Application of a portable coordinate measuring machine onto automotive door panel for quality inspection activity

An experimental investigation was conducted to explore the feasibility of replacing the current inspection method by a portable coordinate measuring machine (CMM) for daily quality inspection in automotive industry. The experiment focusses on inspecting stamped body parts due to the significant number of inspection points that could be time consuming for inspection activities. Two inspection methods were performed, i.e. the application of checking fixture (CF) which is the current method and the second method was using a portable CMM. Both inspections were performed onto the same loose freeform surface of an outer door panel. Factors related to inspection duration, economical and data reliability were all compared to understand the practicality of replacing the current inspection method with a portable CMM. It was found that a portable CMM provide a significant shorter inspection duration, more economical and better data reliability but at the same time is unable to match the performance of conventional inspection onto freeform surface. The conclusion was made that a portable CMM alone is not sufficient to replace the current inspection method thus require further study

Common Promoter Elements in Odorant and Vomeronasal Receptor Genes

In mammals, odorants and pheromones are detected by hundreds of odorant receptors (ORs) and vomeronasal receptors (V1Rs and V2Rs) expressed by sensory neurons that are respectively located in the main olfactory epithelium and in the vomeronasal organ. Even though these two olfactory systems are functionally and anatomically separate, their sensory neurons show a common mechanism of receptor gene regulation: each neuron expresses a single receptor gene from a single allele. The mechanisms underlying OR and VR gene expression remain unclear. Here we investigated if OR and V1R genes share common sequences in their promoter regions

Rigorous and thorough bioinformatic analyses of olfactory receptor promoters confirm enrichment of O/E and homeodomain binding sites but reveal no new common motifs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mammalian olfactory receptors (ORs) are subject to a remarkable but poorly understood regime of transcriptional regulation, whereby individual olfactory neurons each express only one allele of a single member of the large OR gene family.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We performed a rigorous search for enriched sequence motifs in the largest dataset of OR promoter regions analyzed to date. We combined measures of cross-species conservation with databases of known transcription factor binding sites and <it>ab initio </it>motif-finding algorithms. We found strong enrichment of binding sites for the O/E family of transcription factors and for homeodomain factors, both already known to be involved in the transcriptional control of ORs, but did not identify any novel enriched sequences. We also found that TATA-boxes are present in at least a subset of OR promoters.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our rigorous approach provides a template for the analysis of the regulation of large gene families and demonstrates some of the difficulties and pitfalls of such analyses. Although currently available bioinformatics methods cannot detect all transcriptional regulatory elements, our thorough analysis of OR promoters shows that in the case of this gene family, experimental approaches have probably already identified all the binding factors common to large fractions of OR promoters.</p

Análise do impacto da implantação de sistemas ERP nas características organizacionais das empresas de construção civil

Uma das causas do insucesso do ERP nas empresas de construção civil é o fato da implantação desse sistema ser uma grande mudança organizacional. O objetivo desta pesquisa é identificar como a implementação do sistema ERP impacta na organização e nos processos gerencias das empresas de construção civil. Foi realizada uma survey em uma amostra de empresas construtoras brasileiras. Os dados foram coletados por meio de um questionário encaminhado por email a dois grupos de empresas: com e sem ERP implantado. A partir da análise estatística discriminante foi possível identificar as variáveis relacionadas ao nível de desenvolvimento dos processos de gestão e as características organizacionais que mais distinguem os dois grupos de empresas. Os resultados revelaram que a implantação do ERP impacta nas variáveis da maturidade organizacional nos seguintes aspectos: visão estratégica, relacionamento com cliente, gerenciamento de recursos humanos, gestão financeira e de TI

Component Specifications for Robotics Integration

. Robotics researchers have been unable to capitalize easily on existing software components to speed up their development e#orts and maximize their system&apos;s capabilities. A component-based approach for building the software for robotics systems can provide reuse and sharing abilities to the research community. The software engineering community has been studying reuse techniques for three decades. We present several results from those e#orts that are applicable to the robotics software integration problem. We describe how to specify a software componentsothat a potential user may understand its capabilities and facilitate its application to his or her system. At the National Institute of Standards and Technology,wehave developed a three-stage, component-speci#cation approach. We illustrate this approach for a component that is relevant to robotics. Keywords: software components, software reuse, frameworks, intelligent systems, software architectures 1. Robotic research and software ..

Expanding the Role of Finite State Machine Technology in Open Architecture Control

Modern machine control systems rely heavily on software to achieve system functionality. Until recently, control software’s primary purpose was to provide logic and sequencing of machine execution. With computer hardware now providing power and memory to spare, control software is broadening its horizon from a focus on execution control to multiple phases within a control systems lifetime, such as design, testing, and maintenance. This paper reviews an object-oriented Finite State Machine (FSM) framework developed at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that exploits this potential and expands the software utility and functionality of machine control logic. The public domain FSM framework handles additional control requirements such as reusability, extensibility, modularity, testing, diagnostic troubleshooting, reporting, and maintenance. Please send any comments or questions by e-mail to

AIM Application Interpreted Model AP Application Protocol

A joint effort between Boeing and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was undertaken for validating and evaluating STEP AP238 (STEP-NC) Conformance Class 1 (CC1) for 5-axis machining. STEP-NC is a new manufacturing standard to support “design anywhere, build anywhere, and support anywhere. ” The joint Boeing/NIST validation intended to prove that five-Axis AP-238 programs with tool center programming (TCP), as opposed to that of axis movement data, are portable. Current RS274 “G code ” part programs that use axis movement data are bound to a single CNC, are ineffective on different machine tools, and cannot be used for the exchange of information between process planning, work preparation, tooling, and other production processes. All of these obstacles add considerable time and cost to the production life cycle of a machine part. This paper discusses the joint Boeing/NIST STEP-NC TCP validation work. The major findings were that STEP-NC TCP geometrical data is portable across different 5-axis configuration CNCs. This came with a caveat, that although CNC programs can be “data-neutral”, they are not necessarily “processneutral”