Worker-robot cooperation and integration into the manufacturing workcell via the holonic control architecture

Cooperative manufacturing is a new field of research, which addresses new challenges beyond the physical safety of the worker. Those new challenges appear due to the need to connect the worker and the cobot from the informatics point of view in one cooperative workcell. This requires developing an appropriate manufacturing control system, which fits the nature of both the worker and the cobot. Furthermore, the manufacturing control system must be able to understand the production variations, to guide the cooperation between worker and the cobot and adapt with the production variations.Die kooperative Fertigung ist ein neues Forschungsgebiet, das sich neuen Herausforderungen stellt. Diese neuen Herausforderungen ergeben sich aus der Notwendigkeit, den Arbeiter und den Cobot aus der Sicht der Informatik in einem kooperativen Arbeitsplatz zu verbinden. Dies erfordert die Entwicklung eines geeigneten Produktionskontrollsystems, das sowohl der Natur des Arbeiters als auch der des Cobots entspricht. Darüber hinaus muss die Fertigungssteuerung in der Lage sein, die Produktionsschwankungen zu verstehen, um die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Arbeiter und Cobot zu steuern

Pembangunan Modul Pengajaran Kendiri (MPK) keusahawanan dalam topik isu keusahawanan bagi pelajar diploma di politeknik

Terdapat pelbagai kaedah pembelajaran yang telah diperkenalkan termasuklah kaedah pembelajaran yang menggunakan pendekatan pembelajaran bermodul secara kendiri. Kajian ini adalah bertujuan untuk mengkaji kesesuaian Modul Pengajaran Kendiri Keusahawanan dalam topik Isu Keusahawanan yang telah dihasilkan bagi pelajar yang mengikuti pengajian Diploma di Jabatan Perdagangan Politeknik. Antara aspek yang dikaji ialah untuk menilai sama ada rekabentuk modul yang dihasilkan dapat memenuhi ciri-ciri modul yang baik, MPK yang dihasilkan dapat membantu mencapai objektif pembelajaran, MPK ini bersifat mesra pengguna dan MPK yang dihasilkan membantu pensyarah menyampaikan pengajarannya dengan lebih berkesan. Kajian ini dilakukan ke atas 110 orang pelajar semester en am yang mengikuti pengajian diploma dan 4 orang pensyarah yang mengajar subjek Keusahawanan di Jabatan Perdagangan Politeknik Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah, Selangor. Kaedah analisa data yang digunakan dalam kajian ini ialah skor min dan peratus. Hasil daripada kajian ini menunjukkan bahawa rekabentuk modul yang dihasilkan memenuhi ciri-ciri modul yang baik, MPK ini membantu untuk mencapai objektif pembelajaran, MPK ini bersifat mesra pengguna dan MPK yang dihasilkan dapat membantu pensyarah menyampaikan pengajarannya dengan lebih berkesan. Ini bermakna secara keseluruhannya, hasil kajian menunjukkan bahawa modul yang dihasilkan oleh pengkaji adalah sesuai digunakan oleh pelajar-pelajar semester enam yang mengikuti pengajian diploma di Jabatan Perdagangan peringkat politeknik. Seterusnya, beberapa pandangan telah dikemukakan bagi meningkatkan rnutu dan kualiti MPK yang dihasilkan. Semoga kajian ini dapat memberi manfaat kepada mereka yang terlibat dalam bidang pendidikan

Prevention And Detection Mechanism For Security In Passive Rfid System

Low-cost radio frequency identification (RFID) tags conforming to the EPCglobal Class-1 Generation-2 standard are inherently insecure due to computational constraints. This thesis proposed the use of both prevention and detection mechanisms to solve the security and privacy issues. A lightweight cryptographic mutual authentication protocol which is resistant to tracking, denial of service (DoS) and replay attacks is proposed as a prevention mechanism. The proposed protocol is designed with lightweight cryptographic algorithm, including XOR, Hamming distance, rotation and a modified linear congruential generator (MLCG). The proposed protocol using 64 bits index is proved having the lowest non-unequivocally identification probability. In addition, the randomness of the session key generated from the MLCG is verified using NIST test suite. Besides that, the security of the proposed protocol is validated using the formal analysis tool, AVISPA. The correctness of the proposed protocol is demonstrated in a simulation model developed in JAVA TCP/IP socket. Next, the proposed protocol is implemented in RFID system including IAIK UHF Demo tag, TagSense Nano-UHF reader and back-end database. A GUI is created in a form of JAVA application to display data detected from tag. The proposed protocol implemented in real RFID system outperforms other related protocols because of 13.46 % shorter read time and write time consumed. The system is proved to be able to prevent tracking, DoS, and replay attacks from adversaries with moderate computation requirement compared to other related protocols

Mapping E-Auction Sharia Compliant Requirements to User Interface Design

Successful online auction platform depends on many factors. These factors amongst others include competent business models which can survive the world’s economic challenges, useful features to attract buyers and sellers, as well as intuitive and easy to learn interface to enhance user experience. The infamous eBay for example is considered the most successful e-auction platform which caters for various products, while artnet is reviewed as an e-auction dedicated to art with the highest revenue. eBay has the largest user base of all the online auction sites. Though it has some steep fees, it also has an easy-to-use interface that makes listing items simple. Although these e-auction platforms are attractive in so many ways, many Muslim consumers are increasingly aware of Islam as a way of life, and their responsibility to seek not just for halal products but also to use services which guarantee legitimacy of the transactions and conformant to Islamic business rules. This study presents Mazad, a Sharia compliant e-auction platform that offers processes and procedures that meet Sharia requirements, promotes benevolent behavior, as well as Islamic business ethics. In order to encourage Muslim and non-Muslim users alike to learn about specific e-auction features which are not available in conventional online auctions, this work emphasizes on the mapping of the sharia requirements of e-auctions and their implementation in Mazad by highlighting its user interface design. The user centered design principles as well as the “What You See Is What You Get” concept is used in designing Mazad, the sharia compliant e-auction platform.

Top-Down & Bottom-Up Approaches to Robot Design

This thesis presents a study of different engineering design methodologies and demonstrates their effectiveness and limitations in actual robot designs. Some of these methods were blended together with focus on providing an easily interpreted project design flow while implementing more bottom-up, or feedback, elements into the design methodology. Typically design methods are learned through experience, and design taught in academia aims to shape and formalize previous experience. Usually, inexperienced engineers are taught approaches resembling the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI) 2221 process. This method presented by the Association of German Engineers in 2006 is regarded as the general system design process. This introductory process is largely left open to interpretation, and it is often unclear when to implement feedback in the design process. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the roles of top-down and bottom-up processes, and how to integrate them in the robot design methodology. The proposed approach utilizes several components from existing design methods. There are three main conditional loops within the proposed approach. The first loop focuses on defining the problem in a top-down manner through logical decomposition, defining technical requirements, researching solutions, and conducting a trade study. These four steps are done iteratively until reaching the bottom of the system, the most primitive components. This is followed by a modeling and analysis loop. This works from the bottom to the top of the design in preparation for manufacturing and validation. The final loop of the proposed approach focuses on validation and verification. The testing and manufacturing involved allows for alterations to the design to fulfill the original technical requirements. These three loops occur until a proof of concept is achieved. The proposed method is intended to be applied iteratively. The first pass of the method results in a proof of concept, while the second results in a preproduction prototype, and the third in a production model. This assembly of design elements provides a project flow that leaves little to be interpreted and is suitable for small design teams while still flexible enough to be applied to diverse robotics projects. This thesis provides three case studies analyzing the application of the hybrid design approach mentioned above to robotic system development. The first study showcases a complicated system design with a small development team. The second case is of simpler construction with a smaller developer team. This simpler case better demonstrates the benefits of this hybrid approach in robotic system development due to the comparatively higher speed at which the system matures. The third case study shows how this same proposed approach can be applied to the design of a bottom-up controlled swarm. These case studies are for future designers to reference as examples of the hybrid design methodology in application, and what can happen when there is a lack of feedback in design. This proposed hybrid design method can encourage design practices in new engineers that translate better to industrial applications, and therefore encourage faster integration of new engineers into established design engineering practices

Web information systems: A study of maintenance, change and flexibility

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Information Systems (IS’s) have provided organisations with huge efficiency gains and benefits over the years; however an outstanding problem that is yet to be successfully tackled is that of the troublesome maintenance phase. Consuming vast resources and thwarting business progression in a competitive global market place, system maintenance has been recognised as one of the key areas where IS is failing organisations. Organisations are too often faced with the dilemma of either replacement or the continual upkeep of an unwieldy system. The ability for IS’s to be able to adapt to exogenous influences is even more acute today than at any time in the past. This is due to IS’s namely, Web Information Systems (WIS’s) increasingly and continually having to accommodate the needs of organisations to interconnect with a plethora of additional systems as well as supporting evolving business models. The richness of the interconnectivity, functionalities and services WIS’s now offer are shaping social, cultural and economic behaviour on a truly global scale, making the maintenance of such systems and evermore pertinent issue. The growth and proliferation of WIS’s shows no sign of abating which leads to the conclusion that what some have termed as the ‘maintenance iceberg’ should not be ignored. The quandary that commercial organisations face is typically driven by two key aspects; firstly, systems are built on the cultural premise of using fixed requirements, with not enough thought or attention being paid to systems abilities to deviate from these requirements. Secondly, systems do not generally cope well with adapting to unpredictable change arising from outside of the organisations environment. Over the recent past, different paradigms, approaches and methods have attempted to make software development more predictable, controllable and adaptable, however, the benefits of such measures in relation to the maintenance dilemma have been limited. The concept of flexible systems that are able to cope with such change in an efficient manner is currently an objective that few can claim to have realised successfully. The primary focus of the thesis was to examine WIS post-development change in order to empirically substantiate and understand the nature of the maintenance phase. This was done with the intention to determine exactly ‘where’ and ‘how’ flexibility could be targeted to address these changes. This study uses an emergent analytical approach to identify and catalogue the nature of change occurring within WIS maintenance. However, the research framework design underwent a significant revision as the initial results indicated that a greater emphasis and refocus was required to achieve the research objective. To study WIS’s in an appropriate and detailed context, a single case study was conducted in a web development software house. In total the case study approach was used to collect empirical evidence from four projects that investigated post-development change requests in order to identify areas of the system susceptible to change. The maintenance phases of three WIS projects were considered in-depth, resulting in the collection of over four hundred change requests. The fourth project served as a validation case. The results are presented and the findings are used to identify key trends and characteristics that depict WIS maintenance change. The analytical information derived from the change requests is consolidated and shown diagrammatically for the key areas of change using profile models developed in this thesis. Based on the results, the thesis concludes and contributes to the ongoing debate that there is a discernable difference when considering WIS maintenance change compared to that of traditional IS maintenance. The detailed characteristics displayed in the profile models are then used to map specific flexibility criteria that ultimately are required to facilitate change. This is achieved using the Flexibility Matrix of Change (FMoC) tool which was developed within the remit of this research. This tool is a qualitative measurement scheme that aligns WIS maintenance changes to a reciprocal flexibility attribute. Thus, the wider aim of this thesis is to also expand the awareness of flexibility and its importance as a key component of the WIS lifecycle

Design rules and guidelines for generic condition-based maintenance software's Graphic User Interface

The task of selecting and developing a method of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) for a Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) system, is investigated in this thesis. Efficiently and accurately communicating machinery health information extracted from Condition Monitoring (CM) equipment, to aid and assist plant and machinery maintenance decisions, is the crux of the problem being researched. Challenges facing this research include: the multitude of different CM techniques, developed for measuring different component and machinery condition parameters; the multitude of different methods of HCI; and the multitude of different ways of communicating machinery health conditions to CBM practitioners. Each challenge will be considered whilst pursuing the objective of identifying a generic set of design and development principles, applicable to the design and development of a CBM system's Human Machine Interface (HMI). [Continues.

Particularities of Verification Processes for Distributed Informatics Applications

This paper presents distributed informatics applications and characteristics of their development cycle. It defines the concept of verification and there are identified the differences from software testing. Particularities of the software testing and software verification processes are described. The verification steps and necessary conditions are presented and there are established influence factors of quality verification. Software optimality verification is analyzed and some metrics are defined for the verification process