Distributed planning and control systems for the virtual enterprise: organizational requirements and development life-cycle

This paper describes the requirements analysis and system specification of an Order Promise module to be used as part of a broader Decision Support System for production and operations planning of a Virtual Enterprise. This work is part of a broader project with a particular focus on the microelectronics industry which is a good example of Virtual Enterprise, and where a quick response to the customers needs and to unpredictable changes in production conditions is considered a major factor for success. First, the analysis and specification are presented within a development framework that involves the study of organizational issues of semiconductor enterprises. The use of ontological engineering for supporting the communication and shared understanding of the system concepts is explained and a virtual enterprise ontology is outlined. Following the clarification of the concept of virtual enterprise, the generic techno-organizational requirements for the information system are derived. Finally, a specification of the global planning module and a more detailed one regarding the order promise module is presented.     

基于Web的农机零件CAPP系统

简述计算机辅助工艺设计系统CAPP研究的意义及在国内外的研究现状与存在的问题,提出基于Web的农机零件CAPP系统的设计体系结构,介绍系统的各功能模块。     

基于最小变量的B-样条移动机器人路径规划研究

为解决移动机器人在避障时的曲线优化问题,提出了基于最小变量的B-样条路径规划方法。对该方法从数学模型上进行了推导,指出了该方法相对于其它B-样条方法的优点,并对该方法进行了优化,给出了相应的优化算法。研究表明：具有最小变量的B-样条函数比只用B-样条函数定义的曲线具有更优化的线性约束,其曲线具有更好的光滑性。     

基于Web的农机零件CAPP系统

简述计算机辅助工艺设计系统CAPP研究的意义及在国内外的研究现状与存在的问题,提出基于Web的农机零件CAPP系统的设计体系结构,介绍系统的各功能模块。     

Declarative planning in procedural agent architectures

Practical agent languages and their corresponding architectures have often relied on a static plan library with more or less direct trigger-response activation mechanisms as a source for agent behaviours for the sake of runtime efficiency. Although efficient, such a language design choice severely limits an agent’s ability to reason about its goals and adapt to unforeseen circumstances after being deployed. This effectively delegates the task of planning to the designers themselves, who must design plan libraries able to cope with every foreseeable situation an agent might find itself in by designing plans to deal with any contingency. In this paper we develop a formal conversion process from traditional BDI agent languages into declarative planning. Using this conversion process, we show how to integrate domain independent planning algorithms into the BDI interpreter, allowing a designer to program an agent not only through the trigger-response mechanism used in traditional languages, but also in terms of declarative goals. Our contribution here is twofold: firstly we increase an agent’s ability to cope with unforeseen situations and secondly we unburden an agent designer from having to define multiple plan combinations that could be easily generated by a planner.     

Metaheuristic algorithms for solving two interconnected vehicle routing problems in a hospital complex

This paper addresses a real-life logistic problem arising in the hospital complex of Tours (France). The two-level vehicle routing problem has time windows, a heterogeneous fleet, and multi-depot, multi-commodity and split deliveries. The first level concerns the routing problem for a fleet of vehicles serving several hospital units that delivers medicines, clean linen, meals, various supplies, patient files and picks up waste and dirty linen. The second level concerns the problem of routing employees between buildings within a large hospital unit. Both levels are interconnected. In addition, decisions about sizing and planning the teams of drivers and warehouse employees have to be made. Two metaheuristic algorithms are proposed to solve the entire problem: a genetic algorithm and a tabu search. The algorithms are tested on 100 instances, randomly generated on the basis of real-life instances.     

Female gait patterns: The influence of footwear

The two horizontal orthogonal ground reaction forces, mediolateral (Fx) and antero-posterior (Fy), together with limb segment displacements, were recorded simultaneously during gait from 24 female subjects aged 18–29 years. Recordings were made for each subject barefoot and when wearing each of four different pairs of shoes: soft-soled, rigid-soled, medium- and high-heeled. The results showed a trend for increasing lateral stability with increasing heel height and decreasing ground contact area. This.was reflected in decreasing mean values for defined ground reaction force peaks in the medio-lateral direction at heel strike and at toe off. Limb segments displacements tended to increase with decreasing heel height and increasing shoe-ground contact area, being greatest when subjects were wearing pumps, i.e. flexible-soled, no-heeled shoes.     

Gait recognition based on joint distribution of motion angles

Gait as a biometric trait has the ability to be recognized in remote monitoring. In this article, a method based on joint distribution of motion angles is proposed for gait recognition. The new feature of the motion angles of lower limbs is defined and extracted from either 2D video database or 3D motion capture database, and the corresponding angles of right leg and left leg are joined together to work out the joint distribution spectrums. Based on the joint distribution of these angles, we build a feature histogram individually. In the stage of distance measurement, three types of distance vector are defined and utilized to measure the similarity between the histograms, and then a classifier is built to implement the classification. Experiments has been carried out both on CASIA Gait Database and CMU motion capture database, which show that our method can achieve a good recognition performance.     

Comparisons of tibial accelerations when walking on a wood composite vs. a concrete mezzanine surface

Mezzanine surfaces can be made from concrete, bar grate, or composite materials. Anecdotal data indicate that mezzanines in distribution centers made from composite materials, due to their increased compliance, may be a more comfortable working surface. Prior research suggested that a measure of tibial shock, peak tibial acceleration, could potentially discriminate the biomechanical differences between these surfaces. The objective of this study was to quantify differences in tibial accelerations as 27 people walked on mezzanines constructed from concrete and a wood composite material. Accelerometers were attached bilaterally to the shins of volunteers, and data were collected as they walked 30.5 m on each surface at their normal walking speed, a faster-than-normal walking speed, and a slower-than-normal walking speed. Peak acceleration values obtained from the leg with the highest values were compared. On average, the peak acceleration values were 5% higher on the concrete mezzanine as compared with the wood composite mezzanine (p = .036). These findings suggest that individuals working on mezzanines in distribution centers constructed from composite surfaces would potentially experience less discomfort associated with long exposure periods on these surfaces.     

基于网络化新闻回传及媒资共享的应用

随着信息技术在广播电视领域的发展,实现新闻回传网络化,媒资系统共享化已经成为可能。文章针对我台实际需求设计并建成一套完整的新闻回传与媒资共享系统进行了说明。