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The paper aims to propose general design rules and route plan for automated guided vehicle system (AGVS). The AGVS is applied to automated meter verification areas through a case study of meter verification shop floor to verify the feasibility.

The paper gives an appropriate route design for AGVS and proposes an optimized strategy for designed routes and a control system to manage traffic conflict.

This case study indicates that the application of AGVS can highly improve the efficiency of manufacturing and production. Besides, a reasonable transportation plan is beneficial in making the system run smoothly and in cutting conveying time.

The application of AGVS integrates a variety of advanced technologies (i.e. information technology, artificial intelligence, etc.) into the electricity meter verification system, which brings great economic and social benefits via enhancing the verification efficiency and reducing the total labor costs.

The application proposed in the paper solves the problem that the verification almost relies on workers, labor intensity is high and work efficiency is hard to improve. Furthermore, the general rules and strategies of AGVS transportation can be applied not only to the automated electricity meter verification but also in other industrial areas.

The main purpose of this paper is to develop a method to recognize the initial welding position for large-diameter pipeline automatically, and introduce the image processing based on pulse-coupled neural network (PCNN) which is adopted by the proposed method.

In this paper, a passive vision sensor is designed to capture weld seam images in real time. The proposed method contains two steps. The first step is to detect the rough position of the weld seam, and the second step is to recognize one of the solder joints from the local image and extract its centroid, which is regarded as the initial welding position. In each step, image segmentation and removal of small false regions based on PCNN are adopted to obtain the object regions; then, the traditional image processing theory is used for the subsequent processing.

The experimental results show the feasibility and real time of the proposed method. Based on vision sensing technology and PCNN, it is able to achieve the autonomous recognition of initial welding position in large-diameter pipeline welding.

The proposed method can greatly shorten the time of positioning the initial welding position and satisfy the automatic welding for large-diameter pipeline.

In the proposed method, the image pre-processing is based on PCNN, which is more robust and flexible in the complex welding environment. After that, traditional image processing theory is adopted for the subsequent processing, of which the processing speed is faster.

Discusses the 6th ITCRR, its breadth of textile and clothing research activity, plus the encouragement given to workers in this field and its related areas. States that, within the newer research areas under the microscope of the community involved, technical textiles focuses on new, ‘smart’ garments and the initiatives in this field in both the UK and the international community at large. Covers this subject at length.

Looks at the eighth published year of the ITCRR and the research, from far and near, involved in this. Muses on the fact that, though all the usual processes are to the fore, the downside part of the industry is garment making which is the least developed side. Posits that the manufacture of clothing needs to become more technologically advanced as does retailing. Closes by emphasising support for the community in all its efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze long-term institutional causes and consequences of preference falsification by studying the evolution of China’s patriarchal clan system.

The historic study shows that although the clan system was abolished in the Qin dynasty, it re-emerged among high-standing families in the Han dynasty and spread to common people after the Tang dynasty.

The author submits that the clan system was an institutional response to the preference falsification problem that arose due to the dictatorial political institutions first established in the Qin dynasty. It helped people to take collective action by themselves and also opened a back door to influence government decisions. A piece of clear evidence is the co-evolution of the clan system and government personnel system.

In this sense, the clan system probably also helped to prolong the political institutions for 2,000 years.

This is the first institutional study on the clan system in China.

The colors of traditional interior textiles cannot be changed. With the development of hi-tech textiles, interior textiles and furnishings with changeable colors are now possible with the integration of optical fibers. In this article, a study on the design of optical fiber integrated photonic interior furnishings is presented. First, the applications of polymeric optical fibers (POFs) in textiles are reviewed. It is observed that although there have been a wide variety in applications of POFs in textiles, research on the application of POFs in interior furnishing is rarely reported. The gap between technology and design handicaps the usability of photonic products. In order to design user-friendly photonic soft furnishings, a new design method is explored. Both technical and design aspects are considered in the development of photonic soft furnishings. A prototype of photonic fabrics and soft furnishings is successfully created. A usability test is undertaken to evaluate the performance of the prototype. The result of the usability test reveals that most of the subjects are satisfied with the overall performance of the prototype. They believe that photonic interior furnishings with changeable colors can enhance the environment. These usability test results are fed back to the design framework, and can provide a good source of reference for the improvement of photonic soft furnishing in the future.

From the sixteenth to eighteenth century, China underwent a commercial revolution similar to the one in contemporaneous Europe. The rise of market did foster the rise of a nascent bourgeois and the concomitant rise of a liberal, populist version of Confucianism, which advocated a more decentralized and less authoritarian political system in the last few decades of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). But after the collapse of the Ming Empire and the establishment of the Qing Empire (1644–1911) by the Manchu conquerors, the new rulers designated the late-Ming liberal ideologies as heretics, and they resurrected the most conservative form of Confucianism as the political orthodoxy. Under the principle of filial piety given by this orthodoxy, the whole empire was imagined as a fictitious family with the emperor as the grand patriarch and the civil bureaucrats and subjects as children or grandchildren. Under the highly centralized administrative and communicative apparatus of the Qing state, this ideology of the fictitious patrimonial state penetrated into the lowest level of the society. The subsequent paternalist, authoritarian, and moralizing politics of the Qing state contributed to China’s nontransition to capitalism despite its advanced market economy, and helped explain the peculiar form and trajectory of China’s popular contention in the eighteenth century. I also argue that this tradition of fictitious patrimonial politics continued to shape the state-making processes in twentieth-century China and beyond.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a co‐simulation method to study the ground maneuvers of aircraft anti‐skid braking and steering.

A virtual prototype of aircraft is established in the multibody system dynamics software MSC.ADAMS/Aircraft. The anti‐skid braking control model, which adopts the multi‐threshold PID control method with a slip‐velocity‐controlled, pressure‐bias‐modulated (PBM) system, is established in MATLAB/Simulink. EASY5 is used to establish the hydraulic system of nose wheel steering. The ADAMS model is connected to block diagrams of the anti‐skid braking control model in MATLAB/Simulink, and is also connected to the block diagrams of nose wheel steering system model in EASY5, so that the ground maneuvers of aircraft anti‐skid braking and steering are simulated separately.

Results are presented to investigate the performance of anti‐skid braking system in aircraft anti‐skid simulation. In aircraft steering simulation, the influence of two important parameters on the forces acting on the tires is discussed in detail, and the safe area to prevent aircraft sideslip is obtained.

This paper presents an advanced method to study the ground maneuvers of aircraft anti‐skid braking and steering, and establishes an integrated aircraft model of airframe, landing gear, steering system, and anti‐skid braking system to investigate the interaction of each subsystem via simulation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanism of transmitting economic policy uncertainty (EPU) shocks to capital structure.

The authors adopt a novel approach that bridges the asset pricing implications of EPU and the debt-financing decisions of Chinese firms by introducing a variable “policy-risk-induced equity return” (PRER). PRER is the product of the EPU beta and the EPU shock. Differentiating firms as per the signs of the EPU beta helps to shed light on the deep questions of whether their respective leverage targets and speeds of adjustment are different and how the targets and speeds are determined.

The empirical evidence shows that it is the equity market that channels EPU shocks to capital structure through PRER in China. Firms with positive (negative) EPU betas have PRER impact negatively (positively) the leverage target, conforming to the market-timing theory. EPU and non-policy uncertainty shocks cause the speed of adjustment to change over time. Overall, the intertemporal relation between EPU and leverage is negative. These results are robust to alternative leverage measures and after controlling for non-policy uncertainty shocks and conventional firm characteristics and have implications for academic research, policymaking, market stability, and corporate financing.

This study is the first to probe for, and provide insights into, the underlying reason why EPU impacts capital structure by connecting asset pricing to corporate financing for a large sample of Chinese publicly traded firms.

Employees’ bootlegging innovation behavior is common and plays an important role in enterprise management. Based on the resource conservation theory and self-regulation theory, the purpose of this study is to explore the influence mechanism of leaders’ abusive supervision on employees’ bootlegging innovation behavior, with psychological safety as a mediator and mindfulness at workplace as a moderator.

Survey data were gathered from 591 employees’ self-assessment questionnaires in China. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the research model through SPSS and AMOS.

This study found that the leaders’ abusive supervision negatively affects employees’ bootlegging innovation behavior; employees’ psychological safety completely mediates the negative effect of leaders’ abusive supervision on employees’ bootlegging innovation behavior; and mindfulness at work moderates the influence of leaders’ abusive supervision on employee’ bootlegging innovation behavior, as well as the influence of leaders’ abusive supervision on employees’ psychological safety.

This study has significant implications in passive leadership that affect employees’ innovation. Authors found that leaders’ abusive supervise, mindfulness at workplace play a crucial role in employees’ bootleg innovation through psychological safety.

Theoretically, this study has enriched the antecedent research on employees’ bootlegging innovation behavior from the perspective of negative leadership behavior and employee psychology. And this study considered mindfulness at workplace as a boundary condition.