Tomato-Harvesting-Robot Competition Towards Smart Agriculture

In agriculture, the aging and depopulation of farmers cause the shortages of farmers and manpower. Most of commercialized robots are industrial robots for factory automation, and most of robots for the first industry, agriculture, forestry and fisheries are still under developing. The reasons are cost-efficiency of the robotization, safety of the works using robots, difficulty of outdoor operations, and knowledge transfer problem from farmers to computer, etc. As one of solutions for the problems, robot technology into the agriculture is expected to contribute to the laborsaving, improvement of production, production line automation, and also the management toward smart-agriculture. We organize the Tomato-harvesting-robot competition to offer the research field and welcome researchers into agricultural robotics.The 2021 International Conference on Artificial Life and Robotics (ICAROB 2021), January 21-24, 2021, Higashi-Hiroshima (オンライン開催に変更

Fruit Grading based on Deep Learning and Active Vision System

This paper presents a low-cost computer vision-based solution to obtain the size of fruits without contact. It consists of a low-cost webcam and a cross-shaped laser beam rigidly assembled. The proposed approach acquires and processes the images in real-time. Due to the low computational cost of the proposed algorithm, a robust solution is obtained using a frame redundancy approach, which consists in processing several frames of the same scene and hence computing a robust estimation of the fruit size. The proposed solution is evaluated with different tropical fruits (e.g., banana, avocado, dragon fruit, mamey, papaya, and taxo). Obtained results show on mean average percentage error (MAPE) below 1.50% in the computed sizes

Space Biology Initiative. Trade Studies, volume 1

The six studies which are addressed are entitled: Design Modularity and Commonality; Modification of Existing Hardware (COTS) vs. New Hardware Build Cost Analysis; Automation Cost vs. Crew Utilization; Hardware Miniaturization versus Cost; Space Station Freedom/Spacelab Modules Compatibility vs. Cost; and Prototype Utilization in the Development of Space Hardware. The product of these six studies was intended to provide a knowledge base and methodology that enables equipment produced for the Space Biology Initiative program to meet specific design and functional requirements in the most efficient and cost effective form consistent with overall mission integration parameters. Each study promulgates rules of thumb, formulas, and matrices that serves has a handbook for the use and guidance of designers and engineers in design, development, and procurement of Space Biology Initiative (SBI) hardware and software

Growth State Map for Automatic Harvesting of Tomato Fruits

九州工業大学博士学位論文 学位記番号：生工博甲第406号 学位授与年月日：令和3年3月25日1. 序論|2. 栽培領域のモザイク画像の生成|3. トマト果実の検出及び生育状態の推定|4. 収穫しやすさの評価|5. 生育状態マップの導入|6. 結論九州工業大学令和2年

ATHENA Research Book, Volume 2

ATHENA European University is an association of nine higher education institutions with the mission of promoting excellence in research and innovation by enabling international cooperation. The acronym ATHENA stands for Association of Advanced Technologies in Higher Education. Partner institutions are from France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Slovenia: University of Orléans, University of Siegen, Hellenic Mediterranean University, Niccolò Cusano University, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Polytechnic Institute of Porto and University of Maribor. In 2022, two institutions joined the alliance: the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University from Poland and the University of Vigo from Spain. Also in 2022, an institution from Austria joined the alliance as an associate member: Carinthia University of Applied Sciences. This research book presents a selection of the research activities of ATHENA University's partners. It contains an overview of the research activities of individual members, a selection of the most important bibliographic works of members, peer-reviewed student theses, a descriptive list of ATHENA lectures and reports from individual working sections of the ATHENA project. The ATHENA Research Book provides a platform that encourages collaborative and interdisciplinary research projects by advanced and early career researchers

Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction towards E-shopping in Malaysia

Online shopping or e-shopping has changed the world of business and quite a few people have decided to work with these features. What their primary concerns precisely and the responses from the globalisation are the competency of incorporation while doing their businesses. E-shopping has also increased substantially in Malaysia in recent years. The rapid increase in the e-commerce industry in Malaysia has created the demand to emphasize on how to increase customer satisfaction while operating in the e-retailing environment. It is very important that customers are satisfied with the website, or else, they would not return. Therefore, a crucial fact to look into is that companies must ensure that their customers are satisfied with their purchases that are really essential from the ecommerce’s point of view. With is in mind, this study aimed at investigating customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia. A total of 400 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly selected from various public and private universities located within Klang valley area. Total 369 questionnaires were returned, out of which 341 questionnaires were found usable for further analysis. Finally, SEM was employed to test the hypotheses. This study found that customer satisfaction towards e-shopping in Malaysia is to a great extent influenced by ease of use, trust, design of the website, online security and e-service quality. Finally, recommendations and future study direction is provided. Keywords: E-shopping, Customer satisfaction, Trust, Online security, E-service quality, Malaysia

Recent Development of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems

Abstract: The use of renewable energies continues to increase. However, the energy obtained from renewable resources is variable over time. The amount of energy produced from the renewable energy sources (RES) over time depends on the meteorological conditions of the region chosen, the season, the relief, etc. So, variable power and nonguaranteed energy produced by renewable sources implies intermittence of the grid. The key lies in supply sources integrated to a hybrid system (HS)

PROCEEDINGS 5th PLATE Conference

The 5th international PLATE conference (Product Lifetimes and the Environment) addressed product lifetimes in the context of sustainability. The PLATE conference, which has been running since 2015, has successfully been able to establish a solid network of researchers around its core theme. The topic has come to the forefront of current (political, scientific & societal) debates due to its interconnectedness with a number of recent prominent movements, such as the circular economy, eco-design and collaborative consumption. For the 2023 edition of the conference, we encouraged researchers to propose how to extend, widen or critically re-construct thematic sessions for the PLATE conference, and the paper call was constructed based on these proposals. In this 5th PLATE conference, we had 171 paper presentations and 238 participants from 14 different countries. Beside of paper sessions we organized workshops and REPAIR exhibitions