With the development of robot technology, trials adopting robots for last-mile delivery are continuing, and the final destination of last-mile delivery is further expanding into indoor environments. ...Unlike existing studies conducted for robot-based last-mile delivery in outdoor environments, two main issues must be solved to enable last-mile delivery in indoor environments using robots. First, it is necessary to reasonably and realistically estimate the robot travel time considering horizontal and vertical movement segments within a given building. Second, optimizing the robot routing problem based on the estimated robot travel time is necessary. In this paper, we proposed a new method to estimate the robot travel time considering robot movement characteristics and an elevator in a building. In addition, we developed a mathematical model of the robot routing problem and problem-specific heuristic based on a genetic algorithm to quickly solve the proposed mathematical model. It obtained the exact solutions when the problem size was small and near-optimal solutions in the medium- and large-sized problems (average optimality gap: 0.11% and 0.18%, respectively). Through extensive experiments assuming various building structures, it was determined that the proposed model and heuristic can quickly yield realistic solutions for indoor robot-based last-mile delivery.
In general, the demand for delivery cannot be fulfilled efficiently due to the excessive traffic in dense urban areas. Therefore, many innovative concepts for intelligent transportation of freight ...have recently been developed. One of these concepts relies on drone-based parcel delivery using rooftops of city buildings. To apply drone logistics system in cities, the operation design should be adequately prepared. In this regard, a mixed integer programming model for drone operation planning and a heuristic based on block stacking are newly proposed to provide solutions. Additionally, numerical experiments with three different problem sizes are conducted to check the feasibility of the proposed model and to assess the performance of the proposed heuristic. The experimental results show that the proposed model seems to be viable and that the developed heuristic provides very good operation plans in terms of the optimality gap and the computation time.
This paper presents an innovative design of a six-axis force/torque sensor, which enables ease of manufacturing, cost reduction, and ruggedness in operation. The advantages are realized by ...simplifying the structure of the sensor and reducing manual labor during the manufacturing process. In order to achieve a simple sensor structure, we propose a capacitive-type force sensing scheme in which the sensing elements are aligned in-plane. By using this method, all the sensing elements can be fabricated on single printed circuit board, and thus, manual tasks, such as bonding and coating the sensing elements, can be eliminated. In order to verify the feasibility of the idea, a prototype six-axis force/torque sensor was manufactured, and its performances were evaluated. The characteristics of the prototype are analyzed in terms of condition number, static response, time domain response, hysteresis, repeatability, and time drift.
This paper presents a novel bidirectional tactile display by integrating an antagonistic dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) with a V-shaped electrostatic actuator (EA), called electrostatic ...dielectric elastomer actuator (EDEA). Within a simple structure, this device can provide large out-of-plane vibration of the silicone-based DEA membrane. It is noted that, compared to the DEA alone, combining the soft DEA and electrostatic actuator significantly enhances the device performance by about 19.1% in terms of displacement and by about 14%-26% in terms of blocking force. We also analyze the constitutive DEA and EA models to predict the displacement and blocking force behaviors. The simulation results are consistent with the experimental results. The device is successfully fabricated by using 3D printing technology which simplifies the fabrication process and improves the scalability of the system. The tactile display can provide up to 680 m of displacement and up to 185 mN of blocking force more than the human hand stimulus threshold (displacement/force). By controlling the input voltage and frequency, the device can generate different haptic feelings to the user.
Most countries usually have a logistical dead-zone problem which the delivery demand cannot be fully fulfilled on time via conventional transportation vehicles (i.e. trucks) due to the intrinsic ...geographical conditions. Demand in either small islands or mountainous regions might be hard to fulfill by logistics providers in comparison with other delivery areas. In this work, we proposed a drone delivery scheduling model and conducted various simulations using it to check the effect of various factors such as recharging speed, drone weight, and battery capacity on the simulation results. To show the feasibility of the proposed model and simulations, we analyzed a real case of remote islands in South Korea.
This study suggests a new product recommendation model to reflect the recent purchasing patterns of customers. There are many methods to measure the similarity between customers or products using ...one-way collaborative filtering. However, few studies have calculated the similarity of using both customer information and product information. Therefore, in this study, affinity variables that combine customer data with product data are created through a confusion matrix. Various derived variables are also generated to enhance the forecasting performance in enormous analysis data. In this study, various data mining classifiers such as the decision tree, neural network, support vector machine, random forest, and rotation forest are applied, and a sliding-window scheme is considered to construct the recommendation model.
This special issue contains the extended versions of the selected papers from the 26th International Conference on Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing (FAIM 2016), held in Seoul, ...Republic of KOREA during the period 27-30 June, 2016. Since 1991 (the first FAIM conference was held in Ireland), the FAIM conference has become the leading international forum for dissemination of current research on all aspects of automation and manufacturing, and highlights how theoretical models and principles underpin practice in a production or service environment. The authors of the papers in this issue were invited to submit the extended versions of their work to the special issue. After undergoing the normal review process of the journal, five papers were accepted for publication in this special issue. In what follows, the five papers are summarized briefly. Han et al. (Title of the paper: “A Solution Procedure for Emergency Logistics Problem in Disaster Scene”) propose a solution procedure for the vehicle routing problem for emergency logistics in disaster situations. The proposed solution procedure is composed of two steps: 1) to generate an emergency vehicle routing plan for individual vehicle using the genetic algorithm; and 2) to coordinate the plans of individual vehicles by applying a priority based heuristic and k-means clustering for the headquarter. The performance of their proposed solution procedure is empirically proven to be efficient in terms of both solution quality and computational time. Ji et al. (Title of the paper: “Feasibility research on development of product-independent assembly complexity model: A case study of a refrigerator”) deal with product assembly complexity. They applied the assembly complexity model to the assembly process of refrigerators, and found that the assembly complexity is significantly correlated with assembly time. They also suggested the way how the assembly complexity model needs to be modified in order to reflect the features of a specific product assembly process. Park (Title of the paper: “Interval Estimation for Mean Response in a Simple Nested Error Regression Model in Gauge R & R Study”) investigates an issue regarding a measurement system which monitors manufacturing processes. Gauge repeatability and reproducibility experiments are used to determine the degree of variability occurred by parts, final products, operators, or gauge itself. To determine whether the variability is appropriately managed in a manufacturing process, confidence intervals for the mean response in a simple nested error regression model can be used.
He proposed several confidence intervals for the mean response, and performed computer simulations to check them.
Bendatu and Yahya (Title of the paper: “An adaptive time-based kiln schedule using forward chaining approach”) propose a decision support framework for the sequential decision problem of the kiln dry wood process. They utilized the log data to construct a kiln schedule model as a reference for sequential decision problem in kiln dry wood process. Also, they used the process mining based approach to map uncertain numerical attributes such as the change of temperature into an activity profile. Peruzzini and Pellicciari (Title of the paper: “Application of Early Sustainability Assessment to Support the Design of Industrial Systems”) propose an analytical approach to support the design of industrial products by providing an early sustainability assessment of the three aspects of sustainability (environment, cost, and people). Their approach adopts a feature-based approach and a set of key performance indicators to assess the sustainability of the manufacturing and assembly processes and to support an easy and preventive analysis during product design. The editors of this special issue wish to thank the authors of the papers included for their contribution and the anonymous reviewers for the time they spent freely to provide... KCI Citation Count: 0
This paper demonstrates a new haptic display based on soft actuator and soft sensor. The device consists of an array rigid coupling actuator and an array tactile sensor which configured sensor ...located on the top of actuator. The actuator includes a frame with rigid coupling made by silicone and a dielectric elastomer actuator(DEA). The movement of the DEA is transferred to touch pad via rigid coupling. Thus, it provides a soft, comport touch feeling and eliminates the danger of applying high voltage to the human skin. The actuator can work at a wide range frequency of 0-150 Hz and produce sufficient force of 50 mN over the human hand threshold. The tactile sensor can measure the pressure, locate the objects and send the feedback signals to control the actuator. In this work, a 8×12 haptic tactile display is made with high resolution. In addition, the high voltage signal processing also developed to generate variable 0-3.5 kV, and can control individual cell by using the dynamic scanning actuation algorithm. Then, it can display any shape such as a circle, a smile/sad face, a star, etc. In the future, we will build the "emotion touch pad" system which can transfer a person's emotion to another one via internet.
This paper presents a hexapod crawling robot which has bioinspired design and locomotion posture from the insects. The robot, called S-Hex II, is an upgraded version of the different printable ...monolithic hexapod robot which is named as S-Hex I. The S-Hex II is studied for the project of developing mesoscale walking robots actuated by the soft dielectric elastomer actuators. In comparison with the S-Hex I, the S-Hex II owns smaller dimension, lighter weight, and significantly faster walking speed. We improve and increase the total number of degree-of-freedom (DOF) of the soft dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) from three, used in the S-Hex I, up to five, employed in the S-Hex II, and that provides the promising versatile locomotion ability to the S-Hex II robot. This robot has successfully demonstrated the back and forth ambulation on flat surfaces using the alternating tripod gait with the walking speed of 52 mm/s (approximately 0.35 body-lengths per second) at 7 Hz of actuation frequency.
The well-known sentence, "You can't manage what you don't measure" suggests the importance of measurement. The Ministry of National Defense (MND) in Korea is measuring the effort of informatization ...for various dimensions such as validity, adequacy, and effectiveness using the MND evaluation system to obtain positive and significant effects from informatization. MND views the defense informatization domain as divided into the defense informatization policy, the defense informatization project, and the defense informatization level, which can measure the informatization capability of the MND and the armed forces or organizations. Furthermore, it feels there is some limitation, such as those related to ambiguity and reliability, present in the system. To overcome the limitations in the existing system to evaluate the defense informatization policy, this study proposes a revised evaluation framework for the policy of defense informatization, its indicators, and measurement methods.
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