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Claims that recent rapid advances in robotic‐related technology offer the potential for new strategies that can help older adults extend or enhance their self‐help capabilities and, therefore, their independence. Such strategic applications can also help the caregivers of older adults by reducing the time consumed by providing care. In order to identify those robotic applications that are appropriate and effective in the caregiving process, it is important to perform functional task analysis that involves caregivers, care recipients, and technologists in an interactive collaborative assessment of both the tasks of caregiving and the capacity of technology. Focuses on the potential to employ robotic assistance in meal preparation, and describes an approach for identifying robotic applications that might assist older adults.

More than 100 engineers and researchers from industry and from government and academic laboratories met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in September at the Fourth World Conference on Robotics Research, sponsored by Robotics International of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

Notes that there are many areas where fine positioning of a robotic device carrying a specialized end‐effector is required. Describes a mechatronic wrist unit with fine motion capabilities for such applications. The wrist unit was designed as a four‐axis system with three revolute and one prismatic. The implementation is carried out in two stages. In the first stage, one prismatic axis and one revolute axis are implemented. Focuses attention on the underlying techniques for the development of this wrist unit given the requirements for weight and accuracy. Also describes the actuation mechanism and control strategies for the mechatronic wrist unit. Also presents the results of the experiments carried out for performance analysis.

Against the grain of the paradigmatic postcolonial analytics of the colonial state, this chapter presents a non-dichotomous comparison of two regimes within the late 18th century Danish empire, which are commonly presumed to be of essentially different kinds – namely the colonial state in Tranquebar in South East India and the metropolitan government of rural Danish society. By focusing, firstly, on practices of policing and, secondly, on the general technology of power that targeted these significantly different socio-political spheres, it is argued that these regimes were governing according to similar strategies: seeking, on one hand, to deploy societal mechanisms of self-regulation and, on the other, to provide a balance and order to the otherwise chaotic forces of the population. On the basis of a Foucauldian vocabulary of government, it is thereby argued that colonialism, at this time and place, had not yet clearly constituted itself as a particular form of rule.

More than ever before, public transit must compete in the transport market. This competition is, on the one hand, against steadily increasing car traffic; and on the other hand, between public transit operators. This, in turn, leads to new demands regarding the type, content and quality of data needed for planning and management. Frequently, traditional travel behaviour surveys do not provide sufficiently accurate and detailed information about public transit demand. To plan public transit, frequently a precise description of all trip stages, including the first and the last mile, is necessary. To achieve this, an adaptation of the traditional survey methods is necessary. In many countries, public transit associations have been established to integrate services offered by individual public transit operators with the help of through-ticketing and a coordination of lines and timetables into what looks, to the user, like a single system. To distribute revenue among the operators involved, detailed surveys of passengers are needed. Measuring the quality of public transit service and surveying customer satisfaction are new tasks. Such data are the basis for quality assurance and are essential for gaining and keeping customers of the public transit system. New technologies such as the Global Positioning System, automated passenger counts and Smart Card Payment Systems offer new possibilities to collect data more efficiently and cost-effectively. This article covers essential aspects of surveys and the collection of data that are crucial for the planning and management of public transit; it points to state-of-the-art methods and offers potential solutions.

The purpose of this study is to examine in what type of scenarios of daily life assistive technology such as the INSENSION system would provide considerable benefit for people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD).

A series of focus group workshops were held with relatives of people with PIMD and direct support professionals (DSPs), as well as experts in information and communications technology (ICT). They were oriented towards the design thinking approach and moderated as per the Disney method.

The participants identified transitions from known to unknown caregivers, provision of care during the night and the impact of external factors on a person’s mood as challenging situations within the PIMD context.

Solving these problems would lead to considerable benefits to the affected people. Based on the ideas gathered in workshops, three technological applications for the INSENSION system were derived, i.e. communication application, multimedia player and smart room devices, all of which will provide remedies in specific usage scenarios.

Methods drawing on the participant’s creativity in combination with the workshops’ multi-perspectivity facilitated a direct reference to the daily life of the target group. In this manner, the innovative ICT system INSENSION can be oriented towards the requirements of this vulnerable group.

Outlines some basic human embryological facts and considers several myths such as “the immediate product of fertilization is just a potential human being”. Gives medical facts to clarify these issues and concludes that these have far reaching implications for many areas of research. Argues that these decisions, at present, are based more on myth than science.

This paper is to explore how cross-functional integration (CFI) of production-marketing can impact the firm's build-to-order (BTO) competitiveness, marketing performance (MP) and financial performance (FP).

Empirical study with the structural equation modeling approach is applied. Six hypotheses are constructed and tested based on survey data collected from Chinese manufacturing firms.

The survey data supports that production-marketing integration (PMI) improves BTO competitiveness (BTOC) and MP and that BTOC also positively affects marketing outcome which, in turn, impacts a firm's FP. The results reveal that CFI of production-marketing is an effective approach for achieving the BTO manufacturing strategy and can improve organizational performance.

The paper uncovers the role of CFI of production-marketing in BTO manufacturing strategy and its impacts on a firm's MP and FP and provides important managerial implications for practitioners to improve organizational time-based competitiveness and performance in today's time-based competition era.