Feasibility of Warehouse Drone Adoption and Implementation

While aerial delivery drones capture headlines, the pace of adoption of drones in warehouses has shown the greatest acceleration. Warehousing constitutes 30% of the cost of logistics in the US. The rise of e-commerce, greater customer service demands of retail stores, and a shortage of skilled labor have intensified competition for efficient warehouse operations. This takes place during an era of shortening technology life cycles. This paper integrates several theoretical perspectives on technology diffusion and adoption to propose a framework to inform supply chain decision-makers on when to invest in new robotics technology

Production’s digital transformation analysis using Industry 4.0 technologies

The article is devoted to a detailed analysis of the industry’s digital transformation processes based on the use of Industry 4.0 technologies. The theoretical analysis made it possible to establish that technological trends are often in the spotlight, however, the need for transformation is not posed by technology as such, but by deep shifts in the enterprise’s external environment caused by digitalization. The study of industry transformation global mechanisms allowed the article’s authors to identify eight key levers necessary for creating value due to the Industry 4.0 technologies implementation at a high-tech production. In conclusion, the authors consider the technological transformation process in Russia, as well as the main directions that can effectively accelerate it

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

Paths to Innovation in Supply Chains: The Landscape of Future Research

This chapter presents a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for supply chain and it is the result of an intensive work jointly performed involving a wide network of stakeholders from discrete manufacturing, process industry and logistics sector to put forward a vision to strengthen European Supply Chains for the next decade. The work is based on matching visions from literature and from experts with several iterations between desk research and workshops, focus groups and interviews. The result is a detailed analysis of the supply chain strategies identified as most relevant for the next years and definition of the related research and innovation topics as future developments and steps for the full implementation of the strategies, thus proposing innovative and cutting-edge actions to be implemented based on technological development and organisational change

Umjetna inteligencija i robotika kao pokretačka snaga modernog društva

In synergy with other technologies, the AI significantly accelerates the scientific and technological development of human society. New possibilities of the application of technological achievements are constantly opening up – in industry, healthcare and everyday life. AI-based robotics is the main driver of the present industrial revolution. Robots have already played an important role in production and changed the production economy over the past decade. New generations of smart robots, or smart technical systems in general, are turning to new applications, especially in service industries, medicine and home use. In the future, autonomous and mobile robots will be able to assist the elderly and immobile, help with household chores, act as caregivers and perform repetitive, tedious or dangerous jobs in nursing homes, hospitals, military environments, disaster sites and schools. The potential benefits are great, but they pose significant ethical challenges too. Our autonomy may be compromised and social interaction obstructed. Expanded use of robots can lead to reduced contact among people and possible restrictions on personal freedoms. Machines of these kinds shape the new world radically, leading to significant economic and cultural changes, creating both winners and losers on a global scale.U sinergiji s drugim tehnologijama AI značajno ubrzava znanstveni i tehnološki razvoj ljudskog društva. Neprestano se otvaraju nove mogućnosti primjene tehnoloških dostignuća, kako u industriji, zdravstvu tako i u svakodnevnom životu. Robotika temeljena na umjetnoj inteligenciji glavni je pokretač sadašnje industrijske revolucije. Roboti su već odigrali važnu ulogu u proizvodnji i promijenili proizvodnu ekonomiju tijekom posljednjih desetak godina. Nove generacije pametnih robota, ili općenito pametnih tehničkih sustava, okreću se novim primjenama, posebno u uslužnim djelatnostima, medicini i kućnoj uporabi. Autonomni i mobilni roboti u budućnosti će moći pomagati starijim i nepokretnim osobama, pomagati u kućanskim poslovima, djelovati kao njegovatelji i obavljati ponavljajuće, dosadne ili opasne poslove u staračkim domovima, bolnicama, vojnim okruženjima, mjestima katastrofe i školama. Potencijalne prednosti su velike, ali također predstavljaju značajne etičke izazove. Naša autonomija može biti ugrožena, a društvena interakcija opstruirana. Prošireno korištenje robota može dovesti do smanjenog kontakta među ljudima i mogućih ograničenja osobnih sloboda. Strojevi ove vrste oblikuju radikalno novi svijet, što dovodi do značajnih ekonomskih i kulturoloških promjena, stvarajući jednako pobjednike kao i gubitnike na globalnoj svjetskoj razini

A business planning framework for WiMAX applications

Mobile networking refers to wireless technologies which provide communications between devices. Applications for mobile networking have a broad scope as they can be applied to many situations in either industrial or commercial sectors. The challenge for firms is to better match market-induced variability to the organizational issues and systems necessary for technological innovation. This chapter develops a business planning framework for mobile networking applications. This framework recognises the fluidity of the situation when trying to anticipate and model emerging wireless applications. The business planning framework outlined in this chapter is a generic model which can be used by companies to assess the business case for applications utilizing mobile networking technologies

New Trends in Development of Services in the Modern Economy

The services sector strategic development unites a multitude of economic and managerial aspects and is one of the most important problems of economic management. Many researches devoted to this industry study are available. Most of them are performed in the traditional aspect of the voluminous calendar approach to strategic management, characteristic of the national scientific school. Such an approach seems archaic, forming false strategic benchmarks. The services sector is of special scientific interest in this context due to the fact that the social production structure to the services development model attraction in many countries suggests transition to postindustrial economy type where the services sector is a system-supporting sector of the economy. Actively influencing the economy, the services sector in the developed countries dominates in the GDP formation, primary capital accumulation, labor, households final consumption and, finally, citizens comfort of living. However, a clear understanding of the services sector as a hyper-sector permeating all spheres of human activity has not yet been fully developed, although interest in this issue continues to grow among many authors. Target of strategic management of the industry development setting requires substantive content and the services sector target value assessment

The Diffusion of Flexible Automation and Robots

This working paper is based on the authors' contributions to the Innovation Management Workshop held at IIASA in June 1981. Chapters 1-4 were written by Heinz-Dieter Haustein; chapter 5 was prepared by Harry Maier. The authors describe the role of flexible automation in increasing productivity, characterize flexible automation as a socioeconomic phenomenon, make a rough forecast of robot diffusion, and present some information on robots and national innovation policy using the GDR as an example

How do Consumers' Gender and Rational Thinking Affect the Acceptance of Entertainment Social Robots?

In recent years, the rapid ageing of the population, a longer life expectancy and elderly people's desire to live independently are social changes that put pressure on healthcare systems. This context is boosting the demand for companion and entertainment social robots on the market and, consequently, producers and distributors are interested in knowing how these social robots are accepted by consumers. Based on technology acceptance models, a parsimonious model is proposed to estimate the intention to use this new advanced social robot technology and, in addition, an analysis is performed to determine how consumers' gender and rational thinking condition the precedents of the intention to use. The results show that gender differences are more important than suggested by the literature. While women gave greater social influence and perceived enjoyment as the main motives for using a social robot, in contrast, men considered their perceived usefulness to be the principal reason and, as a differential argument, the ease of use. Regarding the reasoning system, the most significant differences occurred between heuristic individuals, who stated social influence as the main reason for using a robot, and the more rational consumers, who gave ease of use as a differential argument