Search results

The chemical plant (CP) maintenance industry has been under increasing pressure by process designers to demonstrate its evaluation and information management of model checking (MC) on the durability’s performance and design of plant control instrument. This main problem has been termed as imperfect maintenance actions (IMAs) level. Although IMAs have been explored in interdisciplinary maintenance environments, less is known about what imperfect maintenance problems currently exist and what their causes are, such as the recent explosion in the Beirut city (4 August 2020, about 181 fatalities). The aim of this paper is to identify how CP maintenance environments could integrate MC within their processes.

To achieve this aim, a comprehensive literature review of the existing conceptualisation of MC practices is reviewed and the main features of information and communication technology tools and techniques currently being employed on such IMA projects are carried out and synthesised into a conceptual framework for integrating MC in the automation system process.

The literature reveals that various CP designers conceptualise MC in different ways. MC is commonly shaped by long-term compliance to fulfil the requirement for maintaining a comfortable durability risk on imperfect maintenance schemes of CP projects. Also, there is a lack of common approaches for integrating the delivery process of MC. The conceptual framework demonstrates the importance of early integration of MC in the design phase to identify alternative methods to cogenerate, monitor and optimise MC.

Thus far, this study advances the knowledge about how CP maintenance environments can ensure MC delivery. This paper highlights the need for further research to integrate MC in CP maintenance environments. A future study could validate the framework across the design phase with different CP project designers.

This paper aims to address formal testing of real‐time systems by providing readers with guidance for generating test cases from timed automata.

In this paper, a set of test selection criteria is presented. Such criteria are useful for testing real‐time systems specified by timed automata. The criteria are introduced after the presentation of timed automata model and the concepts related to it.

The paper finds that the set of test selection criteria are ordered based on the inclusion relation. The ordering is useful for developing new testing methods and for comparing existing approaches.

Each of the proposed test selection criteria can be used to develop a new method for testing timed automata with certain fault coverage.

The need for assuring correctness of business processes in enterprises is widely recognised in terms of business process re-engineering and improvement. Formal methods are a promising approach to this issue. The challenge in business process verification is to create a formal model that is well-aligned to the reality. Process mining is a well-known technique to discover a model of a process based on facts. However, no studies exist that apply it to formal verification. This study aims to propose a methodology for formal business process verification by means of process mining, and attempts to clarify the challenges and necessary technologies in this approach using a case study.

A trading company simulation model is used as a case study. A workflow model is discovered from an event log produced by a simulation tool and manually complemented to a formal model. Correctness requirements of both domain-dependent and domain-independent types of the model are checked by means of model-checking.

For business process verification with both domain-dependent and domain-independent correctness requirements, more advanced process mining techniques that discover data-related aspects of processes are desirable. The choice of a formal modelling language is also crucial. It depends on the correctness requirements and the characteristics of the business process.

Formal verification of business processes starting with creating its formal model is quite new. Furthermore, domain-dependent and domain-independent correctness properties are considered in the same framework, which is also new. This study revealed necessary technologies for this approach with process mining.

The green building (GB) maintenance industry has been under increasing pressure by designers to demonstrate its evaluation and information management of building information modelling based model checking (BMC) to the competency's performance and design knowledge of building control instrument. This main problem has been termed as maintenance planning level. Although maintenance planning has been explored in GB maintenance environments, less is known about what maintenance planning problems currently exist and what their causes are, such as the recent fire in the Grenfell Tower (14 June 2017, about 80 fatalities) in North Kensington, West London. The aim of this paper is to identify how GB maintenance environments could integrate BMC within their processes. The purpose of this study is to assess the BMC technology management of GB maintenance ecosystem and that of a soft skills level to establish the impact of innovation policy features on database and safety risk function mechanism.

To achieve this aim, a comprehensive literature review of the existing conceptualisation of BMC practices is reviewed and the main features of Information and Communication Technology tools and techniques currently being employed on such GB maintenance ecosystem is carried out to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the previous studies. The conceptual framework explores the importance of integration of BMC in the construction phase to identify alternative methods in the automation system (AS) process to co-generate, monitor and optimise BMC.

The results confirm that BMC tool positively influences database application and risk mechanism of construction project safety while agreeableness negatively does. Besides, database application has a negative influence on innovation policy of company towards BMC implementation. Propositions derived not only shed light on guidance for future research on the soft skills of construction organisations, but also provide decision-making support through a better understanding of the factors affecting soft skills level amongst biggest construction companies.

Thus far, this study advances the knowledge about how GB maintenance environments can ensure BMC delivery. This paper highlights the need for further research to integrate BMC in GB maintenance environments validates the framework across the construction phase with different GB project managers and engineers.

Artificial automata replace, in part or in total, natural automata in systems, and properly disciplined models of natural automata become design models of artificial automata for replacement. In Part I, a summary of two sets of disciplines provided by a General Systems Theory is presented, and the importance of these disciplines to the modeling of three inherited abilities is indicated for a case study. A theorem is presented in the form of an algorithm to aid in the modeling of the ability to modify and extend knowledge structures. In Part II (appearing in the next issue), the proof of the theorem is given and the theorem is applied to the case study. Finally, the application of the disciplines of the General Systems Theory is indicated for a second casestudy of an industrial system of 10 interactive automata.

An interactive clothing system is one of the basic components of virtual reality. The clothing is implemented via design of two‐dimensional garment panels and putting the panels on an actor in a realistic way. We show how to ease this time consuming task by appealing to a hybrid cellular automaton as a parallel computing device. We draw our approach on a fact that the draping fabric bears a feature of natural parallelism. At a very short time scale behavior of any node point of a fabric depends only on the behavior of its closest neighboring node points. Therefore distant regions of the fabric can be simulated independently. Basing on the problem's natural parallelism we design two‐dimensional network of uniform locally connected hybrid automata that execute in parallel a particle model of draping behavior of clothes on a standing mannequin.

Studies in complexity of cellular automata do usually deal with measures taken on integral dynamics or statistical measures of space‐time configurations. No one has tried to analyze a generative power of cellular‐automaton machines. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap and develop a basis for future studies in generative complexity of large‐scale spatially extended systems.

Let all but one cell be in alike state in initial configuration of a one‐dimensional cellular automaton. A generative morphological diversity of the cellular automaton is a number of different three‐by‐three cell blocks occurred in the automaton's space‐time configuration.

The paper builds a hierarchy of generative diversity of one‐dimensional cellular automata with binary cell‐states and ternary neighborhoods, discusses necessary conditions for a cell‐state transition rule to be on top of the hierarchy, and studies stability of the hierarchy to initial conditions.

The method developed will be used – in conjunction with other complexity measures – to built a complete complexity maps of one‐ and two‐dimensional cellular automata, and to select and breed local transition functions with highest degree of generative morphological complexity.

The hierarchy built presents the first ever approach to formally characterize generative potential of cellular automata.

Drones are used in several purposes including examining areas, mapping surroundings and rescue mission operations. During these tasks, they could encounter compound surroundings having multiple obstacles, acute edges and deadlocks. The purpose of this paper is to propose an obstacle dodging technique required to move the drones autonomously and generate the obstacle's map of an unknown place dynamically.

Therefore, an obstacle dodging technique is essentially required to move autonomously. The automaton of drones requires complicated vision sensors and a high computing force. During this research, a methodology that uses two basic ultrasonic-oriented proximity sensors placed at the center of the drone and applies neural control using synaptic plasticity for dynamic obstacle avoidance is proposed. The two-neuron intermittent system has been established by neural control. The synaptic plasticity is used to find turning angles from different viewpoints with immediate remembrance, so it helps in decision-making for a drone. Hence, the automaton will be able to travel around and modify its angle of turning for escaping objects during the route in unknown surroundings with narrow junctions and dead ends. Furthermore, wherever an obstacle is detected during the route, the coordinate information is communicated using RESTful Web service to an android app and an obstacle map is generated according to the information sent by the drone. In this research, the drone is successfully designed and automated and an obstacle map using the V-REP simulation environment is generated.

Simulation results show that the drone effectively moves and turns around the obstacles and the experiment of using web services with the drone is also successful in generating the obstacle's map dynamically.

The obstacle map generated by autonomous drone is useful in many applications such as examining fields, mapping surroundings and rescue mission operations.

Delaunay triangulations provide a good alternative to existing approaches of modelling unstructured unconventional computers. Experimental research in novel and emerging computing paradigms and materials shows a great progress in designing laboratory prototypes of spatially extended computing devices. In these devices, computation is implemented by excitation waves and localisations in reaction‐diffusion chemical media, geometrically constrained and compartmentalized excitable substrates, organic molecular assemblies, and gas‐discharge systems. These unconventional computing substrates can be formally represented by Delaunay triangulations with excitable nodes. Thus, it is important to uncover most common types of excitation dynamics on the Delaunay diagrams. The purpose of this paper is to define excitable automata on Delaunay triangulation and demonstrate how to control a space‐time dynamics of excitation on the triangulation using absolute and relative excitability thresholds.

The paper modifies classical Greenberg‐Hasting model to topology of Delaunay triangulations and considers not only a threshold of excitation but also a ratio of excited neighbours as an essential factor of nodes' activation. Delaunay triangulations for various densities of nodes packaging are considered.

The paper defines excitable automata on Delaunay triangulation and demonstrates how to control a space‐time dynamics of excitation on the triangulation using absolute and relative excitability thresholds. The paper uncovers several interesting phenomena ranging from reaction of excitation waves by edge of triangulation to branching domains of activity guided by travelling localized excitations.

The findings reported in the paper will contribute towards designs of novel computing substrates in non‐crystalline structure. Also, automaton interpretation of activity dynamics on Delaunay triangulation can make a viable model of automaton‐network approaches to design of nano‐computing devices.