Poland, variable geometry and the enlarged European Union

This article examines the role of Poland in the European Union, where the traditional Franco-German leadership axis has been replaced by a new ‘variable geometry’ of leadership constellations across a variety of policy areas. In this setting Poland has the potential to move from maintaining an initially passive role as a policy-taker towards becoming an agenda-setter alongside other larger and more traditionally dominant member states, especially Germany. However, Poland's success in this matter and subsequent influence on a variety of European Union policy areas, particularly the single market and the European Union's external relations, will substantially depend on the extent of its economic recovery from the effects of the global economic recession and wider developments in the European Union's debt crisis as well as its willingness to engage in constellations of member states that go beyond its traditional partners

The EU-25 Fiscal Compact: Differentiated spillover effects under crisis conditions

This article analyses the intergovernmental Fiscal Compact, which represents the latest layer in the emerging new governance framework European Union (EU) governments have adopted in response to the sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone. The crisis has initiated a new wave of selective functionalist spillover towards noticeably different levels of policy coordination between the eurozone-18 core and the remaining EU member states, who are divided into a semi-periphery and an outer periphery group. As an intergovernmental contract with currently 25 EU member states the Fiscal Compact signifies the decline of the traditional community method of universal supranational integration in favour of a more differentiated form of intergovernmental policy coordination between groups of member states

Britain's and Germany's interests in EU enlargement and reform.

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Objektorientierte Modellierung mit Modelica zur Echtzeitsimulation und Optimierung von Antriebssträngen

In diesem Beitrag werden Methoden und Werkzeuge zur Automatischen Applikation elektronischer Getriebesteuergeräte und deren Integration beschrieben. Am Beispiel eines mit der Sprache Modelica modellierten und in Echtzeit simulierten Sechsgang-Automatikgetriebes wird gezeigt, wie die Parameter eines exemplarischen Getriebesteuergerätes mittels numerischer Optimierung verbessert werden können

Modellierung, Regelung, Simulation und Bewertung der Fahrdynamik

In diesem Artikel wird gezeigt, wie beim DLR entwickelte Methoden und Werkzeuge in der Vorentwicklung bei BMW produktiv zum Einsatz kommen. So wurde bei der Entwicklung des xDrive-Allradsystems mit objektorientierter Modellierung in Modelica die Dynamik einer dort eingesetzten Lamellenkupplung untersucht. Des weiteren konnte mit dem Parameterraumverfahren die Fahrstabilisierungsfunktion der Aktivlenkung unter Berücksichtigung variierender Betriebsbedingungen bereits in einer frühen Phase abgesichert werden

Robotic Support for Haptic Dementia Exercises

Due to demographic change, the number of seniors in nursing homes will increase over the next few years. Since caring for people with dementia is very time-consuming and nursing homes are cutting staff due to cost pressures, the care sector faces enormous challenges in the coming years. However, regular training of certain physical exercises adapted to the individual state of health is very important for the health promotion and resilience of people with dementia. Therefore, it is necessary to explore a dementia robot that enables seniors to perform these exercises independently and flexibly. As dementia exercises that can be transferred to a robot, ball throwing, high-five game and strength exercises have already been derived in preliminary work. Based on this, an adaptive, optimizing and real-time interaction system has now been researched, which uses rule-based Fuzzy Logic to classify the degree of dementia and Evolutionary Algorithms to adapt the exercise parameters to the state of health. To develop the classifier, the expert knowledge of caregivers was collected using knowledge acquisition. The expert knowledge was formalized in a knowledge base using a hybrid inference mechanism. The results show that the degree of dementia can be correctly classified for the ball throwing, high-five game and strength exercise. Similarly, the exercise parameters can also be optimized with respect to individual therapy progress. The interaction system was successfully tested in a real-time robot simulation. Initial tests with a real two-arm robot were successfully performed. The evaluation with trained personnel as well as the acceptance study in a nursing home are in preparation

Improving Resilience in the Elderly Through Robot-Assisted Dementia Therapy

The number of older people with dementia has been steadily increasing for years. Physical and mental fitness is a supporting pillar for increasing resilience with regard to dementia. Therefore, older people should perform exercises as often as possible and in a targeted manner to prevent and treat dementia. Due to high cost pressures and staff shortages, there are limited caregivers available to supervise these exercises. Therefore, it is necessary to explore a dementia robot that can be used by elderly people to perform dementia therapy exercises alone at home, without a rigid schedule. In consultation with caregivers, ball games, high-five games, and strength exercises were identified as realistic exercises. The robot should include an adaptive interaction system that controls the design and sequence of the exercises in such a way that the patient receives the best possible individual support. For the realization of this knowledge-based system, initial parts of the nursing staff's expertise were acquired and formalized in five nursing facilities. Based on this, a metric was derived which, after a classification of the patient's daily performance, allows an appropriate adjustment of the degree of difficulty of the exercises. The formalization of knowledge will now be discussed, verified, and detailed with nursing experts from science and practice. After completion of this knowledge acquisition, the interaction system will be implemented and prototypically transferred to a mobile robot. Subsequently, the dementia robot will be evaluated in a test person study with regard to its performance and its acceptance