To schedule a Reconfigurable Manufacturing Cell (RMC), reconfiguration and setting decisions should be made first. Those decisions, together with characteristics of production orders, affect attainable performance of a system. So an integrative approach is required considering all decisions and characteristics rather than dealing with each of them separately. Pallet-fixture allocation, as a decision problem in setting, which determines the number of pallets to be equipped with each fixture type to produce different types of products, has rarely been investigated. In this study, several pallet-fixture allocation rules are proposed including both simple and novel ones. Then system performance is investigated through various combinations of setting and scheduling decisions (rules) for given system configurations and production orders, via simulation. The result shows that one of proposed pallet-fixture allocation rules which considers both configuration and order characteristic outperforms the others, justifying the necessity of an integrative approach in the RMC operation

The biggest factors that lower the machining accuracy are thermal deformation and chatter vibration. In this article, we introduce the study case of technology that can automatically compensate the errors of these factors of a machine during processing on the machine tool"s CNC(Computerized Numerical Controller) in real time. This study is related to the detection and compensation of thermal deformation and chatter vibration that can compensate for faster and produce processed goods with more precision by autonomous compensation. In addition, this study is related to the active control of vibration during machining, monitoring of cutting force and auto recognition of machining axes origin. Thus, we attempt to introduce the related contents of the development we have made in this article.

Disruptions in manufacturing systems caused by system changes and disturbances such as the tool wear, machine breakdown, malfunction of transporter, and so on, reduce the productivity and the increase of downtime and manufacturing cost. In order to cope with these challenges, a new method to build an intelligent manufacturing system with biological principles, namely an ant colony inspired manufacturing system, is presented. In the developed system, the manufacturing system is considered as a swarm of cognitive agents where work-pieces, machines and transporters are controlled by the corresponding cognitive agent. The system reacts to disturbances autonomously based on the algorithm of each autonomous entity or the cooperation with them. To develop the ant colony inspired manufacturing system, the disturbances happened in the machining shop of a transmission case were analyzed to classify them and to find out the corresponding management methods. The system architecture with the autonomous characteristics was generated with the cognitive agent and the ant colony technology. A test bed was implemented to prove the functionality of the developed system.

This paper contains the optimized M2M technology, and the information of production resource of 4M, which understanding the roles and functions of M2M Device, and the explanation of its effectiveness, and the information of optimized M2M Device in IT convergence point of view.
In addition, this content also points out the optimized M2M Device, analyzes and collects various type of management information which emphasizes the need for a common platform"s were Middleware, and Auto-Configuration, WebLine Monitoring, WebService through the functionality of an integrated management information supports the productions by digitizing the information with standardized data for management efficiency.

Recent trends in the flexible manufacturing systems are morphing cell control for the shop-wide production operation system and providing the integrated operation and execution system together with vendor-specific FMC/FMS platform. In these requirements, the shop-floor level operation system plays a role of coordinating the control activity of each cell, and has to provide flexibility for the complexity of mixed operations of various cells. This paper suggests a system architecture for the mixed environments of multi-cells and job shop, its corresponding enabling technologies based on comparative studies with other related studies and commercialized systems. This approach includes a process definition model considering the integration with upper BOM-BOP and external service modules, and reconfigurable device-level interface which provides dynamic interconnections with machine tools and cell controllers. The function modules and their implementation results are also described to provide the feasibility of the proposed approaches as the flexible shop-floor operation system for the multi-cell environments.

An experimental investigation with 2.8kW Nd:YAG laser system was carried out to study the effects of different laser process parameters on the microstructure and hardness of STD11. The optical lens with the elliptical profile are designed to obtain a wide surface hardening area with uniform hardness. The Laser beam is allowed to scan on the surface of the work piece varying the power (1600, 1800 and 1900kW) and traverse speed (200, 400, 600, 800 and 1000mm/min) at three different F-numbers of lens. After laser surface treatment three zones, In the microstructure have been observed : melted zone(decarburization), heat affected zone(martensite), and the substrate.

Recently, surface modification technology is of importance to improve the wear resistance and the corrosive resistance for high accurate mechanical parts such as LM guide, Ball Screw and Roller Bearing etc., Those has generally featured on rolling contact mechanism to improve not only the wear and the friction, but also the accuracy and the corrosion performances. For surface modifications of high accurate mechanical parts, normally thermal spray, PVD, CVD and E.P. processes have been used with many materials such as DLC, raydent, W, Ni, Ti etc. Diamondlike carbon (DLC) films possess a combination of attractive properties and have been largely employed to modify the tribological behaviors such as friction, wear, corrosion, fretting fatigue, biocompatibility, etc. However, for rolling contact mechanism mechanical parts DLC films are needed to study for commercial benefit. Rolling contact mechanism has features on effects of cyclic motions and stresses, and also not simply sliding motions. The papers focused on the performance test of wear and corrosive resistance according to Me-DLC film thickness. And also, its thickness effect of wear analysis was carried out through the simulation of the maximum shear stress under the rolling contact surface. As the results, Me-DLC films have more potential to improve the wear resistance for high precision mechanical parts than raydent films.

This paper presents reference ZMP trajectory generation and implementation for a biped robot via linear inverted dumbbell model (LIDM), which can consider the effect of external momentum on the center of mass (COM) of robot. Based on a reference ZMP trajectory derived by using LIDM, a base trajectory is proposed not only to make the locomotion of robot similar to that of human but also to facilitate its implementation and tuning. In order to realize a dynamic walking using the proposed trajectory, compliance, impedance and ZMP tracking controllers are adopted together. Extensive experiments show that the proposed locomotion of a biped robot is stable and also, similar to that of human. Further researches on balance recovery of a biped robot will be carried out to guarantee its robust locomotion in combination with the proposed trajectory.

In this study, kinematic analysis of forward kinematic, inverse kinematic and jacobian for 6-bar parallel robot was analyzed. In order to analyze the maximum workspace of 6-bar parallel robot, maximum revolution range of active joint was calculated. Also, to analyze forward dynamics and inverse dynamics of 6-bar parallel robot, recurdyn and simmechanics was utilized. Using a PI controller and Feedforward controller make an experiment with square motion of end_effector. The reference value of active joint and trace of end_effector were compared with actual experimental value.

Various studies to improve the physical abilities of the human have been steadily continued from the past to the present. Only recently such technology has been realized, and those are expected to replace or complement human beings in large part. In this paper, the current status of developed wearable robots is investigated and studies were conducted in order to apply the types of robots in industry spot. In order to apply wearable exoskeleton robot to industry which enhances human physical capability, driving range of the robot"s degrees of freedom were selected by analyzing working motion, and augmentative exoskeleton structure design process is presented by analyzing require torque and power during selected working motion. At the end of this paper, the designed mock-up is introduced to validate the feasibility of designed robot.

This paper describes the optimal home positioning algorithm of Eclipse-II, a new conceptual parallel mechanism for motion simulator. Eclipse-II is capable of translation and 360 degrees continuous rotation in all directions. In unexpected situations such as emergency stop, riders have to be resituated as soon as possible through a shortest translational and rotational path because the return paths are not unique in view of inverse kinematic solution. Eclipse-II is man riding. Therefore, the home positioning is directly related to the safety of riders. To ensure a least elapsed time, ZYX Euler angle inverse kinematics is applied to find an optimal home orientation. In addition, the subsequent decrease of maximum acceleration and jerk values is achieved by combining the optimal return path function with cubic spline, which consequently reduces delivery force and vibration to riders.

The method for spraying of liquid through an electrical filed has become a printing method since it can make very small droplet. To increase the reliability using the electro-hydrodynamic (EHD) jet printing, the jetting status needs to be monitored. Vision measurement techniques using high speed camera has been used to visualize the jet images. However, it requires image processing of a lot of images after image acquisitions. So, it is difficult to understand jet behavior such as jetting frequency, jet repeatability etc. In this work, a low cost electrical current measurement method was developed to measure electrical current from EHD jet printing. To verify the jetting monitoring capability of developed circuit, images from high speed camera were processed for comparison purpose.

The Electrostatic Inkjet system has many applications in cost and time effective manufacturing of printed electronics like RFIDs, OLEDs and flexible displays etc. This paper presents pneumatic ink supply system for an electrohydrodynamic deposition (EHD) setup for the precise pressure control to produce a small amount of discharge at the end of the capillary. The meniscus shape depends upon the applied pneumatic pressure to the ink supply system. Furthermore, this paper also compares meniscus shapes at different applied pneumatic pressures. It is concluded that patterning of constant line-width can be achieved better by controlling the meniscus shape using this technique.

Silo is a warehouse for storing granular materials such as grain, cement, petroleum compound and coal. When compared to other warehouses, the silo can use space efficiently. The coal silo are consists of silo, tunnel and extractor. Of these, there are not sufficient study and design data on tunnel. It depends heavily upon trial and error method by field engineers with several years of experience. Recently, silos are constructed with a large size, and tunnel becomes to be in danger of severe cracking and collapse by a huge load of coal. So it is necessary to analyze structural safety for tunnel. In this study, the problems of the tunnel are analyzed by field data, and reinforcement of structural weak area using FE analysis has been carried out to design the tunnel satisfying structural safety. From FE Analysis, the reinforced model which does not exceed the yield strength of the material has been proposed.

This study aims to discover the optimal pipe layout for a ship, which generally needs a lot of time, efforts and experiences. Genetic algorithm was utilized to search for the optimum. Here the optimum stands for the minimum pipe length between two given points. Genetic algorithm is applied to planar pipe layout problems to confirm plausible and efficiency. Sub-programs are written to find optimal layout for the problems. Obstacles are laid in between the starting point and the terminal point. Pipe is supposed to bypass those obstacles. Optimal layout between the specified two points can be found using the genetic algorithm. Each route was searched for three case models in two-dimensional plane. In consequence of this, it discovered the optimum route with the minimized distance in three case models. Through this study, it is possible to apply optimization of ship pipe route to an actual ship using genetic algorithm.