Human–robot interaction in industrial collaborative robotics: a literature review of the decade 2008–2017

ABSTRACT

Currently, a large number of industrial robots have been deployed to replace or assist humans to perform various repetitive and dangerous manufacturing tasks. However, based on current technological capabilities, such robotics field is rapidly evolving so that humans are not only sharing the same workspace with robots, but also are using robots as useful assistants. Consequently, due to this new type of emerging robotic systems, industrial collaborative robots or cobots, human and robot co-workers have been able to work side-by-side as collaborators to accomplish tasks in industrial environments. Therefore, new human–robot interaction systems have been developed for such systems to be able to utilize the capabilities of both humans and robots. Accordingly, this article presents a literature review of major recent works on human–robot interactions in industrial collaborative robots, conducted during the last decade (between 2008 and 2017). Additionally, the article proposes a tentative classification of the content of these works into several categories and sub-categories. Finally, this paper addresses some challenges of industrial collaborative robotics and explores future research issues.     

Diagnosability Analysis of Intermittent Faults in Discrete Event Systems Using a Twin-plant Structure

Most research in fault diagnosis of discrete event systems has been focused on permanent failures. However, experience with monitoring of dynamic systems shows that intermittent faults are predominant, and that their diagnosis constitutes one of the most challenging tasks for surveillance activities. Among the main existing approaches to deal with permanent faults, two were widely investigated while considering different settings: the Diagnoser based approach, and the Twin-plant based approach. The latter was developed to cope with some complexity limitations of the former. In the present paper, we propose a twin-plant based approach to deal with diagnosability of intermittent faults. Firstly, we discuss various notions of diagnosability, while considering the occurrence of faults, their recovery, and the identification of the system status. Then, we establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for each notion, and develop on-the-fly algorithms to check these properties. The discussed approach is implemented in a prototype tool that is used to conduct experiments on a railway control benchmark.

     

Effect of vegetable and synthetic fibers on mechanical performance and durability of Metakaolin-based mortars

The use of vegetable fibers has regained interest in different fields. In fact, fibers may represent an alternative to traditional fibers incorporated in building materials, such as polypropylene fibers. Sustainable development requires the adoption of ecofriendly and natural materials. In this approach, using vegetable fibers as reinforcement for cementitious materials represents an interesting option for concrete industry. Thus, this article studies mechanical performances and transfer properties of cementitious mortars reinforced with vegetable fibers. The used fibers were Dis (DS), Alfa (AF), Date palm (DP) and Hemp (HE). They were subjected to prior treatment with calcium hydroxide. The results show that reinforced mortars with vegetable fibers represent a better deformation capacity than the control mortar without fibers; the best bending strength was recorded for hemp and date palm mortars; the addition of vegetable fibers leads to thermal conductivity decrease by 15% for a content of 0.1%. However, greater carbonation depths were recorded for vegetable fibers based mixes. These findings, for us, are promising for the use of vegetable fibers in cementitious materials.     

Graphene–Mesoporous Si Nanocomposite as a Compliant Substrate for Heteroepitaxy

The ultimate performance of a solid state device is limited by the restricted number of crystalline substrates that are available for epitaxial growth. As a result, only a small fraction of semiconductors are usable. This study describes a novel concept for a tunable compliant substrate for epitaxy, based on a graphene–porous silicon nanocomposite, which extends the range of available lattice constants for epitaxial semiconductor alloys. The presence of graphene and its effect on the strain of the porous layer lattice parameter are discussed in detail and new remarkable properties are demonstrated. These include thermal stability up to 900 °C, lattice tuning up to 0.9 % mismatch, and compliance under stress for virtual substrate thicknesses of several micrometers. A theoretical model is proposed to define the compliant substrate design rules. These advances lay the foundation for the fabrication of a compliant substrate that could unlock the lattice constant restrictions for defect‐free new epitaxial semiconductor alloys and devices.     

Compact ultra‐wideband slot antenna with three notched‐band characteristics

A very compact ultra‐wideband (UWB) slot antenna with three L‐shaped slots for notched‐band characteristics is presented in this article. The antenna is designed and fabricated using a new stepped slot with different size, integrated in the ground plane, and excited by a 50 Ω microstrip transmission line. The stepped slot is used to minimize the dimensions of the antenna and to achieve an impedance bandwidth between 2.65 and 11.05 GHz with voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) less than 2. The length of the stepped slot is equal to a quarter wavelength to create a resonance in the desired frequency. Three L‐shaped slots with various sizes are etched in the ground plane to reject three frequency bands in C‐band (3.7‐4.2 GHz), WLAN (5.15‐5.825 GHz), and X‐band (7.25‐7.75 GHz), respectively. The notched‐band frequency can be controlled by changing the length of the L‐shaped slot. The proposed antenna has a very small size (20.25 × 8 × 1.27 mm³) compared with previous works. The measured and simulated results show a good agreement in terms of radiation pattern and impedance matching.     

Face based person recognition mechanism using monogenic Binarized Statistical Image Features

Multimedia Tools and Applications - These days, automated face recognition systems are hugely being applied in diverse applications ranging from personal use to border crossing. Feature...