Symmetrical Observability of Kinematic Parameters in Symmetrical Parallel Mechanisms

This article presents an application of symmetry group theory in kinematic identification of parallel mechanisms of nlegs legs -- Kinematic Identification implies the estimation of the actual geometrical parameters (as opposed to nominal ones) of a physical mechanism -- For a symmetric mechanism, KI requires configuring sets of leg positions with symmetrical observability – This article presents as main contributions: (i) a conjecture that allows mapping the symmetries of the mechanism into the active-joint workspace, (ii) a set of necessary conditions to express leg parameters in coordinate systems which allow symmetrical observability, and (iii) a procedure for exploiting symmetries in pose selection for kinematic identification of symmetrical parallel mechanisms -- For the kinematic identification itself, we adopt a divide-and-conquer (DC) identification protocol -discussed by us in another publication- in which each leg of the mechanism is independently identified by using the inverse calibration method -- In this article we emphasize how to exploit the symmetries existent in (nlegs − 1) legs of the parallel mechanism allowing to apply to other legs the symmetry-transformed sample protocol used for the kinematic identification of a reference leg -- The symmetrical observability of sets of leg parameters allows to reduce the costs of the pose selection procedure by a factor of (1/nlegs) compared to a complete DC procedure in which the poses of each leg are selected independently -- The pose selection is carried out only for the reference leg -- For the (nlegs−1) remaining legs the poses are dictated by symmetry operations performed onto the poses of the reference leg -- An application of the symmetrical observability is presented through the simulated kinematic identification of a 3RRR symmetrical parallel mechanismPolytechnic School of the University of São PauloSitio webIndicaciones, Associação Brasileira de Métodos Computacionais em Engenharia, International Association for Computational Mechanics, International Congress and Convention Association, Conheça o São Paulo é Tudo de Bom, Embratur, PETROBRA

Design, modelling, simulation and integration of cyber physical systems: Methods and applications

The main drivers for the development and evolution of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) are the reduction of development costs and time along with the enhancement of the designed products. The aim of this survey paper is to provide an overview of different types of system and the associated transition process from mechatronics to CPS and cloud-based (IoT) systems. It will further consider the requirement that methodologies for CPS-design should be part of a multi-disciplinary development process within which designers should focus not only on the separate physical and computational components, but also on their integration and interaction. Challenges related to CPS-design are therefore considered in the paper from the perspectives of the physical processes, computation and integration respectively. Illustrative case studies are selected from different system levels starting with the description of the overlaying concept of Cyber Physical Production Systems (CPPSs). The analysis and evaluation of the specific properties of a sub-system using a condition monitoring system, important for the maintenance purposes, is then given for a wind turbine

Investigating the influence of product perception and geometric features

Research in emotional design and Kansei Engineering has shown that aesthetics play a significant role in the appeal of a product. This paper contributes to establishing a methodology to identify the relationships between perceptions, aesthetic features, desire to own and background of consumers. Surveys were conducted with 71 participants to gather their perceptions of 11 vase concepts. Advanced statistical analyses, including mixed models, were applied to allow generalisation of the results beyond the data sample. Significant relations between the desire to own a product and how the product is perceived were found (the desire to own was found to be related to beautiful, expensive, elegant, exciting, feminine, common and dynamic vases), as well as between the perceptions and the parameters describing the form of the vases (a vase was perceived as beautiful if it had many curved lines and was simple and tall). An automated mixed model analysis was conducted and revealed that general rules can be found between aesthetic features, perceptions and ownership, which can apply across gender and culture. The findings include design rules that link aesthetic features with perceptions. These contribute to research as guidelines for design synthesis and can either be implemented via shape grammars or parametric modelling approaches. These rules are also interesting for 3D printing applications, especially important when the consumer is the designer. Some of these design rules are linked to the desire to own a product, they have implications for industry, and they offer guidelines to creating attractive products that people want to own

Miten markkinointiviestintään liittyvää asiakasymmärrystä luodaan ja hyödynnetään? Case: suomalainen teleoperaattori

Companies have an increasing amount of customer data available, but the challenge is to analyze it into actionable customer insights. Customer insight has become an important way to get competitive advantage when organizations strive to use it e.g. to build long-lasting customer relationships, targeted marketing communication and automated marketing processes. Data-driven marketing has also an important role in justifying the marketing actions to the rest of the organization. The purpose of this thesis is to shed light on the customer insight creation process and exploitation of the insights in marketing communication decision making. The aim is to resolve which factors either facilitate or impede the creation and exploitation of customer insights. Theoretical framework, which regards the customer insight generation as an organizational capability is developed based on existing literature. The empirical part of the study was conducted as a qualitative single case study and the data was collected through 10 semi-structured interviews. Case company is a Finnish Telco and the interviews were arranged with employees from its Customer Insight and Analysis unit and Marketing Communication unit. The informants were directors, middle-level chiefs and operative level employees of the both units. The main findings of the study are presented as five themes that affect to the generation and application of customer insights. These are organizational culture and organizational learning capabilities, organizational structure, linking of analytics and marcom processes, customer insight strategy and confrontation of insight specialists and marketing professionals. The first four have support in earlier researches, while the last one is a new emerging theme. According to the study, organization culture that does not fully support the pursuit of being data-driven and has weak organizational learning practices was recognized as one significant reason for the poor exploitation of customer insights in marketing communication. Regarding organizational structure, the physical distance between analytics and marketing communication unit, as well as the perceived approachability of analysts, affect to the exploiting of customer insights. The study suggests that the customer insight generation process has to be planned in a way that analytics process and marketing communication process are linked together. The study stresses the importance of linking the processes, since separate processes might prevent the exploitation of insights due to timing challenges. The study agrees with earlier researches of customer insight strategy in regard of three important issues. First, insight specialists have an important role in enabling the effective application of customer insights. Second, the customer insight initiatives should be tied to business objectives, and thirdly, dissemination and exploitation of customer insights should be tracked. Confrontation of the analytics and marketing communication units emerged as a new theme affecting the creation and application of customer insights. This study suggests that the relations of the two units can be problematic due to the different educational background. The cooperation between the units could be improved by developing common practices, rules and objectives

Multikombinacyjna strategia unikania przedwczesnej konwergencji w genetycznie generowanych rozmytych bazach wiedzy

A growing number of industrial fields is concerned by complex and multiobjective problems. For this kind of problems, optimal decision making is critical. Decision support systems using fuzzy logic are often used to deal with complex and large decision making problems. However the main drawback is the need of an expert to manually construct the knowledge base. The use of genetic algorithms proved to be an effective way to solve this problem. Genetic algorithms model the life evolution strategy using the Darwin theory. A main problem in genetic algorithms is the premature convergence, and the last enhancements in order to solve this problem include new multi-combinative reproduction techniques. There are two principal ways to perform multi-combinative reproduction within a genetic algorithm, namely the Multi-parent Recombination, Multiple Crossover on Multiple Parents (MCMP); and the Multiple Crossover Per Couple (MCPC). Both techniques try to take the most of the genetic information contained in the parents. This paper explores the possibility to decrease premature convergence in a real/binary like coded genetic algorithm (RBCGA) used in automatic generation of fuzzy knowledge bases (FKBs). The RBCGA uses several crossover mechanisms applied to the same couple of parents. The crossover are also combined in different ways creating a multiple offspring from the same parent genes. The large family concept and the variation of the crossovers should introduce diversity and variation in otherwise prematurely converged populations and hence, keeping the search process active.Rosnącej liczbie dziedzin, którymi zainteresowany jest przemysł, towarzyszą złożone zagadnienia wieloobiektowe. Dla takich zagadnień optymalne podejmowanie decyzji jest krytyczne. Często dla wsparcia procesu decyzyjnego w złożonych problemach stosuje się układy logiki rozmytej. Kłopotem pozostaje jednak potrzeba manualnego wygenerowania bazy wiedzy poprzez eksperta. Okazuje się, że pewnym rozwiązaniem tego problemu może być użycie algorytmów genetycznych. Algorytmy takie modelują zagadnienie ewolucyjne na podstawie teorii Darwina. Głównym problemem w algorytmach genetycznych jest przedwczesna konwergencja, której próby wyeliminowania oparto na strategii multikombinowanych technik reprodukcji. Występują zasadniczo dwie drogi realizacji techniki reprodukcji: Multiple Crossover on Multiple Parents (MCMP) oraz Multiple Crossover Per Couple (MCPC). Obydwie metody celują w wykorzystanie jak największej ilości informacji genetycznej od rodziców. W artykule zajęto się możliwością ograniczania przedwczesnej konwergencji w rzeczywistym/binarnym kodzie genetycznym (RBCGA) używanym w automatycznymgenerowaniu rozmytych baz wiedzy (FKBs). Algorytm RBCGA stosuje kilka mechanizmów krzyżowania genów w odniesieniu do tej samej pary rodziców. Mechanizmy te przeróżnie kombinowane pozwalają na wielokrotną kreację potomstwa od tej samej pary rodziców. Koncepcja dużej rodziny i różnicowanie krzyżowania powinny wprowadzić dywersyfikację nowogenerowanych pokoleń, które w przeciwnym razie szybko uległyby konwergencji. Zapobieżenie temu zjawisku poprzez strategię multikombinacyjną utrzymuje proces poszukiwania rozwiązania w stanie aktywnym

Kinematic identification of parallel mechanisms by a divide and conquer strategy

This paper presents a Divide and Conquer strategy to estimate the kinematic parameters of parallel symmetrical mechanisms. The Divide and Conquer kinematic identification is designed and performed independently for each leg of the mechanism. The estimation of the kinematic parameters is performed using the inverse calibration method. The identification poses are selected optimizing the observability of the kinematic parameters from a Jacobian identification matrix. With respect to traditional identification methods the main advantages of the proposed Divide and Conquer kinematic identification strategy are: (i) reduction of the kinematic identification computational costs, (ii) improvement of the numerical efficiency of the kinematic identification algorithm and, (iii) improvement of the kinematic identification results. The contributions of the paper are: (i) The formalization of the inverse calibration method as the Divide and Conquer strategy for the kinematic identification of parallel symmetrical mechanisms and, (ii) a new kinematic identification protocol based on the Divide and Conquer strategy. As an application of the proposed kinematic identification protocol the identification of a planar 5R symmetrical mechanism is simulated. The performance of the calibrated mechanism is evaluated by updating the kinematic model with the estimated parameters and developing simulations