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Vision, audition, olfactory, tactile and taste are five important senses that human uses to interact with the real world. As facing more and more complex environments, a sensing system is essential for intelligent robots with various types of sensors. To mimic human-like abilities, sensors similar to human perception capabilities are indispensable. However, most research only concentrated on analyzing literature on single-modal sensors and their robotics application.

This study presents a systematic review of five bioinspired senses, especially considering a brief introduction of multimodal sensing applications and predicting current trends and future directions of this field, which may have continuous enlightenments.

This review shows that bioinspired sensors can enable robots to better understand the environment, and multiple sensor combinations can support the robot’s ability to behave intelligently.

The review starts with a brief survey of the biological sensing mechanisms of the five senses, which are followed by their bioinspired electronic counterparts. Their applications in the robots are then reviewed as another emphasis, covering the main application scopes of localization and navigation, objection identification, dexterous manipulation, compliant interaction and so on. Finally, the trends, difficulties and challenges of this research were discussed to help guide future research on intelligent robot sensors.

The purpose of this paper is to characterize distracted driving by quantifying the response time and response intensity to an emergency stop using the driver’s physiological states.

Field tests with 17 participants were conducted in the connected and automated vehicle test field. All participants were required to prioritize their primary driving tasks while a secondary nondriving task was asked to be executed. Demographic data, vehicle trajectory data and various physiological data were recorded through a biosignalsplux signal data acquisition toolkit, such as electrocardiograph for heart rate, electromyography for muscle strength, electrodermal activity for skin conductance and force-sensing resistor for braking pressure.

This study quantified the psychophysiological responses of the driver who returns to the primary driving task from the secondary nondriving task when an emergency occurs. The results provided a prototype analysis of the time required for making a decision in the context of advanced driver assistance systems or for rebuilding the situational awareness in future automated vehicles when a driver’s take-over maneuver is needed.

The hypothesis is that the secondary task will result in a higher mental workload and a prolonged reaction time. Therefore, the driver states in distracted driving are significantly different than in regular driving, the physiological signal improves measuring the brake response time and distraction levels and brake intensity can be expressed as functions of driver demographics. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study using psychophysiological measures to quantify a driver’s response to an emergency stop during distracted driving.

The authors examine how performance measurement systems (PMSs) and academic agency influence the meaning of research quality in practice. The worries are that the notion of research quality is becoming too simplistically and narrowly determined by research quality's measurable proxies and that academics, especially manager-academics, do not sufficiently realise this risk. Whilst prior literature has covered the effects of performance measurement in the university sector broadly and how PMSs are mobilised locally, there is only little understanding of whether and how PMSs affect the meaning of research quality in practice.

The study is designed as a comparative case study of two university faculties in Finland. The role of conceptual analysis plays a notable role in the study, too.

The authors find that manager-academics of the two examined faculties have rather similar conceptual understandings of research quality. However, there were differences in the degree of slippage between the “espoused-meaning” of research quality and “meaning-in-practice” of research quality. The authors traced these differences to how the local PMS and manager-academics’ agency relate to one another within the context of increasing global and national performance pressures. The authors developed a tentative framework for the various “styles of agency”. This suggests how the relationship between the local PMS and manager-academics’ exerted agency shapes the “degrees of freedom” of the meaning of research quality in practice.

Given that research quality lies at the heart of academic work, the authors' paper indicates that exploring the three matters – performance measurement, the agency of manager-academics and the meaning of research quality in practice – in combination is crucial for the sustainability of the academe. The authors contribute to the literature by detailing the way in which local PMS and manager-academics' agency have material impacts on what research quality means in practice. The authors conclude by highlighting the pressing need for manager-academics to exercise the agency in efforts to safeguard a broad and pluralistic understanding of research quality in practice.

As the comparability concept has recently garnered increased attention of policymakers and standard setters in the sustainability reporting (SR) arena, this paper aims to provide a reflexive viewpoint of this concept in this context.

To inform the authors’ viewpoint and disentangle the concept of comparability into different facets, the authors review policymakers’ and standard setters’ (including the Global reporting initiative) comparability principles, as well as relevant studies in the field. To provide insights into the different ways in which the comparability facets can be approached, the authors use multi-perspective reflexive practices and focus on the multiple purposes that reporting can serve. To empirically animate the authors’ reflection on the facets, the authors analyse the sustainability disclosures of two Italian banks over three years.

This study reveals that three facets form valuable starting points for extending the understanding of the meanings the comparability concept can carry in the SR arena. These facets are materiality and comparability, benchmarking/monitoring and comparability and operationalisation and comparability.

This study is intended to elicit policymakers’ and standard setters’ thoughts on the role of comparability and its complexities in SR.

By taking a critical and reflexive approach, the authors encourage policymakers and standard setters to reconsider the comparability principle, so it effectively embeds the accountability purpose of SR.

In this paper, the authors propose three facets for disentangling the concept of comparability.

This study aims to investigate why and how shared service centres (SSCs) are implemented as well as how they affect audit firm practice and audit quality.

In this qualitative study guided by the theoretical framework of institutional theory, the authors conducted 25 semi-structured interviews in seven European countries, including 16 interviews with audit partners from Big 4 firms, 6 with audit team members, 2 with interviewees from second-tier audit firms and 1 with a member of an oversight body.

The authors show that the central rationale for audit firms to implement SSCs is economic rather than external legitimacy. The authors find that SSC implementation has substantial effects on audit practices, particularly those related to standardisation, coordination and monitoring activities. The authors also highlight the potential impacts on audit quality.

By exploring the motivation for and effects of SSC implementation amongst audit firms, the authors offer insights into the best practices related to subsequent change processes and audit quality.

The purpose is to identify and explore barriers to overcome for developing collaborative innovation between a global service supplier and two of its industrial customers in Sweden.

The research had an action-based research approach in which the researchers were interacting and collaborating with the practitioners in the companies. The empirical part includes primary data from multiple interviews, and two workshops with dialogues with participants from the involved companies. The use of complementary data collection methods gave rich input to understanding the context for collaborative innovation, and to uncovering barriers, to develop solutions for collaborative innovation. The empirical barriers were analysed using theoretically derived barriers from a literature review. The analysis generated four broad themes of barriers which were discussed and led to conclusions and theoretical and practical implications on: the customer's safety culture, the business model, the parties' understanding of innovation and the management of collaborative innovation in supply chains.

The thematic analysis generated four broad themes: the customer's safety culture, the business model, the parties' understanding of innovation and the management of collaborative innovation. These themes where analysed using theoretically derived barriers from a literature review. The industrial context, the understanding of innovation and its management created barriers.

The unique access to the service supplier and its two independent industrial customers adds a rich contextual framing to the process of identifying and exploring the barriers to collaborative innovation. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of an industrial business context, the business logic in terms of business models and for the understanding and management of collaborative innovation.

Many manufacturers are exploring adopting smart technologies in their operations, also referred to as the shift towards “Industry 4.0”. Employees' contribution to high-tech initiatives is key to successful Industry 4.0 technology adoption, but few studies have examined the determinants of employee acceptance. This study, therefore, aims to explore how managers affect employees' acceptance of Industry 4.0 technology, and, in turn, Industry 4.0 technology adoption.

Rooted in the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model and social exchange theory, this inductive research follows an in-depth comparative case study approach. The two studied Dutch manufacturing firms engaged in the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in their primary processes, including cyber-physical systems and augmented reality. A mix of qualitative methods was used, consisting of field visits and 14 semi-structured interviews with managers and frontline employees engaged in Industry 4.0 technology adoption.

The cross-case comparison introduces the manager's need to adopt a transformational leadership style for employees to accept Industry 4.0 technology adoption as an organisational-level factor that extends existing Industry 4.0 technology user acceptance theorising. Secondly, manager's and employee's recognition and serving of their own and others' emotions through emotional intelligence are proposed as an additional individual-level factor impacting employees' acceptance and use of Industry 4.0 technologies.

Synthesising these insights with those from the domain of Organisational Behaviour, propositions were derived from theorising the social aspects of effective Industry 4.0 technology adoption.

Modern meat processing requires automation and robotisation to remain sustainable and adapt to future challenges, including those brought by global infection events. Automation of all or many processes is seen as the way forward, with robots performing various tasks instead of people. Meat cutting is one of these tasks. Smart novel solutions, including smart knives, are required, with the smart knife being able to analyse and predict the meat it cuts. This paper aims to review technologies with the potential to be used as a so-called “smart knife” The criteria for a smart knife are also defined.

This paper reviews various technologies that can be used, either alone or in combination, for developing a future smart knife for robotic meat cutting, with possibilities for their integration into automatic meat processing. Optical methods, Near Infra-Red spectroscopy, electrical impedance spectroscopy, force sensing and electromagnetic wave-based sensing approaches are assessed against the defined criteria for a smart knife.

Optical methods are well established for meat quality and composition characterisation but lack speed and robustness for real-time use as part of a cutting tool. Combining these methods with artificial intelligence (AI) could improve the performance. Methods, such as electrical impedance measurements and rapid evaporative ionisation mass spectrometry, are invasive and not suitable in meat processing since they damage the meat. One attractive option is using athermal electromagnetic waves, although no commercially developed solutions exist that are readily adaptable to produce a smart knife with proven functionality, robustness or reliability.

This paper critically reviews and assesses a range of sensing technologies with very specific requirements: to be compatible with robotic assisted cutting in the meat industry. The concept of a smart knife that can benefit from these technologies to provide a real-time “feeling feedback” to the robot is at the centre of the discussion.

The field of implementation science has emerged as a response to the challenges experienced in translating evidence-based practice and research findings to healthcare settings. Whilst the field has grown considerably in recent years, comparatively, there is a conspicuous lack of attention paid to the work of pre-implementation, that is, how we effectively engage with organisations to support the translation of research into practice. Securing the engagement and commitment of healthcare organisations and staff is key in quality improvement and organisational research. In this paper the authors draw attention to the pre-implementation phase, that is, the development of an amenable context to support implementation research.

Drawing from examples across an interdisciplinary group of health systems researchers working across a range of healthcare organisations, the authors present a reflective narrative viewpoint. They identify the principal challenges experienced during the course of their work, describe strategies deployed to effectively mitigate these challenges and offer a series of recommendations to researchers based on their collective experiences of engaging in collaborations with healthcare organisations for research and implementation. This reflective piece will contribute to the narrative evidence base by documenting the challenges, experiences and learning emerging from the authors’ work as university researchers seeking to engage and collaborate with healthcare organisations.

The RELATE model is presented to guide researchers through six key steps and sample strategies in working to secure organisational buy-in and creating a context amenable to implementation and research. The six stages of the RELATE model are: (1) Recognising and navigating the organisation's complexity; (2) Enhancing understanding of organisational priorities and aligning intervention; (3) Leveraging common values and communicating to key individuals the value of implementation research; (4) Aligning and positioning intervention to illustrate synergies with other initiatives; (5) Building and maintaining credibility and trust in the research team; and (6) Evolving the intervention through listening and learning.

The authors hope this guidance will stimulate thinking and planning and indeed that it will encourage other research teams to reflect and share their experiences and strategies for successful engagement of organisations, thus developing a knowledge base to strengthen implementation efforts and increase efficacy in this important enterprise.

Researchers must relate to the world’s everyday reality of the healthcare managers and administrators and enable them to relate to the potential of the research world in enhancing practice if we are to succeed in bringing the evidence to practice in a timely and efficient manner. Climates receptive to implementation must be developed incrementally over time and require actors to navigate messy and potentially unfamiliar organisational contexts. In this paper, the often invisible and lamentably underreported work of how we begin to work with healthcare organisations has been addressed. The authors hope this guidance will stimulate thinking and planning and indeed that it will encourage other research teams to reflect and share their experiences and strategies for successful engagement of organisations, thus developing a knowledge base to strengthen implementation efforts and increase efficacy in this important enterprise.