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This research discusses the role of service robots in gastronomic and dining experiences in a post–coronavirus disease (COVID) world.

The research note draws on secondary data to analyse the use of robots as an important mechanism to address the impacts of global disease outbreaks on the food industry, as related to hospitality and tourism.

Hospitality and tourism services are highly affected by the current travel bans, lockdowns and health-related rules that have emerged to manage the current pandemic (COVID-19). This research showcases the role of service robots in food encounters in hospitality and tourism as agents that contribute to safe and innovative experiences.

This research note explores how the use of robots in tourism futures will not only transform food experiences, but it is also critical to sustainable development of communities and destinations in a future that will continuously have to deal with disease outbreaks and pandemics with continued travel mobilities.

In recent years, railway systems worldwide have faced challenges such as the modernization of engineering projects, efficient management of intelligent digital railway equipment, rapid growth in passenger and freight transport demands, customized transport services and ubiquitous transport safety. The transformation toward intelligent digital transformation in railways has emerged as an effective response to the formidable challenges confronting the railway industry, thereby becoming an inevitable global trend in railway development.

This paper, therefore, conducts a comprehensive analysis of the current state of global railway intelligent digital transformation, focusing on the characteristics and applications of intelligent digital transformation technology. It summarizes and analyzes relevant technologies and applicable scenarios in the realm of railway intelligent digital transformation, theoretically elucidating the development process of global railway intelligent digital transformation and, in practice, providing guidance and empirical examples for railway intelligence and digital transformation.

Digital and intelligent technologies follow a wave-like pattern of continuous iterative evolution, progressing from the early stages, to a period of increasing attention and popularity, then to a phase of declining interest, followed by a resurgence and ultimately reaching a mature stage.

The results offer reference and guidance to fully leverage the opportunities presented by the latest wave of the digitalization revolution, accelerate the overall upgrade of the railway industry and promote global collaborative development in railway intelligent digital transformation.

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.

This review aims to give a critical view of the wheel/rail high frequency vibration-induced vibration fatigue in railway bogie.

Vibration fatigue of railway bogie arising from the wheel/rail high frequency vibration has become the main concern of railway operators. Previous reviews usually focused on the formation mechanism of wheel/rail high frequency vibration. This paper thus gives a critical review of the vibration fatigue of railway bogie owing to the short-pitch irregularities-induced high frequency vibration, including a brief introduction of short-pitch irregularities, associated high frequency vibration in railway bogie, typical vibration fatigue failure cases of railway bogie and methodologies used for the assessment of vibration fatigue and research gaps.

The results showed that the resulting excitation frequencies of short-pitch irregularity vary substantially due to different track types and formation mechanisms. The axle box-mounted components are much more vulnerable to vibration fatigue compared with other components. The wheel polygonal wear and rail corrugation-induced high frequency vibration is the main driving force of fatigue failure, and the fatigue crack usually initiates from the defect of the weld seam. Vibration spectrum for attachments of railway bogie defined in the standard underestimates the vibration level arising from the short-pitch irregularities. The current investigations on vibration fatigue mainly focus on the methods to improve the accuracy of fatigue damage assessment, and a systematical design method for vibration fatigue remains a huge gap to improve the survival probability when the rail vehicle is subjected to vibration fatigue.

The research can facilitate the development of a new methodology to improve the fatigue life of railway vehicles when subjected to wheel/rail high frequency vibration.

As the global presence of Chinese firms grows, increasing numbers of Chinese managers are working abroad as expatriates. However, little attention has been paid to such Chinese expatriate managers and their leadership challenges in an inter-cultural context, especially across a large cultural distance. To fill the gap in the literature concerning the leadership challenges for expatriate managers in an inter-cultural context, the purpose of this paper is to elucidate the leadership styles of Chinese expatriate managers from the perspectives of three traditional Chinese philosophies (i.e. Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism) in the inter-cultural context of the Netherlands.

The data for this qualitative study were collected via semi-structured, open-ended, narrative interviews with 30 Chinese expatriate managers in the Netherlands.

The results clearly show that the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is deeply rooted in the three traditional Chinese philosophies of Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism, even in an inter-cultural context. Specifically, the study reveals two salient aspects of how Chinese expatriate managers frame and interact with a foreign cultural context from the perspectives of traditional Chinese philosophies. First, the Chinese expatriate managers reported an initial cultural shock related to frictions between the foreign cultural context and Confucianism or Taoism, but less so in the case of Legalism. Second, the Chinese expatriate managers also reported that their interactions with the Dutch culture are best described as a balance between partial conflict and partial complementarity (thus, a duality). In this sense, the leadership style of Chinese expatriate managers is influenced jointly by the three traditional Chinese philosophies and certain elements of the foreign cultural context. This is consistent with the Chinese perspective of yin-yang balancing.

This study is among the first to offer a more nuanced and highly contextualized understanding of leadership in the unique case of expatriate managers from an emerging market (e.g. China) in an advanced economy (e.g. the Netherlands). The authors call for more research to apply the unique perspective of yin-yang balancing in an inter-cultural context. The authors posit that this approach represents the most salient implication of this study. For practical implications, the authors argue that expatriate leaders should carefully manage the interplay between their deep-rooted home-country philosophies and their salient host-country culture. Reflecting on traditional philosophies in another culture can facilitate inter-cultural leadership training for Chinese expatriates.

Under the background of economic and technological globalization, all countries will pay attention to science and technology innovation policies. At this time, the era of innovation policy plays an important role. In order to thoroughly implement the spirit of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, earnestly innovate development concepts and strengthen the key supporting role of scientific and technological innovation for social development.

The research will make an in-depth study on the policy of scientific and technological innovation, take the change trend of the number of laws and regulations and the analysis of the basic content as the entry point, and classify it from five different aspects, such as the policy of scientific and technological system and mechanism, the policy of financial guidance, the policy of technological innovation of enterprises, the policy of scientific and technological talents, and the policy of intellectual property.

Through the comparison of the development history of science and technology policies at home and abroad, the development history of science and technology innovation policies under the special national conditions of China is obtained. Combining with the relevant basic theories of science and technology innovation system, designing from the publishing department, main content, and implementation subject, constructing a synergistic science and technology innovation system of “government, industry, university and research,” and forming an “integration of supply and demand” technology innovation framework will guide the development of China's science and technology innovation in the future.

The authors construct the policy framework of science and technology collaborative innovation based on the concept of science and technology innovation policies. The framework has realistic significance for its future development.

Straightness measurement of rail weld joint is of essential importance to railway maintenance. Due to the lack of efficient measurement equipment, there has been limited in-depth research on rail weld joint with a 5-m wavelength range, leaving a significant knowledge gap in this field.

In this study, the authors used the well-established inertial reference method (IR-method), and the state-of-the-art multi-point chord reference method (MCR-method). Two methods have been applied in different types of rail straightness measurement trollies, respectively. These instruments were tested in a high-speed rail section within a certain region of China. The test results were ultimately validated through using traditional straightedge and feeler gauge methods as reference data to evaluate the rail weld joint straightness within the 5-m wavelength range.

The research reveals that IR-method and MCR-method produce reasonably similar measurement results for wavelengths below 1 m. However, MCR-method outperforms IR-method in terms of accuracy for wavelengths exceeding 3 m. Furthermore, it was observed that IR-method, while operating at a slower speed, carries the risk of derailing and is incapable of detecting rail weld joints and low joints within the track.

The research compare two methods’ measurement effects in a longer wavelength range and demonstrate the superiority of MCR-method.

This study aims to consider active vision in low-visibility environments to reveal the factors of optical properties which affect visibility and to explore a method of obtaining different depths of fields by multimode imaging.Bad weather affects the driver’s visual range tremendously and thus has a serious impact on transport safety.

A new mechanism and a core algorithm for obtaining an excellent large field-depth image which can be used to aid safe driving is designed and implemented. In this mechanism, atmospheric extinction principle and field expansion system are researched as the basis, followed by image registration and fusion algorithm for the Infrared Extended Depth of Field (IR-EDOF) sensor.

The experimental results show that the idea we propose can work well to expand the field depth in a low-visibility road environment as a new aided safety-driving sensor.

The paper presents a new kind of active optical extension, as well as enhanced driving aids, which is an effective solution to the problem of weakening of visual ability. It is a practical engineering sensor scheme for safety driving in low-visibility road environments.