Agronomy

Climate change is a serious threat to field crop production and food security. It has negative effects on food, water, and energy security due to change in weather patterns and extreme events such as floods, droughts, and heat waves, all of which reduce crop productivity. Over six chapters, this book presents a comprehensive picture of the importance of agronomy as it relates to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. With an emphasis on the goals of Zero Hunger and Climate Change, this volume examines sustainable agronomic practices to increase crop productivity and improve environmental health

Reliable, Built-in, High-Accuracy Force Sensing for Legged Robots

An approach for achieving reliable, built-in, high-accuracy force sensing for legged robots is presented, based on direct exploitation of the properties of a robot’s mechanical structure. The proposed methodology relies on taking account of force-sensing requirements at the robot design stage, with a view to embedding force-sensing capability within the mechanical structure of the robot itself. The test case is ROBOCLIMBER, a bulky, quadruped climbing and walking machine whose weighty legs enable it to carry out heavy-duty drilling operations. The paper shows that, with finite-element analysis of ROBOCLIMBER’s mechanical configuration during the design stage, candidate positions can be selected for the placement of force transducers to measure indirectly the contact forces between the feet and the ground. Force sensors are then installed at the theoretically best positions on the mechanical structure, and several experiments are carried out to calibrate all sensors within their operational range of interest. After calibration, the built-in sensors are subjected to experimental performance evaluation, and the final best sensor option is found. The built-in force-sensing capability thus implemented is subjected to its first test of usability when it is employed to compute the actual centre of gravity of ROBOCLIMBER. The method is shown to be useful for determining variation during a gait (due to the non-negligible weight of the legs). Afterwards the force sensors are shown to be useful for controlling foot-ground interaction, and several illustrative experiments confirm the high sensitivity, reliability and accuracy of the selected approach. Lastly, the built-in sensors are used to measure ground-reaction forces and to compute the zero-moment point for ROBOCLIMBER in real time, both while standing and while executing a dynamically balanced gait.An approach for achieving reliable, built-in, high-accuracy force sensing for legged robots is presented, based on direct exploitation of the properties of a robot’s mechanical structure. The proposed methodology relies on taking account of force-sensing requirements at the robot design stage, with a view to embedding force-sensing capability within the mechanical structure of the robot itself. The test case is ROBOCLIMBER, a bulky, quadruped climbing and walking machine whose weighty legs enable it to carry out heavy-duty drilling operations. The paper shows that, with finite-element analysis of ROBOCLIMBER’s mechanical configuration during the design stage, candidate positions can be selected for the placement of force transducers to measure indirectly the contact forces between the feet and the ground. Force sensors are then installed at the theoretically best positions on the mechanical structure, and several experiments are carried out to calibrate all sensors within their operational range of interest. After calibration, the built-in sensors are subjected to experimental performance evaluation, and the final best sensor option is found. The built-in force-sensing capability thus implemented is subjected to its first test of usability when it is employed to compute the actual centre of gravity of ROBOCLIMBER. The method is shown to be useful for determining variation during a gait (due to the non-negligible weight of the legs). Afterwards the force sensors are shown to be useful for controlling foot-ground interaction, and several illustrative experiments confirm the high sensitivity, reliability and accuracy of the selected approach. Lastly, the built-in sensors are used to measure ground-reaction forces and to compute the zero-moment point for ROBOCLIMBER in real time, both while standing and while executing a dynamically balanced gait

Proceedings of the 2018 Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME) International Congress

Published proceedings of the 2018 Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME) International Congress, hosted by York University, 27-30 May 2018

Time Localization of Abrupt Changes in Cutting Process using Hilbert Huang Transform

Cutting process is extremely dynamical process influenced by different phenomena such as chip formation, dynamical responses and condition of machining system elements. Different phenomena in cutting zone have signatures in different frequency bands in signal acquired during process monitoring. The time localization of signal’s frequency content is very important. An emerging technique for simultaneous analysis of the signal in time and frequency domain that can be used for time localization of frequency is Hilbert Huang Transform (HHT). It is based on empirical mode decomposition (EMD) of the signal into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) as simple oscillatory modes. IMFs obtained using EMD can be processed using Hilbert Transform and instantaneous frequency of the signal can be computed. This paper gives a methodology for time localization of cutting process stop during intermittent turning. Cutting process stop leads to abrupt changes in acquired signal correlated to certain frequency band. The frequency band related to abrupt changes is localized in time using HHT. The potentials and limitations of HHT application in machining process monitoring are shown

Space resources roundtable 8

The goal of the Space Resources Roundtable is to advance the prospects for the commercial development of space resources through information exchange among government, commercial, and academic organizations.sponsors, Colorado School of Mines, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Space Resources Roundtable, Inc.scientific organizing committee, Michael B. Duke ... [and others]Potential Toxicology of Lunar Dust / L.A. Taylor and J.T. James -- Advanced Ultra High Displacement Compressor Technology for Space Industrialization as an Economic Tool for Space Exploration / B.L. Fraser -- Planetary Mining: Planning the Dig and Digging the Plan / D S. Boucher -- An Integrated Lunar Manufacturing Plant. Building the Fleet in Support of Continuous Presence on Mars / G. Rodriguez and R. Westfall -- Lunar Physical Simulant: Evolution, Production and Use -- J. Richard, D.S. Boucher, and M.M. Battler

WP3 – Innovation in Agriculture and Forestry Sector for Energetic Sustainability

The papers published in this Special Issue “WP3—Innovation in Agriculture and Forestry Sector for Energetic Sustainability” bring together some of the latest research results in the field of biomass valorization and the process of energy production and climate change and other areas relevant to energetic sustainability [1–20]. Moreover, several works address the very important topic of evaluating the safety aspects for energy plant use [21–24]. Responses to our call generated the following statistics:• Submissions (21);• Publications (15);• Rejections (6);• Article types: research articles (13), reviews (2). Of the submitted papers, 15 have been successfully published as articles. Reviewing and selecting the papers for this Special Issue was very inspiring and rewarding. We also thank the editorial staff and reviewers for their efforts and help during the process. For better comprehension, the contributions to this Special Issue are divided into sections, as follows