Commercialisation of precision agriculture technologies in the macadamia industry

A prototype vision-based yield monitor has been developed for the macadamia industry. The system estimates yield for individual trees by detecting nuts and their harvested location. The technology was developed by the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture, University of Southern Queensland for the purpose of reducing labour and costs in varietal assessment trials where yield for individual trees are required to be measured to indicate tree performance. The project was commissioned by Horticulture Australia Limited

PENGEMBANGAN KOMPONEN MODULAR MENUJU PENERAPAN PRODUCT-SERVICE SYSTEM (PSS) DI PT. X

In this global market development, greater diversification is expected and thus coerces company to have competitive advantages. Quick production lead time and high variations of product become considerations of customers, but cost of competitive advantages is the trade-off for company. This problem also faced by PT. X as commercial vehicle construction manufacturer. PT. X is using Maketo- Order system to achieve high customization of product but requires long lead time, and leads into difficulty of company to fulfill demand in peak season. In other side, PT. X also planned to implement Product-Service System (PSS) as milestone to achieve green industry standardization. The suitable method to solve PT. X production problem is by developing modularities for parts and components, since modularity is able to reduce production lead time but increase flexibility. Components of commercial vehicle construction will be analyzed through Bill of Material and Process Chart analysis, and modules are constructed by using Modular Function Deployment. There is inventory analysis by using Periodical Review to calculate required safety stock and also cost and layout analysis as considerations to implement modularity. The result of this research is two standardized parts and four modules which can save up to 47.19% of lead time, and increase the production capacity become 2.4, but the holding cost is Rp 6,189,021.94

On the working memory of humans and great apes: Strikingly similar or remarkably different?

In this article we review publications relevant to addressing widely reported claims in both the academic and popular press that chimpanzees working memory (WM) is comparable to, if not exceeding, that of humans. WM is a complex multidimensional construct with strong parallels in humans to prefrontal cortex and cognitive development. These parallels occur in chimpanzees, but to a lesser degree. We review empirical evidence and conclude that the size of WM in chimpanzees is 2 ± 1 versus Miller''s famous 7 ± 2 in humans. Comparable differences occur in experiments on chimpanzees relating to strategic and attentional WM subsystems. Regardless of the domain, chimpanzee WM performance is comparable to that of humans around the age of 4 or 5. Next, we review evidence showing parallels among the evolution of WM capacity in hominins ancestral to Homo sapiens, the phylogenetic evolution of hominins leading to Homo sapiens, and evolution in the complexity of stone tool technology over this time period. © 2021 The Author(s

Automatic Romaine Heart Harvester

The Romaine Robotics Senior Design Team developed a romaine lettuce heart trimming system in partnership with a Salinas farm to address a growing labor shortage in the agricultural industry that is resulting in crops rotting in the field before they could be harvested. An automated trimmer can alleviate the most time consuming step in the cut-trim-bag harvesting process, increasing the yields of robotic cutters or the speed of existing laborer teams. Leveraging the Partner Farm’s existing trimmer architecture, which consists of a laborer loading lettuce into sprungloaded grippers that are rotated through vision and cutting systems by an indexer, the team redesigned geometry to improve the loading, gripping, and ejection stages of the system. Physical testing, hand calculations, and FEA were performed to understand acceptable grip strengths and cup design, and several wooden mockups were built to explore a new actuating linkage design for the indexer. The team manufactured, assembled, and performed verification testing on a full-size metal motorized prototype that can be incorporated with the Partner Farm’s existing cutting and vision systems. The prototype met all of the established requirements, and the farm has implemented the redesign onto their trimmer. Future work would include designing and implementing vision and cutting systems for the team’s metal prototype

Robot at factory lite - a step-by-step educational approach to the robot assembly

In a robotics scope, an excellent way to test and improve knowledge is through competitions. In other words, it is possible to follow the results in practice, compare them with the development of other teams and improve the current solutions. The Robot At Factory Lite proposal simulates an Industry 4.0 warehouse scenario, applying education through Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) methodology, where the participants have to work on a solution to overcome its challenges. Thus, this article presents an initial electromechanical proposal, which is the basis for developing robots for this competition. The presented main concepts aim to inform the possibilities of using the robot’s parts and components. Thus, an idea can be sketched in the participants’ minds, inspiring them to use their imagination and knowledge through the presentation of this model.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support through national funds FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CeDRI (UIDB/05757/2020 and UIDP/05757/2020), SusTEC (LA/P/0007/ 2021). The project that gave rise to these results received the support of a fellowship from ”la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434). The fellowship code is LCF/BQ/DI20/11780028.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Reference ontologies for interoperability across multiple assembly systems

The role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is crucial for future manufacturing organisations in order to support effective collaboration and information sharing. However, the contemporary ICT-based systems lack the required ability to adequately support interoperability across multiple domain systems. The capability of such ICT-based systems to interoperate is impeded by the semantic conflicts arising from loosely defined meanings and intents of the participating system concepts. The aim of this paper is to investigate the interoperability of assembly systems at multiple levels of concept specialisations using the concept of a formal reference ontology. Formal ontologies are providing a promising way to computationally capture the domain meanings which can subsequently provide a base to support interoperability across multiple systems and in our case multiple assembly systems. This paper takes the example of manufacturing bill of materials concept and three different domain-specific interpretations to explore and demonstrate the potential of formal reference ontologies to support interoperability

EU Cohesion policy 2007-13 and the implications for Spain : who gets what, when and how?

The recent negotiation of the EU budget and the associated reform of EU Cohesion policy have had major policy implications for Spain, the country in receipt of most Cohesion policy support in the current programming period (2000-06). EU enlargement, combined with relatively rapid growth in Spain, impacted on the eligibility of Spanish regions for Cohesion support while also taking the country as a whole beyond the eligibility threshold for the Cohesion Fund. As a result, based on the original Commission budget proposals of February 2004, Spain was facing a reduced Cohesion policy budget of at least a half (to below €30 billion). This paper first reviews the budget negotiations from a Spanish (Cohesion policy) perspective, identifying the key negotiating goals and the extent to which they were achieved. It then looks at the outcome of the negotiations for Spain, initially at the national level and then in the regions. It highlights the significant differential impacts of the cutbacks in Cohesion policy allocations at the regional level and the pressures on the Spanish government to modulate the regional impact of the budgetary changes. Having considered the direct funding implications of the new Cohesion policy, the second half of the paper is concerned with the regulatory, institutional and economic impacts of the new policy regime. Many of the reform proposals fit with Spanish priorities, not least the new rationale for Cohesion policy (with its stress on the Lisbon and Gothenburg agendas) and the new policy architecture (with all regions eligible for some form of support and with a related shift from a geographic to more of a thematic focus). The retention of the key Structural Funds principles has also been welcomed in Spain, unsurprising given the wealth of experience and expertise built up over three (high-spending) programming cycles. As in most Member States, the main regulatory concern relates to the extent to which a more simplified and devolved approach to Funds' implementation will be achieved in practice. As regards policy and institutional impacts, the paper brings together regional views on the new budgetary and regulatory frameworks and reviews how the new regulations are being implemented in practice. A discussion of the developing National Strategic Reference Framework and the related Operational Programmes makes clear that the strong emphasis on the Lisbon agenda is not viewed as a constraint in Spain; rather, it is felt to fit well with recent Spanish developments and goals. Finally, the paper considers the economic implications of the reductions in Cohesion policy support. On the basis of evaluation studies, it highlights the positive impact the Funds have had in the past and the potentially quite varied regional impacts the reductions in funding may have in the future

The hArtes Tool Chain

This chapter describes the different design steps needed to go from legacy code to a transformed application that can be efficiently mapped on the hArtes platform