ICRAM'99 has been organized by UNESCO Chair on Mechatronics and Mechatronics Research and Application Center of Bogazici University, Istanbul in Turkey, during 24-26 May 1999, co-sponsored by IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Industrial Electronics Society and IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. The purpose of this conference is to provide an international forum for the discussion on the most recent advances in the field of mechatronics. The program of the conference contains three kinds of papers, 4 plenary papers, 44 long papers and 90 regular papers. The long papers have been published by Springer-Verlag (ISBN 981-4021-34-2), under the name Recent Advances in Mechatronics (Eds. Okyay Kaynak, Sabri Tosunoglu and Marcelo Ang Jr.). The long papers have been presented in the following 12 sessions: Advances in Robotics, Motion control 1, Intelligent Techniques in Mechatronics 1, Virtual Techniques and Telecommanding, Robust Adaptive Control, Design of Mechanical System 1, Fault Detection and Inspection 1, Motion Control 2, Intelligent Techniques in Mechatronics 2, Analysis of Mechatronic Systems, Mobile Robots 1 and Biomedical Applications. For the regular papers, Modeling and Simulation, Trajectory Planning and Control, Variable-Structure Control Systems, Control of Mechatronic Systems, Production Automation, Machine Vision, Adaptive Control, Design of Mechatronic Systems 2, Measurement Technology, Intelligent Systems, Control of Robot Manipulators, Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Education and Training in Mechatronics, Neural Networks and Applications, Fuzzy Systems, Hydraulic and Pneumatic Applications, Mobile Robots 2, Control Applications and Sensors and Actuators. The papers have been submitted to the conference from 30 countries in the world. From Japan 14 papers have been presented, one plenary paper, S long papers and 8 regular papers. This special issue comprises 10 papers edited from the conference papers contributed from Japan. Each paper has been revised and updated for this issue from the original conference paper to describe the recent status of research and development of mechatronics in Japan. The included papers are concerned with some important and attractive subjects such as mobile robot, robot behavior evolution, nanoelectromechanical system, magnetic suspension, human symbiotic robot, stereovision, force control of robot, soft pneumatic actuator and so on. I would like to thank all the authors for their valuable contributions to this issue.
Special Issue “Applications of Finite Element Modeling for Mechanical and Mechatronic Systems”