Assembly Challenge: a robot competition of the Industrial Robotics Category,World Robot Summit – summary of the pre-competition in 2018*

ABSTRACT

The World Robot Summit (WRS) is a robotic ‘challenge and exposition’ organized by the Japanese government to accelerate social implementation, research and development of robots working in realistic daily life, society, and industrial fields. In this paper, we introduce a robot competition of the Industrial Robotics Category of the WRS, called ‘Assembly Challenge’, which is organized by the WRS Industrial Robotics Competition Committee in order to promote the development of the next-generation production systems that can respond to new production demands in agile and lean manners. Prior to the main competition in 2020, a pre-competition was held in 2018 with 16 participating teams from around the world. In this paper, we introduce the contents and results of this pre-competition, analyze the results, and give a perspective for the 2020 main competition.     

Activities of oxygen in liquid Bi,Sn, and Ge from electrochemical measurements

Modified coulometric titrations on the galvanic cell: O in liquid Bi, Sn or Ge/ZrO₂( + CaO)/Air, Pt, were performed to determine the oxygen activities in liquid bismuth and tin at 973, 1073 and 1173 and in liquid germanium at 1233 and 1373 K. The standard Gibbs energy of solution of oxygen in liquid bismuth, tin and germanium for 1/2 O₂ (1 atm) →O (1 at. pct) were determined respectively to be ΔG° (in Bi) = −24450 + 3.42T (±200), cal· g-atom⁻¹ = − 102310 + 14.29T (±900), J·g-atom⁻¹, ΔG° (in Sn) = −42140 + 4.90T (±350), cal· g-aton⁻¹ = −176300 + 20.52T (± 1500), J-g-atom⁻¹, ΔG° (inGe) = −42310 + 5.31 7 (±300), cal·g-atom⁻¹ = −177020 + 22.21T(± 1300), J· g-atom⁻¹, where the reference state for dissolved oxygen was an infinitely dilute solution. It was reconfirmed that the modified coulometric titration method proposed previously by two of the present authors produced far more reliable results than those reported by other investigators. TOYOKAZU SANO, formerly a Graduate Student, Osaka University     

Integration of equivalence theory and ultra-fine-group slowing-down calculation for resonance self-shielding treatment in lattice physics code GALAXY

A new hybrid resonance self-shielding treatment method in reactor physics field is developed by integrating equivalence theory and ultra-fine-group slowing-down calculation from the theoretical point of view. In the conventional equivalence theory, scattering source approximation and taking no account of resonance interference effect cause prediction error of effective cross-section. By reviewing the derivation scheme of neutron flux in the equivalence theory, the essence of the ultra-fine-group treatment is effectively incorporated. A new form of energy-dependent flux is based on multi-term rational equation, but the scattering source can be solved by the way similar to the slowing-down equation. The accurate non-fuel flux is also considered without direct heterogeneous calculation. The new method can also efficiently eliminate the multi-group condensation error by a semi-analytical reaction rate preservation scheme between ultra-fine and multi-group treatments. The present method is implemented in Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. lattice physics code GALAXY. From comparisons of neutronics parameters between GALAXY and a continuous energy Monte-Carlo code, applicability of the new method for lattice physics calculations is confirmed. GALAXY achieves high accuracy with short computation time. Therefore, it can be efficiently applied to generation of the nuclear constants used in the nuclear design and safety analysis of commercial light water reactors.     

Phospholipid-Coated Boronic Oxide Nanoparticles as Boron Agents for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy

Minimally invasive boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is an elegant approach for cancer treatment. The highly selective and efficient deliverability of boron agents to cancer cells is the key to maximizing the therapeutic benefits of BNCT. In addition, enhancement of the frequencies to achieve boron neutron capture reaction is also significant in improving therapeutic efficacy by providing a highly concentrated boron agent in each boron nanoparticle. As the density of the thermal neutron beam remains low, it is unable to induce high-efficiency cell destruction. Herein, we report phospholipid-coated boronic oxide nanoparticles as agents for BNCT that can provide a highly concentrated boron atom in each nanoparticle. The current system exhibited in vitro BNCT activity seven times higher than that of commercial boron agents. Furthermore, the system could penetrate cancer spheroids deeply, efficiently suppressing thermal neutron irradiation-induced growth.     

The effect of tapioca maltodextrins on the stability of oil‐in‐water emulsions

The effect of concentration of tapioca maltodextrin with three different DE values on the viscosity, depletion attraction potential (W_dep), rate of coalescence (K_c), and creaming rate of oil‐in‐water emulsion have been investigated. The relative viscosity and W_dep increased with increasing maltodextrin concentration. Critical flocculation concentration (CFC) of emulsions containing maltodextrin with DE of 16 (DE16), 12 (DE12), and 9 (DE9) were 11, 7, and 5.5 wt%, respectively. At maltodextrin concentrations below CFC, there was no change in K_c and no creaming was observed. At maltodextrin concentrations above CFC, an increase in the concentration of DE9 and DE12 resulted in an increase in K_c until it reached a constant value. K_c values remained to be constant in the concentration range between 30 and 40 wt% for DE9 and that between 35 and 45 wt% for DE12. Further increasing in concentration of DE9 and 12 decreased K_c. K_c of DE16 monotonically increased with increasing concentration from CFC to 50 wt%. The rate of creaming decreased with increasing maltodextrin concentration over CFC until it reached zero. Creaming was not observed at maltodextrin concentrations more than 35 wt% for DE9 and 40 wt% for DE12 whereas DE16 showed creaming at all concentrations above CFC. A maltodextrin with a lower DE inhibited creaming more efficiently than maltodextrin with a higher DE because of higher viscosities. The K_c tended to increase with decreasing DE because the strength of interaction between oil droplets increased.     

Toward Engineered Biosynthesis of Drugs in Human Cells

Biosynthetic genes are not only responsible for the formation of bioactive substances but also suited for other applications including gene therapy. To test the feasibility of human cells producing antibiotics in situ when provided with a heterologous biosynthetic gene, we focused on cytochrome P450, the class of enzymes important in conferring bioactivity to natural product precursors. We selected Fma-P450 that plays a central role in the fumagillin antimicrobial biosynthesis in Aspergillus fumigatus to examine fungal metabolite production by HeLa cells that express fma-P450 heterologously. Here we show that HeLa cells harboring fma-P450 can biosynthesize 5-hydroxyl-β-trans-bergamoten and cytotoxic 5-epi-demethoxyfumagillol when supplemented with the nontoxic precursor β-trans-bergamotene. While the production level was insufficient to effect cell death, we demonstrate that programming human cells to autogenerate antibiotics by introducing a heterologous biosynthetic gene is feasible.     

Optimizing service restoration in distribution systems based on scheduling of crews considering priorities of loads

The service restoration to sound sections within a short period as much as possible, performed after the permanent fault occurs in a distribution system, is significant for maintaining power supply reliability. This paper proposes an efficient method to find service restoration procedures based on fault searching and the optimal work scheduling of crews, considering the power supply priorities of loads and the probability of occurrence of faults. The proposed method is composed of two-stage problems to reduce the outage sections efficiently: (i) the problem to find a series of searching procedures for unknown fault locations in the first stage and (ii) the optimization problem of work schedules of crews in the second stage. In the first stage, the order of operation of switches opened for searching for the fault direction is determined, constituting the searching tree. After that, the proposed optimization method can efficiently solve the work scheduling problem by formulating it as a mixed-integer linear programming problem in the second stage. The computational experiments using a large-scale distribution system model with many remote and manual switches show that the proposed method can provide efficient service restoration procedures within a reasonable computational time.