Search results for "NIST"
showing 10 items of 13738 documents
Comparison of Model-Based Simultaneous Position and Stiffness Control Techniques for Pneumatic Soft Robots
2020
Soft robots have been extensively studied for their ability to provide both good performance and safe human-robot interaction. In this paper, we present and compare the performance of two model-based control techniques with the common aim to independently and simultaneously control position and stiffness of a pneumatic soft robot’s joint. The dynamic system of a robot arm with flexible joints actuated by a pneumatic antagonistic pair of actuators, so-called McKibben artificial muscles, will be regarded, while its dynamic parameters will be considered imprecise. Simulation results are provided to verify the performance of the algorithms.
Public Policy Design for Climate Change Adaptation: A Dynamic Performance Management Approach to Enhance Resilience
2017
This chapter proposes dynamic performance management (DPM) as a suitable method to identify policies in the context of climate change adaptation. Namely, it focuses on the role it can play to support the analysis of how to enhance resilience of social and economic systems to climate change. While ‘resilience’ is a buzzword in the policymaking world, putting the concept into practice is still undeveloped. In a public administration focused on accountability, intangible outcomes of resilience represent a complication. The chapter discusses the findings and lessons from a case study applying the proposed approach. The results highlight the role of a dynamic performance approach to support stak…
Clothoid-Based Three-Dimensional Curve for Attitude Planning
2019
Interest in flying robots, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has grown during last years in both military and civil fields [1, 2]. The same happens to autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) [3]. These vehicles, UAVs and AUVs, offer a wide variety of possible applications and challenges, such as control, guidance or navigation [2, 3]. In this sense, heading and attitude control in UAVs is very important [4], particularly relevant in airplanes (fixed-wing flying vehicles), because they are strongly non-linear, coupled, and tend to be underactuated systems with non-holonomic constraints. Hence, designing a good attitude controller is a difficult task [5, 6, 7, 8, 9], where stabilit…
Ferrer del Río: Rodrigo de Mendoza, noble y coleccionista del Renacimiento
2020
The ‘Open Garden of Politics’: The impact of open primaries for candidate selection in the British Conservative Party
2016
International audience; Since 2003, hundreds of open primaries for the selection of parliamentary candidates have been held by the British Conservative Party as a means of democratising party organisation and enhancing representativeness. In the run-up to the 2015 general election, only 26 primaries could be identified. This article will apply the analytical framework provided by Hazan and Rahat to demonstrate that the relative failure of the experiment in terms of intra-party competition, participation, representation and responsiveness is counterbalanced by the benefits brought by this procedure, both as a tool of party branding at the national level and as a strategy for raising the prof…
Der Wettbewerb zwischen Parteien der Extremen Rechten und der linken Mitte
2016
Seit den fruhen 1980er Jahren gehoren Parteien, die der „Extremen“, „Radikalen“, „Populistischen“ oder „Neuen Rechten“ zugerechnet werden, zur Realitat westeuropaischer Parteiensysteme. Die Etablierung dieser neuen Parteienfamilie stellt die westeuropaischen Demokratien vor eine Vielzahl von Herausforderungen. Dabei ist der Aspekt der Konkurrenz um Stimmen von zentraler Bedeutung. Es gibt gute Grunde zu vermuten, das die Extreme Rechte auch und gerade den sozialistischen und sozialdemokratischen Parteien Europas zusehends Konkurrenz machen konnte. Die neuen Rechtsparteien haben ihre ursprunglich oft marktliberale Rhetorik abgeschwacht und umwerben die Arbeiterschaft mit protektionistischen …
Rodzinna postpamięć Ślązaków
2017
Family Postmemory of the People of Silesia
 The author suggests a possible use of postmemory to analyse the contemporary family memory of the people of Silesia. Their memoirs about WW2 (such as working for the Wehrmacht, the Red Army invading Silesia, working in labour camps, nationality verification, displacements to Germany, and deportations to Siberia) bear signs of latent memory which is rarely revealed even to the next of kin. Present mainly within the family circle, within the local society, and among friends, these memoirs integrated Silesians and made them a unique community that considers itself a stigmatized minority. This contributed to mythologizing and stereotyping the who…
State effects and the effects of state building: institution building and the formation of state-centred societies
2016
AbstractThis article discusses the assumptions underlying state-building efforts and the effects of these efforts. It addresses two main questions: why has state building not led to the establishment of effective states? And what are the effects of statebuilding? It is argued that these efforts have been based on an institutionalist model of the state derived from a Weberian framework, and that the basic reason why state building has failed is that the creation of effective states requires the creation of state-centred societies, where both material and symbolic resources are concentrated in the state. This is very difficult to achieve for external actors. But, although state building has n…
The Impact of Regionalism on Democracy Building: An Examination of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
2017
Since the early 1990s, the world has witnessed a new wave of regionalism and a mushrooming of regional integration organizations, particularly in the global South. Focusing on Africa, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) ranks among the most promising examples of regionalism on the continent. The SADC explicitly aims at building and advancing democracy in the region and its member states as part of its broader agenda on regional development. From a political science perspective, there is general agreement that regional integration and parallel institution building can be useful measures to promote and strengthen democratic rule, since an appropriate institutional “lock-in” impl…
Young People and Political Activism in Moldova
2020
The election of a Socialist and pro-Russian candidate in December 2016 as president of Moldova marks a new turn in Moldovan politics. This is in contrast with the pro-Western attitudes of the previous government. Political instability and changing international orientations, as emphasized by this article, are partly due to political alternative victories of parties supported by different social groups. Focusing on young people's activism, the article underlines the differentiation between the political success made possible by street protests in April 2009 and the political failure in December 2016. The findings may add a new explanation to Moldova's permanent instability.