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As wheeled mobile robots find increasing use in outdoor applications, it becomes more important to reduce energy consumption to perform more missions efficiently with limit energy supply. The purpose of this paper is to survey the current state-of-the-art on energy-efficient motion planning (EEMP) for wheeled mobile robots.

The use of wheeled mobile robots has been increased to replace humans in performing risky missions in outdoor applications, and the requirement of motion planning with efficient energy consumption is necessary. This study analyses a lot of motion planning technologies in terms of energy efficiency for wheeled mobile robots from 2000 to present. The dynamic constraints play a key role in EEMP problem, which derive the power model related to energy consumption. The surveyed approaches differ in the used steering mechanisms for wheeled mobile robots, in assumptions on the structure of the environment and in computational requirements. The comparison among different EEMP methods is proposed in optimal, computation time and completeness.

According to lots of literature in EEMP problem, the research results can be roughly divided into online real-time optimization and offline optimization. The energy consumption is considered during online real-time optimization, which is computationally expensive and time-consuming. The energy consumption model is used to evaluate the candidate motions offline and to obtain the optimal energy consumption motion. Sometimes, this optimization method may cause local minimal problem and even fail to track. Therefore, integrating the energy consumption model into the online motion planning will be the research trend of EEMP problem, and more comprehensive approach to EEMP problem is presented.

EEMP is closely related to robot’s dynamic constraints. This paper mainly surveyed in EEMP problem for differential steered, Ackermann-steered, skid-steered and omni-directional steered robots. Other steering mechanisms of wheeled mobile robots are not discussed in this study.

The survey of performance of various EEMP serves as a reference for robots with different steering mechanisms using in special scenarios.

This paper analyses a lot of motion planning technologies in terms of energy efficiency for wheeled mobile robots from 2000 to present.

Firms are the primary producers of innovations, and understanding how these agents acquire, update and manage the knowledge of their employees is central to understanding economic growth. However, in developing economies, technology adaptation plays a critical role in innovation compared to knowledge creation. Thus, this research investigates the role of human capital in innovation at the firm level in the case of a small developing economy, which ranks highly on several human capital dimensions but shows declining levels of investment in advanced human capital development in its manufacturing sector.

This research examines the relationship between innovation and human capital at the firm level in a small peripheral economy. The human capital theory is applied to a firm context to understand variations in innovative behavior depending on the size of manufacturing companies. The effect of several human capital dimensions on product innovation is estimated by applying binomial logistic regression models with firm and time-fixed effects.

This article contributes to innovation economics and public policy by highlighting that not all dimensions of human capital operate similarly for all companies in the context of developing economies. In such settings, technology adaptation plays a critical role in innovation. While employees' human capital endowments significantly impact small firms in that context, firm-level practices such as internal training are crucial for large companies. Consequently, policymakers should consider that firms' human capital endowments impact their innovative behavior differently to avoid one-size-fits-all policy design approaches in this regard.

Prior research on the relationship between human capital and innovation in developing economies was based on a cross-sectional approach. This research's unique panel dataset covering 11-year triennial innovation surveys enabled a modeling strategy that controls for time-invariant unobservable firm characteristics. Three aspects of firms' human capital have been analyzed human capital endowments, internal training and human resource management (HRM) practices for the first time longitudinally in a developing economy, enabling to contrast of empirical findings with policy design.

Freight transportation practices accounted for a significant share of environmental degradation and climate change over the years. Therefore, environmentally responsible transport practices (ERTPs) become a serious concern of freight shippers and transport service providers. Past studies generally ignored the assessment of ERTPs of freight transport companies during a transport service contract. To bridge the above literature gap, this paper proposed a hierarchical framework for evaluating freight transport companies based on ERTPs.

In a data-driven decision-making environment, transport firm selection is affected by multiple expert inputs, lack of information availability, decision-making ambiguity and background of experts. The evaluation of such decisions requires a multi-criteria decision-making method under a group decision-making approach. This paper used a data-driven method based on the intuitionistic fuzzy-set-based analytic hierarchy process (IF-AHP) and VIseKriterijumska Kompromisno Rangiranje (IF-VIKOR) method. The applicability of the proposed framework is validated with the Indian freight transport industry.

The result analysis shows that environmental knowledge sharing among freight transport actors, quality of organizations human resource, collaborative green awareness training programs, promoting environmental awareness program for employees and compliance of government transport emission law and practice have been ranked top five ERTPs which significantly contribute to the environmental sustainability of freight transport industry. The proposed framework also ranked freight transport companies based on ERTPs.

This research is expected to provide a reference to develop ERTPs in the emerging economies freight transport industry and contribute to the development of a sustainable freight transport system.

This study assesses the environmental responsibility of the freight transportation industry. The emerging economies logistics planners can use proposed framework for assessing the performance of freight transportation companies based on ERTPs.

Some of the major concerns since the implementation of smart meters (prepaid meters) in some parts of Ghana is how electricity consumers have benefited from data obtained from these meters by providing important statistics on electricity-saving advice; this is one of the key demand-side management methods for achieving load reduction in residential homes. Appliance shifting techniques have proved to be an effective demand response strategy in load reduction. The purpose of this paper is therefore to help consumers of electricity understand when and how they can shift some appliances from peak to off-peak and vice versa.

The research uses an analysis technique of Richardson et al. (2010). In their survey on time-of-use surveys to determine the usage of electricity in households as far as appliance shifting was concerned, this study allowed for the assessment of how the occupants’ daily activities in households affect residential electricity consumption. Fell et al. (2014) modeled an aggregate of electricity demand using different appliances (n) in the household. The data for the peak time used in this study were identified from 05:00 to 08:00 and 17:00 to 21:00 for testing the load shifting algorithms, and the off-peak times were pecked from 10:00 to 16:00 and 23:00. This study technique used load management considering real-time scheduling for peak levels in the selected homes. The household devices are modeled in terms of controlled parameters. Using this study’s time-triggered loads on refrigerators and air conditioning systems, the findings suggested that peak loads can be reduced to 45% as a means of maintaining the simultaneous quality of service. To minimize peak loads to around 35% or more, Chaiwongsa and Wongwises (2020) have indicated that room air conditioning and refrigerator loads are simpler to move compared to other household appliances such as cooking appliances. Yet in conclusion, this study made a strong case that a decrease in household peak demand for electricity is primarily contingent on improvements in human behavior.

This study has shown that appliance load shifting is a very good way of reducing electrical consumption in residential homes. The comparative performance shows a moderate reduction of 1% in load as was found in the work done by Laicaine (2014). The results, however, indicate that load shifting to a large extent can be achieved by consumer behavioral change. The main response to this study is to advise policymakers in Ghana to develop the appropriate demand response and consumer education towards the general reduction in electrical load in domestic households. The difficulty, however, is how to get the attention of consumer’s on how to start using appliances with less load at peak and also shift some appliances from off-peak times. By increasing consumer knowledge and participation in demand response, it is possible to achieve more efficiency and flexibility in load reduction. The findings were benchmarked with existing comparison studies but may benefit from the potential production of structured references. However, the findings show that load shifting can only be done by modifying consumer actions.

It should be remembered that this study showed that the use of appliances shifting in residential homes results in load reduction benefits for customers, expressed as savings in electricity prices. The next step will be to build on this cost/benefit study to explain and measure how these reductions transform into net consumer gains for all Ghanaian households.

Load shifting will include load controllers in the future, which would automatically handle electricity consumption from various appliances in the home. Based on the device and user needs, the controllers can prioritize loads and appliance usage. The algorithms that underpin automatic load controllers will include knowledge about the behaviors of groups of end users. The results on the time dependency of activities may theoretically inform the algorithms of automatic demand controllers.

This paper addresses an important need for the country in the midst of finding solutions to an unending energy crisis. This paper presents demand response to the Ghanaian electricity consumer as a means to help in the reduction of load in residential homes. This is a novel research as no one has at yet carried out any research in this direction in Ghana. This paper has some new information to offer in the field of demand in household electricity consumption.

Points out that differences in the background of the working population, are often made responsible for the observed inequality of income distribution. Explores whether the observed distribution in incomes in countries such as the Federal Republic of Germany (West and East), Great Britain, Sweden, the United States and Brazil could not be the result of a statistical distribution process in which households participate. Recalls the early work in statistical thermodynamics by Boltzmann and Maxwell, who studied the distribution of energy among an ensemble of identical molecules, and which showed that not all molecules hold the same energy, but rather that the distribution has an exponential fall‐off character, with most molecules being in the lower energy bracket. Adapts the Maxwell‐Boltzmann distribution to incomes, and transforms these distributions into well‐known Lorenz graphs, and obtains a perfect match for each examined country. Suggests that, as the distributions can be directly related to their corresponding statistical weights, and as their logarithms are proportional to entropy in statistical thermodynamics, it could be shown that the unequal income distribution has a higher entropy, and therefore is more stable than the corresponding low entropy distribution resulting from Boulding′s principle of equal advantage where all households earn the same income. Supposes that neither of the two extreme stand‐points to explain the inequality of incomes can lead to a totally satisfactory explanation. Proposes that evolutionary strategies may be an interesting lead to follow up in more detail.

Building on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to investigate employee empowerment’s moderation effect on the relationship of situational (job satisfaction, affective commitment) and dispositional (positive affectivity, emotional intelligence) variables toward the emotional exhaustion of service employees amidst the pandemic.

In total, 288 service employees from various sectors in Indonesia participate as the study’s respondents. This study applies a two-stage structural equation modeling approach to test the hypotheses.

The results show that employee empowerment moderates situational and dispositional variables differently. While employee empowerment significantly influences situational variables, a different situation is found on dispositional variables, that employee empowerment does not significantly influence these variables. This study’s findings portray the COR theory in practice and clarify the importance of employee empowerment for employees with particular attributions.

The present study bears four limitations: the cross-sectional design; no exploration of dispositional and situational variables’ antecedents; the findings are limited to the service workers; and lastly, this study only takes Indonesian samples.

From a practical perspective, this study reveals which type of service employees are responsive to empowerment policy and which are prone to experience emotional exhaustion, particularly during a crisis.

By understanding what factors determine employee empowerment’s effectiveness, managers could maximize the impacts of their empowerment policies. Subsequently, it will create better service deliveries which might benefit the broader societal scope.

This study contributes to both theoretical and practical understanding. Theoretically, this study adds and promotes using a categorical lens to examine the pattern of interactions between organizations and employees.

The purpose of this study is to assess the comparative influence of two empathy dimensions (cognitive and emotional attributes) on emotional service experience and behavioral intention among business and leisure hotel guests. Studies relevant to empathy dimensions are relatively scarce in tourism and hospitality.

The current study reviewed the concepts of empathy, and empirically compared perceptions of empathy attributes between the two groups. The survey was intended to examine how well the hotel employees emotionally handle hotel guests’ incidents or inquiries related to any discomforts through personalized attention. The data were collected from 330 hotel guests who had actually complained about service failures while staying at the hotel during the record-breaking summer of 2013 in terms of number of visitors to Jeju. An active empathetic listening (AEL) tool has been taken to measure the hotel guest’s cognitive views and behavioral intentions, as well as emotional empathy measures under the empathic concern and emotional contagion.

The results revealed that empathetic dimensions strongly influenced the service experiences of hotel guests. While the emotional service experience of business guests was almost completely determined by the cognitive empathy, the emotional service experience of the leisure guests was mainly governed by the emotional empathy.

These outcomes suggest that the empathetic services through a “purpose of visit”-oriented manner might enhance the guest’s overall emotion positively.

According to the prior literatures and empirical findings in hospitality and tourism, empathy can be seen as subscale in SERVQUAL instrument. This paper focus on insights of empathy dimensions, and it was revealed that the interaction of both the cognitive and emotional dimensions of empathy conjointly determines the overall emotional service experience and intention of hotel guests.