Human–robot interaction in industrial collaborative robotics: a literature review of the decade 2008–2017

ABSTRACT

Currently, a large number of industrial robots have been deployed to replace or assist humans to perform various repetitive and dangerous manufacturing tasks. However, based on current technological capabilities, such robotics field is rapidly evolving so that humans are not only sharing the same workspace with robots, but also are using robots as useful assistants. Consequently, due to this new type of emerging robotic systems, industrial collaborative robots or cobots, human and robot co-workers have been able to work side-by-side as collaborators to accomplish tasks in industrial environments. Therefore, new human–robot interaction systems have been developed for such systems to be able to utilize the capabilities of both humans and robots. Accordingly, this article presents a literature review of major recent works on human–robot interactions in industrial collaborative robots, conducted during the last decade (between 2008 and 2017). Additionally, the article proposes a tentative classification of the content of these works into several categories and sub-categories. Finally, this paper addresses some challenges of industrial collaborative robotics and explores future research issues.     

Design optimization of a solar tower power plant heliostat field by considering different heliostat shapes

The present study focuses on the optimization of solar tower power plant heliostat field by considering different heliostat shapes including rectangular, square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, and circular heliostat shapes. The optimization is carried out using an in-house developed code-based MATLAB program. The developed in-house code is validated first on a well-known PS10 Solar Thermal Power plant having rectangular heliostats shape and the resulting yearly unweighted heliostat field efficiency of about 64.43% could be obtained. The optimized PS10 heliostat field using different heliostat shapes showed that the circular and octagon heliostat shapes provide better efficiency with minimum land area. The yearly efficiency is increased from 69.65% for the rectangular heliostat shape to 70.96% and 71% for the octagon and circular shapes, respectively. In addition, the calculated field area (land area) is reduced for the case of circular and octagon heliostat shapes with a gain of about 11.10% and 10.93% (about 42.0436 × 10³ and 41.4036 × 10³ m²), respectively, in comparison with the PS10 field area.     

Water activities, osmotic and activity coefficients of the system (NH4)2SO4–K2SO4–H2O at the temperature 298.15 K

The mixed aqueous electrolyte system consisting of ammonium and potassium sulfates has been studied using the hygrometric method at the temperature 298.15 K. The water activities are measured at total ionic strength values ranging from 0.60 to 8.25 mol kg⁻¹ for different ionic strength fractions (y) of (NH₄)₂SO₄ with y=0.20, 0.50 and 0.80. The obtained data allow the deduction of osmotic coefficients. The experimental results are compared with the predictions of the Zdanovskii–Stokes–Robinson (ZSR), Kusik and Meissner (KM), Robinson and Stokes (RS), Lietzke and Stoughton (LS II), Reilly–Wood and Robinson (RWR) and Pitzer models. From these measurements, the new Pitzer mixing ionic parameters are determined and used to predict the solute activity coefficients in the mixture.     

A novel approach for generic home emergency management and remote monitoring

This paper presents a novel home emergency management system (HEMS) for managing home emergency situations. The proposed solution is a generic and based on normalized technologies. First, we have identified a set of requirements that a robust HEMS should satisfy (interoperability, security, mobility, etc). Then, we have opted for an extended finite‐state machine to detect and manage emergency situations. We also adopted WebRTC to enable communication in an interoperable manner. For securing our HEMS, we have used HTTPS, password, contextual role–based access control, and we have finally installed all the public servers into a protected area. The result obtained from the test‐bed demonstrates that the proposed HEMS fills all the listed requirements. Furthermore, it gives very interesting results in terms of round‐trip delay time and scalability.