Assessment of Manufacturing Operational Complexity

The manufacturing system must balance human characteristics, needs, skills and capabilities within the technical and business environment, in order to be effective and successful. A Systems Analysis and Design approach was utilized to integrate manufacturing technologies with the capabilities of human workers, in order to augment the performance of both. A framework was created on which to build systems analysis tools that focus on realistic factors within the manufacturing environment, such as information quantity, diversity and content; complexity (product, process and operational); task effort, and so forth. A matrix methodology and an objective measure of complexity have been developed that assess the three levels of manufacturing complexity: product complexity, process complexity and operational complexity. The focus of this paper is the ‘operational complexity’ and it provides insight into the system performance and sensitivities when considering human characteristics.     

Visualising a knowledge mapping of information systems investment evaluation

Information systems (IS) facilitate organisations to increase responsiveness and reduce the costs of their supply chain. This paper seeks to make a contribution through exploring and visualising knowledge mapping from the perspective of IS investment evaluation. The evaluation of IS is regarded as a challenging and complex process, which becomes even more difficult with the increased complexity of IS. The intricacy of IS evaluation, however, is due to numerous interrelated factors (e.g. costs, benefits and risks) that have human or organisational dimensions. With this in mind, there appears to be an increasing need to assess investment decision-making processes, to better understand the often far-reaching implications associated with technology adoption and interrelated knowledge components (KC). Through the identification and extrapolation of key learning issues from the literature and empirical findings, organisations can better improve their business processes and thereby their effectiveness and efficiency, while preventing others from making costly oversights that may not necessarily be only financial. In seeking to enlighten the often obscure evaluation of IS investments, this paper attempts to inductively emphasise the dissemination of knowledge and learning through the application of a fuzzy Expert System (ES) based knowledge mapping technique (i.e. Fuzzy Cognitive Map [FCM]). The rationale for exploring knowledge and IS investment evaluation is that a knowledge map will materialise for others to exploit during their specific technology evaluation. This is realised through conceptualising the explicit and tacit investment drivers. Among the several findings drawn from this research, the key resulting knowledge mapping through FCM demonstrated the complex, multifaceted and emergent behaviour of causal relationships within the knowledge area. The principal relationships and knowledge within IS investment evaluation are illustrated as being determined by a blend of managerial and user perspectives.     

Fundamentals of systems ergonomics/human factors

Ergonomics/human factors is, above anything else, a systems discipline and profession, applying a systems philosophy and systems approaches. Many things are labelled as system in today's world, and this paper specifies just what attributes and notions define ergonomics/human factors in systems terms. These are obviously a systems focus, but also concern for context, acknowledgement of interactions and complexity, a holistic approach, recognition of emergence and embedding of the professional effort involved within organization system. These six notions are illustrated with examples from a large body of work on rail human factors.     

Modeling and verifying probabilistic Multi-Agent Systems using knowledge and social commitments

Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) have long been modeled through knowledge and social commitments independently. In this paper, we present a new method that merges the two concepts to model and verify MASs in the presence of uncertainty. To express knowledge and social commitments simultaneously in uncertain settings, we define a new multi-modal logic called Probabilistic Computation Tree Logic of Knowledge and Commitments (PCTL^kc in short) which combines two existing probabilistic logics namely, probabilistic logic of knowledge PCTLK and probabilistic logic of commitments PCTLC. To model stochastic MASs, we present a new version of interpreted systems that captures the probabilistic behavior and accounts for the communication between interacting components. Then, we introduce a new probabilistic model checking procedure to check the compliance of target systems against some desirable properties written in PCTL^kc and report the obtained verification results. Our proposed model checking technique is reduction-based and consists in transforming the problem of model checking PCTL^kc into the problem of model checking a well established logic, namely PCTL. So doing provides us with the privilege of re-using the PRISM model checker to implement the proposed model checking approach. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by presenting a real case study. This framework can be considered as a step forward towards closing the gap of capturing interactions between knowledge and social commitments in stochastic agent-based systems.     

Smart grid coordination in building HVAC systems: EMPC and the impact of forecasting

Energy consumption by heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems exhibits a clear correlation with electricity prices. The method of economic model predictive control (EMPC) can be used in conjunction with thermal energy storage (TES) to time-shift power consumption away from periods of high demand to periods of low energy cost. Dynamic electricity pricing and weather condition forecasts can be readily incorporated within this methodology. Unfortunately, the receding horizon nature of this control strategy makes it very susceptible to the quality of the forecasts used. To this end, the development and implementation of several forecasting methods will be discussed. Finally, the EMPC performance of these methods will be assessed on a simple building example using active TES.     

More than twenty years of advancements on Frontiers in handwriting recognition

In this paper the results of the research in handwriting/handwritten character recognition in about the last quarter of a century are reported, illustrating the results presented during the International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (IWFHR) and the International Conference on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition (ICFHR).     

Model checking response times in Networked Automation Systems using jitter bounds

Response time (RT) of Networked Automation Systems (NAS) is affected by timing imperfections induced due to the network, computing and hardware components. Guaranteeing RT in the presence of such timing imperfections is essential for building dependable NAS, and to avoid costly upgrades after deployment in industries.This investigation proposes a methodology and work-flow that combines modelling, simulation, verification, experiments, and software tools to verify the RT of the NAS during the design, rather than after deployment. The RT evaluation work-flow has three phases: model building, modelling and verification. During the model building phase component reaction times are specified and their timing performance is measured by combining experiments with simulation. During the modelling phase, component based mathematical models that capture the network architecture and inter-connection are proposed. Composition of the component models gives the NAS model required for studying the RT performance on system level. Finally, in the verification step, the NAS formal models are abstracted as UPPAAL timed automata with their timing interfaces. To model timing interfaces, the action patterns, and their timing wrapper are proposed. The formal model of high level of abstraction is used to verify the total response time of the NAS where the reactions to be verified are specified using a subset of timed computation tree logic (TCTL) in UPPAAL model checker. The proposed approach is illustrated on an industrial steam boiler deployment.     

基于ARM的智能机器人语音控制应用研究

智能机器人作为机器人的研究热点,为机器人的交互提供一种方便有效的接口很重要。语音交互是一种最熟悉最自然的交互方式。在我们的个人计算机上具有丰富的软硬件资源易于语音识别技术的实现,但这也会限制了机器人的应用场合。而基于ARM的嵌入式语音识别系统可以嵌入到机器人对象内部,更适合机器人的应用需求。本文详细介绍了语音识别技术的原理,嵌入式语音识别技术的实现,机器人的语音控制技术,实验结果表明采用该方法实现机器人的语音控制可以达到方便,有效的控制效果。     

分数阶区间系统的鲁棒稳定性分析

由于实际的物理系统常会存在各种不确定结构,这些不确定结构给系统的稳定性分析带来了困难和一定的影响,因此对这类带有不确定结构的分数阶系统控制问题的研究,具有广泛的实际应用意义。本文主要针对带有区间不确定性的分数阶控制系统,分析了该系统的鲁棒稳定性问题,首先将区间矩阵用分式线性变换(LFT)表示,然后基于分析得出了此类系统鲁棒稳定的充分必要条件。并给出两个数值算例阐释该方法,仿真结果表明了该方法的有效性。