FASTory assembly line power consumption data.

Machine learning (ML) techniques are widely adopted in manufacturing systems for discovering valuable patterns in shopfloor data. In this regard, machine learning models learn patterns in data to optimize process parameters, forecast equipment deterioration, and plan maintenance strategies among other uses. Thus, this article presents the dataset collected from an assembly line known as the FASTory assembly line. This data contains more than 4,000 data samples of conveyor belt motor driver's power consumption. The FASTory assembly line is equipped with web-based industrial controllers and smart 3-phase energy monitoring modules as an expansion to these controllers. For data collection, an application was developed in a timely manner. The application receives a new data sample as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) every second. Afterwards, the application extracts the energy data for the relevant phase and persists it in a MySQL database for the purpose of processing at a later stage. This data is collected for two separate cases: static case and dynamic case. In the static case, the power consumption data is collected under different loads and belt tension values. This data is used by a prognostic model (Artificial Neural Network (ANN)) to learn the conveyor belt motor driver's power consumption pattern under different belt tension values and load conditions. The data collected during the dynamic case is used to investigate how the belt tension affects the movement of the pallet between conveyor zones. The knowledge obtained from the power consumption data of the conveyor belt motor driver is used to forecast the gradual behavioural deterioration of the conveyor belts used for the transportation of pallets between processing workstations of discrete manufacturing systems.

Managing Perceived Loneliness and Social-Isolation Levels for Older Adults: A Survey with Focus on Wearables-Based Solutions.

As an inevitable process, the number of older adults is increasing in many countries worldwide. Two of the main problems that society is being confronted with more and more, in this respect, are the inter-related aspects of feelings of loneliness and social isolation among older adults. In particular, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and its associated restrictions have exacerbated the loneliness and social-isolation problems. This paper is first and foremost a comprehensive survey of loneliness monitoring and management solutions, from the multidisciplinary perspective of technology, gerontology, socio-psychology, and urban built environment. In addition, our paper also investigates machine learning-based technological solutions with wearable-sensor data, suitable to measure, monitor, manage, and/or diminish the levels of loneliness and social isolation, when one also considers the constraints and characteristics coming from social science, gerontology, and architecture/urban built environments points of view. Compared to the existing state of the art, our work is unique from the cross-disciplinary point of view, because our authors' team combines the expertise from four distinct domains, i.e., gerontology, social psychology, architecture, and wireless technology in addressing the two inter-related problems of loneliness and social isolation in older adults. This work combines a cross-disciplinary survey of the literature in the four aforementioned domains with a proposed wearable-based technological solution, introduced first as a generic framework and, then, exemplified through a simple proof of concept with dummy data. As the main findings, we provide a comprehensive view on challenges and solutions in utilizing various technologies, particularly those carried by users, also known as wearables, to measure, manage, and/or diminish the social isolation and the perceived loneliness among older adults. In addition, we also summarize the identified solutions which can be used for measuring and monitoring various loneliness- and social isolation-related metrics, and we present and validate, through a simple proof-of-concept mechanism, an approach based on machine learning for predicting and estimating loneliness levels. Open research issues in this field are also discussed.

Emotion-Driven Analysis and Control of Human-Robot Interactions in Collaborative Applications.

The utilization of robotic systems has been increasing in the last decade. This increase has been derived by the evolvement in the computational capabilities, communication systems, and the information systems of the manufacturing systems which is reflected in the concept of Industry 4.0. Furthermore, the robotics systems are continuously required to address new challenges in the industrial and manufacturing domain, like keeping humans in the loop, among other challenges. Briefly, the keeping humans in the loop concept focuses on closing the gap between humans and machines by introducing a safe and trustworthy environment for the human workers to work side by side with robots and machines. It aims at increasing the engagement of the human as the automation level increases rather than replacing the human, which can be nearly impossible in some applications. Consequently, the collaborative robots (Cobots) have been created to allow physical interaction with the human worker. However, these cobots still lack of recognizing the human emotional state. In this regard, this paper presents an approach for adapting cobot parameters to the emotional state of the human worker. The approach utilizes the Electroencephalography (EEG) technology for digitizing and understanding the human emotional state. Afterwards, the parameters of the cobot are instantly adjusted to keep the human emotional state in a desirable range which increases the confidence and the trust between the human and the cobot. In addition, the paper includes a review on technologies and methods for emotional sensing and recognition. Finally, this approach is tested on an ABB YuMi cobot with commercially available EEG headset.

FASTory digital twin data.

The vast adoption of machine learning techniques in developing smart solutions increases the need of training and testing data. This data can be either collected from physical systems or created using simulation tools. In this regard, this paper presents a set of data collected using a digital twin known as the FASTory Simulator. The data contains more than 100 K events which are collected during a simulated assembly process. The FASTory simulator is a replica of a real assembly line with web-based industrial controllers. The data have been collected using specific-developed orchestrator. During the simulated process, the orchestrator was able to record all the events that occurred in the system. The provided data contains raw JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) formatted data and filtered Comma Separated Values (CSV) formatted data. This data can be exploited in machine learning for modelling the behaviour of the production systems or as testing data for optimization solution for the production system. Finally, this data has been utilized in a research for comparing different data analysis approaches including Knowledge-based systems and data-based systems.

An Approach for Managing Manufacturing Assets through Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting.

The manufacturing industry requests novel solutions that will permit enterprises to stay competitive in the market. This leads to decisions being made based on different technologies that are focused on real-time accurate measurement and monitoring of manufacturing assets. In the context of traceability, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags have been traditionally used for tracking, monitoring, and collecting data of various manufacturing resources operating along the value chain. RFID tags and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors enable the monitoring of manufacturing assets by providing real-time data. Such devices are usually powered by batteries that need regular maintenance, which in turn leads to delays that affect the overall manufacturing process time. This article presents a low-cost approach to detect and measure radio frequency (RF) signals in assembly lines for optimizing the manufacturing operations in the manufacturing industry. Through the detection and measurement of RF signals, the RF energy can be harvested at certain locations on the assembly line. Then, the harvested energy can be supplied to the MEMS sensors, minimizing the regular maintenance for checking and replacing batteries. This leads to an increase in the operational efficiency and an overall reduction in operational and maintenance costs.

Technology review: prototyping platforms for monitoring ambient conditions.

The monitoring of ambient conditions in indoor spaces is very essential owing to the amount of time spent indoors. Specifically, the monitoring of air quality is significant because contaminated air affects the health, comfort and productivity of occupants. This research work presents a technology review of prototyping platforms for monitoring ambient conditions in indoor spaces. It involves the research on sensors (for CO2, air quality and ambient conditions), IoT platforms, and novel and commercial prototyping platforms. The ultimate objective of this review is to enable the easy identification, selection and utilisation of the technologies best suited for monitoring ambient conditions in indoor spaces. Following the review, it is recommended to use metal oxide sensors, optical sensors and electrochemical sensors for IAQ monitoring (including NDIR sensors for CO2 monitoring), Raspberry Pi for data processing, ZigBee and Wi-Fi for data communication, and ThingSpeak IoT platform for data storage, analysis and visualisation.