1,720,958 research outputs found
Reshoring of Electric Bicycle Frame Manufacturing Through Postponement
No full textBicycle manufacturers struggle to meet the seasonal demand of their products due to frame manufacturing lead times of upwards of 6 months. As such, design and testing through FEA is assessed in terms of labour hours for a proposed product development strategy. The current method of manufacturing bicycle frames within the custom geometry class is through brazing lugs and tubes. This manufacturing method requires 115 tools and 30 labour hours. By contrast, 3D printing the lugs and gluing them to carbon fibres tubes can bring the tools used to 31 and the labour hours to 9.
Overhead engineering costs have not been added to the investigation which is likely to greatly increase the price but also to add a quality component. The conclusion of the thesis points towards the technology being a promising candidate for domestic manufacturing within the European Union with the capability to reduce lead times to 3 or 4 months for 100 frames if finishing such as painting is not included. Further analysis and verification to this empirical study is needed before it can be implemented, particularly due to the novelty of the machines and materials used. The overhead engineering costs also needs further validation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Squeeze-in Functionality for a Soft Parallel Robot Gripper
No full textGrasping parts of inconsistent shapes, sizes and weights securely requires accurate part models and custom gripper fingers. Compliant grippers are a potential solution; however, each design approach requires the solution of unique problems. In this case, the durability and reliability of half lips (at least 1400 cycles) to perform consistently as springs of a specified stiffness (0.5N/mm) and displacement (5mm). Moreover, the challenge of low and small (3mm, 0.01kg bolt or Allen key) objects is addressed through vertical squeeze-in, implemented using an incline, lip and flex limiter as part of a 3D printed TPC spring. The squeeze-in phenomena are verified on large objects through a 30mm, 1.66kg common rail. Experimental results demonstrate the reliability when given a human-specified location for gripping, without the need for jigs or fixtures. Finally, the tested design is assessed for potential fulfillment of 7 of the United Nations sustainable development goals.Peer reviewe
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Knowledge-Based Planning for Human-Robot Collaborative Tasks
No full textHuman-robot collaboration is a promising alternative to full automation and manual labour. Collaborative robots are considered safe and individual robot actions can often be easily programmed, for example, by physical hand-guiding. Coordinated collaboration, where tasks and the environment are shared, cannot be so easily achieved, due to continuously changing conditions and actions that need to be triggered at unknown instances. Besides, knowledge required for collaboration is difficult to program into robotic systems. This paper presents a system architecture that aims at facilitating human-robot collaboration by alleviating the need for pre-programmed information and exploring ways to teach new skills. This is done by reducing the amount of information required to program tasks by utilizing a knowledge base that represents knowledge on tasks, actions and the world. Automatic reasoning over conditions and properties of the knowledge is then utilized to generate available actions and action plans in order to complete the shared tasks. Moreover, learning new tasks is enabled by extending the original knowledge base, concatenating available actions and tasks into news bricks of knowledge. Two examples, a kitting task and a handover task, serve to validate the system architecture and exemplify its usage. Experiments demonstrate that by combining reasoning methods and knowledge-based planning, high-level shared tasks can be generated and executed, and robots can act reliable as teammate to human operators.Peer reviewe
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Soft robotic gripper with compliant cell stacks for industrial part handling
No full text<p>Robot object grasping and handling requires accurate grasp pose estimation and gripper/end-effector design, tailored to individual objects. When object shape is unknown, cannot be estimated, or is highly complex, parallel grippers can provide insufficient grip. Compliant grippers can circumvent these issues through the use of soft or flexible materials that adapt to the shape of the object. This letter proposes a 3D printable soft gripper design for handling complex shapes. The compliant properties of the gripper enable contour conformation, yet offer tunable mechanical properties (i.e., directional stiffness). Objects that have complex shape, such as non-constant curvature, convex and/or concave shape can be grasped blind (i.e., without grasp pose estimation). The motivation behind the gripper design is handling of industrial parts, such as jet and Diesel engine components. (Dis)assembly, cleaning and inspection of such engines is a complex, manual task that can benefit from (semi-)automated robotic handling. The complex shape of each component, however, limits where and how it can be grasped. The proposed soft gripper design is tunable by compliant cell stacks that deform to the shape of the handled object. Individual compliant cells and cell stacks are characterized and a detailed experimental analysis of more than 600 grasps with seven different industrial parts evaluates the approach.</p>Peer reviewe
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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