Industry 4.0: A Special Section in IEEE Access

Industry 4.0 can be said to be the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. Originally, the term ???Industrie 4.0??? is from a project in the high-tech strategy of the German government, which hope to promote the computerization of manufacturing. Usually involves terms like cyber-physical systems, Internet of things, amd cloud computing. For now, Industry 4.0 becomes an emerging buzzword that is gaining significant interest among all stakeholders of the global industry-related R&D market from academia to international companies. It is a new business model attracting much interest, yet the definitions are not very matured and is an amazing melting pot of disruptive technologies. No doubt, to maximize the impact of Industry 4.0, researchers from different fields and industry have to work together applying the new technologies in practice. On the top of the wave, it is timely to analyze the cross section who can benefit from the novel achievements of Industry 4.0

Earthmoving construction automation with military applications: Past, present and future

© ISARC 2018 - 35th International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction and International AEC/FM Hackathon: The Future of Building Things. All rights reserved. Amongst increasing innovations in frontier engineering sciences, the advancements in Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) has brought about a new horizon in construction applications. There is evidence of the increasing interest in RAS technologies in the civil construction sector being reflected in construction efforts of many military forces. In particular, Army or ground-based forces are frequently called upon to conduct construction tasks as part of military operations, tasks which could be partially or fully aided by the employment of RAS technologies. Along with recent advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) and cyber-physical system infrastructure, it is essential to examine the current maturity, technical feasibility, and affordability, as well as the challenges and future directions of the adoption and application of RAS to military construction. This paper presents a comprehensive survey and provides a contemporary and industry-independent overview on the state-of-the-art of earthmoving construction automation used in defence, spanning current world’s best practice through to that which is predicted over the coming years

Volumetric Techniques for Product Routing and Loading Optimisation in Industry 4.0: A Review

Industry 4.0 has become a crucial part in the majority of processes, components, and related modelling, as well as predictive tools that allow a more efficient, automated and sustainable approach to industry. The availability of large quantities of data, and the advances in IoT, AI, and data-driven frameworks, have led to an enhanced data gathering, assessment, and extraction of actionable information, resulting in a better decision-making process. Product picking and its subsequent packing is an important area, and has drawn increasing attention for the research community. However, depending of the context, some of the related approaches tend to be either highly mathematical, or applied to a specific context. This article aims to provide a survey on the main methods, techniques, and frameworks relevant to product packing and to highlight the main properties and features that should be further investigated to ensure a more efficient and optimised approach