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Assembly action recognition plays an important role in assembly process monitoring and human-robot collaborative assembly. Previous works overlook the interaction relationship between hands and operated objects and lack the modeling of subtle hand motions, which leads to a decline in accuracy for fine-grained action recognition. This paper aims to model the hand-object interactions and hand movements to realize high-accuracy assembly action recognition.

In this paper, a novel multi-stream hand-object interaction network (MHOINet) is proposed for assembly action recognition. To learn the hand-object interaction relationship in assembly sequence, an interaction modeling network (IMN) comprising both geometric and visual modeling is exploited in the interaction stream. The former captures the spatial location relation of hand and interacted parts/tools according to their detected bounding boxes, and the latter focuses on mining the visual context of hand and object at pixel level through a position attention model. To model the hand movements, a temporal enhancement module (TEM) with multiple convolution kernels is developed in the hand stream, which captures the temporal dependences of hand sequences in short and long ranges. Finally, assembly action prediction is accomplished by merging the outputs of different streams through a weighted score-level fusion. A robotic arm component assembly dataset is created to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

The method can achieve the recognition accuracy of 97.31% and 95.32% for coarse and fine assembly actions, which outperforms other comparative methods. Experiments on human-robot collaboration prove that our method can be applied to industrial production.

The author proposes a novel framework for assembly action recognition, which simultaneously leverages the features of hands, objects and hand-object interactions. The TEM enhances the representation of dynamics of hands and facilitates the recognition of assembly actions with various time spans. The IMN learns the semantic information from hand-object interactions, which is significant for distinguishing fine assembly actions.

Emergencies have become a growing concern for organizations, which require flexibility to respond to changes in emergencies based on their contingency, dynamic evolution rapidly and other characteristics. In order to enhance the ability of engineering project organizations to cope with emergencies, this study explores the mechanism of its influence on knowledge innovation under emergencies from the perspective of bricolage theory, and provides a new perspective for the traditional preplanning-based handling of emergencies by improvising to enhance the ability and results of improvisation.

Firstly, a structural equation model of the relationship between bricolage and knowledge innovation was constructed by introducing improvisational behavior and serendipity as mediating and moderating variables of the relationship between bricolage and knowledge innovation based on bricolage theory; secondly, drawing on previous well-established measurement scales about bricolage, improvisational behavior, knowledge innovation and serendipity, a questionnaire survey was conducted with different types of engineering project managers and technicians in Gansu Province as the research subjects, and 238 valid questionnaires were returned; finally, validation factor analysis and correlation analysis were performed, and the hypothesized relationships were verified using AMOS 24.0 software.

The results show that bricolage positively influences improvisational behavior; improvisational behavior positively influences knowledge innovation; bricolage positively influences knowledge innovation; bricolage influences knowledge innovation through the mediating role of improvisational behavior and serendipity positively moderates the impact of resource bricolage on knowledge innovation.

It reveals the mechanism of knowledge innovation of engineering project organizations in response to emergencies and the innovation mechanism of the episodic nature of emergency decision-making, extends the applicable context of bricolage theory and provides a new perspective for engineering project organizations in response to emergencies.

Traditional visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) systems are primarily based on the assumption that the environment is static, which makes them struggle with the interference caused by dynamic objects in complex industrial production environments. This paper aims to improve the stability of visual SLAM in complex dynamic environments through semantic segmentation and its optimization.

This paper proposes a real-time visual SLAM system for complex dynamic environments based on YOLOv5s semantic segmentation, named YLS-SLAM. The system combines semantic segmentation results and the boundary semantic enhancement algorithm. By recognizing and completing the semantic masks of dynamic objects from coarse to fine, it effectively eliminates the interference of dynamic feature points on the pose estimation and enhances the retention and extraction of prominent features in the background, thereby achieving stable operation of the system in complex dynamic environments.

Experiments on the Technische Universität München and Bonn data sets show that, under monocular and Red, Green, Blue - Depth modes, the localization accuracy of YLS-SLAM is significantly better than existing advanced dynamic SLAM methods, effectively improving the robustness of visual SLAM. Additionally, the authors also conducted tests using a monocular camera in a real industrial production environment, successfully validating its effectiveness and application potential in complex dynamic environment.

This paper combines semantic segmentation algorithms with boundary semantic enhancement algorithms to effectively achieve precise removal of dynamic objects and their edges, while ensuring the system's real-time performance, offering significant application value.

This study aims to examine the determinants of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations and consequences of FCPA enforcements.

This paper uses publicly available data from Compustat, I/B/E/S and Thomson Reuters databases, combined with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) cases, to extract insights on FCPA violations and enforcements using econometric approaches.

The main determinants of FCPA violations appear to be firm size, multinational structure, country corruption and Sarbanes-Oxley Act control weaknesses. Traditional misreporting risks (F-score and M-score) do not predict FCPA violations. This study discovers significant differences between FCPA violations by motivation, as in, sale generation, rent extraction or cost evasion. Bribes motivated by sale generation or rent extraction are partially driven by the extent of the firm’s global operations, whereas bribes motivated by cost evasion relate to internal influences. This study also finds that enforcement is more salient for criminal violations (DOJ enforcement), compared to civil violations (SEC enforcement).

This research provides new insights into the determinants of FCPA violations while underscoring the need for effective measures to combat bribery and promote ethical business practices. This research contributes to the ongoing efforts to curtail bribery, offering valuable insights into the characteristics of firms more likely to engage in bribery and contexts in which these activities occur. It provides critical implications for regulatory bodies, highlighting the differential responses of firms to varying types of enforcement, namely, criminal versus civil, as the authors observe greater decreases in internal control weaknesses following DOJ enforcement compared to SEC enforcement.

For enforcement agencies, the findings underscore the importance of rigorous criminal enforcement against FCPA violations, highlighting the improved control environments prompted by DOJ actions. Managers will find this research relevant, as it demonstrates that a firm’s entry into international markets substantially elevates the risk of its representatives engaging in bribery with foreign officials. In addition, the results are of interest to regulators, revealing that the underlying motivations driving a firm’s activities can significantly alter the factors to consider that might lead to an FCPA violation.

This paper is the original work of the authors and explores the determinants and consequences of FCPA violations and enforcement actions since 2002. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to explore bribe determinants by their motive and documents industry-wide benefits arising from criminal enforcement.

This study aims to evaluate the thermal performance of sodium alginate (SA) aerogel attached to nano SiO₂ and its radiative cooling effect on firefighting clothing without environmental pollution.

SA/SiO₂ aerogel with refractory heat insulation and enhanced radiative cooling performance was fabricated by freeze-drying method, which can be used in firefighting clothing. The microstructure, chemical composition, thermal stability, and thermal emissivity were analyzed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analyzer and infrared emissivity measurement instrument. The radiative cooling effect of aerogel was studied using thermal infrared imager and thermocouple.

When the addition of SiO₂ is 25% of SA, the prepared aerogel has excellent heat insulation and a high radiative cooling effect. Under a clear sky, the temperature of SA/SiO₂ aerogel is 9.4°C lower than that of pure SA aerogel and 22.1°C lower than that of the simulated environment. In addition, aerogel has more exceptional heat insulation effect than other common fabrics in the heat insulation performance test.

SA/SiO₂ aerogel has passive radiative cooling function, which can efficaciously economize global energy, and it is paramount to environment-friendly cooling.

This method could pave the way for high-performance cooling materials designed for firefighting clothing to keep maintain the wearing comfort of firefighters.

SA/SiO₂ aerogel used in firefighting clothing can release heat to the low-temperature outer space in the form of thermal radiation to achieve its own cooling purpose, without additional energy supply.

When handling small-sized shafts and holes, achieving optimal safety, size compatibility and shape adaptability using rigid grippers presents significant problems. Recent advancements have introduced soft end-effectors that offer enhanced safety and adaptability for gripping parts. However, these soft end-effectors often struggle to maintain the necessary gripping positional accuracy. The purpose of this paper is to design a soft end-effector specifically engineered to address these problems, combining precise gripping capabilities with improved safety, positional accuracy and adaptability to the size and shape of fragile, small-sized components.

A soft finger with multilayer decreasing drive air chambers is designed to achieve the finger bending increasing from the root to the tip of the finger to improve the flexibility of the fingertip. Additionally, a three-finger self-centering configuration is employed, coupled with an expandable structure to increase the gripping range. Furthermore, a theoretical mathematical model of the finger is established. The physical prototype is manufactured and subjected to experimental testing, including gripping tests on small-sized, fragile shaft holes, to validate its operational performance.

The grasping experiments confirm that the designed end-effector can maintain coaxial positioning and meet adaptability requirements when handling fragile components with small-sized shaft holes. Furthermore, the addition of expanding palm structure increases the gripping attitude and enriches the application scene and gripping space.

The design of multilayer decreasing air chamber structure to solve the problem of poor gripping stability and low positional accuracy of soft manipulator; the expandable palm design is introduced to enhance gripping space; and solved the problem of gripping accuracy in the assembly of fragile parts with small-size shafts and holes.