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There is a strong current trend in automation towards These often systems that can handle small to medium batch sizes are also often associated with In prototyping situations. Batch numbers High complexity the application described Is for British Airways Heathrow Airport where the number of variations pattern of their meal trays Is large. The batch size the assembly variations Is also extremely variable. Catering at in assembly of each of This thesis describes the justification and design of anautomatic system to assemble these trays whilst retaining the flexibility Inherent In the current manual assembly arrangement.The work examines system layouts. Considering each possibility particularly from the flexibility and potential reliabilityaspects. This leads to the consideration of Industrial robots because of their Inherent flexibility. Consequently the variousconfigurations of robots are examined to assess the suitability of each In a cell arrangement the system which was chosen forIts potential reliability. The work continues by developing the Ideas and techniques of parts feeding to realise the maximumbenefits from a robotic cell system." The thesis describes novel magazining arrangements for handling each of the Items which make. up the tray assembly. Two major developments are described. one for the handling of stackable Items and the other for handling small discrete parts from bulk. Both systems are flexible to accomodate variations In part dimensions and possess ability to be quickly re-configured - to handle completely different parts. The equipment designed and constructed for British Airwaysuses Ideas that could also find use In many similar applications where the components have the same characteristics.

The currently prevalent forms of display controller hardware are discussed in terms of their architecture, and their relationship to the software which forms the graphics packages with which they are to be used. New architectures are proposed utilising both conventional, commercially available components and special purpose Large Scale Integrated circuits. The concept of a "hardware graphics package" Is developed and implementation details presented. The conclusions drawn from this work are that in order to provide an appropriate environment for the type of interactive graphics capabilities which will form the hub of much future software, more emphasis must be placed on intelligent display systems. This distributed approach requires that a host computer provides a display controller with a high-level scene description which is subsequently rendered to constituent polygonal facets by the controller. Substantial benefits accrue from this reduced dependence upon a single Central Processing element.

This thesis presents the results of research performed into the simulation of electrical power systems using a set of microprocessors operating in parallel , The uses and methods of simulation on analog and single processor computers are discussed as well as on multiple processor machines . It then considers various methods already used in the field of simulation for both the dynamic and network sets of equations in detail and the problems of using them on parallel processors . Several possible methods of parallel simulation are proposed and the best of these developed into a detailed algorithm for simulating both the dynamic and network portions of the power system .The different types of multiprocessor system are looked at , both in terms of physical configuration and the type of hardware used to implement the different types of system .The problems inherent in parallel computing are discussed and a form of multiprocessor, suitable for the simulation algorithm, is then developed taking these problems Into account. The hardware is developed using widely available hardware and the algorithm Is then Implemented upon this hardware .The results obtained using the simulator show that the proposed system provides a more economical solution, both in terms of the time taken in producing results and in the cost of the system, when compared with a conventional single processor computing system such as a mini computer.