Evaluation of Collaborative Robot Sustainable Integration in Manufacturing Assembly by Using Process Time Savings

Collaborative robots are enablers of flexibility in the current dynamic and uncertain manufacturing environment. Decision making on its implementation requires technical feasibility, involving productivity and workforce implications that should be faced in an integrated perspective in processes where many components of different materials are assembled in products of increasing diversity and complexity. This study introduces two new parametric models for collaborative robotics, formulated in order to evaluate the differential cost of assembly (economic dimension) and the differential income from taxes that supports short-term workforce displacement (social dimension) in cobot implementation. Updated techno-economical parameters are selected for assessing feasibility ranges of application in different production scenarios. Next, the influence curves of productivity gain for a feasible implementation of cobot establish thresholds for decision making under both criteria. The results show the need for productivity gains that are significantly lower in high-wage scenarios than in low-wage scenarios; however, in a joint approach, breakeven productivity gain is always higher for the social dimension threshold than for the economic requirement of cost-effective manufacturing, with a higher gap in low-wage cases. The detailed analysis of a real case study of cobot implementation for assembly demonstrates the practical application of models and potential for future research.

The 2011 Bangkok Floods: Live Peacefully (Yoo Hai Yen), Live Harmoniously (Yoo Hai Pen Suk)

<p>Thailand’s Bangkok has experienced rapid population growth and subsequent expansion over recent decades. It has resulted in an unintentional increase in vulnerability within rural-residential and metropolis areas. Flood prevention strategies, such as dams, irrigation canals, and flood detention basin, and Kaem Ling ‘Green belt Embankment’, have been slowly built and activated in response to this suburban catastrophe (Vanno). In recent years, King Rama IX of Thailand, initiated Kaem Ling’s, ‘Monkey’s Cheek’s’ project; a reference to the common parable of an intelligent monkey storing its food in its saggy cheeks rather than swallowing. This has allowed the Western and Eastern suburbs of Bangkok to function as waterways, diverting the destructive water paths away to protect the metropolis. Beginning in July 2011, a significant rainfall from the highlands of Thailand flooded down to Bangkok. With affected areas lying less than 10 metres above mean sea level and some as low as 1.5 metres, some areas remained flooded until January 2012. By October, the inundated metropolitan Bangkok began to negatively impact on industries, such as computers and automotive. Both critical supply networks for other manufacturing operations outside of Thailand. This ‘vulnerability’ where the inter-connectedness of economies could mean the closing of factories and manufacturing assembly lines in one country because of a flooding disaster in another had not been recognised. The 2011 Thailand’s flooding death tolls surpassed 815 deaths (with 3 missing), affected 13.6 million people and classed 65 of Thailand’s 77 provinces as flood disaster zones (Benfield, 2012). During the extreme environmental activity, decisions were made to close several district gates in last-ditch efforts for protecting the metropolitan areas. This caused many other peri-urban areas of Bangkok to flood. These suburban areas were intended to act as waterways to protect the metropolis, but instead became a reservoir. Nimitmai 40 Road, situated in Khlong Sam Wa district, was in the middle of the 2011 flooding zones became the locus and main area of interest in this research. Several initial studies, of precedence and technical data, explored objectives of building resilience in response to flooding and community. This research further utilised field study surveys, interviews, and case studies, all of which provided a wealth of information and contextual material. They contributed to design propositions developed through a series of critical reflections. This research aimed to build community resilience, encapsulating spiritual elements in cultural and psychosocial elements of suburban Thai community’s livelihood and to provide flood resilience through both non-technical and technical solutions. Final outcomes of the design iterations suggested a merging of Thai monastery and community centre as a spiritual anchor for the community’s resilience and strengthen my neighbourhood’s sense of place.</p>

The 2011 Bangkok Floods: Live Peacefully (Yoo Hai Yen), Live Harmoniously (Yoo Hai Pen Suk)

<p>Thailand’s Bangkok has experienced rapid population growth and subsequent expansion over recent decades. It has resulted in an unintentional increase in vulnerability within rural-residential and metropolis areas. Flood prevention strategies, such as dams, irrigation canals, and flood detention basin, and Kaem Ling ‘Green belt Embankment’, have been slowly built and activated in response to this suburban catastrophe (Vanno). In recent years, King Rama IX of Thailand, initiated Kaem Ling’s, ‘Monkey’s Cheek’s’ project; a reference to the common parable of an intelligent monkey storing its food in its saggy cheeks rather than swallowing. This has allowed the Western and Eastern suburbs of Bangkok to function as waterways, diverting the destructive water paths away to protect the metropolis. Beginning in July 2011, a significant rainfall from the highlands of Thailand flooded down to Bangkok. With affected areas lying less than 10 metres above mean sea level and some as low as 1.5 metres, some areas remained flooded until January 2012. By October, the inundated metropolitan Bangkok began to negatively impact on industries, such as computers and automotive. Both critical supply networks for other manufacturing operations outside of Thailand. This ‘vulnerability’ where the inter-connectedness of economies could mean the closing of factories and manufacturing assembly lines in one country because of a flooding disaster in another had not been recognised. The 2011 Thailand’s flooding death tolls surpassed 815 deaths (with 3 missing), affected 13.6 million people and classed 65 of Thailand’s 77 provinces as flood disaster zones (Benfield, 2012). During the extreme environmental activity, decisions were made to close several district gates in last-ditch efforts for protecting the metropolitan areas. This caused many other peri-urban areas of Bangkok to flood. These suburban areas were intended to act as waterways to protect the metropolis, but instead became a reservoir. Nimitmai 40 Road, situated in Khlong Sam Wa district, was in the middle of the 2011 flooding zones became the locus and main area of interest in this research. Several initial studies, of precedence and technical data, explored objectives of building resilience in response to flooding and community. This research further utilised field study surveys, interviews, and case studies, all of which provided a wealth of information and contextual material. They contributed to design propositions developed through a series of critical reflections. This research aimed to build community resilience, encapsulating spiritual elements in cultural and psychosocial elements of suburban Thai community’s livelihood and to provide flood resilience through both non-technical and technical solutions. Final outcomes of the design iterations suggested a merging of Thai monastery and community centre as a spiritual anchor for the community’s resilience and strengthen my neighbourhood’s sense of place.</p>

Teleoperation and Visualization Interfaces for Remote Intervention in Space

Approaches to robotic manufacturing, assembly, and servicing of in-space assets range from autonomous operation to direct teleoperation, with many forms of semi-autonomous teleoperation in between. Because most approaches require one or more human operators at some level, it is important to explore the control and visualization interfaces available to those operators, taking into account the challenges due to significant telemetry time delay. We consider one motivating application of remote teleoperation, which is ground-based control of a robot on-orbit for satellite servicing. This paper presents a model-based architecture that: 1) improves visualization and situation awareness, 2) enables more effective human/robot interaction and control, and 3) detects task failures based on anomalous sensor feedback. We illustrate elements of the architecture by drawing on 10 years of our research in this area. The paper further reports the results of several multi-user experiments to evaluate the model-based architecture, on ground-based test platforms, for satellite servicing tasks subject to round-trip communication latencies of several seconds. The most significant performance gains were obtained by enhancing the operators’ situation awareness via improved visualization and by enabling them to precisely specify intended motion. In contrast, changes to the control interface, including model-mediated control or an immersive 3D environment, often reduced the reported task load but did not significantly improve task performance. Considering the challenges of fully autonomous intervention, we expect that some form of teleoperation will continue to be necessary for robotic in-situ servicing, assembly, and manufacturing tasks for the foreseeable future. We propose that effective teleoperation can be enabled by modeling the remote environment, providing operators with a fused view of the real environment and virtual model, and incorporating interfaces and control strategies that enable interactive planning, precise operation, and prompt detection of errors.

Planar Micro-Positioning Device Based on a 3D Digital Electromagnetic Actuator

In this paper, a novel micro-positioning device based on a 3D digital actuator is presented. The proposed system allows realizing planar motions of micro-objects, which could be implemented in several applications where micro-positioning tasks are needed such as micro-component manufacturing/assembly, biomedicine, scanning microscopy, etc. The device has three degrees of freedom, and it is able to achieve planar motions of a mobile plate in the xy-plane at two different levels along the z-axis. It consists of a hexagonal mobile part composed of a permanent magnet that can reach twelve discrete positions distributed between two z-axis levels (six at each level). Two different approaches are presented to perform positioning tasks of the plate using the digital actuator: the stick-slip and the lift-mode approaches. A comparison between these two approaches is provided on the basis of the plate displacement with respect to different current values and conveyed mass. It was observed that for a current of 2 A, the actuator is able to displace a mass of 1.15 g over a distance of 0.08 mm. The optimal positioning range of the planar device was found to be ±5.40 mm and ±7.05 mm along the x- and y-axis, respectively.

DfMA: Towards an Integrated Strategy for a More Productive and Sustainable Construction Industry in Australia

Design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA) is an important part of the future of the construction industry due to the promise of speed of project delivery, quality control, worker safety, and waste minimization onsite via the purposeful design for manufacture and assembly offsite. However, the adoption of DfMA in Australia has been slow. This paper investigates the barriers prohibiting widespread uptake and how digital construction will be a catalyst for improving use on commercial-scale projects. A total of six leading experts were interviewed to elicit their opinions, and seven recent case studies of high-rise modular apartment and hotel buildings constructed by Hickory were cross-referenced as evidence of DfMA capability. The experts suggested that the reasons for slow adoption in Australia were community mindset, government regulations and incentives, planning and building codes, unionization and business politics, finance, and supply chain management. The case studies suggest that compatible building type and transportation distance are also factors. These barriers can be addressed by the clever integration of building information modelling tools with lean construction processes as part of a proposed strategy leading to smarter (more productive) and better (more sustainable) outcomes predicated on growth in digital construction practices. The paper concludes with a proposed framework for change that conceptualizes the ‘ecosystem’ needed to support widespread DfMA in the Australian context, including the paradigm shift from building to manufacturing/assembly, the displacement of workers from onsite to offsite activity, and the expansion of interdisciplinary design and construct collaboration.

Is Expensive More Environment Friendly? Comparative LCA of Three Home Appliances

Due to rise in income and living standards in the developing world, there is a substantial growth in the use of home appliances. This growth is responsible for several environmental issues. Hence, there is a growing demand for energy efficient, environment friendly, and sustainable appliances. This study compares the environmental impacts of three home appliances using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Three irons of same power rating but with different prices (low, medium, and high) were selected for this study. First, energy consumption of these irons was measured and then they were disassembled to generate a detailed list of components, materials, and processes used to manufacture them. Next, LCA was conducted using SimaPro to compare the environmental impacts of these irons. Life cycle stages including material extraction, component manufacturing, assembly, distribution, and use were considered in LCA. Both ReCiPe mid-point and end-point environmental impacts were calculated. The results of this study showed that high-price iron was more environment friendly than the low-price iron.