Public Awareness of Remanufactured Products in Yangtze River Delta of China: Present Status, Problems and Recommendations.

Exponential increase of used and scrapped products has aroused worldwide attention, with various coping strategies regarding environmental protection and resource reutilization being considered and implemented. Among these, remanufacturing, processing used products environmentally and restoring them to like-new conditions, is preferred by nations around the world. China has been committed to developing and advancing the remanufacturing industry along with its products since 2013, however only a few residents are able to recognize and purchase remanufactured products at the present time. This paper aims to investigate the public awareness of Chinese residents on these emerging products by conducting a questionnaire survey and field research for data collection, and analyzing the results statistically. Results show that most Chinese residents are not familiar with remanufactured products, the superior attributes of such products, or the channels available to purchase them. This could be explained by insufficient publicity and promotion on the part of the government and business enterprises. Factors influencing the purchase intentions of customers are illuminated and potential problems are summarized, in response to which, respective recommendations are provided for both policy makers and firms to popularize remanufactured products.

Objective classification of performance in the use of a piercing saw in jewellery making.

Data from 15 jewellery students, in their 1st and 3rd years of training, were analysed to show how data collected from work settings can be used to objectively evaluate performance in the use of tools. Participants were asked to use a piercing saw to cut 5 lines in a piece of metal. Performance was categorised in terms of functional dynamics. Data from strain gauges and a tri-axial accelerometer (built into the handle of the saw) were recorded and thirteen metrics derived from these data. The key question for this paper is which metrics could be used to distinguish levels of ability. Principal Components Analysis identified five components: sawing action; grasp of handle; task completion time; lateral deviation of strokes; and quality of lines cut. Using representative metrics for these components, participants could be ranked in terms of performance (low, medium, high) and statistical analysis showed significant differences between participants on key metrics.

Virtual reality based support system for layout planning and programming of an industrial robotic work cell.

Traditional robotic work cell design and programming are considered inefficient and outdated in current industrial and market demands. In this research, virtual reality (VR) technology is used to improve human-robot interface, whereby complicated commands or programming knowledge is not required. The proposed solution, known as VR-based Programming of a Robotic Work Cell (VR-Rocell), consists of two sub-programmes, which are VR-Robotic Work Cell Layout (VR-RoWL) and VR-based Robot Teaching System (VR-RoT). VR-RoWL is developed to assign the layout design for an industrial robotic work cell, whereby VR-RoT is developed to overcome safety issues and lack of trained personnel in robot programming. Simple and user-friendly interfaces are designed for inexperienced users to generate robot commands without damaging the robot or interrupting the production line. The user is able to attempt numerous times to attain an optimum solution. A case study is conducted in the Robotics Laboratory to assemble an electronics casing and it is found that the output models are compatible with commercial software without loss of information. Furthermore, the generated KUKA commands are workable when loaded into a commercial simulator. The operation of the actual robotic work cell shows that the errors may be due to the dynamics of the KUKA robot rather than the accuracy of the generated programme. Therefore, it is concluded that the virtual reality based solution approach can be implemented in an industrial robotic work cell.