Variable topological space robots are essential for providing adaptability and flexibility, enabling the robot to adjust its morphology to perform a range of tasks in the unstructured environment of space. However, impact is a common consequence of topology transformation in space robotics, which may lead to irreversible damage, such as the shedding of solid lubrication on joints. Nevertheless, determining the precise force-time relationships of such impacts poses significant challenges, especially when accounting for various connection mechanisms. In this work, a docking strategy that optimizes the manipulator’s joint angle configuration to minimize the impulse when the topology changes is proposed. First, an estimation technique is developed to quantify the impulse generated by topology transformation, employing spatial operator algebra and generalized momentum balance equations. Based on this model, the impulse minimization is modelled as a bilevel optimization problem, which decomposes a complex multipolar problem into two simpler subproblems. Although this optimization model may compromise computational efficiency, it increases the probability of achieving an optimal solution. To address this, a bilevel solution strategy based on a heuristic algorithm is proposed. In this framework, the lower level uses particle swarm optimization to determine the global optimum, while the upper level adopts simulated annealing to enhance computational speed. Finally, simulations are conducted to validate the proposed approach. Results demonstrate that the proposed method substantially reduces impulse.

This article is structured around snapshots of everyday life in reception centres for asylum seekers. These set the tone of the sonic and affective dimensions of the experience of the centre, as narrated by a resident, a music teacher, and through ethnographic reflections. The article devises ‘voice’ as a distinct category of the sonic spectrum, imbued with the significance of testifying to human existence, in a twofold way: first as a theoretical lens that offers new perspectives on the asylum seekers’ paradigm, and second, as a methodological tool to gain insights into aspects of everyday life in a reception centre, and by extension gaining access into ‘other’ social worlds that would otherwise remain concealed.

Management practices are constantly changing amid intense competitive global pressure. This can put a strain on managers in terms of adapting to new challenges that arise from rapid transformations. While there is an emphasis on timely transformations in order to increase efficiency and productivity gains, there can also be a relaxation when managers have reached their pinnacle and achieved their goals. The goal of this editorial is to focus on hot management trends which is an important topic given the ever shifting business environment. Well-known academics were asked to write about what they see as the main management trends affecting society at the current time period. They each have diverse views based on their area of expertise and thought processes. For the Journal of Management & Organization, it is critical that we look into management trends in order to inform practice but also to enrichen theory. It is exciting times with many things happening regarding management that makes it exciting to read about what may occur in the future.

This paper examines the licences of right system in English law and the ETSI FRAND licensing system to explore underlying reasons and approaches informing the establishment and design of these voluntary licensing schemes. It is argued that both these systems were established to advance specific demand-side objectives. At the national level, the licences of rights system functions as a demand-side framework within the patent system to promote local working of inventions, complementing the supply-side oriented structure for patent grant. At the international level, the FRAND licensing system serves as a global demand-side framework to promote the working of inventions on a worldwide scale. The institutional arrangement of these frameworks closely aligns with the commons management strategy applied to traditional infrastructural resources, characterised by public access to inventions on non-discriminatory terms. This alignment facilitates public access to inventions for productive activities. However, their institutional arrangements are further qualified by the underlying demand-side objectives that initially motivated their creation. The development of such a demand-side framework must devise mechanisms to mitigate the barriers to public access created by patent rights, while simultaneously preserving incentives for patentees to contribute their inventions to demand-side frameworks.

As Poland began to expand towards the east in the 1340s, a large-scale settlement initiative commenced on the former Polish-Ruthenian borderland in the Carpathians. This initiative, along with integration of German and Polish colonists, resulted over time in the emergence of a Polish cultural group known as Forest Germans (in Polish Głuchoniemcy). In 1871-1989 Polish-German conflict led to the relevant ethnonym and choronym being removed from both Polish academic and popular discourse. As a result, no systematic geographical research into the location and borders of their settlement region was carried out. All we have are its dispersed, imprecise geographical descriptions from the period between the second half of the 17th century and the first half of the 20th century. Despite the erasure of this term from discourses and obstruction of the process of self-determination by the local population as Forest Germans at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries primarily for political reasons, the existence of a community which can potentially be identified today as Forest Germans at the former Polish-Ruthenian border is a fact. This article outlines the problems, challenges as well as the very process of delimiting Forest Germany, along with a general outline of its boundaries.

Due to the effects of tolerance, design, and manufacturing deviations, there are clearances in the revolute joints of mechanical arms. These clearances can easily lead to system impacts and vibrations, resulting in a decrease in dynamic performance and affecting the trajectory tracking accuracy of the end effector. The existing dynamic models of mechanisms with clearance in revolute joints lack comprehensiveness, universality, and systematicity, and have not addressed the impact of joint reaction forces within clearance revolute joints on the system. The impact collision problem of the revolute joints with clearance was systematically, accurately, and comprehensively modeled and simulated in this study based on multibody dynamics theory. Based on Hertz’s elastic theory, the LuGre friction model, and joint reaction forces, this paper constructs constraint and mechanical models of revolute joints with clearance based on the theory of multibody dynamics. To facilitate multibody dynamics analysis, the collision impact direction matrix is proposed and used for the first time to transform the mechanical model of revolute joints with clearance into external forces. The dynamic models of mobile parallel and double serial manipulators are then constructed. Through numerical simulations on different clearance amounts, tracking trajectories, and load parameters, the impact of revolute joint clearances on system dynamic performance is analyzed. The engineering significance of this research in dynamic analysis of mobile parallel manipulators under imperfect revolute joint conditions is also discussed.

Who gets to have a voice, and what does it mean? Questions of vocal ontology and ethics are perennial, but in a world where the ability to sample the voices of others or to synthesize new ones in pursuit of both creative and commercial endeavours is available more widely than ever before, the relationship of the voice to the individual body, agency, and rights is invested with a new urgency. Through a discussion ranging from The Little Mermaid to Kanye West, Cathy Berberian to Holly Herndon, this short provocation considers the manifold ways in which we find, have, and borrow voices.

La communication constitue un élément déterminant dans la participation sociale des personnes aînées. Or, les interactions entre ces dernières et le personnel d’institutions publiques, dont les bibliothèques, demeurent peu étudiées. Cette étude visait donc à identifier les composantes déterminantes de l’interaction entre les personnes aînées et le personnel de la bibliothèque. Des entrevues individuelles et de groupes ont été menées auprès de 10 personnes employées et de 19 personnes aînées avec et sans troubles cognitifs ou de communication, puis analysées qualitativement. Un modèle théorique représentant comment l’interaction en bibliothèque est influencée par des facteurs relatifs à la personne aînée (ex.: besoin d’interaction), la personne employée (ex.: stratégies de communication), l’environnement (ex.: achalandage) et la modalité (ex.: téléphone) a été développé. L’identification de ces facteurs pourra soutenir les bibliothèques dans l’adaptation de leurs modes de fonctionnement pour promouvoir la pleine participation sociale des personnes aînées.