/A's, A/D's, encoder
counters and some digital I/O lines and is available to connect to
several bus architectures including VMEbus, IBM-PC bus, Multibus and
IndustryPack bus. (with others under consideration) It comes as a
two-board set: A PUMA board and a bus interface board. This allows
several buses to be supported and keeps the analog electronics away
from the noise of the bus. (It also makes switching buses cheap, if
the need ever arises.) Since it is primarily an I/O board set, it can
be used in applications other than controlling a PUMA.

The user's manuals are available by anonymous ftp:

	ftp ftp.cs.cmu.edu
	login as "anonymous"
	cd /usr/anon/user/deadslug
	get trc4um.ps

This is a PostScript file that can be printed or viewed (to conserve paper)
and describes the remote board that mounts inside the Unimate controller, 
replacing the VAL computer.
The file trd0001.ps shows the board arrangement diagrammatically.

Useful Puma references:

[1] Richard Paul, Brian Shimano, and Gordon Mayer, ``Kinematic Control 
    Equations for Simple Manipulators''. IEEE Transactions on Systems,
    Man, and Cybernetics, Vol SMC-11, No. 6, June 1981.

[2] B Armstrong, O Khatib, and J. Burdick
    The Explicit Dynamic Model and Inertial Parameters of the PUMA 560 Arm
    Proceedings IEEE Int. Conference on Robotics and Automation, April 1986
    San Francisco, CA pp510-518
_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Simulators:

Simulation allows researchers, designers and users to construct robots
and task environments for a fraction of the cost and time of real
systems. They differ significantly from traditional CAD tools in that
they allow study of geometries, kinematics, dynamics and motion
planning. This list is NOT a comparative analysis of the different
systems but rather a list of systems that are available.

Commercial Simulators
---------------------

Auto Simulations, Inc.
655 Medical Drive
Bountiful, UT  84010
tel: 801.298.1398
contact:  Teresa Francis, ext 330
Products: AutoMod II
Platforms: ?
Cost: ?

CADSI
PO Box 203
Oakdale, IA 52319
tel: 800.383.1322
tel: 319.337.8968
  DADS - kinematics and dynamics package. Have ProEngineer to CADSI
interface.  Supports rigid and flexible body analysis. Animation and
interfaces to FEA/FEM and CAD programs.

Deneb Robotics, Inc.
3285 Lapeer Road West
PO Box 214687
tel: 313.377.6900
Product:	IGRIP
Platforms:	SPARCs, SGI
Cost:	US$50-$60,000.
  Allows offline programming, dynamics capability etc.

Mechanical Dynamics Inc.
2301 Commonwealth Blvd
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
tel: 313.944.3800
 ADAMS dynamics package

Silma/Cimstation
1601 Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road
Cupertino, California  95014
tel: 408.725.8908                           
Product:	CimStation
Platforms:	SGI-4D, SUN SparcStation, Apollo, Intergraph,
		Computervision, HP, IBM Risc6000 and DEC.
Cost:		Base system around $55K (commercial license)
		They also have a University Partnership
		Program to enable universities to purchase CimStation
		for around $20K US and $25K International.  
Features:
Silma offers application solutions for Spot Welding, Arc Welding,
Painting, Stamping and Assembly, as well as Robot Calibration Tools.
Also, SILMA has direct CAD interfaces to Computervision CADDS,
Parametric Technology Corporation Pro/ENGINEER, IBM CATIA ans MCS
ANVIL5000. We also support VDAFS and SET in addition to IGES. Finally,
in addition to CimStation Robotics, we also offer SILMA(R) CimStation
Inspection - used to create, simulate and edit DMIS programs for
coordinate measuring machines- (CMMs) and SILMA(R) CimStation NC
Verification- used to simulate and verify NC part programs.
	Provides: Basic CAD Tools: 2D and 3D solid & wireframe, IGES
interface, Robot Modelling: generate the required governing equations
(iterative or closed form) automatically for "many" classes of robots
Path Generation Kinematic Simulation with Collision Detection Dynamic
Simulation (CimStation only at this point) I/O Operations

John Craig of "Introduction to Robotics" fame is head of Silma's R&D.
Silma has a programming environment called SIL complete with its own
PASCAL-like iterative language with graphics and robotics extensions.
CimStation is built out of this language.  This allows you to add your
own functionality. E.g. your own path planner. You can also write
C-code, compile it, and add it to the system.

Comutek
1223 Peoples Avenue
Troy, NY  12180
tel: 518.276.2817
fax: 518.276.XXXX
contact:  Vinay Joshi
  Products: Work-Out
  Cost: Around $25000.

Tecnomatix Technologies/Robcad
39750 Grand River Avenue
Suite A-3
Novi, MI 48375
tel: 313.471.6140
fax: 313.471.6147
Platforms: HP, Silicon Graphics, IBM and Sun
Tecnomatix makes several packages for simulation including ones for
Spot welding, Arc welding, Painting, Teleoperation (Martel), CMM and
Drilling. They also have an open systems environment, ROSE, that
allows user customization and interface design. ROBCAD itself allows
robot modeling (library of 100 robots is supplied), collision free
path generation, importation of IGES, VDAFS and SET files and direct
interface with Catia and ComputerVision.

[GMF - the entry that used to be here, no longer supports OLPW-200,
instead they are a Robcad reseller]

Simulators on the net
---------------------
Ars Magna
  The ARS MAGNA robot simulator provides an abstract world in which a
  planner controls a mobile robot. The simulator also includes a simple
  graphical user-interface which uses the CLX interface to the X window
  system. Version 1.0 of the ARS MAGNA simulator is documented in Yale
  Technical Report YALEU/DCS/RR #928, "ARS MAGNA: The Abstract Robot
  Simulator".  This report is available in the distribution as a
  Postscript(tm) file, as well as from:
	Paula Murano
	Yale University 
	Department of Computer Science
	P.O. Box 2158 Yale Station
	New Haven, CT  06520-2158
	net: <murano@cs.yale.edu>
  Comments to Sean Engelson: <engelson@cs.yale.edu>
  ARS MAGNA is available by anonymous ftp:
	location:	ftp.cs.yale.edu
	directory:	pub/nisp
	filenames:	*

Simderella
  Simderella is a robot simulator consisting of three programs:
	connel: the controller
	simmel: the simulator
	bemmel: the X-windows oriented graphics back-end
  Simmel is the part which actually simulates the robot. It performs a
  few matrix multiplications, based on the Denavit Hartenberg method,
  calculates velocities with the Newton-Euler scheme, and communicates
  with the other two programs. Bemmel only displays the robot. It is
  a fast general-purpose display method which places separate objects
  in space depending on the homogeneous matrices it receives from
  simmel. Connel is the controller, which must be designed by the user
  (in the distributed version, connel is a simple inverse kinematics
  routine. I didn't include my neural networks.)

  The three programs use Unix sockets for communication.  This means
  that
	1. you need sockets
	2. all the programs can run on different machines
  Since data communication is high-level (meaning, in this case, that
  I do not send doubles, integers, and so on, but encode them first),
  running the programs on different architectures is no problem.  In
  fact, it was thus designed that connel can, at the same time,
  control a real robot _and_ the simulated one.

  Simderella likes to sleep; that is, when nothing happens, no
  processor time will be used.

  The software is available as a compressed tar file from:
	site:		galba.mbfys.kun.nl [IP 131.174.82.73]
	directory: 	pub/neuro-software/pd.
	filename:	simderella.1.0.tar.Z

  Extract the simulator from the tar file by typing at the Unix
  command line:
	zcat simderella.tar.Z | tar xf -
  or use your favourite extracting commands. In the simderella/
  directory, type
        make
  The sub-directories are recursively visited and executables are
  compiled and linked.

  The software has been compiled using gcc on SunOS running under
  X11R4/5 on Sun3, Sun4, Sun Sparc 1, 2, and 10, and Silicon Graphics
  architectures (using cc, of course, which is what the gnu compiler
  is called there).

  If you're impatient, execute the thing as follows:
	cd bemmel; Zoscar & cd ..
	cd simmel; source env; simmel1 ns & cd ..
	cd connel; connel s
  all on one machine.  Then type commands like
	f 50 50 50
	k 50 50 50

  or move the mouse pointer in the bemmel window and press an `l' or
  `r' or `u' or `d' or ....

  [CMU has been using this recently to facilitate software development
  of the Shuttle servicing robot before the hardware and mechanics are
  available to test the various parts of the controller - it has also
  been linked to TCA calls and worked very well]

Public Domain SGI based simulator:
	This is a Silicon Graphics based delux robot simulator with
  lots of nice graphics Stuff. It was written by Andrew Conway and
  Craig Dillon as undergraduates for an electrical engineering project
  at the University of Melbourne. Not much in installation
  instructions. There is a latex manual with usage instructions and
  the mathematics.  Warning: It is 4.3Mbytes compressed, and the
  US-Australia link is quite slow.
	Disclaimer: I [Andrew] haven't used this software for
  years. If it malfunctions, don't sue me or Craig, we don't guarantee
  it.
	site:		krang.vis.citri.edu.au
	directory:	pub/robot

MODULSH:
	The complete programe is divided into three menus: Main,
  Drawing and Robot Menus. features such as selecting elements or the
  complete screen, rotating, translating, zooming, enlarging or
  reducing the scale and passing to the two dimensional drawing window
  from the three dimensional one are available.
	The Drawing Menu also offers many other possibilities like
  drawing three dimensional circles, ellipses, arcs, elliptical arcs,
  cylinders, cones, prisms, ellipsoids, toroids, etc.  In addition to
  these, it is also possible to obtain hidden line drawing and to
  change the point numbers of the circular drawing elements.  Whereas
  in Robots Menu, operations like selecting modules from the
  sub-menus, containing graphics, which concern body, wrist, hand
  systems and work spaces of robots, finding direct and inverse
  kinematics solution of these systems, point by point simulation of
  the robot motions, changing Denavit-Hartenberg parameters and joint
  freedom extremums from the menus can be performed.
	site:  		WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil and OAK.Oakland.Edu
	directory:	pd1:<msdos.education>
	filenames:	MODULSH1.ZIP    Design and animation of robots, 1 of 2
			MODULSH2.ZIP    Design and animation of robots, 2 of 2
	Author:
	Dr. Hikmet Kocabas
	Istanbul Technical University
	MKKOCABS%TRITU.BITNET@FRMOP11.CNUSC.FR
	MKKOCABS@TRITU.BITNET

_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS)

This is an abridged list of the RTOS'. See
comp.real-time and news.answers for the complete FAQ.

	location:  rtfm.mit.edu [18.70.0.209]
	directory: /pub/usenet/news.answers/realtime-computing
	filenames: faq

Below is a list of both commercial and research Real-Time Operating
Systems (RTOS) which are being used around the world for implementing
robotic systems.  Only the names and addresses of the distributors are
included.  Since the available features of each are constantly
changing, and the advantages and disadvantages of each are greatly a
matter of opinion and target application, no such descriptions are
given.

Commercial RTOS:

    * iRMX III 
	    Runs on Intel 80X86-based computers
	U.S.A.:
	    Intel Corporation
	    3065 Bowers Avenue
	    Santa Clara, California 95051
	    tel (408) 987-8080
    * LynxOS
	    Runs on wide variety of platforms, including Motorola,
	    Intel, Sun, and Hewlett Packard.

	    Lynx Real-Time Systems, Inc
	    16780 Lark
	    Los Gatos, CA 95030
	    tel (408) 354-7770
	    fax (408) 354-7085

    * OS-9
	    Runs on Motorola MC680X0-based single board computers.

	    Microware System Corporation
	    1900 N.W. 114th St.
	    Des Moines, Iowa 50322
	    tel (515) 224-1929
    * pSOS+ 
	    Runs on a variety of Motorola 680X0 and 88100, and 
	    Intel 80386 computers.  Requires a host workstation or
	    personal computer if pASSPORT+ real-time programming
	    environment is to be used.

	    Software Components Group, Inc.
	    1731 Technology Drive
	    San Jose, CA  95110
	    tel (408) 437-0700
	    fax (408) 437-0711

     * E-VENIX & VENIX
		VenturCom Inc
		215 First St.
		Cambridge, MA. 02142
		P: (617) 661-1230
		I: info@vci.com
	Product runs on ix86 platforms and PC/104 systems.
	Product is real UNIX, SVR3.2 & SVR4.2.
	Workstation version requires ~4MB, 120MB, 80{3|4}86 processor.
	Embedded version requirements vary depending on features used.
	Embedded product allows for completely ROMed UNIX systems,
	from read-only root to stand alone applications.

    * VRTX
	    Runs on a wide variety of processors, including Motorola 680X0,
	    Intel 80X86 and 80960, National Semiconductor series 3200. 

	    Ready Systems
	    470 Potrero Avenue
	    P.O.Box 60217
	    Sunnyvale, CA 94086
	    (800) 228-1249
	    fax (214) 991-8775

    * VxWorks
	    Runs on a wide variety of MC680X0 and SPARC-based single 
	    board computers. Requires a workstation for program
	    developments. Widely used in Unix environments for realtime work.

	    Wind River Systems Inc.
	    1000 Atlantic Avenue
	    Alameda, CA 94501
	    tel: 510.748.4100 or 800.545.WIND (9463)
	    fax: 510.814.2010
	    <inquiries@wrs.com>


	QNX
    Distributed, POSIX, real-time microkernel for Intel x86 processors.
    Supports fault tolerance and also hosts MS-Windows in Standard mode

  QNX Software Systems                          QNX Software Systems
  175 Terrence Matthews Cr.                     Westendstr.19 6000 Frankfurt
  Kanata, Ontario K2M 1W8                       am main 1
  Canada                                        Germany
  voice:  (613) 591-0931 x111 (voice)           voice: 49 69 97546156 x299
  fax:    (613) 591-3579      (fax)             fax:   49 69 97546110

Two QNX papers are available via anonymous FTP:
	An Architectural Overview of QNX
	A Microkernel POSIX OS for Realtime Embedded Systems

	location: ftp.cse.ucsc.edu [128.114.134.19]
	directory:/pub/
	filenames: qnx-paper.ps.Z, qnx_embed.ps.Z 

Research RTOS that are distributed:

    * Chimera II 
	    Runs on MC680X0-based single board computers.
	    Requires a Sun workstation for program development
	U.S.A.:
	    Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
	    Carnegie Mellon University
	    5000 Forbes Avenue
	    Pittsburgh, PA 15213
	    ATTN: David B. Stewart
	    tel (412) 268-7120
	    fax (412) 268-3890
	    email: chimera@ri.cmu.edu

    * Harmony 
	    Runs on MC680X0-based single board computers
	Canada:
	    Division of Electrical Engineering
	    National Research Council of Canada
	    Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
	    K1A 0R6
	    ref: NRCC Tech Report No. 30081

    * REXIS
	REXIS (Real-time EXecutive for Intelligent Systems) is a small
	multi-tasking preemptive real-time executive for implementing control
	programs for intelligent systems such as robotics and distributed
	networks. It provides functions for
	managing tasks, memory allocation, message ports, timers, and
	event processing.
		It is distributed as shareware at a low cost to
	hobbyists / students.  The current requirements for compiling
	and running REXIS is an ANSI C HC11 cross compiler and a HC11
	target with at least 24K of RAM. Other targets are under
	consideration.  For more information, please contact
	Richard Man
	P.O. Box 6
	North Chelmsford, MA 01863
	(phone+FAX) (508) 452-5203
	imagecft@world.std.com, or
	man@labrea.zko.dec.com

Robot Control C Library (RCCL)
	A robot programming environment embedded in C/UNIX. A graphics
	simulator is provided which supports the PUMA, Stanford, and
	`Elbow' manipulators. The system can be compiled on SGIs (so
	the Indigo should be fine), and the graphics runs under either
	X or GL.  You can get the system from RCIM for a small fee to
	cover copying and shipping. If you are interested send mail
	to:
	John Lloyd 		Research Center for Intelligent Machines
	lloyd@curly.mcrcim.mcgill.edu        McGill University, Montreal
	tel: 514.398.8281			       fax: 514.398.7348

_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Survey of Robot Development Environments

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;;								   ;;;
;;;								   ;;;
;;; RESPONSES TO INFORMAL SURVEY ON DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENTS	   ;;;
;;;                      FOR MOBILE ROBOTS			   ;;;
;;;								   ;;;
;;;								   ;;;
;;;								   ;;;
;;; Updated: Thu Oct 28 07:25:55 1993 <wlim@gdstech.grumman.com>   ;;;
;;; Created: Sat May 23 09:37:24 1992 <wlim@gdstech.grumman.com>   ;;;
;;;								   ;;;
;;; Maintained by: wlim@gdstech.grumman.com (for now)		   ;;;
;;;								   ;;;
;;; Please send updates, additions, corrections, etc. to:	   ;;;
;;;		 wlim@gdstech.grumman.com			   ;;;
;;;								   ;;;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; 



Organization   	Robot		Development		Languages &		
               	Type		HW Environment		SW Enviroment		
=============   ====		==============		=============		
Alcatel Alsthom Indoor robot	SPARC II, VME proc	VxWorks, MOTIF		
Recherche (AAR) Outdoor	robot							
                										
                										
Brown U.        Mobile robots	SPARC I & II,		OS/9, GNU Emacs, Xlib,	
                		VME 68030		MOTIF, Forth, C, C++	
                										
CMU             a) SM^2(walker)	VME 68020 & 68030,	Chimera II RTOS, C,	
                				Sun			Sun tools		
                b) AMBLER	VME 68020 & 68030,	MOTIF, VxWorks,			
                   		SPARC II, Iris		X windows, C		
                c) Mobile Mani-	Z8088s, Sun IPC & ELC,	X Window, Lisp, C, Hero		
                   pulator	NeXT			Basic			

                d) Mobile robot	SPARC, Iris, Mac,	X windows, Openwindows,	
                		VME, Maspar, Titan	VxWorks, Chimera RTOS,
                					TCA, GIL, LISP
                e) Navlab	Sun-4			X windows, C		


Colorado Sch.   Denning MRV-3	Sparc IIs, IPXs,	C, X11, Khoros, potential fields
of Mines        		IBM RS/6000s           	X11 visualization tool (homemade)


Colorado St.    6-legged robot	68HC11EVM, AT		C			

Cornell U.	2 mobile robots	Gespak 68000, Intel	Scheme, Lucid Lisp
		(robot with	80c196, Sun(?)
		tank-tread
		base coming)

Cray Research(?)Mobile robot	MC68HC16EBV, 386	Assembler		

Georgia Tech	Denning	DRV-1	SUN IPC, Decstation,	X windows, C,		
            	& MRV-II	Microvax II		Lisp

Grumman CRC     SmartyCat	Mac II's/IIci's,	C, CLOS, LISP, SAL		
            	(Cybermotion	uExplorer, SGI(soon)	VxWorks(soon)
		 K2A)		68030 VME board(soon)

IBM TJ Watson	TJ, TJ2		Symbolics, RS/6000,	LISP, CLOS, CLIM,	
(1989?-1992)           		286, 386, Suns		C, X-windows, MOTIF,
                					GNU Emacs
                							
ISX Corp        Subsumption	Mac II cx's/ci's	C(?)		
                							
JPL             7 robots	Suns to 6811		RCCL, ALFA	

McGill U	Mobile robot	Sparcs, mc68hc11, PC	GNU, X, Small-C 
							C, C++
		QUADRIS		SUNs, Macs, C-40, 68K	C, X-windows, IRIS GL

MIT		20 robots	Mac II & IIsi, HC6811	Behavior Language
		GOPHER (ISR R2)	68332, Mac, Sun		GCC, Behavior Language,
							Lisp, X-windows
		Polly		VME, 6811, Mac		Senselisp(Scheme)
		SOZZY(homemade)	6811, Mac		Lisp, Behavior Language
                									
MITRE           Denning MRV-1	MacQuadra, uExplorer	Lisp, REX/GAPPS, C, C++	

Northeastern U.	Lobster Robot	HC11, Mac		C, Pascal, Assembly
		Phaeton		Sun 4/330, Mac		C, epsilon (Cognex), 
		(Denning MRV3)				X-windows

NRC of Canada	EAVE		Mac II's, 68020's	C, HARMONY OS, MacAPP
		(Cybermotion)                									

NC State        Mobile robot	VME 68020 & 68040,	OS/9, P/NET	

Osaka U.	Homemade	VME 68030, SUN IPX,	C, X-windows
				Sparc 2

Purdue U.	PETER		Sun4, 68030		C, VxWorks
		(Cybermotion)

SRI		FLAKEY		Sparc10/30, Z80		Lucid Lisp, C, X-windows

Stanford        Landmark based	Mac IIci		C, LISP		
                Navigation
		(Nomadic)								
                									
Swiss FIT       Mobile robot	Mac			MacMETH, Modula-2	
                							
U of Central    a) 6-leg walker	Commodore 64		SuperC,	C	
                b) 6-leg walker Amiga 500		C		

U of Edinburgh	a) ALDER	8052, SUN, PC		Basic
		(Fischertecknik)
		b) CAIRNGORM	68000, SUN		C
		(Fischertecknik)
                									
U of Mass.,	Denning		DECstation 5000,	C, LISP
Amherst				Sparcstation

U of New	Underwater	Sparcstation,		VxWorks, C(?)
Hampshire	robots		CMOS VME boards


U Wash.		Denning		HP 9000 series 300's,	Gensym G2, OS/9	
				68000			LLAMA (Forth), Lisp, C 

Worcester Poly-	James		NEC 76310, 68HC11,	Assembly, Small-C (DOS) 
technic Inst.	(RWI B12)	Gateway 2000 PC

Wright Lab,	Hero 2000	Intel 286		MS C (DOS), Assembly
Wright-Pat. Air
Force Base

VTT (Technical	Akseli		HP-1100, 386		MS-DOS, LynxOS (soon)
Research Center						C
of Finland)

_____________________________________________________________________________
+++What is the miniboard?

The Mini Board is an outgrowth of the MIT 6.270 robot course and
design project. It is a small and inexpensive design for a controller
board based on the ubiquitous (yet hard to find) 68HC11
micro-controller.

A fifty-page manual describing how to build and operate the Mini Board
is on-line on the FTP server cherupakha.media.mit.edu in directory
pub/miniboard/docs.  Also on-line is software for programming the Mini
Board from MS-DOS, Macintosh, and Unix machines.

Hard copies of the Mini Board manual may be ordered by sending a check
payable for U.S. $5 to "MIT Epistemology and Learning" at Epistemology
and Learning Publications, MIT Media Laboratory, 20 Ames Street
E15-301, Cambridge MA 02139.

There is now a mailing list for discussing the board.  The purpose of
the mailing list is to discuss robot controller boards, and robot
control in general.  In particular, the list will be used to support
the Mini Board 2.0 and 6.270 board design by Fred Martin and Randy
Sargent of MIT.  However, any and all traffic related to robot
controllers is welcome.

Administrative address:	listserv@oberon.com
	(send a message containing the word "help" for directions)
Mailing list address:	robot-board@oberon.com
Maintainer:		<gkulosa@oberon.com>
Please DO NOT send administrative things to the main mailing list
address, as then everyone will get annoyed.
_____________________________________________________________________________

+++Microcontrollers

Many questions relate to the choice of microcontroller in robot
systems.

Microchip PIC16/17

NS628/629

HP HCTL 1000, 2000

68HC11

_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Books:

The readership of this group ranges from the beginner to experienced
robot designers and users. Accordingly, this list covers the gamut as
well. I would like to include net resources as well such as papers or
tech reports.

Mobile Robots: Inspiration to Implementation.
J. L. Jones and A. Flynn, 
  This book is based on a course taught at MIT and deals with all
  aspects from design and the mechanics and electronics of
  construction to robot programming.
	Klaus Peters
	President and Publisher
	AK PETERS, LTD.
	289 Linden Street
	Wellesley, MA 02181
	tel: 617.235.2210
	fax: 617.235.2404
	net: <kpeters@geom.umn.edu>

The Robot Builder's Bonanza: 99 Inexpensive Robotics Projects
Gordon McComb
TAB Books

Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics and the Coming Robotopia
Frederik L. Schodt
Kodansha International
New York, NY 1988
  Lots of interesting views of robots in Japan and Japan's fascination
  with robots.

The Robot Book
Richard Pawson
Windward, 1985, 192 pages.
  Utilizes Lego kits.

Interfacing Test Circuits With Single-Board Computers
Robert H. Luetzow
TAB Books

Build Your Own Universal Computer Interface
Bruce Chubb
TAB Books

Robots
Peter Marsh
Crescent (Crown) Publishers, NY 1985
Marsh edited the volume and the book is made up of several
contributions from robotics researchers.  A very well illustrated book
that covers the general topic of robots.  Excellent source materials
and graphics.

Microprocessor Based Robotics
Mark J. Robillard
Howard Sams & Co. 1983

Advanced Robot Systems
Mark J. Robillard
Howard Sams & Co. 1984

JTEC report on Japanese Space Robotics
Available from NTIS (see below)
  A summary of the Japanese Technology Evaluation Center (JTEC)
  panel's report on the state of the art of Japanese robot technology.
  Lots of pictures of wierd and wonderful robots -- elephant trunk,
  caterpillar, space tentacle, wall builder, Komatsu's walking
  undersea rubble-leveler, humanoid two-armed assembly robot, 4-legged
  stair climber.  Also tells where to write for videotapes of these
  machines in action.  Here's the info (two years old, remember) ...
  Tape with narration by William "Red" Whittaker:
	cost: $37.50
	University Video Communications
	Box 20006
	Stanford, CA USA 94309
	(415)327-0131
  Shorter tape of highlights from many Japanese labs:
	National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
	5285 Port Royal Road
	Springfield, VA USA 22161
	(703)457-4650
  Article: "Japan robotics aim for unmanned space exploration"
  William L. Whittaker, Takeo Kanade. IEEE Spectrum, December 1990

Robotics
edited by Marvin Minsky
Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1985
ISBN: 0385194145, LCCN: 84024390

Control System Design Guide
George Ellis
ISBN 0-12-237470-3
  Covers hardware,software and theory of ordinary PID control.

Minimalist Mobile Robotics
Jonathan H Connel
   ISBN 0-12-185230-X
  Brooks subsumption architecture robots. Shows complex behaviors are
  possible with little of the massive architectures done in other
  programs.

Robotic Technology: Principles and Practice.
Werner G. Holzbock
Van Nostrand Reinhold Co, 1986, ISBN 0-442-23154-7

Microcontroller Technology: The 68HC11
Peter Spasov
Regents/Prentice Hall, 1993, ISBN 0-13-583568-2
  Aimed at the 68HC11 family, but a good reference anyway.

Machines That Walk
Shin-Min Song and Kenneth J Waldron
   ISBN 0-262-19274-8
  Like it says: legged locomotion. Focus is on the OSU Adaptive
  Suspension Vehicle.

Directed Sonar Sensing for Mobile Robot Navigation_
by John J. Leonard & Hugh F. Durant-Whyte
Kluwer Academic Press
Boston (1992) ISBN 0-7923-9242-6
  An expansion on John's thesis work, which he did at Oxford.

Online reports
--------------
There are emerging sources on the net for tech reports and papers. If
you know of additional ones please send me email. Thanks.

The 6.270 Robot Builder's Guide
Fred Martin
	site:		cherupakha.media.mit.edu (18.85.0.47)
	directory:	pub/6270/docs/
	filenames:	*.PS.Z
  This directory contains "The 6.270 Robot Builder's Guide", the
  course notes to the 1992 MIT LEGO Robot Design Competition.
  Hardcopy also available for $15 from:
	E&L Memo Requests
	MIT Media Laboratory
	20 Ames Street Room E15-309
	Cambridge, MA 02139 USA
	Check made out to 'MIT Epistemology and Learning'
  Contact: Fred Martin at fredm@media-lab.media.mit.edu

University of Kaiserslautern FTP-Server is : 
	site:		ftp.uni-kl.de
	directory:	reports_uni-kl/computer_science/mobile_robots/...
	subdirectory	1993/papers
	filename:	Zimmer.learning_surfaces.ps.Z
	subdirectory:	1992/papers
	filename:	Zimmer.rt_communication.ps.Z
	subdirectory:	1991/papers
	filename:	Edlinger.Pos_Estimation.ps.Z
			Edlinger.Eff_Navigation.ps.Z
			Knieriemen.euromicro_91.ps.Z
			Zimmer.albatross.ps.Z

SPIE abstracts: 
	location:	mom.spie.org
	directory:	/abstracts/1800/1831.txt
	filenames:	1831.txt [From Mobile Robots VII 1992

	bookorders can be made through bookorders@mom.spie.org
_____________________________________________________________________________
+++Acknowledgements:
	Thanks to those who responded with updates, new material,
corrections, suggestions etc. Some of the names are indirect; that is,
they replied to queries on the newsgroup:

Hans Moravec, Maki Habib, Ken Goldberg, David Stanton, John Nagle,
Sean Graves, Sjur Vestli, Mark Yim, Rich Wallace, Dan Hudson, Sanjiv
Singh, Matt Stein, Dave Stewart, Ed Cheung, Ron Fearing, Klaus
Biggers, Lisa Rendleman, Nobuhiko Mukai, Paul Sharkey, Fred Martin,
Willie Lim, Allen Brown, Erann Gat, Judd Jones, Tony Sprent, Richard
Seldon, Brian Richardson, Ross McAree, Nathan Stratten, Chuck
McManuis, Terry Fong, and many others who dropped off suggestions,
comments and changes. Thank you.

-- 

aka: Kevin Dowling			Carnegie Mellon University
tel: (412) 268-8830			The Robotics Institute
adr: nivek@ri.cmu.edu			Pittsburgh, PA 15213
-- 

aka: Kevin Dowling			Carnegie Mellon University
tel: (412) 268-8830			The Robotics Institute
adr: nivek@ri.cmu.edu			Pittsburgh, PA 15213

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