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This study aims to examine the key components to facilitate flexible work arrangement (FWA) and the issues and challenges arisen in preparing the workplace for FWA during Covid-19, and to recommend better approach of FWA implementation in workplace.

This study adopted extensive literature review and case studies approach using interviews and observations to determine the key components to facilitate FWA and the issues and challenges arisen in preparing the workplace for FWA during Covid-19, and to recommend better approach of FWA implementation in workplace. Three offices that owning FWA experience during Covid-19 and featuring flexible workspace concepts, elements and layouts in Klang Valley, Malaysia were chosen as case studies.

Findings have suggested that there are four components required to form flexible workspace for FWA adoption, such as open plan workspace design, task-oriented space, hot desking policy and IT infrastructure. Interestingly, the interview findings do not support the idea that the flexible furniture can facilitate FWA; instead, they believe that versatile, acoustical and aesthetical furniture may be installed when necessary. Among the issues and challenges faced were rearranging and designing open office plan layout, hot desk relocation and reconfiguration of spaces where people may congregate. Lastly, this research recommends that innovative planning software and tools, smart technology and apps, modern IT technology and infrastructure, and digital apps can be introduced to the workplace to help FM manage and monitor the facilities operations, workplace situations and occupancy rates.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, FWA such as “Work From Home” and remote working have become the mainstream in the workplace, affecting how the workplace looks and feels as flexible working is fundamentally related to the flexible workspace. From Facilities Management (FM) perspective, FWA is the biggest consequence of Covid-19, but it also presents opportunities and certain challenges to incorporate a new office environment and employees’ needs in terms of FWA into the corporate culture.

This study aims to develop a framework for optimizing the spatial requirements of the equipment in a construction site using a geographic information system (GIS).

An ongoing construction project, an existing thermal powerplant in India, is considered to be the case study, and the corresponding construction activities were scheduled. The equipment spaces were defined for the scheduled activities in building information modelling (BIM), which was further imported to GIS to define the topology rules, validate and optimize the spatial requirements. The BIM simulates the indoor environment, which includes the actual structure being constructed, and the GIS helps in modelling the outdoor environment, which includes the existing structures, temporary facilitates, topography of the site, etc.; thus, this study incorporates the knowledge of BIM in a geospatial environment to obtain optimized equipment spaces for various activities.

Space in construction projects is to be considered as a resource as well as a constraint, which is to be modelled and planned according to the requirements. The integration of BIM and GIS for equipment space planning will enable precise identification of the errors in the equipment spaces defined and also result in fewer errors as possible. The integration has also eased the process of assigning the topology rules and validating the same, which otherwise is a tedious process.

The workspace for each activity will include the space of the equipment. But, in most of the previous works of workspace planning, only the labour space is considered, and the conflicts and congestions occurring due to the equipment were neglected. The planning of equipment spaces cannot be done based only on the indoor environment; it has to be carried out by considering the surroundings and topography of the site, which have not been researched extensively despite its importance.

This paper aims to present the optimal design procedure of a symmetrical 2-DOF parallel planar robot with flexible joints by considering several performance criteria based on the workspace size, dynamic dexterity and energy of the control.

Consequently, the optimal design consists in determining the dimensional parameters to maximize the size of the workspace, maximize the dynamic dexterity and minimize the energy of the control action. The design criteria are derived from the kinematics, dynamics, elastodynamics and the position control law of the robot. The analysis of the design criteria is performed by means of the design space and atlases.

Finally, the multi-objective design optimization derived from the optimal design procedure is solved by using multi-objective genetic algorithms, and the results are analyzed to assess the validity of the proposed approach.

An alternative approach to the design of a planar parallel robot with flexible joints that permits determining the structural parameters by considering kinematic, dynamic and control operational performance.

Many work conditions require manipulators to open cabinet doors and then gain access to the desired workspace. However, after opening, the unlocked doors can easily close, interrupt a task and potentially break the operating end-effectors. This paper aims to address a manipulator's behavior planning problem for responding to a dynamic workspace released by door opening.

A dynamic model of the restricted workspace released by an unlocked door is established. As a whole system to treat, the interactions between the workspace and robot are analyzed by using a partially observable Markov decision process. A self-protective policy decision executed as a belief tree is proposed. To respond to the policy, this study has designed three types of actions: stay on guard in the workspace, using an elbow joint to defense the door and linear escape out of the workspace for self-protection by observing collision risk levels to trigger them. Finally, this study proposes self-protective motion controllers based on risk time optimization to act to the planned actions.

The elbow defense could balance robotic safety and work efficiency by interrupting the end-effector's work and using the elbow joint to prevent the door-closing in an active collision way. Compared with the stay and escape action, the advantage of the elbow defense is having a predictable performance to quick callback the interrupted work after the risk was relieved.

This work provides guidance for the safe operation of a class of robot operations and the upgrade of motion planning.

The purpose of this paper is to present a step‐by‐step methodology for the design of parallel kinematic machines (PKMs), from the initial stages of the conceptual definition of a new machine to an optimum design fulfilling the complete set of design requirements.

The methodology includes consideration of the kinematic, static and dynamic features required for the manipulator, which must all be assessed in complete industrial design. It is applied to a 4‐degrees‐of‐freedom (DOF) Schönflies motion generator for pick & place operations by way of example.

The authors specify the key stages of a detailed design procedure for parallel manipulators.

There are many publications on the development of specific robots and parallel manipulators based on their particular characteristics. However, it is relatively rare to find a paper on the general procedure with a step‐by‐step methodology applicable to any parallel manipulator.

This paper aims to outline and implement a novel hybrid controller in humanoid robots to map an optimal path. The hybrid controller is designed using the Owl search algorithm (OSA) and Fuzzy logic.

The optimum steering angle (OS) is used to deal with the obstacle located in the workspace, which is the output of the hybrid OSA Fuzzy controller. It is obtained by feeding OSA's output, i.e. intermediate steering angle (IS), in fuzzy logic. It is obtained by supplying the distance of obstacles from all directions and target distance from the robot's present location.

The present research is based on the navigation of humanoid NAO in complicated workspaces. Therefore, various simulations are performed in a 3D simulator in different complicated workspaces. The validation of their outcomes is done using the various experiments in similar workspaces using the proposed controller. The comparison between their outcomes demonstrates an acceptable correlation. Ultimately, evaluating the proposed controller with another existing navigation approach indicates a significant improvement in performance.

A new framework is developed to guide humanoid NAO in complicated workspaces, which is hardly seen in the available literature. Inspection in simulation and experimental workspaces verifies the robustness of the designed navigational controller. Considering minimum error ranges and near collaboration, the findings from both frameworks are evaluated against each other in respect of specified navigational variables. Finally, concerning other present approaches, the designed controller is also examined, and major modifications in efficiency have been reported.

The coupling impact of hybrid uncertain errors on the machine precision is complex, as a result of which the designing method with multiple independent error sources under uncertainties remains a challenge. For the purpose of precision improvement, this paper focuses on the robot design and aims to present an assembly precision design method based on uncertain hybrid tolerance allocation (UHTA), to improve the positioning precision of the mechanized robot, as well as realize high precision positioning within the workspace.

The fundamentals of the parallel mechanism are introduced first to implement concept design of a 3-R(4S) &3-SS parallel robot. The kinematic modeling of the robot is carried out, and the performance indexes of the robot are calculated via Jacobian matrix, on the basis of which, the 3D spatial overall workspace can be quantified and visualized, under the constraints of limited rod, to avoid the singular position. The error of the robot is described, and a probabilistic error model is hereby developed to classify the hybrid error sensitivity of each independent uncertain error source by Monte Carlo stochastic method. Most innovatively, a methodology called UHTA is proposed to optimize the robot precision, and the tolerance allocation approach is conducted to reduce the overall error amplitude and improve the robotized positioning precision, on the premise of not increasing assembly cost.

The proposed approach is validated by digital simulation of medical puncture robot. The experiment highlights the mathematical findings that the horizontal plane positioning error of the parallel robotic mechanism can be effectively reduced after using UHTA, and the average precision can be improved by up to 39.54%.

The originality lies in UHTA-based precision design method for parallel robots. The proposed method has widely expanding application scenarios in industrial robots, biomedical robots and other assembly automation fields.

Office workspace is more than a place but one of the essential resources in business organizations. In recent years, research in office workspace management has become an increasingly important scholarly focus. However, there is a dearth of bibliometric studies to date on the subject. This study aims to explore a scientometric analysis of office workspace field.

The title/abstract/keyword search method was used to extract related papers from 1990 to 2018. A total of 1,670 papers published in Scopus were obtained and subjected to scientometric data analysis techniques via CiteSpace software.

The results revealed the active research institutions and countries, influential authors, important journals, representative references and research hotspots in this field.

While this study focused on office workspace management, the findings hold useful implications for the built environment in general and facility management in particular, being a sector that encompasses multiple disciplines involving building, office assets, people, processes and technology, which enable effective functioning of the built facilities.

This is probably the most comprehensive scientometric analysis of the office workspace field ever conducted. This study adds to the so far limited knowledge in the field and provides insights for future research.

This paper proposes to apply the lean philosophy principle of minimizing or eliminating non-value adding activities combined with 4D building information modeling (BIM) simulations to reduce transportation waste in construction production processes.

This study adopts design science research (DSR) because of its prescriptive character to produce innovative constructions (artifacts) to solve real-world problems. The artifact proposed is a set of constructs for evaluating the utility of 4D BIM simulations for transportation waste reduction. The authors performed two learning cycles using empirical studies in projects A, B and C. The construction process of cast-in-place (CIP) reinforcement concrete (RC) was selected to demonstrate and evaluate 4D BIM's utility. The empirical studies focused on understanding the current transportation waste, collecting actual performance data during job site visits and demonstrating the usage of 4D BIM.

In the first cycle, 4D BIM successfully allowed users to understand the CIP-RC process's transportation activities, which were modeled. In the second cycle, 4D BIM enabled better decision-making processes concerning the definitions of strategies for placing reusable formworks for CIP concrete walls by planning transportation activities.

In Cycle 2, three different scenarios were simulated to identify the most suitable formwork assembly planning, and the results were compared to the real situations identified during the job site visits. The scenario chosen demonstrated that the 4D BIM simulation yielded an 18.75% cycle time reduction. In addition, the simulation contributed to a decrease in transportation waste that was previously identified.

The original contribution of this paper is the use of 4D BIM simulation for managing non-value adding activities to reduce transportation waste. The utility of 4D BIM for the reduction of those conflicts considered three constructs: (1) the capacity to improve transportation activity efficiency, (2) the capacity to improve construction production efficiency and (3) the capacity to reduce transportation waste consequences.

The purpose of the paper is to improve the control of vapour phase soldering (VPS). To enable better productivity and assembling quality, the industry needs to provide precise control and measurements during assembling. In the paper, a special monitoring method is presented for VPS to enable improved process control and oven state identification.

The work presents the investigation of the workspace with dynamic and gage type pressure sensors in fusion with thermocouples. Different sensors were evaluated to find an appropriate type. The relation between the temperature and the pressure was investigated, according to the setup of the oven. The effect of inserting a printed circuit board (PCB) on the pressure of the vapour inside the oven was also investigated with the pressure/power functions.

It was found that the novel gage-type sensors enable better precision than solutions seen in previous literature. The sensors are able to monitor the decreasing vapour concentration when a PCB is inserted to the workspace. It was found that there is a suggested minimum power to sustain a well-developed vapour column for soldering in saturated vapour. An inflexion point highlights this in the pressure/power function, in accordance with the temperature/power curve.

The research presents original works with aspects of a novel sensor fusion concept and work space monitoring for better process control and improved soldering quality.