A famous French writer, Anatole France, liked to say, "The future is a convenient place to position our dreams" (1927). Indeed, this remark gains full meaning when one considers the history of what we call today "Robotics." For more than 3000 years, mankind has dreamt ofthe possibility of arti ficial machines that would have all the advantages of human slaves without any of their drawbacks. With the developments in technology since the end of World War II, mainly with the explosive progress of computers, it was thought we might at last succeed in transforming this everlasting dream into reality. In the mind of scientists of the 1950's, to make such intelligent and autonomous machines before the year 2000 seemed a small challenge: it was obvious, thanks to computers and Artificial Intelligence. But, in spite of progress in some directions, we must admit that the dream remains a dream and that the basic problems denying us a successful issue are not solved. In fact, if we except industrial robots, only calling for classical automata theory, the main advanced result concerning autonomous and intelligent machines is related to some understanding of reasons why we have failed during the past years.

Inhalt
1 Introduction.- 2 Remotely Controlled Manipulators: Use and Structure.- 2.1 Purposes and Applications of Remote Manipulators.- 2.2 Varieties of Remote Manipulators.- 2.3 Structures of Remote Manipulators.- 2.4 Conclusions.- References.- 3 Quality Analysis and Design of the Remote Manipulation Systems.- 3.1 Approaches to the Remote Control Quality Problem.- 3.2 Experimental Determination of Telecontrol Quality.- 3.3 Theoretical Approaches to Study Telerobotic Systems.- 3.4 Discussion.- References.- 4 Control Methods in the Systems Operator Remote Manipulator.- 4.1 Kinds of Remote Control Methods.- 4.2 Input Devices (IDs) of Semiautomatic Control (SAC) Systems.- 4.3 On-Off Control.- 4.4 Master-Slave Control.- 4.5 Semiautomatic Control.- 4.6 Co-Ordinate Control.- 4.7 Discussion.- References.- 5 Control with Parameter Adjustment in the Remote Manipulators.- 5.1 The Experimental Basis of an Adjustment Method.- 5.2. Optimal Value Tuning of Parameters.- 5.3 General Organizational Principles of Parameter Control in Remote Manipulators.- 5.4 Discussion.- References.- 6 Adaptive Coordinate-Parameter Control (CPC) of the Remote Manipulators.- 6.1 Classification of Adaptive CPC Systems.- 6.2 Adaptive Algorithm Synthesis.- 6.3 HCs of Adaptive Systems.- 6.4 Simulation and Testing of the Adaptive Systems.- 6.5 Discussion.- References.- 7 Mechanical Means for Realization of Adaptive Control.- 7.1 Basis of Approach.- 7.2 Slave with Variable Link Lengths.- 7.3 Master with Variable Link Lengths.- 7.4 Discussion.- References.- 8 Methodologies for Analysis and Design of Telecontrol Systems.- 8.1 Introduction.- 8.2 Method Based on Adaptive HO Model.- 8.3 Method Based on the Study of Human Control Movement Structure.- 8.4 Discussion.- References.- 9 Conclusion.- Abbreviations.