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The purpose of this paper is to enhance control accuracy, energy efficiency and productivity of customized industrial robots by the proposed multi-objective trajectory optimization approach. To obtain accurate dynamic matching torques of the robot joints with optimal motion, an improved dynamic model built by a novel parameter identification method has been proposed.

This paper proposes a novel multi-objective optimal approach to minimize the time and energy consumption of robot trajectory. First, the authors develop a reliable dynamic parameters identification method to obtain joint torques for formulating the normalized energy optimization function and dynamic constraints. Then, optimal trajectory variables are solved by converting the objective function into relaxation constraints based on second-order cone programming and Runge–Kutta discrete method to reduce the solving complexity.

Extensive experiments via simulation and in real customized robots are conducted. The results of this paper illustrate that the accuracy of joint torque predicted by the proposed model increases by 28.79% to 79.05% over the simplified models used in existing optimization studies. Meanwhile, under the same solving efficiency, the proposed optimization trajectory consumes a shorter time and less energy compared with the existing optimization ones and the polynomial trajectory.

A novel time-energy consumption optimal trajectory planning method based on dynamic identification is proposed. Most existing optimization methods neglect the effect of dynamic model reliability on energy efficiency optimization. A novel parameter identification approach and a complete dynamic torque model are proposed. Experimental results of dynamic matching torques verify that the control accuracy of optimal robot motion can be significantly improved by the proposed model.

Sensorless passive lead-through programming (LTP) is a promising physical human-robot interaction technology that enables manual trajectory demonstrations based on gravity and friction compensation. The major difficulty lies in static friction compensation during LTP start-up. Instead of static friction compensation, conventional methods only compensate for Coulomb friction after the joint velocity exceeds a threshold. Therefore, conventional start-up external torques must overcome static friction. When the static friction is considerable, it is difficult for conventional LTP to start up and make small movements. This paper aims to decrease the start-up external torque and improve the small movement performance.

This paper reveals a novel usage of a high-gain position-loop in industrial robot applications aimed at sensitively detecting external torque during start-up. Then, the static friction is partly compensated by Coulomb friction to facilitate start-up. In addition, a detailed transition method between the proposed start-up and conventional passive LTP is proposed based on a finite state machine.

Experiments are implemented on the ROKAE XB4 robot to verify the effectiveness of the proposed external torque detection. Compared with the conventional LTP method, the proposed LTP method significantly decreases the start-up external torque and facilitates small movements.

This paper proposes and verifies a novel start-up method of sensorless LTP based on a start-up external torque detection and a transition method between start-up and conventional LTP. This research improves the LTP start-up performance, especially for industrial robots with large static friction.

The Chinese housing market has witnessed rapid growth during the past decade and the significance of housing price forecasting has undoubtedly elevated, becoming an important issue to investors and policymakers. This study aims to examine neural networks (NNs) for office property price index forecasting from 10 major Chinese cities for July 2005–April 2021.

The authors aim at building simple and accurate NNs to contribute to pure technical forecasts of the Chinese office property market. To facilitate the analysis, the authors explore different model settings over algorithms, delays, hidden neurons and data-spitting ratios.

The authors reach a simple NN with three delays and three hidden neurons, which leads to stable performance of about 1.45% average relative root mean square error across the 10 cities for the training, validation and testing phases.

The results could be used on a standalone basis or combined with fundamental forecasts to form perspectives of office property price trends and conduct policy analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and development of “Pylon-Climber”, a pole climbing robot (PCR) for climbing along the corner columns of electricity pylon and assisting the electricians to complete maintenance tasks.

Introduces a PCR that is composed of a simple climbing mechanism and two novel grippers. The gripper consists of two angle-fixed V-blocks, and the size of V-block is variable. The clamping method of the angle bar meets the requirement of the force closure theorem. The whole design adopts symmetrical design ideas.

The developed prototype proved possibility of application of PCRs for inspection and maintenance of pylon. The novel gripper can provide enough adhesion force for climbing robot.

The robot is successfully tested on a test tower composed of different specification steel angles, oblique ledges and overlapping steel struts.

Design and development of a novel climbing assistive robot for pylon maintenance. The robot is able to climb along the column of electricity pylon and pass all obstacles. The gripper can reliably grasp the angle bar with different specification and overlapping steel struts from multiple directions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanism and performance of a potential strategy, which is to enhance turbulence to carry out drag reduction for heavy trucks.

Enhancing turbulence deflector (ETD) was placed on the roof surface of an ground transportation system (GTS) to investigate the drag reduction mechanism of enhancing turbulence. Transition shear-stress transport improved delay detach eddy simulation model was adopted to simulate the unsteady small-scale flow around the ETD.

By optimizing the three influencing factors, diameter, streamwise length and streamwise position, the optimized ETD has achieved a maximum drag reduction of 7.04%. The analysis of flow field results shows that enhancing turbulence can effectively suppress flow separation and reduce the negative pressure intensity in the wake region of GTS.

The present work provides another potential possibility for the improvement of the aerodynamic performance of heavy trucks.

Snake-inspired robots are of great significance in many fields because of their great adaptability to the environment. This paper aims to systematically illustrate the research progress of snake-inspired robots according to their application environments. It classifies snake-inspired robots according to the numbers of degrees of freedom in each joint and briefly describes the modeling and control of snake-inspired robots. Finally, the application fields and future development trends of snake-inspired robots are analyzed and discussed.

This paper summarizes the research progress of snake-inspired robots and clarifies the requirements of snake-inspired robots for self-adaptive environments and multi-functional tasks. By equipping various sensors and tool modules, snake-inspired robots are developed from fixed-point operation in a single environment to autonomous operation in an amphibious environment. Finally, it is pointed out that snake-inspired robots will be developed in terms of rigid and flexible deformable structure, long endurance and multi-function and intelligent autonomous control.

Inspired by the modular and reconfigurable concepts of biological snakes, snake-inspired robots are well adapted to unknown and changing environments. Therefore, snake-inspired robots will be widely used in industrial, military, medical, post-disaster search and rescue applications. Snake-inspired robots have become a hot research topic in the field of bionic robots.

This paper summarizes the research status of snake-inspired robots, which facilitates the reader to be a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the research progress of snake-inspired robots. This helps the reader to gain inspiration from biological perspectives.

Conscious of the benefits building information modeling (BIM) has brought about to the architecture, engineering, construction and operations (AECO) industry, the Chinese government has been driving BIM adoption. Nonetheless, its acceptance and proliferation in China remain stagnant. Most relevant literature focuses on BIM diffusion at the industry and organizational levels, but the impact of non-managerial practitioners executing BIM or the traditional drafting approach in day-to-day work tends to be disregarded. This study aims to extend theoretical models pertaining to technology acceptance to understand non-managerial practitioners’ perceptions toward working with BIM in China.

A new BIM acceptance model was proposed based on previous technology acceptance theories. After a pilot study, a survey was conducted with 153 non-managerial practitioners in the Chinese AECO industry.

Among factors impacting non-managerial practitioners’ BIM acceptance in China, performance expectancy and task-technology fit significantly and positively influence behavioral intention to accept BIM, while the impacts from effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions are not essential.

Management strategies, such as improving non-managerial staff’s benefits and sense of BIM usefulness, selecting suitable tools to match with the staff’s tasks and promoting a middle-out approach in parallel with top-down interventions, are proposed for Chinese AECO organizations to enhance BIM acceptance.

Few studies have explored BIM acceptance from the perspective of non-managerial users in the Chinese AECO industry, especially using the theories related to technology acceptance. The BIM acceptance model developed in this study is different from those used in previous global studies in terms of influencing factors.

Based on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to examine the impact of daily illegitimate tasks on employees' daily silence and daily voice behavior, as well as the mediating role of daily ego depletion and the moderating role of trait mindfulness.

Through daily diary approach, 81 employees were followed for 10 consecutive workdays. Multilevel analysis was employed to examine the hypothesized relationships.

The results showed that daily illegitimate tasks are positively related to daily silence behavior and negatively related to daily voice behavior; daily ego depletion plays a mediating role in these relationships. Trait mindfulness moderates the effect of daily illegitimate tasks on daily ego depletion and the indirect effect of daily illegitimate tasks on daily silence and daily voice.

Managers should be mindful of minimizing the assignment of illegitimate tasks. Additionally, it is recommended that the organization provide training courses for employees to help them reduce ego depletion. Finally, organizations should focus on fostering high levels of mindfulness among their employees.

This study contributes to the existing literature by investigating the immediate impact of illegitimate tasks on employee voice and silence at within-person level. By doing so, it enhances comprehension of the consequences associated with illegitimate tasks. Meanwhile, this study offers additional insights into the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of the effect of illegitimate tasks from a resource perspective.

This paper aimed to introduce a systematic body of knowledge via a scientometric review, guiding the sustainable transition from conventional construction to prefabricated construction. The construction industry currently faces a challenge to balance sustainable development and the construction of new buildings. In this context, one of the most recent debates is prefabricated construction. As an emerging construction approach, although existing knowledge makes contributions to the implementation of prefabricated construction, there is a lack of a comprehensive and in-depth overview of the critical knowledge themes and gaps.

This study uses the scientometric analysis to review the state-of-the-art knowledge of prefabricated construction. It retrieved data from the Web of Science core collection database. CiteSpace software was used to conduct the analysis and visualization; three analysis methods identify the knowledge hotspots, knowledge domains and knowledge topics. Finally, according to integrating the hidden connections among results, a body of knowledge for prefabricated construction application can be inferred.

The results show that 120 knowledge hotspots, five critical knowledge domains and five prominent knowledge topics are vital for promoting implementation of prefabricated construction. Based on the afore analysis, a body of knowledge for prefabricated construction that can systematically cover a broad knowledge of prefabricated construction-related research and activities are integrated and proposed in this paper.

Body of knowledge systematically covers a broad knowledge of prefabricated construction applications and is vital to guide researchers and practitioners to conduct related research and activities, thereby promoting the sustainable transition to prefabricated construction implementation.

Compared with the worldwide reform trend of transcending new public management (NPM) during the past two decades, China's service-oriented government (SOG) reforms are a relatively different reform approach. After building an SOG was politically identified in 2004, China launched three rounds of SOG reforms in 2008, 2013 and 2018. The purpose of this article is to examine what is meant by China's SOG approach and analyze the reasons behind its emergence. In particular, it explores how this approach might be interpreted in NPM, and particularly post-NPM terms.

The main theoretical basis of the paper is three theoretical perspectives from organizational theory – the instrumental, cultural and myth perspectives, but more specifically, the concepts complexity and hybridity. The empirical examples are selected from the SOG reforms of 2008, 2013 and 2018. The data used are a combination of public documents and scholarly secondary literature.

This paper discusses the SOG approach in China as a response to the negative effects of NPM-related reforms and informed by the western post-NPM reforms. It contends that China's SOG is a complex and hybrid approach in which NPM and post-NPM elements coexist and their balance is different from the west.

Few authors have considered China's SOG approach in NPM and post-NPM terms. This paper contributes not only to a wider understanding of the ongoing SOG reform process in China, but also to the understanding of the relevance of public administration theories in a comparative perspective.