5,625 research outputs found
Product Focused Freeform Fabrication Education
Presented in this paper is our experience of teaching freeform fabrication to students at
the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and to high school students and
teachers. The emphasis of the curriculum is exposing students to rapid product
development technologies with the goal of creating awareness to emerging career
opportunities in CAD/CAM. Starting from solid modeling, principles of freeform
fabrication, to applications of rapid prototyping and manufacturing in industry sponsored
product development projects, students can learn in-depth freeform fabrication
technologies. Interactive course content with hands-on experience for product
development is the key towards the success of the program.Mechanical Engineerin
Enterprise Experience into the Integration of Human-Centered Design and Kanban
he integration of Human-Centered Design (HCD) and Agile Software Development (ASD) promises the
development of competitive products comprising a good User Experience (UX). This study has investigated
the integration of HCD and Kanban with the aim to gain industrial experiences in a real world context. A
case study showed that requirements flow into the development process in a structured manner by adding a
design board. To this end, the transparency concerning recurring requirements increased. We contribute to
the body of knowledge of software development by providing practical insights into Human-Centered Agile
Development (HCAD). On one hand, it is shown that the integration of HCD and Kanban leads to a product
with a good UX and makes the development process more human-centered. On the other hand, we conclude
that a cross-functional collaboration speeds up product development.Ministerio de EconomĂa y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de EconomĂa y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED
Integrated Design and Implementation of Embedded Control Systems with Scilab
Embedded systems are playing an increasingly important role in control
engineering. Despite their popularity, embedded systems are generally subject
to resource constraints and it is therefore difficult to build complex control
systems on embedded platforms. Traditionally, the design and implementation of
control systems are often separated, which causes the development of embedded
control systems to be highly time-consuming and costly. To address these
problems, this paper presents a low-cost, reusable, reconfigurable platform
that enables integrated design and implementation of embedded control systems.
To minimize the cost, free and open source software packages such as Linux and
Scilab are used. Scilab is ported to the embedded ARM-Linux system. The drivers
for interfacing Scilab with several communication protocols including serial,
Ethernet, and Modbus are developed. Experiments are conducted to test the
developed embedded platform. The use of Scilab enables implementation of
complex control algorithms on embedded platforms. With the developed platform,
it is possible to perform all phases of the development cycle of embedded
control systems in a unified environment, thus facilitating the reduction of
development time and cost.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures; Open Access at
http://www.mdpi.org/sensors/papers/s8095501.pd
Identifying smart design attributes for Industry 4.0 customization using a clustering Genetic Algorithm
Industry 4.0 aims at achieving mass customization at a
mass production cost. A key component to realizing this is accurate
prediction of customer needs and wants, which is however a
challenging issue due to the lack of smart analytics tools. This
paper investigates this issue in depth and then develops a predictive
analytic framework for integrating cloud computing, big data
analysis, business informatics, communication technologies, and
digital industrial production systems. Computational intelligence
in the form of a cluster k-means approach is used to manage
relevant big data for feeding potential customer needs and wants
to smart designs for targeted productivity and customized mass
production. The identification of patterns from big data is achieved
with cluster k-means and with the selection of optimal attributes
using genetic algorithms. A car customization case study shows
how it may be applied and where to assign new clusters with
growing knowledge of customer needs and wants. This approach
offer a number of features suitable to smart design in realizing
Industry 4.0
TANGO: Transparent heterogeneous hardware Architecture deployment for eNergy Gain in Operation
The paper is concerned with the issue of how software systems actually use
Heterogeneous Parallel Architectures (HPAs), with the goal of optimizing power
consumption on these resources. It argues the need for novel methods and tools
to support software developers aiming to optimise power consumption resulting
from designing, developing, deploying and running software on HPAs, while
maintaining other quality aspects of software to adequate and agreed levels. To
do so, a reference architecture to support energy efficiency at application
construction, deployment, and operation is discussed, as well as its
implementation and evaluation plans.Comment: Part of the Program Transformation for Programmability in
Heterogeneous Architectures (PROHA) workshop, Barcelona, Spain, 12th March
2016, 7 pages, LaTeX, 3 PNG figure
Reconfigurability Function Deployment in Software Development
In the forthcoming highly dynamic and complex business environment high-speed and cost-effective development of software applications for targeting a precise, unique and momentary set of requirements (no more-no less) associated to a customized business case will bring sig-nificant benefits both for producers and users. This requires a life cycle change-oriented ap-proach in software development. In this respect, designing software with intrinsic evolutionary resources for reconfiguration represents the sound approach. A methodology for concurrent deployment of reconfigurability characteristics in software applications is introduced in this paper. Its potential is exemplified in a case study dealing with web-based software tools to support systematic product innovation projects.Reconfigurability, Software Development, Innovation, TRIZ, RAD
mGrid: A load-balanced distributed computing environment for the remote execution of the user-defined Matlab code
BACKGROUND: Matlab, a powerful and productive language that allows for rapid prototyping, modeling and simulation, is widely used in computational biology. Modeling and simulation of large biological systems often require more computational resources then are available on a single computer. Existing distributed computing environments like the Distributed Computing Toolbox, MatlabMPI, Matlab*G and others allow for the remote (and possibly parallel) execution of Matlab commands with varying support for features like an easy-to-use application programming interface, load-balanced utilization of resources, extensibility over the wide area network, and minimal system administration skill requirements. However, all of these environments require some level of access to participating machines to manually distribute the user-defined libraries that the remote call may invoke. RESULTS: mGrid augments the usual process distribution seen in other similar distributed systems by adding facilities for user code distribution. mGrid's client-side interface is an easy-to-use native Matlab toolbox that transparently executes user-defined code on remote machines (i.e. the user is unaware that the code is executing somewhere else). Run-time variables are automatically packed and distributed with the user-defined code and automated load-balancing of remote resources enables smooth concurrent execution. mGrid is an open source environment. Apart from the programming language itself, all other components are also open source, freely available tools: light-weight PHP scripts and the Apache web server. CONCLUSION: Transparent, load-balanced distribution of user-defined Matlab toolboxes and rapid prototyping of many simple parallel applications can now be done with a single easy-to-use Matlab command. Because mGrid utilizes only Matlab, light-weight PHP scripts and the Apache web server, installation and configuration are very simple. Moreover, the web-based infrastructure of mGrid allows for it to be easily extensible over the Internet
- …