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Research and development leading to the realisation of a fully autonomous and robust multi-fingered hand has been going on for three decades. Yet none can be found in an industrial application. This is largely because we do not fully understand the fundamental mechanics of multi-finger grasping. / This thesis is a study of the mechanics of multi-finger grasping, with particular attention being paid to applying the analysis to experimental co-operative motion tasks between a hand-arm system and grasped object. / Fine manipulation with multi-fingered robot hands is critically influenced by the capacity to achieve stable grasps. By exploring the fundamental mechanics involved, a method for establishing the stability of spatial four finger-contact grasps is obtained. This work examines both frictionless and frictional grasps in two and three dimensions and develops the stability requirements for grasping. The conditions for a stable grasp are expressed as simple equations relating the line coordinates of (i) transitory sliding actuator and (ii) the normal to the tangent plane at every contact location. This is achieved by using the principle of virtual work and a branch of statics known as astatics. / After specifying a grasp in terms of its contact locations and forces the object can be grasped. However, in general the configuration of the hand-arm combination will not be unique, as such a manipulator system has more than six degrees of freedom and is said to be super-abundant. The choice of appropriate shares taken by the arm and hand in delivering the manipulation task needs to be resolved. This can be done making use of a kinematic performance measure based on aligning the grip triangle with the hand line of symmetry and maximising the available manipulation range. The hand-arm combination can then be driven to this desired grasp enabling the manipulator to carry out the specified task effectively. A Salisbury hand and PUMA 760 robot arm are used to demonstrate these co-operative motion tasks. / All the experimental results are presented along with a detailed description of the implementation of a hierarchical robot controller system which incorporates force control of the PUMA 760.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1996. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

This study reports on an exploration of one group’s experience of making the transition from a teacher-centred to a learner-centred computer-rich classroom. The learners’ experiences are investigated in the light of the premises of learner-centred learning as they are defined by the American Psychological Association. The researcher seeks to identify the factors that would make the transition to a more learner-centred learning environment easier for learners and provides some factors that teachers need to consider if they wish successfully to transform their classrooms to a learner-centred learning environment. A case study examines the reactions of one group of learners to the transition. Learners were required to complete three types of projects. These projects were on different levels of learner-centeredness. The data was collected in three main ways: from participant observation, interviews and focus-group discussions, and from an analysis of the assessment results on the projects. The study concluded that learners had to learn how to cope and perform well in a learner-centred class environment, and that the matriculation examination at the end of the year undermines the effectiveness of learning in a learner-centred learning environment. / Dissertation (MEd(Computer-integrated Education))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

In 1957 a number of women's organizations were involved in planning a government-sponsored Festival of Women - an event that indicates contemporary awareness of and interest in the changing position of women. This study is similarly concerned with the position of women in the 1950s and 60s, relating constructions of the 'modern' woman in women's magazines to post-war developments, such as increasing levels of consumption and changing leisure patterns. There are two major themes in the thesis: the housewife and the modern. The study illustrates the centrality of 'the housewife' while accentuating the breadth and complexity of post-1945 women's roles and identities, with a focus on two sites pivotal to constructions of femininity in women's magazines: the home and appearance. The study also explores how women's magazines shaped the modern, emphasizing the range of ways in which this notion was constructed and understood. The concept of social capital is used to examine the significance of the modern, looking at why it was so important and its connection with ideas of exclusion and belonging.The study looks at two magazines. Home and Country was the magazine of the National Federation of Women's Institutes, and hence it targeted rural women. Woman's Outlook, on the other hand, was the Women's Co-operative Guild magazine, aimed at working-class Guild members. Through comparisons between the two and with Woman, a mass-circulation weekly magazine, the thesis demonstrates that their respective rural and Co-operative identities were distinctive features that contrast with the urban and mass consumption viewpoints evident in other titles. These rural and Co-operative identities heavily influenced the perspectives of the organizational magazines and created alternative visions of the modern. The relationship of these features to post-war British modernity has received little attention, with historians' focus on the urban and the individual consumer positioning the countryside and the Co-operative movement as antithetical to the modern. However, this study reveals that rural and Co-operative interpretations of the modern enhance and develop understandings of key themes in 1950s and 60s British history such as national identity, consumer culture, generation and age. The thesis situates Home and Country and Woman's Outlook within broader social and cultural networks and shows the extent to which women's magazines operated as cultural intermediaries. The study also engages with a number of intersecting bodies of literature, such as revisionist accounts of domesticity and recent work on women's organizations, and contributes to various discussions including housing in post-war Britain and feminist analyses of fashion and beauty. This multifaceted investigation generates new insights into both the housewife and the modern, insights which offer a more complex and nuanced account of 1950s and 60s Britain and the position of women.

Multi-agent systems are extensively used in several applications. An important class of applications involves the optimal spatial distribution of a group of mobile robots on a given area, where the optimality refers to the assignment of subregions to the robots, in such a way that a suitable coverage metric is maximized. Typically the coverage metric encodes a risk distribution defined on the area, and a measure of the performance of individual robots with respect to points inside the region of interest. The coverage metric will be maximized when the set of mobile robots configure themselves as the centroids of the Voronoi tessellation dictated by the risk density. In this work we advance on this result by considering a generalized area control problem in which the coverage metric is non-autonomous, that coverage metric is time varying independently of the states of the robots. This generalization is motivated by the study of coverage control problems in which the coordinated motion of a set of mobile robots accounts for the kinematics of objects penetrating from the outside. Asymptotic convergence and optimality of the non-autonmous system are studied by means of Barbalat's Lemma, and connections with the kinematics of the moving intruders is established. Several numerical simulation results are used to illustrate theoretical predictions.

The major goal of this work is to compare positions of different institutional types active in the banking sector in the Czech Republic. The emphasis is being given to the description of gradual mutual convergence and interactions of particular institutional types in the context of changes undergoing in a transition economy since 1990. The second part of this work analyses the framework for the operation of different institutional types and compares their positions against clients, owners and supervisor. The last part of the work is a comparative analysis of economic indicators for each institutional type in the context of changes in the market and legal environment since 2004.

A new Canadian political party arose out of the depression years as a protest to the economic, social and psychological conditions of that period. In 1932 the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was established, and the founders of this new political movement believed that their ideology of democratic socialism was the solution for the problems facing Canada. The CCF, later renamed the New Democratic Party (NDP); was a movement that offered a critique of the prevailing society, and was committed to the principles of democratic socialism. The CCF was a reform movement and a political party that challenged the prevailing Canadian ideology of capitalism, and as a result, needed to educate people to its cause. The CCF devoted a great deal of energy and volunteer time to education of party members. It was the only political party that organized correspondence courses, established study groups, provided lengthy and detailed reading lists, published study guides for recognized political books and had six separate party newspapers in simultaneous publication. In addition, the CCF encouraged book clubs, education clubs and ran summer schools and held educational conferences. Political scientists and historians have acknowledged for some time that the CCF in its early years held a strong belief in the necessity to educate its membership (Avakumovic, 1978; Robin, 1973; Young, 1969b; Zakuta, 1964). However, there has never been an attempt by adult educationists to study the CCF and its educational programs. The present study is an examination of the educational programs conducted by the CCF in British Columbia from 1933 to 1961. In addition, the study is an analysis of' a shift in educational emphasis as a reform-political movement evolved into a competitive political party. The CCF movement was avowedly educational in its early years, recognizing the need to explain democratic socialism to its new membership. Major political successes and advances during the war years swayed the CCF towards education for the general public. The post-war years were a time when the CCF evaluated its political goals and direction, as well as its commitment to education. With the "Cold-War" and the affluent fifties, the CCF swayed once again from its original ideological and educational emphasis. In the late fifties and early sixties an effort was directed to forming a new political party, which emerged in 1961 as the New Democratic Party. This study on CCF membership education in British Columbia divides the evolution of the work into five periods. Economic and political concerns, a world war and national and provincial elections had a discernable effect on educational emphasis and programming, The research concluded that in British Columbia the content and extent of various educational programs, activities and the literature changed during the CCF's 28 year history. The early movement years were marked by a great deal of creative activity occurring in numerous educational projects. The later years saw a political party replacing its educational emphasis with an organizational and campaign emphasis. The educational program of the CCF was very much influenced by the political concerns of the CCF as it met its political obligations, and as it responded to a changing world. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

The diploma thesis is focused on the problems in the sector of rental and co-operative housing since the nineties of the twentieth century in the Czech Republic. Firstly the thesis deals with the description of the basic concepts such as housing, supply and demand for housing, housing policy and instruments through which it achievs its goals. Further the thesis analyzes the current situation in the housing stock and its allocation to individual sectors. The third chapter concentrates on the issue of rental and co-operative housing. This chapter provides ample space for development of regulation as well as deregulation of rents. The end of the chapter foccuses the attention on the issue of social housing not only in the Czech Republic but also in selected countries of the European Union. The last two chapters deal with state housing support, where in addition to promoting the supply side mentioned is also housing benefit and satisfaction with living in the Czech Republic.

The conversational maxims are guidelines to how a conversation should be conducted, but sometimes these maxims can be broken for different reasons. The aim of this thesis is to identify breakings of the conversational maxims in the crime drama Blindspot and to study which maxims are broken, for what purpose the maxims are broken and if there are any changes to the number of maxims broken between different seasons of the series. The results show that the maxim of quantity is most frequently broken in the episode from season one and the maxim of quality is broken most frequently in the episodes from season three and five. Some of the reasons for the breakings are sarcasm used for a comedic effect, not giving enough information to keep the viewers in suspense and as a way to change the subject or focus of a conversation.