Failure Mode and Effect Analysis a Tool for Reliability Evaluation: Review

The purpose of safety designing is generally not on cost, but rather on saving life and nature, and consequently bargains just with specific risky system failure modes. High reliability levels are the consequence of good designing, scrupulousness and dependably never the aftereffect of re-dynamic failure management. Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a helpful technique analyzing engineering system reliability. The study focused on the use of FMEA technique to analyze the reliability of engineering equipment or components in selected areas such as: Wind Turbine component, Manufacturing Industries, Medical field and in evaluating the performances of Robots in different fields. The study showed the importance of FMEA as used widely in analyzing engineering equipment with regards to reliability

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Fourth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications

Proceedings of a conference held in Huntsville, Alabama, on November 15-16, 1988. The Fourth Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications brings together diverse technical and scientific work in order to help those who employ AI methods in space applications to identify common goals and to address issues of general interest in the AI community. Topics include the following: space applications of expert systems in fault diagnostics, in telemetry monitoring and data collection, in design and systems integration; and in planning and scheduling; knowledge representation, capture, verification, and management; robotics and vision; adaptive learning; and automatic programming

Advancing automation and robotics technology for the Space Station and for the US economy, volume 2

In response to Public Law 98-371, dated July 18, 1984, the NASA Advanced Technology Advisory Committee has studied automation and robotics for use in the Space Station. The Technical Report, Volume 2, provides background information on automation and robotics technologies and their potential and documents: the relevant aspects of Space Station design; representative examples of automation and robotics; applications; the state of the technology and advances needed; and considerations for technology transfer to U.S. industry and for space commercialization

Unified Behavior Framework for Reactive Robot Control in Real-Time Systems

Endeavors in mobile robotics focus on developing autonomous vehicles that operate in dynamic and uncertain environments. By reducing the need for human-in- the-loop control, unmanned vehicles are utilized to achieve tasks considered dull or dangerous by humans. Because unexpected latency can adversely affect the quality of an autonomous system\u27s operations, which in turn can affect lives and property in the real-world, their ability to detect and handle external events is paramount to providing safe and dependable operation. Behavior-based systems form the basis of autonomous control for many robots. This thesis presents the unified behavior framework, a new and novel approach which incorporates the critical ideas and concepts of the existing reactive controllers in an effort to simplify development without locking the system developer into using any single behavior system. The modular design of the framework is based on modern software engineering principles and only specifies a functional interface for components, leaving the implementation details to the developers. In addition to its use of industry standard techniques in the design of reactive controllers, the unified behavior framework guarantees the responsiveness of routines that are critical to the vehicle\u27s safe operation by allowing individual behaviors to be scheduled by a real-time process controller. The experiments in this thesis demonstrate the ability of the framework to: 1) interchange behavioral components during execution to generate various global behavior attributes; 2) apply genetic programming techniques to automate the discovery of effective structures for a domain that are up to 122 percent better than those crafted by an expert; and 3) leverage real-time scheduling technologies to guarantee the responsiveness of time critical routines regardless of the system\u27s computational load

A gentle transition from Java programming to Web Services using XML-RPC

Exposing students to leading edge vocational areas of relevance such as Web Services can be difficult. We show a lightweight approach by embedding a key component of Web Services within a Level 3 BSc module in Distributed Computing. We present a ready to use collection of lecture slides and student activities based on XML-RPC. In addition we show that this material addresses the central topics in the context of web services as identified by Draganova (2003)

Design and Development of Assistive Robots for Close Interaction with People with Disabilities

People with mobility and manipulation impairments wish to live and perform tasks as independently as possible; however, for many tasks, compensatory technology does not exist, to do so. Assistive robots have the potential to address this need. This work describes various aspects of the development of three novel assistive robots: the Personal Mobility and Manipulation Appliance (PerMMA), the Robotic Assisted Transfer Device (RATD), and the Mobility Enhancement Robotic Wheelchair (MEBot). PerMMA integrates mobility with advanced bi-manual manipulation to assist people with both upper and lower extremity impairments. The RATD is a wheelchair mounted robotic arm that can lift higher payloads and its primary aim is to assist caregivers of people who cannot independently transfer from their electric powered wheelchair to other surfaces such as a shower bench or toilet. MEBot is a wheeled robot that has highly reconfigurable kinematics, which allow it to negotiate challenging terrain, such as steep ramps, gravel, or stairs. A risk analysis was performed on all three robots which included a Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and a Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) to identify potential risks and inform strategies to mitigate them. Identified risks or PerMMA include dropping sharp or hot objects. Critical risks identified for RATD included tip over, crush hazard, and getting stranded mid-transfer, and risks for MEBot include getting stranded on obstacles and tip over. Lastly, several critical factors, such as early involvement of people with disabilities, to guide future assistive robot design are presented

The Rational Behavior Model: a multi-paradigm, tri-level software architecture for the control of autonomous vehicles

There is currently a very strong interest among researchers in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics in finding more effective means of linking high level symbolic computations relating to mission planning and control for autonomous vehicles to low level vehicle control software. The diversity exhibited by the many processes involved in such control has resulted in a number of proposals for a general software architecture intended to provide an efficient yet flexible framework for the organization and interaction of relevant software components. The Rational Behavior Model (RBM) has been developed with these requirements in mind and consists of three levels, called the Strategic, the Tactical, and the Execution levels, respectively. Each level reflects computations supporting the solution to the global control problem based on different abstraction mechanisms. The unique contribution of the RBM architecture is the idea of specifying different programming paradigms to realize each software level. Specifically, RBM uses rule-based programming for the Strategic level, thereby permitting field reconfiguration of missions by a mission specialist without reprogramming at lower levels. The Tactical level realizes vehicle behaviors as the methods of software objects programmed in an object-based language such as Ada. These behaviors are initiated by rule satisfaction at the Strategic level, thereby rationalizing their interaction. The Execution level is programmed in any imperative language capable of supporting efficient execution of real-time control of the underlying vehicle hardware.http://archive.org/details/therationalbehav1094544438Major, United States ArmyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Comparing Innovation Performance in the EU and the USA: Lessons from Three ICT Sub-Sectors

The objective of the study is to document the existence of innovation gaps between the EU and its main competitors in specific ICT sub-sectors – namely web services, industrial robotics and display technologies –and to explore the role of government policies in Europe’s future needs for innovation in information and communication technologies (ICT) through a comparison with the USA and Asian countries. Our analysis shows that rather than there being a simple innovation gap with the EU lagging behind the USA, a more nuanced picture emerges in which firms in different countries have strengths in different sub-sectors and in different parts of the value chain. A key lesson from the analysis of the three subsectors is the critical importance of higher education, particularly elite university research, and of local networks as generated by clusters. Governments can also encourage innovation through appropriate intellectual property and competition laws and, more generally, through the development of a business environment conducive to innovation. Finally, Governments can have a very important role through the funding of early-stage innovationJRC.J.3-Information Societ

Architectures for embedded multimodal sensor data fusion systems in the robotics : and airport traffic suveillance ; domain

Smaller autonomous robots and embedded sensor data fusion systems often suffer from limited computational and hardware resources. Many ‘Real Time’ algorithms for multi modal sensor data fusion cannot be executed on such systems, at least not in real time and sometimes not at all, because of the computational and energy resources needed, resulting from the architecture of the computational hardware used in these systems. Alternative hardware architectures for generic tracking algorithms could provide a solution to overcome some of these limitations. For tracking and self localization sequential Bayesian filters, in particular particle filters, have been shown to be able to handle a range of tracking problems that could not be solved with other algorithms. But particle filters have some serious disadvantages when executed on serial computational architectures used in most systems. The potential increase in performance for particle filters is huge as many of the computational steps can be done concurrently. A generic hardware solution for particle filters can relieve the central processing unit from the computational load associated with the tracking task. The general topic of this research are hardware-software architectures for multi modal sensor data fusion in embedded systems in particular tracking, with the goal to develop a high performance computational architecture for embedded applications in robotics and airport traffic surveillance domain. The primary concern of the research is therefore: The integration of domain specific concept support into hardware architectures for low level multi modal sensor data fusion, in particular embedded systems for tracking with Bayesian filters; and a distributed hardware-software tracking systems for airport traffic surveillance and control systems. Runway Incursions are occurrences at an aerodrome involving the incorrect presence of an aircraft, vehicle, or person on the protected area of a surface designated for the landing and take-off of aircraft. The growing traffic volume kept runway incursions on the NTSB’s ‘Most Wanted’ list for safety improvements for over a decade. Recent incidents show that problem is still existent. Technological responses that have been deployed in significant numbers are ASDE-X and A-SMGCS. Although these technical responses are a significant improvement and reduce the frequency of runway incursions, some runway incursion scenarios are not optimally covered by these systems, detection of runway incursion events is not as fast as desired, and they are too expensive for all but the biggest airports. Local, short range sensors could be a solution to provide the necessary affordable surveillance accuracy for runway incursion prevention. In this context the following objectives shall be reached. 1) Show the feasibility of runway incursion prevention systems based on localized surveillance. 2) Develop a design for a local runway incursion alerting system. 3) Realize a prototype of the system design using the developed tracking hardware.Kleinere autonome Roboter und eingebettete Sensordatenfusionssysteme haben oft mit stark begrenzter Rechenkapazität und eingeschränkten Hardwareressourcen zu kämpfen. Viele Echtzeitalgorithmen für die Fusion von multimodalen Sensordaten können, bedingt durch den hohen Bedarf an Rechenkapazität und Energie, auf solchen Systemen überhaupt nicht ausgeführt werden, oder zu mindesten nicht in Echtzeit. Der hohe Bedarf an Energie und Rechenkapazität hat seine Ursache darin, dass die Architektur der ausführenden Hardware und der ausgeführte Algorithmus nicht aufeinander abgestimmt sind. Dies betrifft auch Algorithmen zu Spurverfolgung. Mit Hilfe von alternativen Hardwarearchitekturen für die generische Ausführung solcher Algorithmen könnten sich einige der typischerweise vorliegenden Einschränkungen überwinden lassen. Eine Reihe von Aufgaben, die sich mit anderen Spurverfolgungsalgorithmen nicht lösen lassen, lassen sich mit dem Teilchenfilter, einem Algorithmus aus der Familie der Bayesschen Filter lösen. Bei der Ausführung auf traditionellen Architekturen haben Teilchenfilter gegenüber anderen Algorithmen einen signifikanten Nachteil, allerdings ist hier ein großer Leistungszuwachs durch die nebenläufige Ausführung vieler Rechenschritte möglich. Eine generische Hardwarearchitektur für Teilchenfilter könnte deshalb die oben genannten Systeme stark entlasten. Das allgemeine Thema dieses Forschungsvorhabens sind Hardware-Software-Architekturen für die multimodale Sensordatenfusion auf eingebetteten Systemen - speziell für Aufgaben der Spurverfolgung, mit dem Ziel eine leistungsfähige Architektur für die Berechnung entsprechender Algorithmen auf eingebetteten Systemen zu entwickeln, die für Anwendungen in der Robotik und Verkehrsüberwachung auf Flughäfen geeignet ist. Das Augenmerk des Forschungsvorhabens liegt dabei auf der Integration von vom Einsatzgebiet abhängigen Konzepten in die Architektur von Systemen zur Spurverfolgung mit Bayeschen Filtern, sowie auf verteilten Hardware-Software Spurverfolgungssystemen zur Überwachung und Führung des Rollverkehrs auf Flughäfen. Eine „Runway Incursion“ (RI) ist ein Vorfall auf einem Flugplatz, bei dem ein Fahrzeug oder eine Person sich unerlaubt in einem Abschnitt der Start- bzw. Landebahn befindet, der einem Verkehrsteilnehmer zur Benutzung zugewiesen wurde. Der wachsende Flugverkehr hat dafür gesorgt, das RIs seit über einem Jahrzehnt auf der „Most Wanted“-Liste des NTSB für Verbesserungen der Sicherheit stehen. Jüngere Vorfälle zeigen, dass das Problem noch nicht behoben ist. Technologische Maßnahmen die in nennenswerter Zahl eingesetzt wurden sind das ASDE-X und das A-SMGCS. Obwohl diese Maßnahmen eine deutliche Verbesserung darstellen und die Zahl der RIs deutlich reduzieren, gibt es einige RISituationen die von diesen Systemen nicht optimal abgedeckt werden. Außerdem detektieren sie RIs ist nicht so schnell wie erwünscht und sind - außer für die größten Flughäfen - zu teuer. Lokale Sensoren mit kurzer Reichweite könnten eine Lösung sein um die für die zuverlässige Erkennung von RIs notwendige Präzision bei der Überwachung des Rollverkehrs zu erreichen. Vor diesem Hintergrund sollen die folgenden Ziele erreicht werden. 1) Die Machbarkeit eines Runway Incursion Vermeidungssystems, das auf lokalen Sensoren basiert, zeigen. 2) Einen umsetzbaren Entwurf für ein solches System entwickeln. 3) Einen Prototypen des Systems realisieren, das die oben gennannte Hardware zur Spurverfolgung einsetzt