Predicting the human behaviour in human-robot co-assemblies: An approach based on suffix trees

Prediction of the human behaviour is essential for allowing an efficient human-robot collaboration. This was confirmed recently showing how scheduling approaches can significantly increase the productivity of a robotic cell by planning the robotic actions in a way as much as possible compliant with the human predicted behaviour. This work proposes an innovative approach for human activity prediction, exploiting both a-priori information and knowledge revealed during operation. The resulting approach is proved to achieve good performance through both off-line simulated sequences and in a realistic co-assembly involving a human operator and a dual arm collaborative robot

Athenian eye cups in context.

Since the late 1970s, scholars have explored Athenian eye cups within the presumed context of the symposion, privileging a hypothetical Athenian viewer and themes of masking and play. Such emphases, however, neglect chronology and distribution, which reveal the complexity of the pottery trade during the late sixth and the fifth centuries B.C.E. Although many eye cups have been found in Athens—namely on the Acropolis and mainly from late in the series—the majority come from funerary, sanctuary, and domestic contexts to the west and east. Most of the earliest, largest, and highest-quality examples were exported to Etruria, where the symposion as the Athenians knew it did not exist. Workshops and traders were clearly aware of their audiences at home and abroad and shifted production and distribution of vases to suit. The Etruscan consumers of eye cups made conscious choices regarding their purchase and use. Tomb assemblages from Vulci and elsewhere reveal their multivalent significance: they are emblematic of banqueting in life and death, apotropaic entities, likely with ritual uses. Rather than being signs of hellenization in a foreign culture, Athenian eye cups—like all Greek vases—were brought into Etruria, then integrated, manipulated, and even transformed to suit local needs and beliefs