Manufacturing and Industrial Robotics have reached a point where to be more useful to small and medium sized manufacturers, the systems must become more agile and must be able to adapt to changes in the environment. This paper describes the process for creating and the lessons learned over multiple years of the Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition (ARIAC) being run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

For the most part, robots perform best in highly structured environments, where objects are in well-known, predictable locations. Another way to describe this is that robots are not considered agile. But, in order for them to be useful to small manufacturers and to also allow larger manufacturers to offer more automated customization of high volume parts, they need to be. In this paper, we describe various technologies that are being developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in conjunction with outside organizations, such as IEEE, which can be used to enhance the agility of manufacturing robot systems. We validate these technologies using two industrially-relevant use cases. The first deals with task failure identification and recovery and the second deals with robot dynamic retasking. These use cases were successfully performed using a formal knowledge representation, a graph database, a perception system, a high-level and low-level planning system, as well as an overall architecture which brought all of the components together.

We give an overview of the design and results of the Second International Competition on Computational Models of Argumentation (ICCMA‐17). Following the first meeting in 2015, the competition evaluates the performance of submitted solvers on computational problems within abstract argumentation. In addition to the four original semantics, ICCMA‐17 includes three additional prominent semantics. Moreover, a dedicated call for benchmarks allowed for the introduction of a sophisticated instance selection process.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a set of draft standard test methods for measuring and promoting software agility in industrial robots. These test methods are being used as the basis for an upcoming competition called the Agile Robotics for Industrial Applications Competition (ARIAC). ARIAC is being used to promote and push forward the state of the art in software agility and enable technology transfer between academia and industry. This paper describes the background about the test methods, how they were developed, how they will be applied to the ARIAC Competition, and additional information about the ARIAC Competition.

Purpose This paper aims to define and describe test methods and metrics to assess industrial robot system agility in both simulation and in reality. Design/methodology/approach The paper describes test methods and associated quantitative and qualitative metrics for assessing robot system efficiency and effectiveness, which can then be used for the assessment of system agility. Findings The paper describes how the test methods were implemented in a simulation environment and real-world environment. It also shows how the metrics are measured and assessed as they would be in a future competition. Practical implications The test methods described in this paper will push forward the state of the art in software agility for manufacturing robots, allowing small and medium manufacturers to better utilize robotic systems. Originality/value The paper fulfills the identified need for standard test methods to measure and allow for improvement in software agility for manufacturing robots.

The total he mispherical e mittance of specimens of t hree a lloys, In co nol and types 321 and 430 stainless t eel, in six differen t surface conditions, was evaluated at te mperatures in t he range 200 to 1,000 °0 by a modification of t he hot filament m ethod.The surface conditions were (1) polished, (2) sandblasted , (3) polished and t hen oxidi ze d, (4) sandblasted and t hen oxidized, (5) coated with NBS coating A-418, a nd (6) coated with NBS coating N-143.The total hemi spherical emittan ce was markedly affected by t he surface treat ment.I n genera l 13mi ttance was low for polished specimens, intermediate for sandblasted specimens, and high for oxidi ze d or ceram ic-coated specimens of each alloy.