Book review of “Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 1955-2005”. 588 pages, University of California Press, 2007, by Deniz Göktürk, David Gramling and Anton Kaes (eds.)

Though migration is an age-old feature of human activity, driven by various circumstances, its current place in the midst of global dynamics and the phenomenon of globalization is becoming increasingly critical. International immigration and its regulation have been largely shaped by the policies in the receiving countries, often determining preferences for nationality cohorts and work skills to satisfy their labor and human capital requirements. When immigration has been necessitated by political strife, host countries have displayed immense magnanimity as well. However, the growing realization of resource limitations and the strange quirks of cultural pluralism are in turn creating waves of dissonance. Literature and the media are now replete with an in depth look into the immigration debate in various nations of the world in trying to seek new directions and satisfactory solutions.

Optical Indoor Positioning of Vehicles

Indoor positioning is the backbone of many advanced intra-logistic applications. As opposed to unified outdoor satellite positioning systems, there are many different technical approaches to indoor positioning. Depending on the application, there are different trade-offs between accuracy, range, and costs. In this paper we present a new concept for a 4-degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) positioning system to be used for vehicle tracing in a logistic facility. The system employs optical data transmission between active infrastructure and receiver devices. Compared to existing systems, these optical technologies promise to achieve better accuracy at lower costs. We will introduce the positioning algorithm and an experimental setup of the system.

Method of collaborative detection of autonomous transport vehicles based on laser rangefinder data

To master changing performance demands, autonomous transport vehicles are deployed to make inhouse material flow applications more flexible. The socalled cellular transport system consists of a multitude of small scale transport vehicles which shall be able to form a swarm. Therefore the vehicles need to detect each other, exchange information amongst each other and sense their environment. By provision of peripherally acquired information of other transport entities, more convenient decisions can be made in terms of navigation and collision avoidance. This paper is a contribution to collective utilization of sensor data in the swarm of cellular transport vehicles.