This award will provide partial support for USA participants in the 1990 Japan-USA Symposium on Flexible Automation. The intent is to help defray approximately 50% of the expenses for attendance at the three-day meeting and for two days of arranged tours of Japanese manufacturing firms. The objective of this trip is to learn about current academic and industry research in flexible automation. This type of close interaction between researchers in these two distant communities has, in the last two Symposia, proven to be quite beneficial, and with the increasing awareness of productivity problems in USA industries, such programs become more vital each year. At the conclusion of the meeting, the USA organizers (a group of four to six) will travel to the National Science Foundation in the fall of 1990 to provide a one-day briefing on the Symposium and related events. Following that meeting, the group will submit a summary report.
