Stanislaw Antoni Szczuka (about 1654-1710) appeared frequently in sources for the reign of Jan III Sobieski and the beginnings of the reign of King Augustus II. The author presents his career from the time he assumed the office of the Crown Referendary in 1688 to his transference to the office of Vice-Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1699). The competence of the office of a referendary who, for all practical purposes, fulfilled court functions, was not distinctly defined in the legislature of the Commonwealth. One could have expected that Szczuka's copious correspondence from the period when he held this post would contribute to its further characterisation. The authors of the letters, written in 1688-1699, were numerous representatives of the prosperous middle gentry and magnates. The letters concerned primarily requests for royal privileges relating to public offices, and sometimes for other forms of benefiting from state revenues. Upon certain occasions, they promised both him and the king (sometimes also the queen) suitable 'fees', whose level depended on the rank of the desired office. The letters almost never mention problems associated with holding the office of a referendary. The poll conducted upon the basis of the letters addressed to Szczuka at the time when he was a regent of the Crown Chancery (1684-1688) made it possible to ascertain that his correspondents were representatives of the same environments and sometimes the same people who later on wrote to him in his capacity as a referendary. The topics of the letters are identical, the only difference being that Szczuka received many more letters as a regent of the Crown Chancery than as a referendary. The reason probably lay in the fact that as the chancery regent he enjoyed direct impact upon the editing and rate of issuing documents. Hence, his protection was much more important for the interested parties than the influence of his formal superiors. All authors dealing with Szczuka's public career stress the part played by the favours of King Jan Sobieski, certainly at the beginning of the career. At the time of Augustus II the number of petitioners writing to Szczuka diminished only slightly. Finally, it must be added that the letters addressed to Szczuka constitute a rich source for learning about the mechanisms which shaped his public career. At the same time, they indicate that the competence of the referendary office played a secondary role, and that the discussed letters do not enhance our knowledge about its functioning.
W pracy przedstawiono koncepcję układu planowania (planera) dla samoadaptowalnego i rekonfigurowalnego systemu mocowań-podpór dla cienkościennych przedmiotów (blach) o dużych rozmiarach w procesie obróbczym polegającym na frezowaniu i wierceniu otworów. W proponowanym rozwiązaniu system mocowań-podpór składa się z ławy oraz ruchomych agentów - manipulatorów mobilnych. Zadaniem planera jest wygenerowanie sekwencji wykonalnych pozycji dla każdego agenta spełniających ograniczenia geometryczne i czasowe. Struktura planera ścieżki, zwanego "potrójnym CSP", składa się z trójpoziomowej hierarchii problemów przeszukiwania dyskretnych przestrzeni rozwiązań. Do rozwiązania zadania planowania ścieżki dla głowic, ruchomych baz i manipulatorów równoległych, stanowiących części mobilnych agentów-podpór, zastosowano sterowany ograniczeniami algorytm przeszukiwania z nawrotami. W pracy przedstawiono projekt i implementację planera oraz omówiono przykładowe plany wyznaczone dla operacji frezowania i wiercenia otworów.
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The paper presents a planner module of a self-reconfigurable fixture system needed in the machining of thin-sheet large work-parts, namely milling and hole drilling processes. The proposed system consists of a power-supplying bench and two or more mobile robotic agents. The objective is to create an action plan for the positioning and reconfiguring of two or more mobile robotic fixtures that satisfies geometric and time-related constraints. The path planner structure, called Triple-CSP, consists of three levels of constraint satisfaction search. We propose an incremental, constraint-driven backtracking search to solve three hierarchic path planning tasks: for the supporting heads, the mobile bases, and the Parallel Kinematic Machine configurations of the mobile fixtures. The paper concentrates on the planner design and implementation and shows example plans obtained for milling and hole drilling processes.
Proposition of compliant foot for bipedal robot is introduced and its properties are investigated. The foot consists of four compliant elements (spring-damper) mounted to four vertices of a rectangular frame. The results of robot gait analysis using Zero Moment Point method are shown. ZMP trajectories for rigid and compliant foot are compared and conclusions are formulated. Foot compliance reduces needed for postural stabilization compensatory movements of the upper part of the body by those simplifying control methods and construction. Obtained results will be applied in real prototype of small humanoidal robot. Robot construction in which proposed foot will be applied is shortly introduced.