According to the last directions in robotics application in industry worldwide this paper tries to give an overview on the current state and future directions in robotics research. Meanwhile an industrial robot is more or less a tool in classical application fields like spot welding, materials handling, spray painting, assembling etc. Because of a saturation in this application fields the producers of industrial robots have to recognize new application fields. Therefore future developements in robotics have to be done in two main directions. First, robots for classical applications have to be equipped with additional features to increase the efficiency and the possibility of usage. This features can be divided into the following groups: Especially „intelligent” sensors are necessary for new robot applications in the field of assembing/disassembling. A second direction for further applications is the service sector. Robots in the hospital, in the household, in amusement parks are some examples for so called service robots. Service robots look quite different than conventional ones and therefore research have going on in additional directions such as external sensors, new grippers and gripping devices, new kinematic structures. Efforts have to be undertaken to further development of key components of these robots towards efficiency, performance, miniaturization and cost. Here the collaboration of research institutions, service industry and robot and component manufacturers has the potential to create valuable synergies. In this paper a first overview on this new generation of robots is given and first applications are presented. Research results show that robots for such purposes differs in the kinematic structure as well as in the demands of control from robots applied for conventional purposes.

In co-operation with an Austrian small sized company, the Institute for Handling Devices and Robotics of the Technical University Vienna started with a project with the goal to reduce the necessary time for planning, programming and set-up of robot equipped manufacturing cells. In this contribution a modular, object-oriented control system for robotized cells is presented. This system ‘C_CTRL’ is responsible for all the necessary tasks, like sequencing, supervising, controlling of basic functions, error handling, and recording of statistic data. The control system is ‘self-generating’ during program start-up — using hardware information from a simple ASCII configuration file. Regardless which and how many components used in a particular cell, there is no additional programming effort for generation of the entire control software.

In co-operation with an Austrian small sized company, the Institute for Handling Devices and Robotics at the Vienna University of Technology started a project with the goal to reduce the time necessary for planning, programming and set-up of robot equipped manufacturing cells. In this contribution a modular, object-oriented control system for robotized cells is presented. This system ‘C_CTRL' is responsible for all necessary tasks, like sequencing, supervising, controlling of basic functions, error handling, and recording of statistic data. The control system is ‘self-generating' during program start-up – using hardware information from a simple ASCII configuration file. Regardless which and how many components used in a particular cell, there is no additional programming effort for generation of the entire control software.

Despite of the trend towards high sophisticated graphical user interfaces for more simple programming tasks, teaching of a mobile robot platform still requires a lot of programming skills. Moreover, when using different mobile platforms, there is one other problem resulting from the lack of standardised programming rules and languages (reflecting the history of industrial robots, there is no such a standard probable neither). A programming, navigation and monitoring system for mobile robot platforms, being developed by the Institute for Handling Devices and Robotics of the Vienna University of Technology, should provide with a more user oriented approach to these tasks. A special graphic user interface (GUI) allows a convenient access to the real as well as to the simulated robot, and to the representation of the environment Through this GUI, the user can send commands to the robot in a task-oriented meta-language, monitor command execution by seeing the robot actually moving on the screen, visualise instantaneous and cumulated sensor data. The user should also be able to create and modify a simulated environment by means of standard CAD functions, and use it to test robot programs.

The work presented in this paper deals with the control of a distribution process by characteristic figures-based computer programs. This work was carried out in the framework EC project MINIMISE (Managing Interoperability by Improvements in Transport System Organisation in Europe An international packages service was choosen for a case study; the main results will be presented here.

In the area of robotic applications assembly and disassembly automation are the fields with one of the highest increasing rates. Especially in small and medium sized companies there is a great demand for flexible modular assembly cells usually equipped with robots, grippers, storage devices and other peripherical devices. The cost and expertise required to set-up a cell, and subsequently to operate it, negates the many advantages of implementing such flexible systems. To guarantee a high flexibility and efficiency, a proper distribution and a context sensitive supply of information between all components must be ensured. This paper describes a module system 'C_CTRL' for hierarchical cell control based on information demands of assembly cells, like controlling tasks, supervising tasks, sequence co-ordination tasks, error handling, monitoring, and statistics.

Low cost vision systems gain more and more importance in robotics and in intelligent manufacturing automation. This paper presents the solution to realize a low cost vision system based on a PC. The function and co-operation of this components, such as the programming of the vision system are described. The programming of the PC based vision system is realized by object oriented programming using an object oriented image processing concept.

ZusammenfassungNachdem im vorangegangenen Kapitel die Hardware eines Rechnersäher beschrieben wurde, wollen wir uns in diesem Kapitel mit der Basisschnittstelle zum Benutzer — dem Betriebssystem — auseinandersetzen. Nach einer Einführung, die die wesentlichen Aufgaben eines Betriebssystems erläutert, werden zwei konkrete Betriebssysteme vorgestellt.

The paper starts with some considerations on CIM (computer integrated manufacturing) and especially CAM (computer aided manufacturing), which is the main topic of this paper. For efficient applications of CAM a well educated staff will be necessary. Therefore education in this field is very important. As a contribution to education in this field several software packages will be described. These packages illustrate the main fields of CAM namely the control of NC and CNC machines, machine feeding devices, transportation facilities, and storage devices.

Zu diesem Buch gehört eine beidseitig beschriebene Diskette, auf der zu den im ersten Teil erläuterten Themenkreisen Programme als Beispiele enthalten sind. Diese Programme bilden ein Paket, dessen Bedienung nun beschrieben werden soll.

The paper deals with the kinematics of an hydraulic driven robot arm which has been developed for teaching purposes. This robot has five rotational degrees of freedom and is controlled by means of a teach panel including a microprocessor. This teach panel was replaced by a personal computer with an appropriate interface. Various additional possibilities can be realized with this personal computer, e.g. calculation of connections between the stroke of the hydraulic pistons and the angles of the links, determination of the nonlinearities in these equations, connections between the robot coordinates and the cartesian world coordinates, programming of the robot in cartesian coordinates and more accurate positioning.

Industrial robots have been widely applied in many fields to increase productivity and flexibility and to help workers from physically and dangerous tasks. From the similar aspects the need on robots in service sectors-like robots in the hospital, in household, in amusement parks-is rapidly increasing. Cheap and accurate sensors with a high maintenance are the basis for "intelligent" robots. For these intelligent robots known conventional but complex applications are much more easier as well as new applications are available not only in industry. This paper should give some ideas for new application of mobile robot systems in service sector, with special focus on the area of health care "personal use", and entertainment.