Future space stations and space factories require many types of manipulators or robots for assembling and servicing in space, and especially demand small-sized manipulators for dexterous tasks. A 1-meter class articulated manipulator with space environment durability and lightweight has been developed. This paper presents the system design of the manipulator and development efforts of its components. The design of actuators and a hand, tribological investigation of mechanical elements in the vacuum environment, the control system with multi-microprocessor and the dynamic control algorithm of the arm are described.

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A method of measuring gas temperature by a laser probe, CARS, has been proposed. The ratio of signal intensity from two photomultipliers was used to determine the instantaneous gas temperature on Q-branch nitrogen molecule spectral profiles. A real-time temperature acquisition may be possible for high rate of laser shot repetition with attendant low-cost of optical and electronic instruments. The application to a practical burner was made with reasonable results.

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Recently, scale, speed and other performances of aircraft have increased and improved. Especially the active control technolgy (ACT) has contributed much to the improvement of performances. Such sophisticated aircrafts operate very well, when all the functions are normal. However, once failures occur in the functions, their normal operations can not be guaranteed, and the accommodation of failures and assurance of safety may require very quick, accurate and complicated restoring operation far beyond human ability. In these circumstances, control systems which automatically restructure themselves to accommodate failures and restore safety and performances, are desired. In this paper, let us suppose that vertical tail is broken in some ways and all the control surfaces are hardover because of failure of the hydro-pressure system. In this case, we study first the effects of vertical tail break on dynamic characteristics of the aircraft and effectiveness of thrust control using optimal regulator. Next we design a restructurable control system which is composed of parameter identification and optimal regulator subsystems. These studies and designs are conducted through computer simulations using a model of a large scale transport (Boeing 747).

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Temperature measurements of a cylindrical heat pipe with wick made of carbon fibers at several setting angles and heat inputs have been carried out under natural convection cooling condition. For each condition, temperature variation of the heat pipe surface has been measured at intervals of five minutes. Thermal conductance of this heat pipe decreases when the setting angle increases and when the evaporator is raised higher position. The maximum capillary pressure of this type of wick was found to be nearly 5 times as large as that of 200 mesh screen wick.

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