Search results

Legged robots are inevitably to interact with the environment while they are moving. This paper aims to properly handle these interactions. It works to actively control the joint torques of a hydraulic-actuated leg prototype and achieve compliant motion of the leg.

This work focuses on the modelling and controlling of a hydraulic-actuated robot leg prototype. First, the design and kinematics of the leg prototype is introduced. Then the linearlized model for the hydraulic actuator is built, and a model-based leg joint torque controller is presented. Furthermore, the virtual model controller is implemented on the prototype leg to achieve active compliance of the leg. Effectiveness of the controllers are validated through the experiments on the physical platform as well as the results from simulations.

The hydraulic joint torque controller presented in this paper shows good torque tracking performance. And the actively compliant leg successfully emulates the performance of virtual passive components under dynamic situations.

The main contribution of this paper is that it proposed a model-based active compliance controller for the hydraulic-actuated robot leg. It will be helpful for those robots that aim to achieve versatile and safe motions.

Due to the rapid urbanization in China, the living environment in urban areas improves considerably, while that in rural settlements does not improve remarkably, or even worsens. The purpose of the research is to propose an organizational approach to the improvement of the living environment in the poverty-stricken rural settlements and an architectural design pattern under a variety of requirements in the context of China’s rapid urbanization and socio-economic development in the redevelopment of rural settlements in Yongsheng Village, Lizhuang Town, Yibin City of Sichuan Province in Southwest China. In this redevelopment project, the architects, as the important third party, are not just architects in the traditional sense in that they are involved in the organizational process and architectural design throughout the whole project. The redevelopment project has been completed, and is aimed at providing a scientific redevelopment model and a design method for other rural residents by guiding them in the improvement of their living environment under a variety of restrictions.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) competitions are a beneficial approach to enhance BIM education, offering students practical experience in BIM application, including mastering workflows and technical tools. However, research exploring the individual perceptions influencing participation intentions and behaviors in BIM competitions is limited. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the factors affecting university students' behavioral intention and behavior in BIM competitions, providing theoretical support for BIM competitions and educational reform.

This study employs the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) framework to analyze the factors influencing BIM competition participation among 970 Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) university students.

The results of the study show that social influence, attitude, and self-efficacy play critical roles in shaping students' intentions to participate in BIM competitions. Furthermore, self-efficacy, facilitating conditions, and behavioral intention significantly influence students' actual engagement in such competitions. Surprisingly, effort expectancy negatively influences intentions, as less challenging tasks can lead students to perceive their participation as less impactful on their skills and learning, reducing their behavioral intention to participate.

This research provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of BIM competitions in enhancing BIM education for AEC students. Extending the UTAUT model to include self-efficacy and attitude, provides a novel perspective for understanding students' intentions and behaviors regarding BIM competitions. The study’s theoretical support proposes incorporating BIM competitions to augment BIM teaching methods and offers suggestions for advancing the efficacy of students' involvement in BIM competitions within higher education, thus contributing to educational reform in the AEC sector.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method that can calculate the transportation infrastructure network service capacity enhancement given by planned transportation infrastructure projects construction. Managers can sequence projects more rationally to maximize the construction effectiveness of infrastructure investments.

This paper designed a computational network simulation software to generate topological networks based on established rules. Based on the topological networks, the software simulated the movement path of users and calculated the average travel time. This software allows the adjustment of parameters to suit different research objectives. The average travel time is used as an evaluation index to determine the most appropriate construction sequence.

In this paper, the transportation infrastructure network of Sichuan Province in China was used to demonstrate this software. The average travel time of the existing transportation network in Sichuan Province was calculated as 211 min using this software. The high-speed railways from Leshan to Xichang and from Xichang to Yibin had the greatest influence on shortening the average travel time. This paper also measured the changes in the average travel time under two strategies: shortening the maximum and minimum priorities. All the transportation network optimisation plans for Sichuan Province will be somewhere between these two strategies.

The contribution of this research are three aspects: First, a complex network analysis method that can take into account the differences of node elements is proposed. Second, it provides an effective tool for decision makers to plan transportation infrastructure construction. Third, the construction sequence of transportation infrastructure development plan can effect the infrastructure investment effectiveness.

Tourism via virtual reality (VR) technology has become an interesting option for consumers to “travel.” The best approaches to optimizing the VR tourism environment, improving the interactive experience of tourists and encouraging tourists to adopt VR are not yet fully understood. This study explores the willingness of tourists to adopt VR tourism from the dual aspects, richness and dynamics, of virtual social cues.

To examine the effects of richness (multiple vs. few cues) and dynamic (changeable vs. static cues) on consumers' willingness to adopt VR tourism, three virtual tourism scenes were designed and presented by head-mounted displays. The data were collected for participants in the VR laboratory and tested by ANOVA and partial least squares–structural equation modeling.

Virtual social cues can generate mental imagery through interactivity, vividness and parasocial interactions, thus increasing the consumer's likelihood of adopting VR tourism. It was also found that imagination moderates mental imagery and adoption intention. When the consumer's imagination is stronger, their mental imagery stimulates a stronger willingness to adopt VR tourism.

The authors innovatively utilize concepts of parasocial interaction and mental imagery and discuss the various influences and mediation mechanisms of social cue characteristics on consumers' adoption of VR tourism. The conclusions may provide new insights for VR tourism managers and tourism scholars.

It is very indispensable for the various control centers of multi-transmission system owners (TSOs) grids to coordinate their reactive power optimization (RPO) efforts. However, such coordinated equilibrium point is comparatively hard to achieve unless one TSO control center could obtain all grids’ information in detail, which may lead to confidential issue and heavy communicating load. The purpose of this paper is to propose a solution to optimizing the reactive power control efforts among multi-TSOs grids with a mathematic interconnection model and reasonable communication cost.

Based on the interconnected power network equation, the stability-related optimum reactive power injection and the power-loss-related optimum reactive power injection were derived, respectively. Furthermore, according to the decomposition-and-coordination-based computing methodology, a coordinated RPO model for interconnected TSOs was designed, taking into consideration both the static voltage stability and economy.

The extreme values for the indicator L of power grid voltage stability and active power loss function were found and proved to be minimums. According to these extreme values, an expression for the reactive power injection at interconnected nodes between TSOs grids was obtained, and a coordinated strategy of RPO was established, which could take the static voltage stability and economy into consideration without confidential concern.

The existence of minimum values for indicator L of voltage stability and power loss was demonstrated, respectively. And the method presented in this paper can ensure the safety of information among different TSO grids, i.e. avoiding confidential issues. In particular, the coordinated control method can be implemented on the local power grid without knowing all of the parameters of its interconnection.

This research attempts to present a solid transportation problem (STP) mechanism in uncertain and indeterminate contexts, allowing decision makers to select their acceptance, indeterminacy and untruth levels.

Due to the lack of reliable information, changeable economic circumstances, uncontrolled factors and especially variable conditions of available resources to adapt to the real situations, the authors are faced with a kind of uncertainty and indeterminacy in constraints and the nature of the parameters of STP. Therefore, an approach based on neutrosophic logic is offered to make it more applicable to real-world circumstances. In this study, the triangular neutrosophic numbers (TNNs) have been utilized to represent demand, transportation capacity, accessibility and cost. Then, the neutrosophic STP was converted into an interval programming problem with the help of the variation degree concept. Then, two simple linear programming models were extracted to obtain the lower and upper bounds of the optimal solution.

The results reveal that the new model is not complicated but more flexible and more relevant to real-world issues. In addition, it is evident that the suggested algorithm is effective and allows decision makers to specify their acceptance, indeterminacy and falsehood thresholds.

Under the transportation literature, there are several solutions for TP and STP in crisp, fuzzy set (FS) and intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) conditions. However, the STP has never been explored in connection with neutrosophic sets to the best of the authors’ knowledge. So, this work tries to fill this gap by coming up with a new way to solve this model using NSs.

Digital economic innovation is associated with risks. The lack of a platform's profitability weakens the operation's ability to sustain innovators and increases the possibility of the business' termination. Relevant data demonstrate a significant upward trend in the exit of Chinese innovators of the digital economy. The study aims to clarify the role of an effective government and effective market in the prevention and control of the withdrawal of innovators.

Based on balanced panel data of 31 provinces and cities from 2010 to 2018, this study uses the individual fixed effect model to study the impact of the marketization level, the market's scale and government interventions on the withdrawal of innovators. Simultaneously, based on the spatial econometric model, this study examines the spatial spillover effect of the withdrawal of innovators.

Results indicate that government interventions have an inhibiting effect on the withdrawal of innovators. Moreover, there was a positive “U”-shaped nonlinear relationship between the marketization level and the withdrawal of innovators, and an inverse “U”-shaped nonlinear relationship between the market size and the withdrawal of innovators.

The paper first studies the relationship between the exit of innovators and government intervention, marketization level and field scale; takes the lead in the research on the role of the government and effective market in the prevention and control of the exit of innovators from the perspective of the exit of innovators and puts forward policy suggestions to promote the sustainable and healthy development of fintech innovation in China from the market scale and other aspects.

The main purpose of this paper is to calculate the analytical solution or a closed-form solution for the temperature distribution in the heterogeneous casting-mould system.

First, the authors formulate and analyze the mathematical formulation of heat conduction equation in the heterogeneous casting-mould system, with an arbitrary assumption of the ideal contact at the cast-mould contact point. Then, He-Laplace method, based on variational iteration method (VIM), Laplace transform and homotopy perturbation method (HPM), is used to elaborate the analytical solution of this system. The main focus of He-Laplace method is to find the Lagrange multiplier with an easy approach which enables the implementation of HPM very smoothly and provides the series solution very close to the exact solution.

An example is considered to show that He-Laplace method provides the efficient results for calculating the temperature distribution in the casting-mould heterogeneous system. Graphical representation and error distribution represents that He-Laplace method is very simple to implement and effective for casting-mould heterogeneous system.

The work in this paper is original and advanced. Specially, calculation of Lagrange multiplier for casting-mould system has not been reported in the literature for this work.

The study research aims to examine the effects of supply chain management practices on risk mitigating (RM) by studying the correlation between social ties, institutional support, interagency cooperation and external flexibility in public healthcare sectors. Moreover, this research examines the impact of RM on supplier trust, and also the authors examine the relationship among supplier trust and logistics performance.

The authors used a structural equation model (SEM) based on 539 quantitative data from Ethiopian healthcare organizations. The model included control variables like company size and position to understand better how employees perceive risk mitigation.

The study's findings indicate that interagency collaboration and external flexibility positively affects RM. On the other hand, RM positively impacts supplier trust and also the supplier trust has a positive effects on performance dimensions. This study also shows that RM has not positively impacting institutional support and social ties.

The study investigation may help the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare service SC agencies and other stakeholders better understand the effects of supply chain management practices on RM and obtain information on progress made thus far.

This research helps managers and their organizations to manage the risk associated with their organizations. Though, this study focuses on Ethiopian healthcare SCM. The authors expect the findings might apply to other countries organizations with comparable demographic or SCM features.