关键词： Collaborative robots   Manufacturing   Ergonomics   Wire harness  

摘要： Wire harnesses are used in several industrial sectors such as automotive, white goods, toys, or electrical and mechanical engineering. One of the key tasks of the process is to assemble and secure harnesses with a taping pistol in several spots to group single wires and make the final harness with all the required ramifications. The proposed method tries to advance the state of the art and enhance the current process, which is being performed manually, by adding robotic arms in a custom cell that collaborates with the human worker. The robotic solution of the proposal will perform all the spot tapings of the process, while the worker performs only the positioning of the cable. It reduces the processing time of the task and allows workers to work on two harnesses at the same time. The results of the present proposal will have a positive impact on companies dedicated to the production of wiring and the sectors to which they supply their products. The solution will also impact on the ergonomic conditions of workers through an innovative work environment that removes the most tedious and repetitive tasks of the operator. (c) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

关键词： robotics   customer service   degree of robotics adoption  

摘要： We propose a conceptual framework that includes the antecedents and consequences of firms' adopting and integrating robotics into their customer service operations. Drawing insights from literature on customer service, technology marketing, and computer science, our proposed framework elaborates on the concept of the degree of robotics adoption (DRA) as well as the antecedents (employee acceptance of robots and customer acceptance of robots) and multiple sequential consequences (service quality, customer long-term performance, and customer engagement) of DRA. We also discuss how the nature of the firm (Business to Consumer versus Business-to-Business, i.e. B2C vs. B2B), service characteristics (utilitarian vs. hedonic), and brand positioning (low equity vs. high equity) might moderate the relationship between DRA and service quality. Further, we provide actionable guidance for managers to adopt and integrate robotics into their customer service operations.

关键词： Digital agriculture   Robotics   Automation   Artificial intelligence   Anticipation   Responsible research and innovation   Apples   Assemblage   More-than-human  

摘要： With the growth of new collaborative design (co-design) strategies for technology development, and increasing media attention on future automation of the farm, food producers are aware of new robotics on the horizon. This paper will discuss how apple growers are anticipating new robotic technologies intended to use artificial intelligence (AI) to automate aspects of the farm, paying particular attention to the ways that anticipation relates to preparatory assembling and reassembling of landscapes, work, and institutions. Our analysis considers the varying ways growers are practically assembling their orchards in anticipation of new technologies, and how their actions map onto ecological systems, labour relations, and farm capitalization. Our findings reveal some of the challenges to democratic forms of engagement with a robotic future, as well as some of the ways that growers enhance their capacity to engage meaningfully with new technologies.

关键词： Pearl millet   Pennisetum glaucum (L   ) R   Br   Autonomous   robotic weeders   physical weed control   robotics  

摘要： Agricultural weeds remain an important production constraint, with labor shortages and a lack of new herbicide options in recent decades making the problem even more acute. Robotic weeding machines are a possible solution to these increasingly intractable weed problems. Franklin Robotics' Tertill((TM)) is an autonomous weeding robot designed for home gardeners that relies on a minimalistic design to be cost-effective. The objectives of this study were to investigate the ability of the Tertill to control broadleaf and grass weeds, and based on early observations, experiments were conducted with and without its string-trimmer-like weeding implement. Tertill demonstrated high weed-control efficacy, supporting its utility as a tool for home gardeners. Weeds were best controlled by the combined effect of soil disturbance caused by the action of the robot's wheels and the actuation of the string trimmer. Despite the regrowth potential of an annual grass due to its meristem location, Tertill maintained low densities of millet in an experimental arena. The simple and effective design of the Tertill may offer insights to inform future development of farm-scale weeding robots. Weed density, emergence periodicity, robot working rate, and robotic weeding mechanisms are important design criteria regardless of the technology used for plant detection.

关键词： Evolutionary robotics   neural networks   simulator neural networks   proprioception   path integration  

摘要： Taking inspiration from the navigation ability of humans, this study investigated a method of providing robotic controllers with a basic sense of position. It incorporated robotic simulators into robotic controllers to provide them with a mechanism to approximate the effects their actions had on the robot. Controllers with and without internal simulators were tested and compared. The proposed controller architecture was shown to outperform the regular controller architecture. However, the longer an internal simulator was executed, the more inaccurate it became. Thus, the performance of controllers with internal simulators reduced over time unless their internal simulator was periodically corrected.

关键词： reinforcement learning   social robotics   human-robot interaction   reward design   physical embodiment  

摘要： This article surveys reinforcement learning approaches in social robotics. Reinforcement learning is a framework for decision-making problems in which an agent interacts through trial-and-error with its environment to discover an optimal behavior. Since interaction is a key component in both reinforcement learning and social robotics, it can be a well-suited approach for real-world interactions with physically embodied social robots. The scope of the paper is focused particularly on studies that include social physical robots and real-world human-robot interactions with users. We present a thorough analysis of reinforcement learning approaches in social robotics. In addition to a survey, we categorize existent reinforcement learning approaches based on the used method and the design of the reward mechanisms. Moreover, since communication capability is a prominent feature of social robots, we discuss and group the papers based on the communication medium used for reward formulation. Considering the importance of designing the reward function, we also provide a categorization of the papers based on the nature of the reward. This categorization includes three major themes: interactive reinforcement learning, intrinsically motivated methods, and task performance-driven methods. The benefits and challenges of reinforcement learning in social robotics, evaluation methods of the papers regarding whether or not they use subjective and algorithmic measures, a discussion in the view of real-world reinforcement learning challenges and proposed solutions, the points that remain to be explored, including the approaches that have thus far received less attention is also given in the paper. Thus, this paper aims to become a starting point for researchers interested in using and applying reinforcement learning methods in this particular research field.

关键词： Robot health monitoring   Industrial robot   PHM   Machine learning   Augmented reality  

摘要： In this manuscript we report on a vision-based data-driven methodology for industrial robot health assessment. We provide an experimental evidence of the usefulness of our methodology on a system comprised of a 6-axis industrial robot, two monocular cameras and five binary squared fiducial markers. The fiducial marker system permits to accurately track the deviation of the end-effector along a fixed non-trivial trajectory. Moreover, we monitor the trajectory deflection using three gradually increasing weights attached to the end-effector. When the robot is loaded with the maximum allowed payload, a deviation of 0.77mm is identified in the Z-coordinate of the end-effector. Tracing trajectory information, we train five supervised learning regression models. Such models are afterwards used to predict the deviation of the end-effector, using the pose estimation provided by the visual tracking system. As a result of this study, we show that this procedure is a stable, robust, rigorous and reliable tool for robot trajectory deviation estimation and it even allows to identify the mechanical element producing non-kinematic errors.

关键词： Modular construction   Mobile crane   Path planning   Lift planning   Robotics in construction   Construction automation   Industrial plant  

摘要： Lift path planning is a significant subtask in constructability analysis, sequencing, and scheduling of congested industrial modular projects, impacting project cost, and safety. Although intuitive lift planning is still prevalent among the practitioners, this manual process might be tedious and error-prone for hundreds of lifts. This research presents an automated lift path planning method for heavy crawler cranes in no-walk scenarios employing a robotics approach. This method treats the lifted object as a three-degree-of-freedom convex mobile robot with discretized rotational and continuous translational motions. The proposed resolution-complete method models the crane capacity chart, tail-swing, and boom clearances as pseudo-obstacles in the lifted object's configuration space. By reducing the lift path planning to a graph search prblem, if any, the shortest path for the planar motion of the heavy-lift, along with its optimal pick-point, is identified. The developed heavy-lift path planning method is validated via two practical case studies.

关键词： Impedance   Force   Dynamics   Robot kinematics   IEEE transactions   Mechatronics   Markovian jump linear systems (MJLS)   robotic rehabilitation   robust control   robust estimation  

摘要： In this article, we deal with rehabilitation robot robust control in order to obtain best performance in the human-robot interaction. This class of system is subject to abrupt changes due to exogenous inputs and parameter variations caused, mainly, by the human dynamic behavior. In this context, Markovian jump linear systems offer suitable tools to model and control of this class of interactions. We propose force and impedance controllers based on robust recursive Markovian versions of the standard Kalman filter and the linear quadratic regulator. Different levels of the individual's actuation during the interaction with the robot define the Markov states. The measurement of electromyographic signals is used as jump parameter among Markov states. Also, a serious game is used to generate visual feedback, to promote active user participation, and to guide his movement routine. We compare our proposal with two other Markovian-based approaches and show the effectiveness our method through experiments with an ankle rehabilitation platform.