Ball, D, Ross, P, English, A, Patten, T, Upcroft, B, Fitch, R, Sukkarieh, S, Wyeth, G & Corke, P 2015, 'Robotics for Sustainable Broad-Acre Agriculture', Springer, Germany, pp. 439-453.
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© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. This paper describes the development of small low-cost cooperative robots for sustainable broad-acre agriculture to increase broad-acre crop production and reduce environmental impact. The current focus of the project is to use robotics to deal with resistant weeds, a critical problem for Australian farmers. To keep the overall system affordable our robot uses low-cost cameras and positioning sensors to perform a large scale coverage task while also avoiding obstacles. A multi-robot coordinator assigns parts of a given field to individual robots. The paper describes the modification of an electric vehicle for autonomy and experimental results from one real robot and twelve simulated robots working in coordination for approximately two hours on a 55 hectare field in Emerald Australia. Over this time the real robot ‘sprayed’ 6 hectares missing 2.6% and overlapping 9.7% within its assigned field partition, and successfully avoided three obstacles.
Barthelmey, A, Lemmerz, K, Lenkenhoff, K, Brambach, T, Nuding, W, Deuse, J & Kuhlenkötter, B 2015, 'Digital representation in automationML - Automatic creation and provision of technical documentation', WT Werkstattstechnik, vol. 105, no. 11-12, pp. 843-848.
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This paper presents an approach to link technical documentation with design data of machinery and plants using the data exchange format AutomationML. Primarily scheduled for the exchange of design data the format will be expanded by documentation features and aspects. Due to the combination of documentation and design data an up to date virtual image of a cyber-physical production system is accomplished. This is an important partial step towards intelligent creation and usage of technical documentation.
Blamires, SJ, Liao, C-P, Chang, C-K, Chuang, Y-C, Wu, C-L, Blackledge, TA, Sheu, H-S & Tso, I-M 2015, 'Mechanical Performance of Spider Silk Is Robust to Nutrient-Mediated Changes in Protein Composition', Biomacromolecules, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 1218-1225.
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Blamires, SJ, Piorkowski, D, Chuang, A, Tseng, Y-H, Toft, S & Tso, I-M 2015, 'Can differential nutrient extraction explain property variations in a predatory trap?', Royal Society Open Science, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 140479-140479.
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Predators exhibit flexible foraging to facilitate taking prey that offer important nutrients. Because trap-building predators have limited control over the prey they encounter, differential nutrient extraction and trap architectural flexibility may be used as a means of prey selection. Here, we tested whether differential nutrient extraction induces flexibility in architecture and stickiness of a spider's web by feeding Nephila pilipes live crickets (CC), live flies (FF), dead crickets with the web stimulated by flies (CD) or dead flies with the web stimulated by crickets (FD). Spiders in the CD group consumed less protein per mass of lipid or carbohydrate, and spiders in the FF group consumed less carbohydrates per mass of protein. Spiders from the CD group built stickier webs that used less silk, whereas spiders in the FF group built webs with more radii, greater catching areas and more silk, compared with other treatments. Our results suggest that differential nutrient extraction is a likely explanation for prey-induced spider web architecture and stickiness variations.
Boostani, AF, Mousavian, RT, Tahamtan, S, Yazdani, S, Khosroshahi, RA, Wei, D, Xu, JZ, Gong, D, Zhang, XM & Jiang, ZY 2015, 'Graphene sheets encapsulating SiC nanoparticles: A roadmap towards enhancing tensile ductility of metal matrix composites', Materials Science and Engineering: A, vol. 648, pp. 92-103.
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Cagno, E, Ramirez-Portilla, A & Trianni, A 2015, 'Linking energy efficiency and innovation practices: Empirical evidence from the foundry sector', Energy Policy, vol. 83, pp. 240-256.
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Cagno, E, Trianni, A, Abeelen, C, Worrell, E & Miggiano, F 2015, 'Barriers and drivers for energy efficiency: Different perspectives from an exploratory study in the Netherlands', Energy Conversion and Management, vol. 102, pp. 26-38.
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Cheng, X, Jiang, Z, Wei, D, Hao, L, Zhao, J & Jiang, L 2015, 'Oxide scale characterization of ferritic stainless steel and its deformation and friction in hot rolling', Tribology International, vol. 84, pp. 61-70.
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Cheng, X, Jiang, Z, Wei, D, Zhao, J, Monaghan, BJ, Longbottom, RJ & Jiang, L 2015, 'High temperature oxidation behaviour of ferritic stainless steel SUS 430 in humid air', Metals and Materials International, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 251-259.
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Cheng, X, Jiang, Z, Zhao, J, Wei, D, Hao, L, Peng, J, Luo, M, Ma, L, Luo, S & Jiang, L 2015, 'Investigation of oxide scale on ferritic stainless steel B445J1M and its tribological effect in hot rolling', Wear, vol. 338-339, pp. 178-188.
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Cui, H, Xu, F & Saha, SC 2015, 'A three-dimensional simulation of transient natural convection in a triangular cavity', International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, vol. 85, pp. 1012-1022.
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Eickelmann, M, Schallow, J, Sousanabady, RJ & Deuse, J 2015, 'Lebenszyklusübergreifende Qualitätsservices', Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, vol. 110, no. 4, pp. 167-171.
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Kurzfassung Moderne Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien ermöglichen die umfassende Speicherung großer Datenmengen, ihre Auswertung wird jedoch oftmals nicht hinreichend fokussiert. Insbesondere für das Qualitätsmanagement ist die effektive Nutzung qualitätsrelevanter Daten zur Entscheidungsunterstützung von höchster Bedeutung. Dieser Beitrag präsentiert einen Ansatz des handhabbaren Datenmanagements sowie der aufwandsarmen Analyse und Prognose qualitätsspezifischer Größen zur Realisierung eines übergreifenden, prädiktiven Qualitätsmanagements.
Eickelmann, M, Wiegand, M, Konrad, B & Deuse, J 2015, 'Die Bedeutung von Data-Mining im Kontext von Industrie 4.0', Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, vol. 110, no. 11, pp. 738-743.
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Kurzfassung Moderne Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien ermöglichen die umfassende Speicherung großer Datenmengen, ihre Auswertung wird jedoch oftmals nicht hinreichend fokussiert. Insbesondere die effektive Nutzung des in den Informationsspeichern vorhandenen Wissens zur prädiktiven Entscheidungs- und Planungsunterstützung ist von höchster Bedeutung. Dieser Beitrag beschreibt am Beispiel drei unterschiedlicher, anwendungsspezifischer Ansätze der Wissensentdeckung die zunehmende Relevanz des Data-Mining im Produktlebenszyklus.
Fadavi Boostani, A, Tahamtan, S, Jiang, ZY, Wei, D, Yazdani, S, Azari Khosroshahi, R, Taherzadeh Mousavian, R, Xu, J, Zhang, X & Gong, D 2015, 'Enhanced tensile properties of aluminium matrix composites reinforced with graphene encapsulated SiC nanoparticles', Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, vol. 68, pp. 155-163.
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Fadavi Boostani, A, Yazdani, S, Taherzadeh Mousavian, R, Tahamtan, S, Azari Khosroshahi, R, Wei, D, Brabazon, D, Xu, JZ, Zhang, XM & Jiang, ZY 2015, 'Strengthening mechanisms of graphene sheets in aluminium matrix nanocomposites', Materials & Design, vol. 88, pp. 983-989.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. Uniform dispersion of SiC nanoparticles with a high propensity to agglomerate within a thixoformed aluminium matrix was attained using a graphene encapsulating approach. The analytical model devised in this study has demonstrated the significant role of shear lag and thermally activated dislocation mechanisms in strengthening aluminium metal matrix composites due to the exceptional negative thermal expansion coefficient of graphene sheets. This, in turn, triggers the pinning capacity of nano-sized rod-liked aluminium carbide, prompting strong interface bonding for SiC nanoparticles with the matrix, thereby enhancing tensile elongation.
Fang, Z, Jiang, Z, Wang, X, Zhou, C, Wei, D & Liu, X 2015, 'Grain size effect of thickness/average grain size on mechanical behaviour, fracture mechanism and constitutive model for phosphor bronze foil', The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, vol. 79, no. 9-12, pp. 1905-1914.
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© 2015, Springer-Verlag London. Size effects play a significant role in microforming process, and any dimensional change can have a great impact on materials’ mechanical properties. In this paper, the size effects on deformation behaviour and fracture of phosphor foil were investigated in the form of grain size effect: the ratio of materials’ thickness (T) to average grain size (D) by micro tensile tests. The ratio was designed to be closed to but larger than, less than and equal to 1, respectively. The results show that the amount of plastic deformation decreases with the decrease of the ratio of T/D, which indicates that the grain size plays a significant role and grain deformation modes differ when the ratio changes. It is also found that their fractograph reflects different features in terms of micro-dimples and cleavage planes, further demonstrating that when T/D >1, its materials have a tendency to fracture ductilely, while materials would like to conduct brittle fracture when T/D <1. So the ratio of T/D which is close to 1 can be regarded as the divide of ductile fracture and brittle fracture. For T/D <1, a new constitutive model is proposed based on the classic composite model. The model’s results are compared with the experimental ones and the efficiency of the developed models is verified.
Fang, Z, Jiang, Z, Wei, D & Liu, X 2015, 'Study on springback in micro V-bending with consideration of grain heterogeneity', The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, vol. 78, no. 5-8, pp. 1075-1085.
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© 2014, Springer-Verlag London. With the new development of microforming technology, the demand on the accuracy of the metallic microcomponents is elevating. Springback phenomenon is inevitable during sheet metal forming process and can cause unpredicted dimensional error. The previous research found that the springback value in microforming is difficult to be assessed as the sizes of tools and specimens downsize hundreds even thousands times. This paper focuses on improving the prediction accuracy of springback during micro V-bending. A finite element (FE) model of the micro V-bending has been established via ABAQUS/Standard commercial software where the specimen’s microstructure is represented by Voronoi tessellations. With the consideration of the grain heterogeneity, each Voronoi tessellation has been employed with different grain mechanical properties based on experimental results. Corresponding micro V-bending tests have been carried out, and a good agreement between the experimental and simulation results indicates that the developed FE model can accurately predict springback in micro V-bending.
Gao, X, Jiang, Z, Wei, D & Kosasih, B 2015, 'Effect of thermomechanical treatment on sliding wear of high-Cr cast iron with large plastic deformation', Tribology International, vol. 92, pp. 117-125.
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Golembiewski, B, Sick, N & Broering, S 2015, 'Potential convergence processes within the emerging bioeconomyPotential convergence processes within the emerging bioeconomy – agriculture and energy industry in the focus', International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 1550012-1-1550012-22.
Golembiewski, B, Sick, N & Bröring, S 2015, 'Patterns of Convergence Within the Emerging Bioeconomy — The Case of the Agricultural and Energy Sector', International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management, vol. 12, no. 03, pp. 1550012-1550012.
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In light of an emerging bioeconomy, fading boundaries between the so far distinct agricultural and energy sector indicate a convergence process leading to a new competitive setting between established value chains requiring dynamic capabilities of the affected firms. On the basis of understanding convergence as a process within research-intensive industries, patent analyses can be applied to identify whether there are trends of convergence associated with the emerging bioeconomy. This study focuses on examining the nexus of agricultural and energy sector with regard to German biogas technologies. Although different disciplinary activities within the field of biogas can be confirmed, for now, biogas (as well as other bioenergy) applications rather seem to build a sub-segment within the energy value chain than to form a new inter-industry segment.
Golembiewski, B, Sick, N & Bröring, S 2015, 'The emerging research landscape on bioeconomy: What has been done so far and what is essential from a technology and innovation management perspective?', Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies, vol. 29, pp. 308-317.
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. As the global resource base is in need to move from fossil towards bio-based raw materials, different supply chains as well as existing technology platforms become increasingly interconnected. The therefore needed creation and exchange of new knowledge across scientific disciplines require R&D and target technology development and innovation, linking the knowledge-based bioeconomy to technology and innovation management research. In order to get an overview of the current research landscape dealing with the bioeconomy, a publication analysis is conducted. As the number of empirical studies, particularly in management research, is low, our study reveals that the evolution of the bioeconomy is still on a strategic level. Existing studies focus on knowledge networks, open innovation and technologies applicable across value chains to enable a holistic view on organizing future resource allocation and biomass flows. Scientific research in several dimensions is needed to elaborate the bioeconomy concept to make its implementation manageable. Industrial relevance Value chains, particularly of the agri-food, industrial products and energy sector, will increasingly converge due to the shift to bio-based raw materials leading to a mutual dependence and triggering new material flows and food processing technologies. This paper suggests that essential innovation management related research frames might contribute to a sustainable evolution of the bioeconomy by addressing the major challenges.
Golembiewski, B, vom Stein, N, Sick, N & Wiemhöfer, H-D 2015, 'Identifying trends in battery technologies with regard to electric mobility: evidence from patenting activities along and across the battery value chain', Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 87, no. C, pp. 800-810.
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© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Electric mobility is a topic of intense discussions in academia and industry since the stability of future energy supply as well as the associated environmental consequences are uncertain. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the research and development status of battery technologies for electric vehicles which are reflecting the interface of the automotive, chemical and electronics sector. The present study applies patent families as technological indicators in order to analyze the research activities of each step of the designed battery value chain individually and in comparison with each other to identify and discuss trends regarding the technologies associated to electric vehicles. By applying this explorative approach to the comparably new field, the study contributes to both the scientific literature on patent analysis as well as on emerging industry and value creation structures related to the electric mobility sector. Although the distribution of patents shows an emphasis on active components, the high number of patents covering more than one value chain step points towards the tendency of considering the whole value chain in systemic research approaches. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of patent assignees reveals insights on the knowledge dissemination across the value chain whereby the major share of industry actors still appears to be focused on their respective core competences but also administers important links to other value chain steps. The increase of collaborative activities across steps further hints towards starting shifts in value creation activities.
Han, Y, Cao, Q & Ji, J 2015, 'Nonlinear Dynamics of a Smooth and Discontinuous Oscillator with Multiple Stability', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BIFURCATION AND CHAOS, vol. 25, no. 13.
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Hao, L, Jiang, Z, Cheng, X, Zhao, J, Wei, D, Jiang, L, Luo, S, Luo, M & Ma, L 2015, 'Effect of Extreme Pressure Additives on the Deformation Behavior of Oxide Scale during the Hot Rolling of Ferritic Stainless Steel Strips', Tribology Transactions, vol. 58, no. 5, pp. 947-954.
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Hao, L, Jiang, Z, Wei, D, Zhao, Y, Zhao, J, Luo, M, Ma, L, Luo, S & Jiang, L 2015, 'Effect of extreme pressure agents on the anti-scratch behaviour of high-speed steel material', Tribology International, vol. 81, pp. 19-28.
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Hussain, S, Roy, NC, Hossain, MA & Saha, SC 2015, 'Effect of Fluctuating Surface Heat and Mass Flux on Natural Convection Flow along a Vertical Flat Plate', Mathematical Problems in Engineering, vol. 2015, pp. 1-15.
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An investigation has been carried on double diffusive effect on boundary layer flow due to small amplitude oscillation in surface heat and mass flux. Extensive parametric simulations were performed in order to elucidate the effects of some important parameters, that is, Prandtl number, Schmidt number, and Buoyancy ratio parameter on flow field in conjunction with heat and mass transfer. Asymptotic solutions for low and high frequencies are obtained for the conveniently transformed governing coupled equations. Solutions are also obtained for wide ranged value of the frequency parameters. Comparisons between the asymptotic and wide ranged values are made in terms of the amplitudes and phases of the shear stress, surface heat transfer, and surface mass transfer. It has been found that the amplitudes and phase angles obtained from asymptotic solutions are found in good agreement with the finite difference solutions obtained for wide ranged value of the frequency parameter.
Ji, JC 2015, 'Two families of super-harmonic resonances in a time-delayed nonlinear oscillator', JOURNAL OF SOUND AND VIBRATION, vol. 349, pp. 299-314.
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Keepanasseril, A, Bagga, R, Saha, SC, Dey, P, Gainder, S & Dhaliwal, LK 2015, 'Primary fallopian tube transitional cell carcinoma', Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 324-325.
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Kehrel, U & Sick, N 2015, 'Oil prices as a driving force in the diffusion of renewables?', International Journal of Energy Sector Management, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 227-250.
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Purpose – Researchers began investigating the diffusion of renewable energy technologies (RETs) in the late 1990s, and, up to today, a variety of authors have presented different approaches to understand the special characteristics of RET diffusion. However, one factor has been thus far disregarded in the research: the influence of raw material prices on RET diffusion. The dependence of a multitude of technologies on raw material prices became especially apparent in recent years due to rather sudden and volatile price movements in raw material markets. Thus, the aim of this work is to contribute to the research by providing evidence for a direct linkage between raw material price developments and RET diffusion. Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical framework used in this article derives from the concept of induced diffusion. This empirical study is based on publicly available data of 18 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries over 20 years and uses multivariate regression analysis to identify the corresponding diffusion models for selected established and emerging RETs. Findings – Results reveal that crude oil prices play a crucial role in the diffusion of emerging RETs. In addition, a joint reflection of induced diffusion and path dependencies as the theoretical foundation of RET diffusion models might be reasonable. Originality/value – This paper makes a sign...
Lammers, T & Golfmann, J 2015, 'Modular Product Design: reducing complexity, increasing efficacy', Performance, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 56-63.
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In a global business environment, the increasedindividuality of customer demands adds externalpressure for companies. On the other hand,growing competition creates the need forcost-cutting programs. The conflict betweenexternal variance and internal standardizationcan be solved by approaches such as modularproduct design. A proven four-phase approachthat enables the modularization of productarchitectures is examined in this article.
Li, H, Jiang, Z, Wei, D, Gao, X, Xu, J & Zhang, X 2015, 'Surface asperity evolution and microstructure analysis of Al 6061T5 alloy in a quasi-static cold uniaxial planar compression (CUPC)', Applied Surface Science, vol. 347, pp. 193-201.
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© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. In a quasi-static cold uniaxial planar compression, surface asperity evolution and microstructure analysis of Al 6061T5 alloy are carried out by employing Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and Electron Backscattered Diffraction (EBSD) methods. Strain rate affects the surface asperity evolution obviously. While lubrication can hinder the surface asperity flattening by constraining the surface localized deformation. Lubrication can accelerate the crystallization in CUPC process. It also impedes the activation of some orientation components by hindering the activation of related slip systems in light metal Al alloy.
Li, H, Jiang, Z, Wei, D, Xu, J, Zhang, X, Gong, D & Han, J 2015, 'Study on Surface Asperity Flattening in Cold Quasi-Static Uniaxial Planar Compression by Crystal Plasticity Finite Element Method', Tribology Letters, vol. 58, no. 3.
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Li, H, Öchsner, A, Wei, D, Ni, G & Jiang, Z 2015, 'Crystal plasticity finite element modelling of the effect of friction on surface asperity flattening in cold uniaxial planar compression', Applied Surface Science, vol. 359, pp. 236-244.
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Li, Q-S, Xiong, R, Huang, S & Huang, Y-M 2015, 'Building a dense surface map incrementally from semi-dense point cloud and RGBimages', Frontiers of Information Technology & Electronic Engineering, vol. 16, no. 7, pp. 594-606.
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© 2015, Journal of Zhejiang University Science Editorial Office and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. Building and using maps is a fundamental issue for bionic robots in field applications. A dense surface map, which offers rich visual and geometric information, is an ideal representation of the environment for indoor/outdoor localization, navigation, and recognition tasks of these robots. Since most bionic robots can use only small light-weight laser scanners and cameras to acquire semi-dense point cloud and RGB images, we propose a method to generate a consistent and dense surface map from this kind of semi-dense point cloud and RGB images. The method contains two main steps: (1) generate a dense surface for every single scan of point cloud and its corresponding image(s) and (2) incrementally fuse the dense surface of a new scan into the whole map. In step (1) edge-aware resampling is realized by segmenting the scan of a point cloud in advance and resampling each sub-cloud separately. Noise within the scan is reduced and a dense surface is generated. In step (2) the average surface is estimated probabilistically and the non-coincidence of different scans is eliminated. Experiments demonstrate that our method works well in both indoor and outdoor semi-structured environments where there are regularly shaped objects.
Liu, J, Ji, J, Zhou, J, Xiang, L & Zhao, L 2015, 'Adaptive group consensus in uncertain networked Euler-Lagrange systems under directed topology', NONLINEAR DYNAMICS, vol. 82, no. 3, pp. 1145-1157.
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Luo, L, Jiang, Z, Wei, D, Manabe, K-I, Sato, H, He, X & Li, P 2015, 'An experimental and numerical study of micro deep drawing of SUS304 circular cups', Manufacturing Review, vol. 2, pp. 27-27.
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© L. Luo et al., published by EDP Sciences, 2015. Micro deep drawing is a promising technology for mass production of complex 3D micro metal products. Significant size effects at a micro scale, however, obstruct application of this technology and block utilisation of traditional finite element method (FEM). Therefore, a micro tensile test system was developed to obtain accurate material properties considering size effects. Subsequently, a Voronoi blank model was developed for the micro scale simulation. Moreover, micro deep drawing experiments were conducted and their results were compared with the simulation results. The simulation results have a good agreement with the experimental data. Furthermore, the wrinkling at the cup mouth increases with the growth of grain sizes on the SUS304 sheets.
Luo, Q & Tong, L 2015, 'Design and testing for shape control of piezoelectric structures using topology optimization', Engineering Structures, vol. 97, pp. 90-104.
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Luo, Q & Tong, L 2015, 'Optimal Designs for Vibrating Structures Using a Moving Isosurface Threshold Method With Experimental Study', Journal of Vibration and Acoustics, vol. 137, no. 6.
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This paper studies optimal designs for vibrating structures using a moving isosurface threshold method (MIST). In the present study, a combination of strain and kinetic energy densities is selected as a response function of natural frequency and then formulations to maximize a specific frequency, frequency separation, and average-mean are derived. An efficient algorithm is developed to find a moving isosurface threshold level for evolving the design boundary and updating the weighting factor. The present algorithm coupled with commercial finite element analysis (FEA) software is used to study optimal designs for vibrating structures. The obtained optimal designs are fabricated and the experimental tests are conducted to validate the optimal topologies.
Luo, Q & Tong, L 2015, 'Structural topology optimization for maximum linear buckling loads by using a moving iso-surface threshold method', Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 71-90.
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Nobbs, M & Blamires, SJ 2015, 'Spatiotemporal distribution and abundance of mangrove ecosystem engineers: burrowing crabs around canopy gaps', Ecosphere, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 1-13.
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The burrowing and feeding activities of fiddler and sesarmid crabs have considerable impacts on ecosystem functioning, accordingly they are considered ecosystem engineers. Identifying the factors influencing spatial and temporal variability in crab distribution and abundance would allow us to make predictions of their engineering impacts over a variety of habitats, which is essential for understanding the functionality of mangrove ecosystems. Here we determined the spatial and temporal distributions and abundances of fiddler crabs and sesarmids around canopy gaps in the mangroves of Darwin Harbour, Australia. We sampled three microhabitats at each canopy gap (site): gap center, gap edge and forest edge. We counted crabs and measured selected environmental variables at thirty sites stratified by height within two creek systems during a single season and at six sites within one creek system over two years. Fiddler crabs were generally more abundant in gap centers with Uca flammula preferring lower sites than Uca elegans or Uca signata, while sesarmids favored low to mid‐height vegetated sites. Canonical Correspondence analyses showed spatial abundances to be partitioned and the main driving factors were canopy density and site height, as well as substrate features (sediment mounds, soil moisture, soil penetrability, soil surface temperature). Temporal abundances were either highly variable (U. signata) or showed significant seasonal variation only at exposed (U. flammula) or higher (U. elegans) sites. The main factors driving temporal partitioning were humidity, wind speed, sunshine, and soil and air temperatures. Our results indicate that the distribution and abundance of crabs in mangroves varies over time and space, and with sampling scale. Substrate and environmental variables had bee...
Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 2015, 'A statistical approach to estimate the Lyapunov spectrum in disc brake squeal', Journal of Sound and Vibration, vol. 334, pp. 120-135.
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Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 2015, 'Nonlinear transient and chaotic interactions in disc brake squeal', Journal of Sound and Vibration, vol. 342, pp. 272-289.
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Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 2015, 'Pad-mode-induced instantaneous mode instability for simple models of brake systems', Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, vol. 62-63, pp. 490-505.
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Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 2015, 'Squeal noise in simple numerical brake models', JOURNAL OF SOUND AND VIBRATION, vol. 352, pp. 129-141.
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Oberst, S, Nava-Baro, E, Lai, JCS & Evans, TA 2015, 'An Innovative Signal Processing Method to Extract Ants’ Walking Signals', Acoustics Australia, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 87-96.
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Parnell, J 2015, 'Welcome from the Conference Chair', Acoustics 2015 Hunter Valley.
Peters, G & Paul, G 2015, 'Maintaining an old icon with a new technology', Journal of Protective Coatings and Linings, vol. 32, no. 8, pp. 22-31.
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The latest technological advancements are being used in maintaining the Sydney Harbor bridge. The latest planned maintenance involving abrasive blast-cleaning of the old paint back to bare metal has provided the opportunity for robotic technology to be used to assist maintenance workers engaged in restoration work on the bridge. Rosie and Sandy are two autonomous robots that have been performing some of the more repetitive and straining blast work on the southern side approach spans under the road deck of the bridge.
Piyathilaka, L & Kodagoda, S 2015, 'Learning Hidden Human Context in 3D Office Scenes by Mapping Affordances Through Virtual Humans.', Unmanned Syst., vol. 3, no. 04, pp. 299-310.
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Ability to learn human context in an environment could be one of the most desired fundamental abilities that a robot should have when sharing a workspace with human co-workers. Arguably, a robot with appropriate human context awareness could lead to a better human–robot interaction. In this paper, we address the problem of learning human context in an office environment by only using 3D point cloud data. Our approach is based on the concept of affordance-map, which involves mapping latent human actions in a given environment by looking at geometric features of the environment. This enables us to learn the human context in the environment without observing real human behaviors which themselves are a nontrivial task to detect. Once learned, affordance-map allows us to assign an affordance cost value for each grid location of the map. These cost maps are later used to develop an active object search strategy and to develop a context-aware global path planning strategy.
Polwaththe-Gallage, H-N, Saha, SC, Sauret, E, Flower, R & Gu, Y 2015, 'Numerical Investigation of Motion and Deformation of a Single Red Blood Cell in a Stenosed Capillary', International Journal of Computational Methods, vol. 12, no. 04, pp. 1540003-1540003.
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It is generally assumed that influence of the red blood cells (RBCs) is predominant in blood rheology. The healthy RBCs are highly deformable and can thus easily squeeze through the smallest capillaries having internal diameter less than their characteristic size. On the other hand, RBCs infected by malaria or other diseases are stiffer and so less deformable. Thus it is harder for them to flow through the smallest capillaries. Therefore, it is very important to critically and realistically investigate the mechanical behavior of both healthy and infected RBCs which is a current gap in knowledge. The motion and the steady state deformed shape of the RBCs depend on many factors, such as the geometrical parameters of the capillary through which blood flows, the membrane bending stiffness and the mean velocity of the blood flow. In this study, motion and deformation of a single two-dimensional RBC in a stenosed capillary is explored by using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method. An elastic spring network is used to model the RBC membrane, while the RBC's inside fluid and outside fluid are treated as SPH particles. The effect of RBC's membrane stiffness (k b ), inlet pressure (P) and geometrical parameters of the capillary on the motion and deformation of the RBC is studied. The deformation index, RBC's mean velocity and the cell membrane energy are analyzed when the cell passes through the stenosed capillary. The simulation results demonstrate that the k b , P and the geometrical parameters of the capillary have a significant impact on the RBCs' motion and deformation in the stenosed section.
Rahman, H, Shams-Ul-Islam, Zhou, CY, Kiyani, T & Saha, SC 2015, 'On the effect of Reynolds number for flow past three side-by-side square cylinders for unequal gap spacings', KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 233-247.
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Roser, C, Lorentzen, K & Deuse, J 2015, 'Reliable shop floor bottleneck detection for flow lines through process and inventory observations: the bottleneck walk', Logistics Research, vol. 8, no. 1.
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© 2015, The Author(s). Bottleneck detection in manufacturing is the key to improving production efficiency and stability in order to improve capacity. Yet, common bottleneck detection methods in industry and academia lack either accuracy or practicability, or both, for dynamic systems. The new methodology is conducted by the observation of processes and inventories. Blocked processes and full inventories indicate a downstream bottleneck. Starved processes and empty inventories indicate an upstream bottleneck. Through subsequent observations of multiple process states and inventory levels within a system, it is possible to determine the direction of the bottleneck at the given time and hence to find the momentary bottleneck in the system. The shifting of bottlenecks can be observed directly. Work sampling techniques can be used to obtain a long-term picture of the dynamically shifting bottleneck. The new methodology does not require any calculations, statistics, or time measurements. Hence, the method is suited for practical use by shop floor supervisors and clerks. The direct observation of the bottleneck also gives additional information about the underlying causes of the bottlenecks, simplifying the improvement of the system capacity. Extensive field testing of the method received positive feedback not only from management but also from shop floor operators. The method is already in use at the Robert Bosch GmbH, where it is known as the bottleneck walk.
Saha, SC & Gu, YT 2015, 'Natural convection in a triangular enclosure heated from below and non-uniformly cooled from top', International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, vol. 80, pp. 529-538.
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Sato, H, Manabe, K, Ito, K, Wei, D & Jiang, Z 2015, 'Development of servo-type micro-hydromechanical deep-drawing apparatus and micro deep-drawing experiments of circular cups', Journal of Materials Processing Technology, vol. 224, pp. 233-239.
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Sato, H, Manabe, K, Wei, DB, Jiang, ZY & Kondo, D 2015, 'Micro Sheet Hydroforming Process of Ultra-Thin Pure Titanium Foil', Key Engineering Materials, vol. 626, pp. 397-401.
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A micro hydromechanical deep drawing is carried out using the pure titanium and the effect of fluid pressure on formability of pure titanium is investigated. The experiments are performed using the two kinds of pure titanium foils (TR270C-H and TR270C-O) and stainless steel foil (SUS304-H) with 50 thickness and the cylindrical and conical punches. As a result, it is found that the peeling off the oxide film of pure titanium can be reduced by applying the fluid pressure because the friction force and contact pressure between the blank and die decreases. However, the formability is lower for pure titanium than that for stainless steel because the tensile strength is low and the friction force is easy to increase as the friction force increases. In contrast, due to the low young modulus of pure titanium, the restriction of wrinkling, decrease of friction force and friction holding effect can be obtained at low fluid pressure.
Schulten, C & Parnell, J 2015, 'Development Around Freight Rail Corridors: Noise Assessment and Mitigation', Acoustics Australia, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 265-273.
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As residential encroachment increases along freight rail corridors or near freight hubs, poor acoustic design of residential developments can lead to increased complaints and community resistance to projects aimed at expanding the freight network and delivering economic growth. Developers and consent authorities, including local councils, must follow planning controls to address noise impact in the assessment and design of sensitive development near rail corridors, The Department of Planning and Environment published the Development Near Rail Corridors and Busy Roads—Interim Guideline (2008) to provide guidance to those assessing noise and designing sensitive developments (such as residences) to avoid and mitigate noise impacts. Extensive noise monitoring recently conducted has provided data to improve the quality of assessments and design for areas near curved or steep gradient track and near freight rail hubs. This paper references a comprehensive noise data set as an evidence base to provide guidance on the identification of affectation zones around freight rail corridors and freight rail hubs where risk of land use conflict is high. The paper also presents three case studies giving examples of how residential developments can be designed to address noise from freight operations.
Sepehrirahnama, S, Lim, K-M & Chau, FS 2015, 'Numerical Analysis of the Acoustic Radiation Force and Acoustic Streaming Around a Sphere in an Acoustic Standing Wave', Physics Procedia, vol. 70, pp. 80-84.
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Sepehrirahnama, S, Lim, K-M & Chau, FS 2015, 'Numerical study of interparticle radiation force acting on rigid spheres in a standing wave', The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 137, no. 5, pp. 2614-2622.
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Acoustic radiation force can be used to move micro-sized particles, such as cells, in microfluidic devices. Although the number of particles in a microfluidic device is large, typically 2.5% (weight/volume), the acoustic force acting on a particle is commonly calculated using an analytical formula for a single particle in infinite medium. The interparticle forces are typically ignored as these are not easily accounted for and calculated with simple closed-form solutions. Based on the isothermal theory for an ideal fluid, a numerical scheme is hereby proposed to calculate the total radiation force, including the interparticle forces. The method uses the multipole series expansion and the weighted residual method to solve the governing Helmholtz equation with the necessary boundary conditions on the particle surface. The effect of different parameters on the primary and interparticle forces is studied using the proposed numerical scheme. It is shown that, near the pressure node, the interparticle forces are dominant and configurations of the spheres are determined by the interparticle forces. The proposed numerical scheme can be used for various sizes of spherical particles.
Shenoy, AU & Shenoy, UV 2015, 'Continuous targeting and network design for zero wastewater discharge in water system integration', Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 87, no. 1, pp. 627-641.
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© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Electric mobility is a topic of intense discussions in academia and industry since the stability of future energy supply as well as the associated environmental consequences are uncertain. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the research and development status of battery technologies for electric vehicles which are reflecting the interface of the automotive, chemical and electronics sector. The present study applies patent families as technological indicators in order to analyze the research activities of each step of the designed battery value chain individually and in comparison with each other to identify and discuss trends regarding the technologies associated to electric vehicles. By applying this explorative approach to the comparably new field, the study contributes to both the scientific literature on patent analysis as well as on emerging industry and value creation structures related to the electric mobility sector. Although the distribution of patents shows an emphasis on active components, the high number of patents covering more than one value chain step points towards the tendency of considering the whole value chain in systemic research approaches. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of patent assignees reveals insights on the knowledge dissemination across the value chain whereby the major share of industry actors still appears to be focused on their respective core competences but also administers important links to other value chain steps. The increase of collaborative activities across steps further hints towards starting shifts in value creation activities.
Siddiqa, S, Hossain, MA & Saha, SC 2015, 'Two-phase natural convection flow of a dusty fluid', International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, vol. 25, no. 7, pp. 1542-1556.
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conduct a detailed investigation of the two-dimensional natural convection flow of a dusty fluid. Therefore, the incompressible boundary layer flow of a two-phase particulate suspension is investigated numerically over a semi-infinite vertical flat plate. Comprehensive flow formations of the gas and particle phases are given in the boundary layer region. Primitive variable formulation is employed to convert the nondimensional governing equations into the non-conserved form. Three important two-phase mechanisms are discussed, namely, water-metal mixture, oil-metal mixture and air-metal mixture. Design/methodology/approach – The full coupled nonlinear system of equations is solved using implicit two point finite difference method along the whole length of the plate. Findings – The authors have presented numerical solution of the dusty boundary layer problem. Solutions obtained are depicted through the characteristic quantities, such as, wall shear stress coefficient, wall heat transfer coefficient, velocity distribution and temperature distribution for both phases. Results are interpreted for wide range of Prandtl number Pr (0.005-1,000.0). It is observed that thin boundary layer structures can be formed when mass concentration parameter or Prandtl number (e.g. oil-metal particle mixture) are high. Originality/value – The results of the study may be of some i...
Sojoudi, A, Saha, SC & Gu, YT 2015, 'Natural convection due to differential heating of inclined walls and heat source placed on bottom wall of an attic shaped space', Energy and Buildings, vol. 89, pp. 153-162.
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Sun, Y, Zhao, L, Huang, S, Yan, L & Dissanayake, G 2015, 'Line matching based on planar homography for stereo aerial images', ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, vol. 104, pp. 1-17.
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© 2015 International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS). We propose an efficient line matching algorithm for a pair of calibrated aerial photogrammetric images, which makes use of sparse 3D points triangulated from 2D point feature correspondences to guide line matching based on planar homography. Two different strategies are applied in the proposed line matching algorithm for two different cases. When three or more points can be found coplanar with the line segment to be matched, the points are used to fit a plane and obtain an accurate planar homography. When one or two points can be found, the approximate terrain plane parallel to the line segment is utilized to compute an approximate planar homography. Six pairs of rural or urban aerial images are used to demonstrate the efficiency and validity of the proposed algorithm. Compared with line matching based on 2D point feature correspondences, the proposed method can increase the number of correctly matched line segments. In addition, compared with most line matching methods that do not use 2D point feature correspondences, the proposed method has better efficiency, although it obtains fewer matches. The C/C++ source code for the proposed algorithm is available at http://services.eng.uts.edu.au/~sdhuang/research.htm.
Thollander, P, Paramonova, S, Cornelis, E, Kimura, O, Trianni, A, Karlsson, M, Cagno, E, Morales, I & Jiménez Navarro, JP 2015, 'International study on energy end-use data among industrial SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and energy end-use efficiency improvement opportunities', Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 104, pp. 282-296.
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vom Stein, N, Sick, N & Leker, J 2015, 'How to measure technological distance in collaborations — The case of electric mobility', Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 97, pp. 154-167.
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© 2014 Elsevier Inc. Innovation collaborations experienced a substantial growth during recent decades, so that research interest in factors contributing to successful collaboration increased. One proposed success factor is technological distance, which determines the probability of receiving new knowledge from a partner as well as the ability of absorbing it. The methodology for measuring this distance is receiving broad attention in current literature. Therefore, we compare well-established measuring methods based on Euclidian distances with the recently introduced method of the min-complement distance.Collaborations along the entire value chain are seen as a way to overcome technological deficiencies associated with battery development for electric mobility, which implies collaboration of partners with different technological distances. Hence, we specifically focus on cross-industry collaborations comprising partners from the chemical and automobile industries.Our results show that the methodology used highlights different aspects of the approximation of technological distance in the examined collaborations. The use of the min-complement distance seems to be reasonable due to the intuitive property of the independence of irrelevant patent classes in cross-industry collaboration settings.
Wang, C, He, X, Tong, L, Luo, Q, Li, Y, Song, Q, Lv, X, Shang, Y, Peng, Q & Li, J 2015, 'Tensile failure mechanisms of individual junctions assembled by two carbon nanotubes', Composites Science and Technology, vol. 110, pp. 159-165.
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Wang, H, Huang, S, Khosoussi, K, Frese, U, Dissanayake, G & Liu, B 2015, 'Dimensionality reduction for point feature SLAM problems with spherical covariance matrices', Automatica, vol. 51, pp. 149-157.
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© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The main contribution of this paper is the dimensionality reduction for multiple-step 2D point feature based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), which is an extension of our previous work on one-step SLAM (Wang et al.; 2013). It has been proved that SLAM with multiple robot poses and a number of point feature positions as variables is equivalent to an optimization problem with only the robot orientations as variables, when the associated uncertainties can be described using spherical covariance matrices. This reduces the dimension of original problem from 3m+2n to m only (where m is the number of poses and n is the number of features). The optimization problem after dimensionality reduction can be solved numerically using the unconstrained optimization algorithms. While dimensionality reduction may not provide computational saving for all nonlinear optimization problems, for some SLAM problems we can achieve benefits such as improvement on time consumption and convergence. For the special case of two-step SLAM when the orientation information from odometry is not incorporated, an algorithm that can guarantee to obtain the globally optimal solution (in the maximum likelihood sense) is derived. Simulation and experimental datasets are used to verify the equivalence between the reduced nonlinear optimization problem and the original full optimization problem, as well as the proposed new algorithm for obtaining the globally optimal solution for two-step SLAM.
Weisner, K, Deuse, J & Jaitner, T 2015, 'Erhöhung der Einsatzflexibilität operativer Mitarbeiter', Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, vol. 110, no. 9, pp. 537-541.
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KurzfassungDie Dynamisierung und Digitalisierung der Arbeit bedingen steigende Flexibilitätsanforderungen an operative Mitarbeiter. Um möglichen negativen Folgen der resultierenden Beanspruchung entgegenzuwirken, wird ein Trainingskonzept entwickelt, das die Anpassungsfähigkeit von Mitarbeitern bei ständig variierenden Umgebungsparametern fördert. Grundlage hierfür bildet der systemdynamische Ansatz aus den Sport- und Bewegungswissenschaften, dessen zentraler Aspekt die Adaptivität koordinativer Systeme ist.
Wight, NM & Bennett, NS 2015, 'Geothermal energy from abandoned oil and gas wells using water in combination with a closed wellbore', Applied Thermal Engineering, vol. 89, pp. 908-915.
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Yu, X, Jiang, Z, Zhao, J, Wei, D, Zhou, C & Huang, Q 2015, 'Crystallographic Texture Based Analysis of Fe<sub>3</sub>O<sub>4</sub>/<i>α</i>-Fe<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> Scale Formed on a Hot-rolled Microalloyed Steel', ISIJ International, vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 278-284.
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Yu, X, Jiang, Z, Zhao, J, Wei, D, Zhou, C & Huang, Q 2015, 'Effects of grain boundaries in oxide scale on tribological properties of nanoparticles lubrication', Wear, vol. 332-333, pp. 1286-1292.
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Yu, X, Jiang, Z, Zhao, J, Wei, D, Zhou, C & Huang, Q 2015, 'Microstructure and microtexture evolutions of deformed oxide layers on a hot-rolled microalloyed steel', Corrosion Science, vol. 90, pp. 140-152.
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Yu, X, Jiang, Z, Zhao, J, Wei, D, Zhou, J, Zhou, C & Huang, Q 2015, 'A Comparison of Texture Development in an Experimental and Industrial Tertiary Oxide Scale in a Hot Strip Mill', Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B, vol. 46, no. 6, pp. 2503-2513.
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Yu, X, Jiang, Z, Zhao, J, Wei, D, Zhou, J, Zhou, C & Huang, Q 2015, 'Dependence of texture development on the grain size of tertiary oxide scales formed on a microalloyed steel', Surface and Coatings Technology, vol. 272, pp. 39-49.
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Yu, X, Jiang, Z, Zhao, J, Wei, D, Zhou, J, Zhou, C & Huang, Q 2015, 'Local strain analysis of the tertiary oxide scale formed on a hot-rolled steel strip via EBSD', Surface and Coatings Technology, vol. 277, pp. 151-159.
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© 2015 Elsevier B.V.. This work presents a fine microstructure and local misorientation study of various oxide phases in the tertiary oxide scale formed on a hot-rolled steel strip via electron back-scattering diffraction (EBSD). Local strain in individual grains of four phases, ferrite (α-Fe), wustite (FeO), magnetite (Fe3O4) and hematite (α-Fe2O3), has been systematically analysed. The results reveal that Fe3O4 has a lower local strain than α-Fe2O3, in particular, on the surface and inner layers of the oxide scale. The multiphase oxides along the cracking or α-Fe2O3 penetration generally develop a high local misorientation. Localised stain along the cracks demonstrates that the misorientation tends to be strong near grain boundaries. The high fraction of small Fe3O4 grains accumulate at the oxide-substrate interface, which leads to a dramatic increase in the intensity of local stain. This variation is due mainly to the phase transformation among the oxide phases, i.e., the Fe3O4 particles during their nucleation and growth. The combined action of stress relief and re-oxidisation is proposed to explain the formation of Fe3O4 seam at the oxide-steel interface. The present study offers an intriguing insight into the deformation behaviour of the tertiary oxide scale formed on steels, and may help with understanding the stress-aided oxidation effect of metal alloys.
Yuan, L-L, Han, J-T, Liu, J, Wei, D-B & Abathun, MZ 2015, 'Titanium effect on the microstructure and properties of laminated high boron steel plates', International Journal of Minerals, Metallurgy, and Materials, vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 492-499.
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Abstract High-boron steel is an important material used for thermal neutron shielding. The appropriate amount of added boron must be determined because excessive boron may deteriorate the steel’s workability. A uniform microstructure can be formed by adding titanium to boron steel. In this study, casting and hot rolling were used to fabricate laminated high-boron steel plates whose cores contained 2.25wt% boron and 0wt%–7.9wt% titanium. The effects of titanium content and hot-rolling and heat-treatment processes on the microstructure and properties of the laminated plates were studied. The results indicated that the optimum titanium content was 5.7wt% when the boron content was 2.25wt%, and that the best overall properties were obtained after heat treatment at 1100°C for 4 h. The tensile strength, yield strength, and elongation at the specified temperature and holding time were as high as 526.88 MPa, 219.36 MPa, and 29%, respectively.
Zhao, L, Huang, S, Sun, Y, Yan, L & Dissanayake, G 2015, 'ParallaxBA: bundle adjustment using parallax angle feature parametrization', The International Journal of Robotics Research, vol. 34, no. 4-5, pp. 493-516.
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The main contribution of this paper is a novel feature parametrization based on parallax angles for bundle adjustment (BA) in structure and motion estimation from monocular images. It is demonstrated that under certain conditions, describing feature locations using their Euclidean XYZ coordinates or using inverse depth in BA leads to ill-conditioned normal equations as well as objective functions that have very small gradients with respect to some of the parameters describing feature locations. The proposed parallax angle feature parametrization in BA (ParallaxBA) avoids both of the above problems leading to better convergence properties and more accurate motion and structure estimates. Simulation and experimental datasets are used to demonstrate the impact of different feature parametrizations on BA, and the improved convergence, efficiency and accuracy of the proposed ParallaxBA algorithm when compared with some existing BA packages such as SBA, sSBA and g2o. The C/C++ source code of ParallaxBA is available on OpenSLAM ( https://openslam.org/ ).
Zhao, L, Huang, S, Yan, L & Dissanayake, G 2015, 'A new feature parametrization for monocular SLAM using line features', Robotica, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 513-536.
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SUMMARYThis paper presents a new monocular SLAM algorithm that uses straight lines extracted from images to represent the environment. A line is parametrized by two pairs of azimuth and elevation angles together with the two corresponding camera centres as anchors making the feature initialization relatively straightforward. There is no redundancy in the state vector as this is a minimal representation. A bundle adjustment (BA) algorithm that minimizes the reprojection error of the line features is developed for solving the monocular SLAM problem with only line features. A new map joining algorithm which can automatically optimize the relative scales of the local maps is used to combine the local maps generated using BA. Results from both simulations and experimental datasets are used to demonstrate the accuracy and consistency of the proposed BA and map joining algorithms.
Zhao, M & Ji, JC 2015, 'Nonlinear torsional vibrations of a wind turbine gearbox', APPLIED MATHEMATICAL MODELLING, vol. 39, no. 16, pp. 4928-4950.
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Zhao, S, Qiu, X & Burnett, I 2015, 'Acoustic contrast control in an arc-shaped area using a linear loudspeaker array (L)', JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA, vol. 137, no. 2, pp. 1036-1039.
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This paper proposes a method of creating acoustic contrast control in an arc-shaped area using a linear loudspeaker array. The boundary of the arc-shaped area is treated as the envelope of the tangent lines that can be formed by manipulating the phase profile of the loudspeakers in the array. When compared with the existing acoustic contrast control method, the proposed method is able to generate sound field inside an arc-shaped area and achieve a trade-off between acoustic uniformity and acoustic contrast. The acoustic contrast created by the proposed method increases while the acoustic uniformity decreases with frequency.
Zhao, S, Qiu, X & Cheng, J 2015, 'An integral equation method for calculating sound field diffracted by a rigid barrier on an impedance ground', The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 138, no. 3, pp. 1608-1613.
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This paper proposes a different method for calculating a sound field diffracted by a rigid barrier based on the integral equation method, where a virtual boundary is assumed above the rigid barrier to divide the whole space into two subspaces. Based on the Kirchhoff-Helmholtz equation, the sound field in each subspace is determined with the source inside and the boundary conditions on the surface, and then the diffracted sound field is obtained by using the continuation conditions on the virtual boundary. Simulations are carried out to verify the feasibility of the proposed method. Compared to the MacDonald method and other existing methods, the proposed method is a rigorous solution for whole space and is also much easier to understand.
Zhao, S, Qiu, X, Cheng, E, Burnett, I, Williams, N, Burry, J & Burry, M 2015, 'Sound quality inside small meeting rooms with different room shape and fine structures', APPLIED ACOUSTICS, vol. 93, pp. 65-74.
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This note is intended to understand relative importance of room shape and fine structures on the sound quality inside small meeting rooms in terms of the reverberation time, the sound field distribution and the speech transmission index with similar room volume, surface area and the absorption coefficients. First, different shaped rooms with smooth walls are modeled and simulated to investigate the effects of room shape on the sound quality, and then hyperboloid cells are made on the walls to examine the influence of fine structural surface on sound quality with both regular and random arrangements. It is found that the reverberation time is affected significantly by the room shape while is not sensitive to the hyperboloid cells. The sound field distribution is affected little by the room shape and the hyperboloid cells and the difference is smaller than the Just-Noticeable-Difference in most cases. The impact of the room shape and fine structural surface on the speech transmission index mainly lies in the transition area between the direct sound and the reverberant sound. The reliability of the simulation remarks is confirmed by the experiments carried out in two different meeting rooms. The main conclusion of the note is that when the room volume, the surface area and the absorption coefficients are kept constant, the room shape and fine structural surface have little impact on the sound field distribution and speech intelligibility inside small rooms with ordinary surface absorption, while the reverberation time is affected significantly by room shape but slightly by the fine structural surface.
Zheng, S, Tong, L & Luo, Q 2015, 'Finite element formulations and algorithms for coupled multiphysics analysis of 0-1 and 0-3 polarized PLZT actuators', International Journal of Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 513-530.
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Zwinkau, R, Krebs, M & Deuse, J 2015, 'Wertstromübergreifende Auslegung von Bauteilreinigungskonzepten', JOT Journal für Oberflächentechnik, vol. 55, no. 6, pp. 52-55.
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Abeywardena, D & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Tightly-Coupled Model Aided Visual-Inertial Fusion for Quadrotor Micro Air Vehicles', Results of the 9th International Conference, International Conference on Field and Service Robotics, Springer International Publishing, Toronto, Canada, pp. 153-166.
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The main contribution of this paper is a tightly-coupled visual-inertial fusion algorithm for simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) for a quadrotor micro aerial vehicle (MAV). Proposed algorithm is based on an extended Kalman filter that uses a platform specific dynamic model to integrate information from an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a monocular camera on board the MAV. MAV dynamic model exploits the unique characteristics of the quadrotor, making it possible to generate relatively accurate motion predictions. This, together with an undelayed feature initialisation strategy based on inverse depth parametrisation enables more effective feature tracking and reliable visual SLAM with a small number of features even during rapid manoeuvres. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Abeywardena, D, Pounds, P, Hunt, D & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Design and development of ReCOPTER: An open source ros-based multi-rotor platform for research', Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA, Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ARAA, Canberra, Australia, pp. 1-10.
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Selection of multi-rotor aircraft systems for robotics research is a trade-off between competing objectives. While Commercial Off The Shelf systems are fast to set up and provide a ready-made platform, they often lack complete documentation and have limited extensibility for allowing researchers to modify them for scientific work. Conversely, developing an aircraft from the ground up is labour intensive and time consuming, and requires substantial experience to ensure a satisfactory result. This paper ranks common robotic multi-rotor air- craft used in research against several criteria for openness, extensibility and performance. We propose a standard platform using open components and an open-source design, specifically geared to the needs of the research community.
Aljabri, A, Jiang, Z & Wei, D 1970, 'Analysis of thin strip profile by work roll crossing and shifting in asymmetrical cold rolling', International Journal of Modern Physics B, Asia-Pacific Conference on Materials Processing, World Scientific Pub Co Pte Lt, Univ Auckland, Auckland, NEW ZEALAND, pp. 1540032-1540032.
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In order to analyze the effects of cold rolling parameters such as the crossing angle and axial shifting value of work rolls on the strip profile, extensive tests were carried out on a 4-high rolling mill equipped with a work roll crossing and shifting system. The results show that the strip profile is nearly flat under asymmetrical rolling. The rolling force was also analyzed in detail by changing the crossing angle and axial shifting value of work rolls.
Al-Widyan, F, Kirchner, N & Zeibots, M 1970, 'An empirically verified passenger route selection model based on the principle of least effort for monitoring and predicting passenger walking paths through congested rail station environments', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings, Australasian Transport Research Forum, ATRF, Sydney, Australia.
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© 2015 ATRF, Commonwealth of Australia. All rights reserved. Crowding at egress points and waiting areas in public transport environments during peak periods can potentially impede passenger movements, causing delays to scheduled services. Passenger modelling is a complex task. There are relatively few models able to simulate the complex behavioural characteristics of large volumes of people walking through confined public transport environments such as rail station concourse and platform areas. With the aid of robotic sensing technology however, rich data can be acquired to provide high quality inputs on which passenger behaviour models can be based. This paper presents a methodology for predicting the preferred route selected by passengers during their egress. Proposed in this paper are a basic principle and a methodology for route choice based on the least effort that a passenger may consume during their travel between destinations. The methodology proposed takes into consideration the movement based passenger and congestion state. We employ the principle of least effort, formulated in terms of a metabolic energy, and congestion states. Our approach uses a new mathematical model for representing effort expended for each path, based on a formulation that minimizes the total amount of metabolic energy used when moving on a trajectory. Using results from an empirical study at Brisbane Central rail station, we show our approach collates well with real patterns of passenger egress. Our discussion concludes with an overview of how our approach could be used by rail service providers to optimise operations and improve customer experience.
Al-Widyan, F, Kirchner, N & Zeibots, M 1970, 'An empirically verified passenger route selection model based on the principle of least effort for monitoring and predicting passenger walking paths through congested rail station environments', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings.
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Crowding at egress points and waiting areas in public transport environments during peak periods can potentially impede passenger movements, causing delays to scheduled services. Passenger modelling is a complex task. There are relatively few models able to simulate the complex behavioural characteristics of large volumes of people walking through confined public transport environments such as rail station concourse and platform areas. With the aid of robotic sensing technology however, rich data can be acquired to provide high quality inputs on which passenger behaviour models can be based. This paper presents a methodology for predicting the preferred route selected by passengers during their egress. Proposed in this paper are a basic principle and a methodology for route choice based on the least effort that a passenger may consume during their travel between destinations. The methodology proposed takes into consideration the movement based passenger and congestion state. We employ the principle of least effort, formulated in terms of a metabolic energy, and congestion states. Our approach uses a new mathematical model for representing effort expended for each path, based on a formulation that minimizes the total amount of metabolic energy used when moving on a trajectory. Using results from an empirical study at Brisbane Central rail station, we show our approach collates well with real patterns of passenger egress. Our discussion concludes with an overview of how our approach could be used by rail service providers to optimise operations and improve customer experience.
Ang, KC, Killen, CP & Sankaran, S 1970, 'Value constructs in multi-stakeholder environments that influence project portfolio decision making', Euram'15 Uncertainty is a great opportunity - Programme Book and E-proceedings, Annual Conference of the European Academy of Management, European Academy of Management, Warsaw, Poland.
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Abstract: A key goal for project portfolio management (PPM) is to maximize strategic value across the portfolio. In certain industries, particularly in the context of non-commercial sectors, the ‘value’ generated by the portfolio may not always fit with typical PPM frameworks that emphasize financial value. Furthermore project and portfolio ‘value’ are complex phenomena due to the multiple and sometimes contradicting expectations demanded by multiple stakeholders that participate in and influence the ways that PPM decisions incorporate value. This paper draws on organization, business, stakeholder and project management literature to consider different perspectives of value, and integrates stakeholder theory and sensemaking in its investigation of value in multi-stakeholder portfolioenvironments. It highlights the key question ‘Value for whom, value by whom’ and proposes that multiple case-studies of a diverse sample of project-based organizations would be useful to address this question. A Hybrid Delphi study using expert panels is also proposed to triangulate the findings.Keywords: project portfolio management, value, stakeholders, sensemaking, decision making
Ang, KCS, Killen, CP & Sankaran, S 1970, 'Unanticipated value creation: Sensemaking and the value spectrum in partnership projects', Proceedings of IRNOP 2015, International Research Network on Organising by Projects, IRNOP 2015, International Research Network on Organising by Projects, International Research Network on Organizing by Projects (IRNOP), London, UK.
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This paper explores the dimensions of value across a partnership project (that requires collaboration from two or more organisations), and highlights how unanticipated values from a project can add value to the overall portfolio. Insights into the complexities of defining and managing value derive from a study investigating managerial decisions to persist with a partnership project despite indications of possible failure, and how value was ultimately created. The study highlights a variety of valuable outcomes from project and portfolio activities. Sensemaking processes are illustrated and a value spectrum model is presented to provide guidance for portfolio decision makers involved in partnership projects.
Best, G, Fitch, R & IEEE 1970, 'Bayesian Intention Inference for Trajectory Prediction with an Unknown Goal Destination', 2015 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS), IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IEEE, Hamburg, Germany, pp. 5817-5823.
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© 2015 IEEE. Contextual cues can provide a rich source of information for robots that operate in the presence of other agents such as people, animals, vehicles and fellow robots. We are interested in context, in the form of the behavioural intent of an agent, for enhanced trajectory prediction. We present a Bayesian framework that estimates both the intended goal destination and future trajectory of a mobile agent moving among multiple static obstacles. Our method is based on multi-modal hypotheses of the intended goal, and is focused primarily on the long-term trajectory of the agent. We propose a computationally efficient solution and demonstrate its behaviour in a pedestrian scenario with a real-world data set. Results show the benefits of our method in comparison to traditional trajectory prediction methods and illustrate the feasibility of integration with higher-level planning algorithms.
Best, G, Martens, W & Fitch, R 1970, 'A Spatiotemporal Optimal Stopping Problem for Mission Monitoring with Stationary Viewpoints', Robotics: Science and Systems XI, Robotics: Science and Systems 2015, Robotics: Science and Systems Foundation, Rome, Italy, pp. 1-10.
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© 2015, MIT Press Journals. All rights reserved. We consider an optimal stopping formulation of the mission monitoring problem, where a monitor vehicle must remain in close proximity to an autonomous robot that stochastically follows a pre-planned trajectory. This problem arises when autonomous underwater vehicles are monitored by surface vessels, and in a diverse range of other scenarios. The key problem characteristics we consider are that the monitor must remain stationary while observing the robot, and that the robot motion is modelled in general as a stochastic process. We propose a resolution-complete algorithm for this problem that runs in polynomial time. The algorithm is based on a sweep-plane approach and generates a motion plan that maximises the expected observation time. A variety of stochastic models may be used to represent the expected robot trajectory. We present results drawn from real AUV trajectories and Monte Carlo simulations that validate the correctness of our algorithm and its feasibility in practice.
Carmichael, MG & Dikai Liu 1970, 'Upper limb strength estimation of physically impaired persons using a musculoskeletal model: A sensitivity analysis', 2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, Milan, Italy, pp. 2438-2441.
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© 2015 IEEE. Sensitivity of upper limb strength calculated from a musculoskeletal model was analyzed, with focus on how the sensitivity is affected when the model is adapted to represent a person with physical impairment. Sensitivity was calculated with respect to four muscle-tendon parameters: muscle peak isometric force, muscle optimal length, muscle pennation, and tendon slack length. Results obtained from a musculoskeletal model of average strength showed highest sensitivity to tendon slack length, followed by muscle optimal length and peak isometric force, which is consistent with existing studies. Muscle pennation angle was relatively insensitive. The analysis was repeated after adapting the musculoskeletal model to represent persons with varying severities of physical impairment. Results showed that utilizing the weakened model significantly increased the sensitivity of the calculated strength at the hand, with parameters previously insensitive becoming highly sensitive. This increased sensitivity presents a significant challenge in applications utilizing musculoskeletal models to represent impaired individuals.
Carmichael, MG & Liu, DK 1970, 'Human Biomechanical Model Based Optimal Design of Assistive Shoulder Exoskeleton', Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, International Conference on Field and Service Robotics, Springer International Publishing, Brisbane, QLD, Australia, pp. 245-258.
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© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. Robotic exoskeletons are being developed to assist humans in tasks such as robotic rehabilitation, assistive living, industrial and other service applications. Exoskeletons for the upper limb are required to encompass the shoulder whilst achieving a range of motion so as to not impede the wearer, avoid collisions with the wearer, and avoid kinematic singularities during operation. However this is particularly challenging due to the large range of motion of the human shoulder. In this paper a biomechanical model based optimisation is applied to the design of a shoulder exoskeleton with the objective of maximising shoulder range of motion. A biomechanical model defines the healthy range of motion of the human shoulder. A genetic algorithm maximises the range of motion of the exoskeleton towards that of the human, whilst taking into account collisions and kinematic singularities. It is shown how the optimisation can increase the exoskeleton range of motion towards that equivalent of the human, or towards a subset of human range of motion relevant to specific applications.
Carmichael, MG, Khonasty, R & Liu, D 1970, 'A multi-stage design framework for the development of task-specific robotic exoskeletons', 2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, Milan, Italy, pp. 1176-1180.
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© 2015 IEEE. This work presents a multi-stage design framework for developing robotic exoskeletons suited for specific tasks, such as individualized exercises that meet the needs of patients undergoing physical therapy. The framework systematically develops the exoskeleton based on the required task space, represented by a set of limb poses which may be defined directly, or indirectly using means such as motion capture. The design process seeks to maximize the poses inside and surrounding the defined task space whilst ensuring additional criteria required to perform the task are satisfied. A case study demonstrates the framework applied to develop two variations of shoulder exoskeleton suited for two specific upper limb activities. Prototype exoskeletons based on the framework's outcomes were constructed, and their suitability for use in their intended tasks were evaluated.
Colborne-Veel, P, Kirchner, N & Alempijevic, A 1970, 'Towards more train paths through early passenger intention inference', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings, Australasian Transport Research Forum, ATRF, Sydney, Australia, pp. 1-14.
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© 2015 ATRF, Commonwealth of Australia. All rights reserved. In public train stations, the designed way finding tends to induce individuals to conform to specific egress patterns. Whilst this is desirable for a number of reasons, it can cumulate into congestion at specific points in the station. Which, in turn, can increase dwell time; for example, loading and unloading time increases with concentrations of people trying to load/unload onto the same carriage. Clearly, an influencing strategy that is more responsive to the current station situation could have advantages. Our prior research studies in Perth Station demonstrated the feasibility of reliably and predictably influencing passengers egress patterns in real time during operations. This capability suggests the possibility of active counterbalancing of the egress-alternatives while maintaining way finding. However, the prerequisite for such capability is the availability of knowledge of passenger's intention at a point in their journey where viable egress-alternatives to their destination exist. This work details an approach towards an early (in the passenger journey) passenger intention inference system necessary to enable active egress-alternative influencing. Our contextually grounded approach infers intention through reasoning upon observed system and passenger cues in conjunction with a-priori knowledge of how train stations are used. The empirical validation of our intention inference system, which was conducted with data acquired during operations on a platform in Brisbane’s Central train station in Queensland, is presented and discussed. The findings are then employed to argue the feasibility of an influencing system to reduce passenger congestion and the potential service impacts.
Colborne-Veel, P, Kirchner, N & Alempijevic, A 1970, 'Towards more train paths through early passenger intention inference', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings.
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In public train stations, the designed way finding tends to induce individuals to conform to specific egress patterns. Whilst this is desirable for a number of reasons, it can cumulate into congestion at specific points in the station. Which, in turn, can increase dwell time; for example, loading and unloading time increases with concentrations of people trying to load/unload onto the same carriage. Clearly, an influencing strategy that is more responsive to the current station situation could have advantages. Our prior research studies in Perth Station demonstrated the feasibility of reliably and predictably influencing passengers egress patterns in real time during operations. This capability suggests the possibility of active counterbalancing of the egress-alternatives while maintaining way finding. However, the prerequisite for such capability is the availability of knowledge of passenger's intention at a point in their journey where viable egress-alternatives to their destination exist. This work details an approach towards an early (in the passenger journey) passenger intention inference system necessary to enable active egress-alternative influencing. Our contextually grounded approach infers intention through reasoning upon observed system and passenger cues in conjunction with a-priori knowledge of how train stations are used. The empirical validation of our intention inference system, which was conducted with data acquired during operations on a platform in Brisbane’s Central train station in Queensland, is presented and discussed. The findings are then employed to argue the feasibility of an influencing system to reduce passenger congestion and the potential service impacts.
Collart, J, Kirchner, N, Alempijevic, A & Zeibots, M 1970, 'Foundation technology for developing an autonomous Complex Dwell-time Diagnostics (CDD) Tool', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings.
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As the demand for rail services grows, intense pressure is placed on stations at the centre of rail networks where large crowds of rail passengers alight and board trains during peak periods. The time it takes for this to occur — the dwell-time — can become extended when high numbers of people congest and cross paths. Where a track section is operating at short headways, extended dwell-times can cause delays to scheduled services that can in turn cause a cascade of delays that eventually affect entire networks. Where networks are operating at close to their ceiling capacity, dwell-time management is essential and in most cases requires the introduction of special operating procedures. This paper details our work towards developing an autonomous Complex Dwell-time Diagnostics (CDD) Tool — a low cost technology, capable of providing information on multiple dwell events in real time. At present, rail operators are not able to access reliable and detailed enough data on train dwell operations and passenger behaviour. This is because much of the necessary data has to be collected manually. The lack of rich data means train crews and platform staff are not empowered to do all they could to potentially stabilise and reduce dwell-times. By better supporting service providers with high quality data analysis, the number of viable train paths can be increased, potentially delaying the need to invest in high cost hard infrastructures such as additional tracks. The foundation technology needed to create CDD discussed in this paper comprises a 3D image data based autonomous system capable of detecting dwell events during operations and then create business information that can be accessed by service providers in real time during rail operations. Initial tests of the technology have been carried out at Brisbane Central rail station. A discussion of the results to date is provided and their implications for next steps.
Collart, J, Kirchner, N, Alempijevic, A & Zeibots, M 1970, 'Foundation technology for developing an autonomous Complex Dwell-time Diagnostics (CDD) Tool', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings, Australasian Transport Research Forum, ATRF, Sydney, Australia, pp. 1-13.
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© 2015 ATRF, Commonwealth of Australia. All rights reserved. As the demand for rail services grows, intense pressure is placed on stations at the centre of rail networks where large crowds of rail passengers alight and board trains during peak periods. The time it takes for this to occur — the dwell-time — can become extended when high numbers of people congest and cross paths. Where a track section is operating at short headways, extended dwell-times can cause delays to scheduled services that can in turn cause a cascade of delays that eventually affect entire networks. Where networks are operating at close to their ceiling capacity, dwell-time management is essential and in most cases requires the introduction of special operating procedures. This paper details our work towards developing an autonomous Complex Dwell-time Diagnostics (CDD) Tool — a low cost technology, capable of providing information on multiple dwell events in real time. At present, rail operators are not able to access reliable and detailed enough data on train dwell operations and passenger behaviour. This is because much of the necessary data has to be collected manually. The lack of rich data means train crews and platform staff are not empowered to do all they could to potentially stabilise and reduce dwell-times. By better supporting service providers with high quality data analysis, the number of viable train paths can be increased, potentially delaying the need to invest in high cost hard infrastructures such as additional tracks. The foundation technology needed to create CDD discussed in this paper comprises a 3D image data based autonomous system capable of detecting dwell events during operations and then create business information that can be accessed by service providers in real time during rail operations. Initial tests of the technology have been carried out at Brisbane Central rail station. A discussion of the results to date is provided and their implications for next steps.
Dantanarayana, L, Dissanayake, G, Ranasinghe, R & Furukawa, T 1970, 'An extended Kalman filter for localisation in occupancy grid maps', 2015 IEEE 10th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS), 2015 IEEE 10th International Conference on Industrial and Information Systems (ICIIS), IEEE, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, pp. 419-424.
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© 2015 IEEE. The main contribution of this paper is an extended Kalman filter (EKF) based framework for mobile robot localisation in occupancy grid maps (OGMs), when the initial location is approximately known. We propose that the observation equation be formulated using the unsigned distance transform based Chamfer Distance (CD) that corresponds to a laser scan placed within the OGM, as a constraint. This formulation provides an alternative to the ray-casting model, which generally limited localisation in OGMs to Particle Filter (PF) based frameworks that can efficiently deal with observation models that are not analytic. Usage of an EKF is attractive due to its computational efficiency, especially as it can be applied to modern day field robots with limited on-board computing power. Furthermore, well-developed tools for dealing with potential outliers in the observations or changes to the motion model, exists in the EKF framework. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated using a number of simulation and real life examples, including one in a dynamic environment populated with people.
Falque, R, Vidal-Calleja, T, Miro, JV & IEEE 1970, 'Kidnapped Laser-Scanner for Evaluation of RFEC Tool', 2015 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS), IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IEEE, Hamburg, Germany, pp. 313-318.
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© 2015 IEEE. An algorithm is proposed for matching data from different sensing modalities. The problem is formalised as a kidnapped robot problem, where Bayesian fusion is used to find the most likely location where both modalities agree. The key idea of our algorithm is to model the correlation between the two modalities as a likelihood used to update a location prior. Data, in this case, is represented as 2.5D thickness maps from a laser scanner and a Remote Field Eddy Current (RFEC) tool, used in non-destructive testing to assess the condition of infrastructures. The laser data is limited, while RFEC data is continuous. Given some prior in location, the aim is to find the 2.5D thickness map from the laser that corresponds to the RFEC data, which should be noted is highly noisy. Real data from CCTV inspections of water pipes are used to validate the proposed approach.
Furukawa, T, Dantanarayana, L, Ziglar, J, Ranasinghe, R & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Fast global scan matching for high-speed vehicle navigation.', MFI, IEEE International conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems, IEEE, San Diego, CA, USA, pp. 37-42.
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Furukawa, T, Takami, K, Tong, X, Watman, D, Hamed, A, Ranasinghe, R & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Map-Based Navigation of an Autonomous Car Using Grid-Based Scan-to-Map Matching', Volume 3: 17th International Conference on Advanced Vehicle Technologies; 12th International Conference on Design Education; 8th Frontiers in Biomedical Devices, ASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, pp. 1-10.
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This paper presents the map-based navigation of a car with autonomous capabilities using grid-based scan-to-map matching. The autonomous car used for demonstration is built based on Toyota Prius and can control the throttle, the brake and the steering by a computer. The proposed grid-based scan-to-map matching method represents a map with a finite number of grid cells, represents a scan and the map with scan points at each grid as normal distributions (NDs) and constructs a map by matching the scan NDs to the map NDs. The proposed method enables scan-based mapping at high speed while maintaining high accuracy. The representation of a grid cell of a map in terms of multiple NDs further enhances speed and accuracy. The accuracy analysis of the proposed method shows that a small robot with a wheel diameter of 8cm had yielded no loop closure error after the travel of 186m while the terminal position error by the GMapping was approximately 1m with the error growth of 1%. The application of the proposed method with the autonomous car has then demonstrated the ability of the proposed method for autonomous driving with varying and high speed and has also quantified the significance of speed for successful mapping in autonomous driving.
Guertler, MR, Schaefer, S, Lipps, J, Stahl, S & Lindemann, U 1970, 'Archaeonics - How to use archaeological solutions for modern product development', Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED, 20th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED), DESIGN SOC, Milan, ITALY, pp. 65-76.
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This paper addresses the fact that product development often tends to 'reinvent the wheel'. By inventing the Archaeonics methodology / Archaeology-inspired-design (AID), we present a systematic approach to identify suitable archaeological solutions and make them useable for modern engineering issues. For this, we use problem abstractions and analogy search methods from TRIZ and biology-inspired design. The archaeology-inspired design approach was successfully evaluated in the context of a water cistern building project in Tanzania which is coordinated by the German chapter of 'Engineers Without Borders'.
Guertler, MR, Von Saucken, C, Schneider, M & Lindemann, U 1970, 'How to search for open innovation partners?', Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED, 20th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED), DESIGN SOC, Milan, ITALY, pp. 21-30.
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Open Innovation (OI) allows the utilisation of external expertise. This can increase the customer integration, reduce the time to market and reduce products' flop rates. However, companies still face challenges when planning and conducting OI. A major issue is the identification and selection of suitable partners (so called OI-actors). Besides OI-actors with specific technical capabilities for solving the primary issue/task of the OI-project, also relevant OI-actors in terms of power and influence need to be involved. In the context of Situative Open Innovation (a methodical procedure model for planning OI-projects), we developed a methodology for identifying suitable OI-actors. Starting with an analysis of existing stakeholders, in the following different search methods are proposed - including a decision support for selecting specific search methods. Identified potential OI-actors are assessed and ranked from a technical and a strategic perspective, and generic cooperation strategies derived for selected OI-actors. By the use case of an industrial project we demonstrate the methodology's applicability and benefit but also show points for further improvements.
Hassan, M, Liu, D, Paul, G & Huang, S 1970, 'An approach to base placement for effective collaboration of multiple autonomous industrial robots', 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE, Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, Washington, USA, pp. 3286-3291.
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There are many benefits for the deployment of multiple autonomous industrial robots to carry out a task, particularly if the robots act in a highly collaborative manner. Collaboration can be possible when each robot is able to autonomously explore the environment, localize itself, create a map of the environment and communicate with other robots. This paper presents an approach to the modeling of the collaboration problem of multiple robots determining optimal base positions and orientations in an environment by considering the team objectives and the information shared amongst the robots. It is assumed that the robots can communicate so as to share information on the environment, their operation status and their capabilities. The approach has been applied to a team of robots that are required to perform complete surface coverage tasks such as grit-blasting and spray painting in unstructured environments. Case studies of such applications are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.
Heinze, F, Kloeckner, M, Rossmann, J, Kuhlenkoetter, B & Deuse, J 1970, 'Simulating and implementing the integration of service robots into manual work processes', 29th Annual European Simulation and Modelling Conference 2015, ESM 2015, pp. 371-376.
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The introduction of service robots in industrial environments is the starting point for the new robotics area of industrial service robotics. Characteristic feature of industrial service robots is the cooperation or even collaboration of service robots with humans in an industrial environment. The number of real industrial service robot applications remains relatively low, as it is difficult to analyze the economic impact of transferring a manual process to a collaborative process. The research project MANUSERV directly addresses this challenge. The objective is to develop a planning and decision support system for transferring manual processes to automatic or semi-automatic solutions. We compare the proposed solution with the original manual process in a simulation environment. Another aim is to generate source code for the chosen service robotic system. Three industrial research partners provide use cases in the form of manual processes for the evaluation of the developed system. In this paper, we focus on the generation of source code and the subsequent modelling and simulation of the different use cases in a combined way in a demonstrator setup. The demonstrator setup inside the simulation environment includes manufacturing stations of different automation degrees, humans and service robotic components. Moreover, we introduce a method, which shows that it is possible to use the results of the simulation tool platform-independent.
Heinze, F, Wolf, F, Weisner, K, Rossmann, J, Deuse, J & Kuhlenkoetter, B 1970, 'Motion capturing for the simulation of manual industrial processes', 13th International Industrial Simulation Conference 2015, ISC 2015, pp. 48-52.
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The appearance of service robots and lightweight robots pave the way for a direct collaboration of robots and humans in industrial production facilities. Thus, the areas of industrial robotics and service robotics begin to merge to the new area of industrial service robotics. The evaluation of manual processes regarding their potential for automation remains a highly complex task. The objective of the project MANUSERV is to develop a planning and decision support system for selecting industrial service robots in order to fully or partially automate manual processes. A simulation system compares the initial manual process and the proposed (semi-) automatic process. Before an analysis of manual processes is possible, they have to be included into the simulation of the whole production process. This paper focuses on the process of integrating human motion sequences from an industrial production process into a 3D simulation environment. The human motion is captured and digitalized with the aid of a motion capture system. The gained data is converted into a standard computer animation file format, and subsequently mapped to an existing digital model of the human body. Thus, the described workflow allows the analysis of the manual process based on the generated computer model.
Jadidi, MG, Miro, JV & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Mutual information-based exploration on continuous occupancy maps', 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE, Hamburg Germany, pp. 6086-6092.
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© 2015 IEEE. The problem of active perception with an autonomous robot is studied in this paper. It is proposed that the exploratory behavior of the robot be controlled using mutual information (MI) surfaces between the current map and a one-step look ahead measurements. MI surfaces highlight informative areas for exploration. A novel method for computing these surfaces is described. An approach that exploits structural dependencies of the environment and handles sparse sensor measurements to build a continuous model of the environment, that can then be used to generate MI surfaces is also proposed. A gradient field of occupancy probability distribution is regressed from sensor data as a Gaussian Process and provide frontier boundaries for further exploration. The continuous global frontier surface completely describes unexplored regions and, inherently, provides an automatic termination criterion for a desired sensitivity. The results from publicly available datasets confirm an average improvement of the proposed methodology over comparable standard and state-of-the-art exploratory methods available in the literature by more than 20% and 13% in travel distance and map entropy reduction rate, respectively.
Ji, JC & Brown, T 1970, 'The Forced Response of a Time-Delayed Nonlinear System under Two Families of Additive Resonances', Proceedings of the 16th Asia Pacific Vibration Conference, Asia-Pacific Vibration Conference, Bachkhoa Publishing House, Hanoi, Vietnam, pp. 560-565.
Khosoussi, K, Huang, S & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Exploiting the Separable Structure of SLAM', Robotics: Science and Systems XI, Robotics: Science and Systems 2015, Robotics: Science and Systems Foundation, Rome, Italy, pp. 1-10.
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© 2015, MIT Press Journals. All rights reserved. In this paper we point out an overlooked structure of SLAM that distinguishes it from a generic nonlinear least squares problem. The measurement function in most common forms of SLAM is linear with respect to robot and features' positions. Therefore, given an estimate for robot orientation, the conditionally optimal estimate for the rest of state variables can be easily obtained by solving a sparse linear-Gaussian estimation problem. We propose an algorithm to exploit this intrinsic property of SLAM by stripping the problem down to its nonlinear core, while maintaining its natural sparsity. Our algorithm can be used together with any Newton-based iterative solver and is applicable to 2D/3D pose-graph and feature-based problems. Our results suggest that iteratively solving the nonlinear core of SLAM leads to a fast and reliable convergence as compared to the state-of-the-art back-ends.
Khushaba, RN, Al-Timemy, A, Kodagoda, S & IEEE 1970, 'Influence of Multiple Dynamic Factors on the Performance of Myoelectric Pattern Recognition', 2015 37TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY (EMBC), International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, IEEE, Milan, pp. 1679-1682.
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© 2015 IEEE. Hand motion classification using surface Electromyogram (EMG) signals has been widely studied for the control of powered prosthetics in laboratory conditions. However, clinical applicability has been limited, as imposed by factors like electrodes shift, variations in the contraction force levels, forearm rotation angles, change of limb position and many other factors that all affect the EMG pattern recognition performance. While the impact of several of these factors on EMG parameter estimation and pattern recognition has been considered individually in previous studies, a minimum number of experiments were reported to study the influence of multiple dynamic factors. In this paper, we investigate the combined effect of varying forearm rotation angles and contraction force levels on the robustness of EMG pattern recognition, while utilizing different time-and-frequency based feature extraction methods. The EMG pattern recognition system has been validated on a set of 11 subjects (ten intact-limbed and one bilateral transradial amputee) performing six classes of hand motions, each with three different force levels, each at three different forearm rotation angles, with six EMG electrodes plus an accelerometer on the subjects' forearm. Our results suggest that the performance of the learning algorithms can be improved with the Time-Dependent Power Spectrum Descriptors (TD-PSD) utilized in our experiments, with average classification accuracies of up to 90% across all subjects, force levels, and forearm rotation angles.
Luo, L, Jiang, Z, Wei, D, Manabe, K-I & Sato, H 1970, 'Experimental and numerical study of micro deep drawing', MATEC Web of Conferences, International Conference on New Forming Technology, EDP Sciences, Glasgow, ENGLAND, pp. 09003-09003.
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© 2015 Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences. Micro forming is a key technology for an industrial miniaturisation trend, and micro deep drawing (MDD) is a typical micro forming method. It has great advantages comparing to other micro manufacturing methods, such as net forming ability, mass production potential, high product quality and complex 3D metal products fabrication capacity. Meanwhile, it is facing difficulties, for example the so-called size effects, once scaled down to micro scale. To investigate and to solve the problems in MDD, a combined micro blanking-drawing machine is employed and an explicit-implicit micro deep drawing model with a voronoi blank model is developed. Through heat treatment different grain sizes can be obtained, which affect material's properties and, consequently, the drawing process parameters, as well as produced cups' quality. Further, a voronoi model can provide detailed material information in simulation, and numerical simulation results are in accordance with experimental results.
Manns, M, Wallis, R & Deuse, J 1970, 'Automatic Proposal of Assembly Work Plans with a Controlled Natural Language', Procedia CIRP, Elsevier BV, pp. 345-350.
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© 2014 The Authors. Manufacturing companies are progressively applying digital manufacturing tools to respond to increased product complexity in shortened product lifecycles. The application results in a comprehensive documentation of the product emergence process. Furthermore at Daimler, a controlled natural language has recently been established, which enables automated analysis of natural language work task description texts. This work proposes a methodology, which enhances planning efficiency by automatically presenting a set of potentially suitable work plans for novel products. The presented work plans are reused from past planning activities. Assessment of work plan suitability is based on a statistical analysis that employs Methods-Time Measurement (MTM) data as well as work task descriptions in a controlled natural language (cnl). The proposed methodology is compared to a previously presented approach, in which text mining is used instead of a controlled natural language. The test comprises 104 work tasks of a Daimler assembly line. While result quality is only slightly improved for the cnl based approach, mapping results from product clusters to assembly sequences are simplified and analysis effort can be reduced if a cnl is already established. Future investigations should focus on investigations of applicability to different production and assembly domains.
Nöhring, F, Rieger, M, Erohin, O, Deuse, J & Kuhlenkötter, B 1970, 'An Interdisciplinary and Hands-on Learning Approach for Industrial Assembly Systems', Procedia CIRP, Elsevier BV, pp. 109-114.
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© 2015 The Authors. Planning and realisation of industrial assembly systems is an interdisciplinary task that requires theoretical and experience-based knowledge in diverse fields (e.g. product design, industrial engineering, automation and robotics). In order to develop students' competences, the Institute of Production Systems introduced the two-step course series "Industrial Assembly". It combines transfer of interdisciplinary theoretical knowledge lectured by different professorships and hands-on tasks in manual and automated assembly systems training environments with a realistic industrial assembly setting. The paper describes the learning objective and procedure of the course series "Industrial Assembly" and underlines the relevance of this interdisciplinary and hands-on learning approach.
Oberst, S, Griffin, D, Tuttle, S, Lambert, A & Boyce, RR 1970, 'Analysis of thin curved flexible structures for space applications', Acoustics 2015 Hunter Valley, Conference of the Australian Acoustical Society, Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia.
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With the advent of affordable nano-satellite designs (off-the-shelf payloads, standardised launch geometries), increasingly enterprises, governmental agencies and universities have started developing their own space programs to explore the environment of Low Earth Orbits. Thin, flexible and unfolding/deployable structures are common space engineering antenna and solar panel designs owing to their lightweight and ideal packaging characteristics, which are, however, difficult to experimentally validate in a 1-g environment. Further, curvatures or discontinuities to increase functionality without violating prioritised design criteria may lead to system-level trade-offs: stability issues arising from buckling in combination with micro-vibrations which feed back to the satellite's attitude behaviour. It appears that the literature lacks a systematic investigation of these aspects. On-Earth experimental validations (static experiments, model updating) are the starting point for studying the response to static/dynamic loading of thin curved flexible structures such as deployable high frequency antennas. Linear and nonlinear buckling modes owing to varying loadings (aerodynamic drag, solar radiation pressure, residual gravity and magnetic body forces) are found together with a high sensitivity to torsional modes' frequency changes under micro-vibrational forcing.
Oldham, KM, Chung, PWH, Edirisinghe, EA & Halkon, BJ 1970, 'Experiments in the Application of Computer Vision for Ball and Event Identification in Indoor Sports', COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS, 4th INNS Symposia on Computational Intelligence in Information Systems (INNS-CIIS), Springer International Publishing, Inst Teknologi Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan, BRUNEI, pp. 275-284.
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Parnell, J 1970, 'Acoustic signature of open cut coal mines', Acoustics 2015 Hunter Valley.
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The NSW Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) has a regulatory role in managing the noise from coal mines. Currently there are 56 coal mines in NSW which generally have Leq(15 minute) noise criteria in the order of 35 to 40 dB(A) at the nearest private residences. As a consequence of its responsibilities, DPE undertakes a range of high quality audits and noise monitoring studies. This paper presents a brief selection of ancillary data that has been extracted from those studies. The object of this exercise was: to document the noise signature of coal mines; to better understand how to measure mine noise in a noise environment dominated by insect, frog and bat noise; and to identify if there are any shortcomings or areas of potential improvement in the way low frequency noise is identified. The exercise found that under normal meteorological conditions, differential attenuation over large distances effectively reduces the spectral energy > 630 Hz to very low levels, (if not below the threshold of hearing) with both dB(A) and dB(C) of mine noise usually being controlled by sub 250 Hz energy. The use of low pass filtering as an effective tool to eliminate extraneous high frequency noise such as that from frogs and insects was validated by the exercise. The exercise also found that the characteristic peaks in the 16 and 25 Hz range are unlikely to be audible unless the overall level of mine noise is in excess of at least 45 dB(A). Consequently, it is recommended that these frequencies should not be included in an assessment of low frequency annoyance (with reference to a C - weighted level).
Parnell, J 1970, 'The generation and propagation of noise from large coal mines, and how it is managed in NSW', Acoustics 2015 Hunter Valley.
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Regulating noise impacts from large coal mines is difficult, particularly given the potential topographical and meteorological variations that can occur over setbacks of up to 5 km between mine sites and potentially impacted receivers. In NSW, the Industrial Noise Guideline is used to determine noise criteria for sensitive noise receivers that may be impacted by mine noise (such as residences). In many instances, this results in noise criteria being established at levels as low as Leq(15 minute) = 35 dB(A). Exceedance of this criterion may be negotiated by agreement, but exceedances of more than 5 dB may require the mine to offer property acquisition. Despite having some of the most stringent noise criteria in the world, regulators still receive a high number of complaints from residents surrounding mine sites. This paper examines the generation and propagation of mine noise, methods used to manage to project noise objectives (including reactive and predictive measures), and the regulatory regime that underpins these objectives.
PAUL, G, MAO, S, LIU, L & XIONG, R 1970, 'MAPPING REPETITIVE STRUCTURAL TUNNEL ENVIRONMENTS FOR A BIOLOGICALLY-INSPIRED CLIMBING ROBOT', Assistive Robotics, CLAWAR 2015: 18th International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots and the Support Technologies for Mobile Machines, WORLD SCIENTIFIC, Hangzhou, China, pp. 325-333.
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© 2015, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte Ltd. All rights reserved. This paper presents an approach to using noisy and incomplete depth-camera datasets to detect reliable surface features for use in map construction for a caterpillar-inspired climbing robot. The approach uses a combination of plane extraction, clustering and template matching techniques to infer from the restricted dataset a usable map. This approach has been tested in both laboratory and real-world steel bridge tunnel datasets generated by a climbing robot, with the results showing that the generated maps are accurate enough for use in localisation and step trajectory planning.
Paul, G, Quin, P, To, AWK & Liu, D 1970, 'A sliding window approach to exploration for 3D map building using a biologically inspired bridge inspection robot', 2015 IEEE International Conference on Cyber Technology in Automation, Control, and Intelligent Systems (CYBER), 2015 IEEE International Conference on CYBER Technology in Automation, Control, and Intelligent Systems (CYBER), IEEE, Shenyang, China, pp. 1097-1102.
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© 2015 IEEE. This paper presents a Sliding Window approach to viewpoint selection when exploring an environment using a RGB-D sensor mounted to the end-effector of an inchworm climbing robot for inspecting areas inside steel bridge archways which cannot be easily accessed by workers. The proposed exploration approach uses a kinematic chain robot model and information theory-based next best view calculations to predict poses which are safe and are able to reduce the information remaining in an environment. At each exploration step, a viewpoint is selected by analysing the Pareto efficiency of the predicted information gain and the required movement for a set of candidate poses. In contrast to previous approaches, a sliding window is used to determine candidate poses so as to avoid the costly operation of assessing the set of candidates in its entirety. Experimental results in simulation and on a prototype climbing robot platform show the approach requires fewer gain calculations and less robot movement, and therefore is more efficient than other approaches when exploring a complex 3D steel bridge structure.
Paul, G, Quin, P, Yang, C-HJ & Liu, D 1970, 'Key feature-based approach for efficient exploration of structured environments.', ROBIO, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, IEEE, Zhuhai, China, pp. 90-95.
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© 2015 IEEE. This paper presents an exploration approach for robots to determine sensing actions that facilitate the building of surface maps of structured partially-known environments. This approach uses prior knowledge about key environmental features to rapidly generate an estimate of the rest of the environment. Specifically, in order to quickly detect key features, partial surface patches are used in combination with pose optimisation to select a pose from a set of nearest neighbourhood candidates, from which to make an observation of the surroundings. This paper enables the robot to greedily search through a sequence of nearest neighbour poses in configuration space, then converge upon poses from which key features can best be observed. The approach is experimentally evaluated and found to result in significantly fewer exploration steps compared to alternative approaches.
Piyathilaka, L & Kodagoda, S 1970, 'Affordance-map: Mapping human context in 3D scenes using cost-sensitive SVM and virtual human models.', ROBIO, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, IEEE, Zhuhai, pp. 2035-2040.
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Robots are often required to operate in environments where humans are not present, but yet require the human context information for better human robot interaction. Even when humans are present in the environment, detecting their presence in cluttered environments could be challenging. As a solution to this problem, this paper presents the concept of affordance-map which learns human context by looking at geometric features of the environment. Instead of observing real humans to learn human context, it uses virtual human models and their relationships with the environment to map hidden human affordances in 3D scenes. The affordance-map learning problem is formulated as a multi label classification problem that can be learned using cost-sensitive SVM. Experiments carried out in a real 3D scene dataset recorded promising results and proved the applicability of affordance-map for mapping human context.
Qiu, X & Zhao, S 1970, 'Active control of the directivity of the sound diffraction from barriers', 22nd International Congress on Sound and Vibration, ICSV 2015, International Congress on Sound and Vibration, International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration, Florence, Italy.
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Active control of the directivity of the sound diffraction from barriers is investigated in this paper where the control sources are located near the top boundary of a barrier to change its spatial diffraction properties. First, an analytical solution for calculating the primary sound field from a point source diffracted from a barrier edge is given based on the Kirchhoff-Helmholtz equation, then the strengths of the secondary point sources near the barrier top boundary are optimized to control the directivity of the diffracted sound through the barrier edge so that the sound pressure is reduced in certain directions behind the barrier. Numerical simulation results show that the proposed directivity control method is feasible and can provide better performance than that of the local control methods in terms of the far field sound reduction. The potential applications of the method include increasing the performance of the current active noise barriers or reducing speech interference from opening ceiling meeting pods in open plan offices.
Richards, D, Patten, T, Fitch, R, Ball, D & Sukkarieh, S 1970, 'User interface and coverage planner for agricultural robotics', Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA, Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ARAA, Canberra, Australia.
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Farmers are under growing pressure to increase production, a challenge that robotics has the potential to address. A possible solution is to replace large farm machinery with numerous smaller robots. However, with a large number of robots it will become increasingly time consuming for the farmer to monitor and control them all, hence the need for an effective user interface and automatic multi-robot coordination. This paper describes the design of a user interface and coverage planner suitable for controlling multiple robots for typical coverage style farm operations. The cross-platform user interface allows the farmer to specify their farm including fields, roads and docking stations. The coverage planner splits the workload between the robots and plans periodic docking. The results for the different multi-robot coverage strategies demonstrate the advantage of the robots sequentially moving between fields rather than freely moving between them. The multi-robot system has been used for a coverage task on a real farm for controlling two real robots and four simulated robots operating for two days.
Roth, M, Guertler, MR & Lindemann, U 1970, 'ICoRD’15 – Research into Design Across Boundaries Volume 2', ICoRD’15 – Research into Design Across Boundaries Volume 2, ICoRD’15 – Research into Design Across Boundaries, Springer India, New Delhi, pp. 291-302.
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As customers’ expectations and requirements steadily increase, the utilization of synergies provides a way of achieving cost savings and improving product design. However, a systematical approach to employ synergies that addresses all levels of abstraction is missing. This paper identifies the various interpretations of the term “synergies” and defines it in the context of engineering through a detailed literature review. The paper develops a seven-phase methodological framework to systematically support the identification and utilization of technological synergies. Unlike existing methodologies it extends the scope to all levels of abstraction. The paper describes the framework and the main challenges in each of the seven phases. Two industrial applications underline the applicability and advantages of the framework.
Ruppert, MG & Moheimani, SOR 1970, 'Multi-Mode Q Control in Multifrequency Atomic Force Microscopy', Volume 4: 20th Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle Conference; 9th International Conference on Micro- and Nanosystems, ASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
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Various Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) modes have emerged which rely on the excitation and detection of multiple eigenmodes of the microcantilever. The conventional control loops employed in multifrequency AFM (MF-AFM) such as bimodal imaging where the fundamental mode is used to map the topography and a higher eigenmode is used to map sample material properties only focus on maintaining low bandwidth signals such as amplitude and/or frequency shift. However, the ability to perform additional high bandwidth control of the quality (Q) factor of the participating modes is believed to be imperative to unfolding the full potential of these methods. This can be achieved by employing a multi-mode Q control approach utilizing positive position feedback. The controller exhibits remarkable performance in arbitrarily modifying the Q factor of multiple eigenmodes as well as guaranteed stability properties when used on flexible structures with collocated actuators and sensors. A controller design method based on pole placement optimization is proposed for setting an arbitrary on-resonance Q factor of the participating eigenmodes. Experimental results using bimodal AFM imaging on a two component polymer sample are presented.
Seiler, KM, Kurniawati, H & Singh, SPN 1970, 'An online and approximate solver for POMDPs with continuous action space', 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE.
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Shi, L, Sun, L, Vidal-Calleja, T & Miro, JV 1970, 'Kernel-specific Gaussian process for predicting pipe wall thickness maps', Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA, Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, AARA, Canberra, pp. 1-8.
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Data organised in 2.5D such as elevation and thickness maps has been extensively studied in the fields of robotics and geostatistics. These maps are typically a probabilistic 2D grid that stores an estimated value (height or thickness) for each cell. Modelling the spatial dependencies and making inference on new grid locations is a common task that has been addressed using Gaussian random fields. However, inference faraway from the training areas results quite uncertain, therefore not informative enough for some applications. The objective of this re- search is to model the status of a pipeline based on limited and sparse local assessments, predicting the likely condition on pipes that have not been inspected. A customised kernel for Gaussian Processes (GP) is proposed to capture the spatial correlation of the pipe wall thickness data. An estimate of the likely condition of non-inspected pipes is achieved by con-cretising GP to a multivariate Gaussian distribution and generating realisations from the distribution. The performance of this approach is evaluated on various thickness maps from the same pipeline, where data have been obtained by measuring the actual remaining wall thickness. The output of this work aims to serve as the input of a structural analysis for failure risk estimation.
Sick, N, Preschitschek, N, Broring, S & Leker, J 1970, 'Market convergence in the field of stationary energy storage systems', 2015 Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), 2015 Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), IEEE, Portland, Oregon, USA.
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Su, D, Miro, JV, Vidal-Calleja, T & IEEE 1970, 'Modelling In-Pipe Acoustic Signal Propagation for Condition Assessment of Multi-Layer Water Pipelines', PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2015 10TH IEEE CONFERENCE ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS AND APPLICATIONS, IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications, IEEE, Auckland, New Zealand, pp. 545-550.
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© 2015 IEEE. A solution to the condition assessment of fluid-filled conduits based on the analysis of in-pipe acoustic signal propagation is presented in this paper. The sensor arrangement consists of an acoustic emitter from which a known sonic pulse is generated, and a collocated hydrophone receiver that records the arrival acoustic wave at a high sampling rate. The proposed method exploits the influence of the surrounding environment on the propagation of an acoustic wave to estimate the condition of the pipeline. Specifically, the propagation speed of an acoustic wave is influenced by the hoop stiffness of the surrounding materials, a fact that has been exploited in the analysis of boreholes in the literature. In this work, this finding is extended to validate the analytical expression derived to infer the condition of uniform, axis-symmetric lined waterworks, a first step to ultimately be able to predict the remaining active life (time-to-failure) of pipelines with arbitrary geometries through finite element analysis (FEA). An investigation of the various aspects of the proposed methodology with typical pipe material and structures is presented to appreciate the advantages of modelling acoustic waves behaviours in fluid-filled cylindrical cavities for condition assessment of water pipelines.
Su, D, Miro, JV, Vidal-Calleja, T & IEEE 1970, 'Real-time Sound Source Localisation for Target Tracking Applications using an Asynchronous Microphone Array', PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2015 10TH IEEE CONFERENCE ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS AND APPLICATIONS, IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications, IEEE, Auckland, New Zealand, pp. 1266-1271.
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© 2015 IEEE. This paper presents a strategy for sound source localisation using an asynchronous microphone array. The proposed method is suitable for target tracking applications, in which the sound source with a known frequency is attached to the target. Conventional microphone array technologies require a multi-channel A/D converter for inter-microphone synchronization making the technology relatively expensive. In this work, the requirement of synchronization between channels is relaxed by adding an external reference audio signal. The only assumption is that the frequencies of the reference signal and the sound source attached to the target are fixed and known beforehand. By exploiting the information provided by the known reference signal, the Direction Of Arrival (DOA) of target sound source can be calculated in real-time. The key idea of the algorithm is to use the reference source to 'pseudo-align' the audio signals from different channels. Once the channels are 'pseudo-aligned', a dedicated DOA estimation method based on Time Difference Of Arrival (TDOA) can be employed to find the relative bearing information between the target sound source and microphone array. Due to the narrow band of frequency of target sound source, the proposed approach is proven to be robust to low signals-to-noise ratios. Comprehensive simulations and experimental results are presented to show the validity of the algorithm.
SU, D, VALLS MIRO, J & VIDAL-CALLEJA, T 1970, 'GRAPH-SLAM BASED CALIBRATION OF AN EMBEDDED ASYNCHRONOUS MICROPHONE ARRAY FOR OUTDOOR ROBOTIC TARGET TRACKING', Assistive Robotics, CLAWAR 2015: 18th International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots and the Support Technologies for Mobile Machines, WORLD SCIENTIFIC, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, pp. 641-648.
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© 2015, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte Ltd. All rights reserved. This paper presents a strategy for sound source localisation using an embedded asynchronous microphone array for robotic target tracking application. Conventional microphone array technologies require a multi-channel A/D converter for inter-microphone synchronization making the technology relatively expensive. In our method, a synchronization free embedded asynchronous microphone array has released this requirement. The microphone array needs self calibration using graph-based SLAM method, which estimates starting time offset and clock difference/drift rate of each microphone channel using Gauss-Newton least square optimization. The proposed method is suitable for target tracking applications.
Su, D, Vidal-Calleja, T, Mins, JV & IEEE 1970, 'Simultaneous asynchronous microphone array calibration and sound source localisation', 2015 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS), IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IEEE, Hamburg, Germany, pp. 5561-5567.
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© 2015 IEEE. In this paper, an approach for sound source localisation and calibration of an asynchronous microphone array is proposed to be solved simultaneously. A graph-based Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) method is used for this purpose. Traditional sound source localisation using a microphone array has two main requirements. Firstly, geometrical information of microphone array is needed. Secondly, a multichannel analog-to-digital converter is required to obtain synchronous readings of the audio signal. Recent works aim at releasing these two requirements by estimating the time offset between each pair of microphones. However, it was assumed that the clock timing in each microphone sound card is exactly the same, which requires the clocks in the sound cards to be identically manufactured. A methodology is hereby proposed to calibrate an asynchronous microphone array using a graph-based optimisation method borrowed from the SLAM literature, effectively estimating the array geometry, time offset and clock difference/drift rate of each microphone together with the sound source locations. Simulation and experimental results are presented, which prove the effectiveness of the proposed methodology in achieving accurate estimates of the microphone array characteristics needed to be used on realistic settings with asynchronous sound devices.
Sun, L, Vidal-Calleja, T & Miro, JV 1970, 'Bayesian fusion using conditionally independent submaps for high resolution 2.5D mapping', 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE, Seattle, Washington, United States, pp. 3394-3400.
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© 2015 IEEE. Typically 2.5D maps provide a compact and efficient representation of the environment. When sensor data is obtained from multiple sets of noisy measurements at differing resolutions, the problem of compounding this information together to provide an effective and efficient means of mapping is not trivial, particularly as the size of the environment increases. In this paper, we propose a general framework for integrating heterogeneous sensor data to obtain large-scale 2.5D probabilistic maps. Gaussian Processes are used to generate a prior map that learns the spatial correlation between nearby points. Bayesian data fusion is then employed to update these prior maps with new measurements from distinct sensor modalities. In order to deal with large scale data, a novel submapping strategy is introduced to perform the fusion step efficiently in dealing with large covariance matrices. Submaps are first marginalised from the learned correlated prior and then updated based on the property of conditional independence. Most notably, the technique lends itself to generate accurate estimates at arbitrary resolutions and is able to handle varying noise from disparate sensor sources. The framework is applied to pipeline thickness mapping, with experimental results in fusing a high-resolution sensor and a low-resolution sensor showing the ability of the proposed technique to capture spatial correlations to come up with more accurate results when compared with a naïve fusion approach.
Sykora, M, Chung, PWH, Folland, JP, Halkon, BJ & Edirisinghe, EA 1970, 'Advances in Sports Informatics Research', Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 4th INNS Symposia on Computational Intelligence in Information Systems (INNS-CIIS), Springer International Publishing, Inst Teknologi Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan, BRUNEI, pp. 265-274.
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© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. With advances in hardware and software, computer science based technologies within sports sciences are becoming more pervasive. This paper presents the growing field of applied computer science often referred to as “sports informatics”, and considers some of the advancements that have been made by its relatively small, but growing research community. The review includes: feedback systems, team play analysis, image/motion analysis, exertion interfaces and virtual reality, and data mining and artificial intelligence.
Thiyagarajan, K, Kodagoda, S & IEEE 1970, 'SMART Monitoring of Surface Temperature and Moisture Content Using Multisensory Data Fusion', PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2015 7TH IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CYBERNETICS AND INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS (CIS) AND ROBOTICS, AUTOMATION AND MECHATRONICS (RAM), IEEE International Conference on Cybernetics and Intelligent Systems, IEEE, Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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This paper characterizes the practice of Infrared Thermopile array sensor to monitor the surface temperature and also temperatures at different depth levels by employing the thermocouple probes. The increase in moisture content when the surface of the object is in influence with water bath is studied and interpreted. The effect of distances and depth levels between the electrodes on resistance moisture content has been analysed and Gaussian Process based machine learning technique to estimate the moisture content using resistive sensor data is proposed. The paper concludes by discussing the projected method's potential to augment the monitoring capabilities in sewer environment through multisensory data fusion.
Tran, A, Liu, D, Ranasinghe, R, Carmichael, M & Liu, C 1970, 'Analysis of Human Grip Strength in Physical Human Robot Interaction', Procedia Manufacturing, Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics, Elsevier BV, Las Vegas, pp. 1442-1449.
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© 2015 The Authors The purpose of this paper is to explore how an operator's grip plays a role in physical Human Robot Interaction (pHRI). By considering how the operator reacts to or initiates changes in control, it is possible to study the operator's grip pattern. By analyzing the grip pattern, it is possible to incorporate their natural response in order to create safer and more intuitive interfaces. An experiment where an exoskeleton and human collaborate in order to complete a path following task has been chosen to measure the forces applied by the user at the handle to observe the interaction between the operator and robot. AThruMode Matrix Array sensor has been wrapped around the robot's handle to measure the applied pressure. By introducing the sensor it not only enables the measurement of applied forces and how they are applied but also a measure of how tight the user is gripping the handle. Previous studies show that the natural response of a human to an unexpected event is to tighten their grip, indicating that how an operator grasps the handle can be related to the operator's intention. In order to investigate how the operator's grip of the handle changes, the experiments presented in this paper examine two different scenarios which might occur during an interaction, the first where the robot attempts to deviate from the path and the second where the operator wishes to deviate to a new path. The results of the experiments show that whether the operator or the robot initiates the transition, a measurable change in how the operator grasps the handle. The information in this paper can lead to new applications in pHRI by exploring the possible uses of an operator's grasping strength.
Trianni, A & Cagno, E 1970, 'Diffusion of Motor Systems Energy Efficiency Measures: An Empirical Study Within Italian Manufacturing SMEs', Energy Procedia, 7th International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE), Elsevier BV, Abu Dhabi, U ARAB EMIRATES, pp. 2569-2574.
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Virgona, A, Kirchner, N & Alempijevic, A 1970, 'Sensing and perception technology to enable real time monitoring of passenger movement behaviours through congested rail stations', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings.
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Passenger behaviour can have a range of effects on rail operations from negative to positive. While rail service providers strive to design and operate systems in a manner that promotes positive passenger behaviour, congestion is a confounding factor, which can create responses that may undermine these efforts. The real time monitoring of passenger movement and behaviour through public transport environments including precincts, concourses, platforms and train vestibules would enable operators to more effectively manage congestion at a whole-of-station level. While existing crowd monitoring technologies allow operators to monitor crowd densities at critical locations and react to overcrowding incidents, they do not necessarily provide an understanding of the cause of such issues. Congestion is a complex phenomenon involving the movements of many people though a set of spaces and monitoring these spaces requires tracking large numbers of individuals. To do this, traditional surveillance technologies might be used but at the expense of introducing privacy concerns. Scalability is also a problem, as complete sensor coverage of entire rail station precinct, concourse and platform areas potentially requires a high number of sensors, increasing costs. In light of this, there is a need for sensing technology that collects data from a set of ‘sparse sensors’, each with a limited field of view, but which is capable of forming a network that can track the movement and behaviour of high numbers of associated individuals in a privacy sensitive manner. This paper presents work towards the core crowd sensing and perception technology needed to enable such a capability. Building on previous research using three-dimensional (3D) depth camera data for person detection, a privacy friendly approach to tracking and recognising individuals is discussed. The use of a head-to-shoulder signature is proposed to enable association between sensors. Our efforts to improve the reli...
Virgona, A, Kirchner, N & Alempijevic, A 1970, 'Sensing and perception technology to enable real time monitoring of passenger movement behaviours through congested rail stations', ATRF 2015 - Australasian Transport Research Forum 2015, Proceedings, Australasian Transport Research Forum, ATRF, Sydney.
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© 2015 ATRF, Commonwealth of Australia. All rights reserved. Passenger behaviour can have a range of effects on rail operations from negative to positive. While rail service providers strive to design and operate systems in a manner that promotes positive passenger behaviour, congestion is a confounding factor, which can create responses that may undermine these efforts. The real time monitoring of passenger movement and behaviour through public transport environments including precincts, concourses, platforms and train vestibules would enable operators to more effectively manage congestion at a whole-of-station level. While existing crowd monitoring technologies allow operators to monitor crowd densities at critical locations and react to overcrowding incidents, they do not necessarily provide an understanding of the cause of such issues. Congestion is a complex phenomenon involving the movements of many people though a set of spaces and monitoring these spaces requires tracking large numbers of individuals. To do this, traditional surveillance technologies might be used but at the expense of introducing privacy concerns. Scalability is also a problem, as complete sensor coverage of entire rail station precinct, concourse and platform areas potentially requires a high number of sensors, increasing costs. In light of this, there is a need for sensing technology that collects data from a set of ‘sparse sensors’, each with a limited field of view, but which is capable of forming a network that can track the movement and behaviour of high numbers of associated individuals in a privacy sensitive manner. This paper presents work towards the core crowd sensing and perception technology needed to enable such a capability. Building on previous research using three-dimensional (3D) depth camera data for person detection, a privacy friendly approach to tracking and recognising individuals is discussed. The use of a head-to-shoulder signature is proposed to enable...
Wijerathna, B, Kodagoda, S, Miro, JV & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Iterative coarse to fine approach for interpretation of defect profiles using MFL measurements', 2015 IEEE 10th Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA), 2015 IEEE 10th Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA), IEEE, Auckland, New Zealand, pp. 1099-1104.
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© 2015 IEEE. Magnetic Flux Leakage (MFL) is a commonly used technology for non destructive evaluation of ferromagnetic materials. MFL in general is used to estimate isolated defect geometry. In this study, a coarse to fine approach is proposed to interpret MFL measurements for continuous defect profiling. The coarse solution is implemented using a Gaussian Processes (GP) model and the fine approach is implemented using an unconstrained non-linear optimiser. This framework was tested on a 100 year old 600mm diameter cast iron pipe line. Some pipe sections were extracted, grit blasted and profiled using a sub millimetre accurate 3 - D laser scanner. The coarse to fine predictions were compared with the laser measured ground truth with just 1.2 mm RMS error.
Williams, JJR, Zhang, Z, Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 1970, 'Model updating of brake components' influence on instability predictions', 22nd International Congress on Sound and Vibration, ICSV 2015, International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Florence, Italy.
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Customers perceive brake squeal as a major annoyance in their automobiles' acoustic performance. Squeal is self-excited, friction induced audible noise above 1 kHz and one of the strongest cost drivers in noise vibration and harshness departments of automotive manufacturers. In order to reduce expensive and time-consuming dynamometer and road vehicle tests, numerical complex eigenvalue analysis has become popular in predicting brake squeal. However, one difficulty in assessing the prediction quality apart from the linearisation of the system is the complexity of the brake system to be modelled. Using structural finite elements the computer model is often insufficiently detailed, insufficiently damped or insufficiently experimentally validated so that instabilities causing brake squeal are over-predicted. Here we present the process of updating components of a brake system's squeal prediction and the improvement in modelling using updated material parameters and a Rayleigh damping model by applying a rigorous mesh refinement study and different friction laws.
Williams, PT, Hill, J, Malecki, C, Kirby, R & Abom, M 1970, 'Hybrid dissipative/reactive silencer predictions with comparison to measurement', Euronoise 2015, Maastricht, pp. 2243-2248.
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Gas Turbines predominantly generate a broadband noise spectrum, although strong tones are also present, often at relatively low frequencies. Dissipative silencers are commonly used to reduce noise within gas turbine systems, however they are inefficient at removing low-frequency noise and this leads to silencers which are overdesigned at higher frequencies. Therefore, by introducing new techniques designed specifically to target low-frequencies it is proposed that the overall cost of the silencer may be decreased. Reactive elements are known to be successful at targeting low frequencies but their non-acoustic limitations, including problems with minimising pressure drop, have traditionally prevented their use in gas turbine systems. This paper presents a new silencer design that combines dissipative and reactive silencer elements in order to target low frequency tonal noise, whilst at the same time minimising static pressure drop. This so-called hybrid silencer is designed using advanced finite element modelling techniques and new prototype designs are then tested in the laboratory. Comparison between prediction and experiment shows good agreement over a wide frequency range, which demonstrates the validity of the modelling approach. Results demonstrate that attaching a carefully designed reactive element to a dissipative element can deliver a large increase in performance at low frequencies. This improvement in performance is characterised by a resonance 'peak', which is designed to cover an octave band surrounding the target frequency in order to accommodate uncertainties in the noise output of a gas turbine. Furthermore, it is found that additional peaks occur at higher harmonics, which further increases the performance of the hybrid silencer beyond the plane wave region of the inlet duct, delivering additional and significant improvements in performance for the new hybrid silencer when compared to traditional dissipative designs and previous hybrid silencer c...
Wu, K, Ranasinghe, R & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Active recognition and pose estimation of household objects in clutter', 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE, Seattle, pp. 4230-4237.
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© 2015 IEEE. This paper presents an active object recognition and pose estimation system for household objects in a highly cluttered environment. A sparse feature model, augmented with the characteristics of features when observed from different viewpoints is used for recognition and pose estimation while a dense point cloud model is used for storing geometry. This strategy makes it possible to accurately predict the expected information available during the Next-Best-View planning process as both the visibility as well as the likelihood of feature matching can be considered simultaneously. Experimental evaluations of the active object recognition and pose estimation with an RGB-D sensor mounted on a Turtlebot are presented.
Zhang, Z, Halkon, B, Chou, SM & Qu, X 1970, 'Shoulder Joint Angle Errors Caused by Marker Offset', Procedia Engineering, 'The Impact of Technology on Sport VI' 7th Asia-Pacific Congress on Sports Technology, APCST, Elsevier BV, Barcelona, SPAIN, pp. 479-484.
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Crown Copyright © 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license. The International Society of Biomechanics (ISB) has recommended a standardization of the definition of the joint coordinate system (JCS) and use of a sequential rotation to describe human shoulder joint rotation. Markers attached to the surface of the body may move during the process of motion data capture, resulting in an offset from their initial location. This leads to a change of the JCS and therefore affects the calculated shoulder joint angles. In this research study, we presented a simple marker offset model to quantify the shoulder joint errors for both static poses and dynamic activities. Specific conditions of different offsets and elbow flexion angles were studied. Results showed that the errors should not be neglected when the shoulder elevation angle was near -90° and 90°, or elbow flexion was very small. Attention should be paid to these errors for such activities especially walking and throwing.
Zhang, Z, Oberst, S, Williams, JJR & Lai, JCS 1970, 'Improving Brake squeal propensitiy prediction by model updating', Acoustics 2015 Hunter Valley, Conference of the Australian Acoustical Society, Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia.
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Brake squeal as a significant warranty-claim related costs problem to the automotive industry is difficult to model numerically and analyse because of inherent nonlinearities, uncertainties in material properties, contact and boundary conditions, and system complexity. Often, model components are linearised and not experimentally validated. Sophisticated contact or friction models as well as stiffness in joints are often not considered owing to difficulties in experimental validation. In this study, a full brake system is modally updated at the component level and then at the subassembly level (pad assembly alone, pad in bracket). Squeal prediction using the complex eigenvalue analysis on a finite element model of the system is compared to squeal results from a noise dynamometer test. The results are discussed with respect to further refinement of the modelling approach and improvements to brake squeal prediction.
Zhao, S, Qiu, X, Lu, J & Cheng, J 1970, 'ROBUST TIME DOMAIN ACOUSTIC CONTRAST CONTROL IN AN ARC-SHAPED AREA USING A LINEAR LOUDSPEAKER ARRAY', PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON SOUND AND VIBRATION, 22nd International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV), INT INST ACOUSTICS & VIBRATION, Florence, ITALY.
Abeywardena, D, Kodagoda, S, Dissanayake, G & Munasinghe, R 2015, 'Improved State Estimation in Quadrotor MAVs: A Novel Drift-Free Velocity Estimator'.
Liao, Y, Kodagoda, S, Wang, Y, Shi, L & Liu, Y 2015, 'Place classification with a graph regularized deep neural network model'.
Liao, Y, Kodagoda, S, Wang, Y, Shi, L & Liu, Y 2015, 'Understand Scene Categories by Objects: A Semantic Regularized Scene Classifier Using Convolutional Neural Networks'.
Sun, Y & Zhao, L 2015, 'Line Matching based on Planar Homography for Aerial Photogrammetric Images C/C++ source code'.
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C/C++ source code
Zhao, L, Huang, S & Dissanayake, G 2015, 'Linear SFM: A Hierarchical Approach to Solving Structure-from-Motion Problems by Decoupling the Linear and Nonlinear C/C++ source code'.
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C/C++ source code