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Quality and reliability for a product or process is defined and evaluated by the customer. Reliability is a time oriented quality characteristic. Time is a compound noise factor, and a reliable product/process must be robust against time. Similarly, a system has several quality characteristics which create impacts on customer satisfaction. This paper develops an integration of several quality and reliability methodologies such as robust design, quality engineering, quality function deployment (QFD), reliability engineering, and strategies for system integration. The objective is to develop a customer-focused approach for quality and reliability.

We can learn from the history of robotics that robots are getting closer to humans, both in the physical as well as in the social sense. The development line of robotics is marked with the triad: industrial — assistive — social robots, that leads from human–robot separation toward human–robot interaction. A social robot is a robot able to act autonomously and to interact with humans using social cues. A social robot that can assist a human for a longer period of time is called a robotic companion. This paper is devoted to the design and control issues of such a robotic companion, with reference to the robot FLASH designed at the Wroclaw University of Technology within the European project LIREC, and currently developed by the authors. Two HRI experiments with FLASH demonstrate the human attitude toward FLASH. A trial testing of the robot's emotional system is described.

This paper presents the design process and construction of a mobile social robot companion “Arash” for educational and therapeutic intervention for children with chronic diseases; one which is based on their interests and needs. This study concentrates on children with cancer who suffer from physical pain caused by both the disease and its treatment. Moreover, cancer treatment causes emotional distress, which can reduce the efficiency of medications. Using social robots to interact with ill children in a hospital environment could decrease their distress, thereby improving the efficiency of the treatment. Arash is a 15 degrees-of-freedom cost effective humanoid mobile robot companion, designed and developed to interact with children ages 4 to 12 years old. The robot has five physical subsystems: head, arms, torso, waist, and the mobile-base. Based on the robot requirements and specifications, appropriate measures were generated and thoroughly evaluated. An important and novel concept is the robots appearance, selected based on a survey taken from 50 children with chronic diseases at three pediatric hospitals in the city of Tehran. Based on these criteria and needs, Arash was designed, constructed, modified, and developed to operate in pediatric hospital environments.

Among the possible fields in human society in which robotics can be applied, the possibility of a robotic guard has been imagined since long time. Human guards usually perform a range of tasks in which a robot can provide help. Security personnel not only perform security tasks and patrolling services, but also have to interact with people, providing additional information about the area they safeguard. In this paper, we present the design, development and preliminary tests of RobotMan, an anthropomorphic robot commissioned by a security company that should serve in security roles, such as patrolling large indoor areas and acting as a telepresence platform for the human guards, and guidance roles such as welcoming visitors and providing information. In the preliminary experiment, the new robot and a human guard were employed the roles of security and guidance in a manufacturing center. The results of the experiment collected from 96 participants highlighted differences in participants’ behavior when interacting with the robot rather than the human and a different perception of likeability and authority of the robot depending on subtle differences in its appearance and behavior. These results provide useful indication for the employment of robot guards in a real world situation.

A new humanoid robot platform is being developed by the RoboticsLab's Hu-manoid Group. RH-2 is an improved design from its previous version RH-1 and functions and mechanical aspects will be outlined. The advantages of the indirect drive transmission, the proposed solution in the ankle joint and the addition of two more DOF are discussed. Also hardware architecture improvements are described: two ethernet networks and four CanBus networks for joint control loop, based on motor vs. joint sensing.

In this paper we present some first aspects of the design of an arthropod-like walking machine that will serve as a carrier for bioinspired sensors as well as a research platform for walking. The focus in the design of the robot was to create an optimal bodily framework for bioinspired control approaches for walking. Since body features and control structures co-evolved in biological systems, it is fundamental to idenify the most important body aspects in order to benefit from the related bioinspired control aspects. According to this, the robot mirrors the relative dimensions of the stick insect Carausius morosus. This involves the scaled-up dimensions of the body and the legs including the leg onsets, the joint axes orientations and additional 2 DoF joints that were introduced in between the individual body segments. In addition to these structural features, an important functional feature regarding biomimetics is the implementation of passive serial elastic elements in the leg joints.