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The Formula 1 World Championship Japanese Grand Prix (denoted SUZUKA F1) has been held in Suzuka city in the Mie Prefecture of Japan every year since 2009. This event gathers a large number of motor racing fans around the circuit. The total number of attendees over three days amounts to more than 200,000. Reducing the traffic congestion around expressway interchanges (ICs) and decreasing the departure times of return traffic during peak hours are of critical importance not only for short-term transportation demand management (TDM) measures but also for sustainable development ­management in Suzuka city as a tourism destination. The chapter starts a brief review of previous studies on the TDM measures to identify the current trends in both their methodological and problem-oriented approaches and then introduces our approach called the area marketing and management approach (AMMA) relating to an issue on how we can pursue the sustainable development in tourism destinations. Based on the concept of the AMMA, a set of the Smart TDM measures are proposed involving the development of the application software that will be used as an interactive communication tool. The validity of the repeated applications of the Smart TDM measures is empirically examined by assessing the most recent experiences at the SUZUKA F1 until 2017. The limitations to what the current Smart TDM measures can do are finally discussed to improve the smartness of these TDM measures to contribute to the sustainable area development.

Aims to introduce a self‐adjusting robotic painting process for automotive fuel containers, capable of predicting the required correction action to avoid further defect production.

Presents the development, testing and on‐site implementation of a robotic thermal machine vision system designed for evaluating coat thickness and coverage attributes. Computer simulation is used to study the effect of the painting robot's program on the film build‐up.

Effective technique for the real‐time detection of anti‐corrosive coat's pinholes and pop‐ups. A systematic study for this paint deposition scheme.

The presented detection system and the simulation program methodology could be further studied and modified for other painting applications.

Provides insights validated with on‐site results and systematic study for the automated or the manual adjustments of the robotic painting parameters.

Introduces a novel application of thermal imaging for evaluating coated surfaces. In addition, a first reported case study of automotive fuel container's painting process. Presents potential application to reduce the defects generation thus, improving quality, and reducing production cost.

Competitiveness is an important personality trait that has been studied in various disciplines and has been shown to predict critical work outcomes at the individual level. Despite this, the role of competitiveness in groups and teams has received scant attention amongst organizational researchers. Aiming to promote future research on the role of competitiveness as both an adaptive and maladaptive trait – particularly in the context of work – the authors review competitiveness and its effects on individual and team stress and Well-Being, giving special attention to the processes of cohesion and conflict and situational moderators. The authors illustrate a dynamic multilevel model of individual and team difference factors, competitive processes, and individual and team outcomes to highlight competitiveness as a consequential occupational stressor. Furthermore, the authors discuss the feedback loops that inform the different factors, highlight important avenues for future research, and offer practical solutions for managers to reduce unhealthy competition.

Combined forced and free laminar convective heat transfer on a vertical plate with a backward‐facing step has been studied numerically and experimentally, considering the effects of the interaction between the buoyancy and inertia forces which play a significant role in this phenomenon with the step‐geometry factor of d/L. The convective heat transfer behavior in connection with the reattachment and recirculation flows appearing in the step region has been investigated based on the numerical calculations and Mach‐Zehnder interferometer measurement under the wide range of the thermal condition. The behaviors of local Nusselt number Nu_L, velocity and temperature boundary layers and streamline fields in the recirculating region have been discussed for the various parameters of Grashof number Gr_L, Reynolds number Re_L and the geometry factor d/L. The characteristic behavior of this convection heat transfer, including the vortex flow mode in the recirculating region and the unstable fluctuating mode near the reattaching point appearing at the specific condition, has been clarified numerically and experimentally by introducing the generalized coupling parameter Gr_L/Re_L² and geometry factor d/L.

This paper aims to synthesize silver nanoparticles using atmospheric discharge plasma in contact with liquid at different pressure in reactor and to assess their catalytical properties for reducing 4-nanoparticles (NP).

The Ag colloidal NPs was rapidly synthesized as a result of non-equilibrium low-temperature plasma formation between an electrode and the surface of AgNO₃ solution for 5 min at different pressure in reactor. Synthesized Ag NPs were characterized with common analytical techniques. Ultraviolet–visible (UV) spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering, scanning microcopy analysis were used to study the formation and characteristics of silver nanoparticles.

The formation of silver colloidal solutions under plasma discharge at different pressure in reactor is characterized by the presence of surface resonance peak in the spectra. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images confirmed the formation of spherical particles having a size distribution in the range of 15-26 nm. The AgNPs solution showed excellent rapid catalytic activity for the complete degradation of toxic 4-nitrophenol (4-NPh) into non-toxic 4-aminophenol (4-APh) within 18 min.

Further studies are necessary for confirmation of the practical application, especially of deposition Ag NPs on TiO₂.

The method provides a simple and practical solution to improving the synthesis of colloidal solutions of Ag NPs for degradation of organic pollutants (4-NPh) in water and wasters water.

Atmospheric discharge plasma in contact with liquid at different pressure can be used as an effective technique for synthesis of nanomaterials with catalytic properties.

Optical fibre sensors are finding wide applications in biotechnology and medicine, as a European specialist explains.

The Asia‐Pacific Region is the fastest growing area of the world in economic terms. Unfortunately, it has also suffered from several environmental and occupational health problems largely as a result of this rapid growth without attendant safeguards. Highlights problems such as environmental pollution, those relating to sanitation, cigarette smoking, traffic accidents, poisoning from industrial and agricultural chemicals, noise, health of women workers and other psychosocial problems, and recent trends in the health education and environmental improvements. Concludes with a plea for more attention to and collaboration concerning a clean environment.

Printed circuit boards are scanned with a CCD linescan camera and a motorised table, under the control of a microcomputer. The camera signal is thresholded to produce a binary image of the track pattern, and this image is processed further in the microcomputer. The processing consists partly of comparisons against a stored master track pattern, and partly of an examination of the scanned track pattern alone to detect anomalies such as whiskers and broken tracks. The system will detect all defects so far presented to it, with an acceptable false alarm rate.

The purpose of this paper is to present a simple yet effective force control scheme for collaborative robots by addressing the problem of disturbance rejection in joint torque: inherent actuator flexibility and nonlinear friction.

In this paper, a joint torque controller with an extended state observer is used to decouple the joint actuators from the multi-rigid-body system of a constrained robot and compensate the motor friction. Moreover, to realize robot force control, the authors embed this controller into the impedance control framework.

Results have been given in simulations and experiments in which the proposed joint torque controller with an extended state observer can effectively estimate and compensate the total disturbance. The overall control framework is analytically proved to be stable, and further it is validated in experiments with a robot testbed.

With the proposed robot force controller, the robot is able to change its stiffness in real time and therefore take variable tasks without any accessories, such as the RCC or 6-DOF F/T sensor. In addition, programing by demonstration can be realized easily within the proposed framework, which makes the robot accessible to unprofessional users.

The main contribution of the presented work is the design of a model-free robot force controller with the ability to reject torque disturbances from robot-actuator coupling effect and motor friction, applicable for both constrained and unconstrained environments. Simulation and experiment results from a 7-DOF robot are given to show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed controller.