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The purpose of this paper is to present a fully automatic calibration method for hand-eye serial robot system is presented in this paper. The so-called “fully automatic” is meant to calibrate the robot body, the hand-eye relation, and the used measuring binocular system at the same time.

The calibration is done by controlling the joints to rotate several times one by one in the reverse order (i.e. from the last one to the first one), and simultaneously take pictures of the checkerboard patterns by the stereo camera system attached on the end-effector, then the whole robot system can be calibrated automatically from these captured images. In addition, a nonlinear optimization step is used to further refine the calibration results.

The proposed method is essentially based on an improved screw axis identification method, and it needs only a mirror and some paper checkerboard patterns without resorting to any additional costly measuring instrument.

Simulations and real experiments on MOTOMAN-UP6 robot system demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

The purpose of this study is to decompose the effects of country-of-origin labeling (COOL) into multiple dimensions—macrolevel image, related to the country image, and microlevel image, related to dairy industry/product attributes—and investigate how each dimension affects Chinese consumers' evaluation of imported milk.

This study adopted the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak (BDM) auction mechanism to elicit consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for milk from different countries (New Zealand, Australia, Germany, France and China). The experiment was conducted with 348 shoppers at supermarkets in three major cities of China (Hangzhou, Wuhan and Shijiazhuang). The study subject was ultrahigh-temperature processing (UHT) milk (200 mL Tetra Pak aseptic brick package).

The results show that Chinese consumers are willing to pay a premium for UHT milk from New Zealand, Australia, Germany and France compared to domestic milk, and the premiums are 59.4, 58.9, 57.9, and 52.9% respectively. Both microlevel and macrolevel images exert a substantial influence on consumers' WTP, and the microlevel image has a greater impact on consumers' evaluation of milk than the macrolevel image. Particularly, the macropolitical, microtechnology/quality and microdesign/package dimensions have a positive influence on WTP for milk.

This study contributes to the existing literature in introducing the country-of-origin image (COI) construct with different dimensions to get in-depth knowledge about the country-of-origin (COO) effect in food or agricultural economics.

This study aims to explore the degree of Chinese consumers' trust and confidence in the Chinese dairy products supply chain and the relationships between trust and overall confidence in dairy products safety and quality.

This study collected data from 1,278 respondents by field survey from five provinces of China. The data were analyzed using ordered logit model.

This study shows the following results: (1) Chinese consumer confidence in domestic dairy products and trust in actors of the dairy chain are at a moderate-to-low level. (2) Government regulators are considered to take the most responsibility, with both an optimism-enhancing and a pessimism-reducing effect (the former effect is greater), while perceived trust in dairy farmers and retailers has little effect. (3) Perceived care has both an optimism-enhancing and a pessimism-reducing effect, and the former effect is stronger. Competence and openness have an optimism-enhancing effect and a pessimism-reducing effect, respectively. (4) The importance of the three dimensions of trust related to optimism-increasing and pessimism-reduction is limited, except in the case of government regulators.

This study contributes to a better understanding of consumer trust in food safety and also help demonstrate to the actors and institutions involved in the dairy supply chain the best way to improve the performance of their duties to meet the consumers' needs for safe and quality dairy products.