Computer-aided engineering tools (CAE) are more pervasive nowadays, and finite element analysis is having more impact than at any other time. In the past, CAE abilities have been used in specific fields with highly trained engineer teams and large computing facilities. For example, in the aeronautical industry the objective is, among others, to design more efficient airliners and the automotive industry must produce safer cars in case of accident.
Currently there are not field of science or engineering that has not been affected, and in some cases transformed, by computer simulation. Almost most manufacturing companies, regardless of the industry, can take advance of CAE abilities to simulate their process and improve their performance.
Sport industry show off this fact, for example, SPEEDO produced swimsuits including compressing effects for changing, in certain way, the shape of the swimmer’s body. Using this idea, SPEDOO designed suit able to achieve drag reductions in more than 15 per cent. In the JJ.OO. of Beijing, 94% of the medals were won by swimmers dressed with SPEDOO swimsuits (Michael Phelps, Mireia Belmonte …) and 23 out of 25 Olympic records where beaten using this technology (according to data from FINA).
For an airliner or for an Olympic swimmer the engineering problem is essentially the same. There is a shape moving through a fluid and the drag must be minimized. That is, advanced engineering aerodynamic concepts also works in the textile industry. This example clearly defines the current situation of CAE abilities, where high technology is used to solve what we could define as trifling problems.
According to Lesa Roe, NASA Langley Research Center director, “Modeling and simulation is older than NASA”. Since the first models of digital calculators, computing machines evolved step by step and around year 2000 some experts believed that engineering simulation programmes had reached its peak due to the big improvement in abilities for the limited supply of high-level engineers.
However, the more powerful computers and the friendly integrated analysis environments have allowed companies to take advantage of the enormous potential of simulation programmes to make accurate predictions about natural phenomena, providing compelling evidence that we are really gaining in our understanding of how the products, processes and services can be optimized. Therefore, the almost endless engineering simulation techniques provide big growth opportunities, based on the current needs and the challenges that this poses.
As the saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention” CARTIFbelieves and works in endless possibilities to help customers develop better products and processes. I would like to stress in a particular application: the estimation of the static and buckling behaviour of very thin walled containers for food packaging.
Through simulation programmes we are able to detect weak points and design failures prior to manufacture, with consequent savings in time, material and money. Note that the containers are manufactured by plastic injection machines using expensive cast moulds. During the analysis are taken into account parameters such as constitutive material properties (PET, HDPS, aluminium …), thickness, type of liquid or granular product to be content, etc. that define the containers and allows us to predict its performance, resulting in deformation curves under load, loads of collapse, tensions and stretching under certain loads which it may be subjected to circumstances of the production process, storage and transport conditions, including temperature, pressure and impact effects among others.
Beside theses services, being aware that “data is the new currency”, CARTIF is also working on structural health monitoring in civil structures. The aim of this work is predict when maintenance will be needed or what the expected behaviour of structure should be if the real system begins to deviate from the digital models’ behaviour. This idea can be reviewed in my previous post ‘When structures age’.
Disaggregation of consumptions? Why? To avoid the dark side
Within the world of management, the aphorism “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it” is often attributed to the twentieth century Austrian philosopher, Peter Drucker, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation. He is indeed considered the founder of modern management.
Anyone with a minimum knowledge of quality control will have heard of the “Deming Cycle” also known as the “Plan-Do-Check-Act management method”. Measurement is essential in management. It is part of the administrative process and it is essential in the application of the PDCA method.
However, physicists know the expression does not come from the field of corporate management but from experimental thermodynamics. In particular, it was the nineteenth century British mathematician and physicist William Thomson Kelvin (Lord Kelvin) who formulated it in the following terms: “What is not defined, cannot be measured. What is not measured cannot be improved. What is not improving, always breaks down.” By the way, William Thomson Kelvin became Lord Kelvin-Britain’s first British scientist to be admitted to the House of Lords,-in recognition of his work in thermodynamics and electricity. He is buried in Westminster Abbey, next to the tomb of Isaac Newton.
Once defended the honour of “physics” versus “management”, the idea of measuring for improvement remains one of the most important ground rules of green manufacturing.
One of the problems encountered in the REEMAIN project when initiating the process of improving the energy efficiency of the production processes is the aggregation of energy consumptions: the individual energy consumptions of the main machines or stages of the production process are not accurately known. Only the global amount of energy consumed by the factory as a whole is known.
In the best case scenario, the total amount of energy consumptions of the different workshops will be available in terms of monthly values in large factories constructively organized in interconnected workshops. This is because, –in those kinds of factories-, the specific electricity and gas meters, and even thermal energy or compressed air meters, will have been installed, in the connection points of the workshops to the energy distribution factory networks. However, this “effort” (i.e. economic investment) in terms of energy meters has nothing to do with energy efficiency concerns. It is devoted to avoid discussions in the allocation of overhead costs for energy supplies and auxiliary services between the different workshops or departments.
Overhead costs must always be distributed, and given that financially the factory (or company) is a closed system, the different departments or workshops will try to use a criterion that benefits them –obviously at the expense of hurting others. For instance, electricity or natural gas costs are often split between different departments depending on the number of workers, the workshop area, the amount of produced units, the number of working hours, nominal power of the machineries or even some type of weighted mix of all the above parameters. As you can imagine, if total energy costs reach magnitudes of six zeroes, changing the weighting of the different criteria can represent hundreds of thousands of euros in the corresponding economic balances.
In any case, either within the workshop or at the global factory level, the challenge is to determine (i.e. monitor with temporal detailed recording) the contributions of the different lines, machines or systems to the energy consumption of the factory. And, why is this useful? Well, there are many reasons that will be discussed in the post. But, talking in general terms and paraphrasing Master Yoda, –now it is 40 years celebration, it could be said that “Aggregation of energy consumptions is the path to the dark side. Aggregation leads to lack of knowledge. Lack of knowledge leads to uncontrollability. Uncontrollability leads to inability to improve.”
The term “malnutrition” refers to a state in which a deficiency, excess or imbalance of energy, proteins and other nutrients. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) more than 2 billion people on the planet suffers some form of malnutrition. When we think about malnutrition, children or adults with undernutrition come to our minds. However, malnutrition can occurs either due to a lack of certain essential micronutrients, e.g vitamins and minerals (dietary deficiency), insufficient calorie intake to ensure normal growth and life (undernutrition) or an excess of consumption of calories (overnutrition).
Nutrition-related diseases are becoming more prevalent in the world and are a serious problem, and overweight and obesity that were related to food abundance, are now a reflection of a clear malnutrition.
According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), since 1980 obesity has doubled worldwide. Specifically, by 2014 more than 1,9 billion adults (aged 18 and over) were overweight, more than 600 million of them were classified as obese. In the same year, it was established that 41 million children under 5 were overweight or obese.
The global cost of malnutrition is about $3,5 billion per year due to associated public health costs and lack of productivity.
Overweight malnutrition is a prevalent problem and increases the risk of developing metabolic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease and stroke, atherosclerosis, and is linked to several cancers due to excess of calories or lack of nutrient balance from the diet.
Economic crisis, political and social factors, cultural and biological conditions are some of the factors that influence the evolution of this problem. In our developed world, the causes that characterize malnutrition are directly related to low nutritional quality diets characterized by an excess in consumption of fat, carbohydrates, low consumption of good quality proteins, vitamins, minerals and fibre and a decrease in physical activity.
New busy life style, increased intake of high-calorie foods (in some countries healthy foods are more expensive than processed food) or inactivity are factors that have contributed to the emergence of this problem.
During the last decade, a boost has been made on nutrition as a key to the development of countries. In 2015, however, the goals for sustainable development were to achieve the end ALL forms of malnutrition by 2030, challenging the world to think and act differently on malnutrition and to end all forms of malnutrition.
Nutrition begins with what we eat. Good nutrition gives us the energy we need to live and is the first defense against diseases. Adequate nutrition is essential for good health and, likewise, poor nutrition can affect the occurrence of diseases or physical and mental underdevelopment, especially in the case of children.
Food is the way to promote health. Recently the Spanish Society of Community Nutrition (SENC) has presented the dietary guidelines and the new nutritional pyramid on which basis, of course, includes daily exercise and emotional balance.
The nutritional pyramid should be our spiritual guide to achieve an adequate nutritional balance. However, the new pyramid also raises some issues such as the presence of sausages or coldmeats as part of daily servings of protein sources, or the presence of the scary industrial pastries, sweets and sugary drinks, or salty snacks as an “optional and moderate consum” and especially the appearance of the nutritional supplements flag waving at the top of the pyramid…
Undoubtedly, there are actions that have long been necessary to eradicate this problem associated with food and that require the full involvement of the competent authorities. For example, the urgency in defining nutritional profiles that would limit food producers’ ability to make use of nutritional claims in low-nutrient products, or limiting children’s advertising of calorie foods (action, of course, which WHO has already taken with “fast food” companies) or pressure on the food industry to reformulate certain products (part of this road is already under way).
On the other hand, the necessary (I would say even mandatory) empowering of consumers on nutrition education in order to choose healthy food and diets to obtain an adequate nutritional balance. Internalize the importance of a proper nutrition, choose fresh seasonal products (and if possible, local food), limit (or do without) the consumption of foods that are not necessary (they are almost certainly calorie-rich and very cheap food), check nutritional labels and practice some regular physical activity.
This question is easy to ask, but very difficult to answer. If a person who does not know about self-consumption is informed, explaining that basically consists of putting a solar photovoltaic installation in your house and to use the energy that the sun gives us to generate the energy we use in our homes, the answer seems obvious.
In addition the energy generated is clean, since we avoid emitting CO2 to the planet and it is also free of charge. But there is nothing free in this world, everything has its price.
Surely many citizens have thought of taking the step of launching themselves to the generation of their own energy. The European Union encourages us through the recent “Clean Energy for all Europeans” initiative. This directive focused at the period 2021-2030 aims to support initiatives aimed at self-consumption so that citizens are their own energy generators.
This is where economic terms of investment and profitability appear, leading the citizen to ask oneself the first questions that may begin to discourage him.
How much does it cost to install my photovoltaic panels? How soon will I recover my initial investment? What do I do with my surplus energy? What happens in periods when there is no sun?
Firstly, we need space to place our panels. For example in Spain, 35% of the population that lives in single-family or semi-detached houses has it easy but the rest who live in flats already depends on other factors ,such as, their neighbours or space. However, in these matters where everybody is benefited, it is easier to reach an agreement.
Overcoming this stumbling block the next question is answered quickly. For an average citizen who consumes 3000 Kw / h by year, their problem could be easy resolved with an investment nearly of 6000 €. However in this case, it is necessary that our facility is connected to the grid and we can discharge the surplus to our power company or take power from the grid in case of imbalance. If we want to be totally grid isolated, the figure shoots to approximately 9000 €, because we will need batteries to store the surplus energy or be used in case of lack of sun. The investment recovery could be in the range of 10-20 years depending on the evolution of energy prices, taxes on self-consumption and other series of factors to take into account.
Nowadays in some countries like Spain, with the current regulation it is difficult to realize investments in self consumption that are efficient, due to a series of obstacles that should begin to be eliminated.
Self-consumption is not just putting photovoltaic panels on the roofs, but opens up a wide range of possibilities that should be allowed. To photovoltaic panels can be joined by other renewable sources of energy that make self-consumption become in another source of electricity generation and it is, at this moment, when new alternatives and questions appear.
Why not exchange energy with my neighbours? Why not obtain a profit from my surplus energy? Why does not my municipality generate its own electricity to supply, for example, street lighting? Will it someday be my building of zero energy or energy plus? Will I be able to charge my electric car?
Response to these issues may allow that our investment to start to be profitable but not only from the economic point of view but also social. Climate change is already a reality and everything whose aim is focused to reduce the burning of fossil fuels will be welcome.
From the self-consumption can be benefited all energy system actors, from electric companies, manufacturers of solar panels and batteries, installers, maintenance companies, engineering research centres and end users. Investment is also in the long term, the future of our planet.
All these and many other questions will have a clear answer in the coming years when the energy models change and we become aware that the past was never better.
In an earlier post titled “It’s a robot and it has feelings” I discussed about the possibility of incorporating “feelings” into robots in a similar way as human emotions are displayed when facing external stimuli. Following that post, an obvious question arises: But what for? Or, being more pragmatic: What advantages can a robot obtain from emulating emotional responses?
Empathy is defined as the cognitive ability to perceive what another being can feel, and can be divided into two main components: affective empathy, also called emotional empathy which is the ability to emotionally respond with appropriately to the mental states of another being; And cognitive empathy, which is the ability to understand the point of view or mental state of another being.
What is the added value of this type of “empathic” communication? On the one hand, empathy improves the efficiency of interaction. Thus, as we perform actions we send signals that communicate our intentions (looks, movements of the hands, the body, etc.), which can allow other beings prepared to perceive these signals to identify them and to make a more efficient collaboration in order to achieve joint objectives. On the other hand, empathic interaction could help to lessen the apprehension that some users have when it comes to interacting with robotic devices, making them feel more comfortable with robots and other machines.
Endowing robots with a behavior that simulates human “emotional” behavior is one of the ultimate goals of robotics. Such emotional behavior could allow robots to show their mood (affective empathy) as well as perceive that of users interacting with them (cognitive empathy).
However, despite the impressive advances made in recent years in the fields of artificial intelligence, speech recognition and synthesis, computer vision and many other disciplines directly and indirectly related to emotional recognition and artificial emotional expressiveness, we are still far from being able to endow the robots with the empathic capacities similar to those a human being has.
Take as an example a person with a friend who just went to two job interviews but only one job was offered to him. Should that person show satisfaction or disappointment for his friend, or give that event any importance at all? Your response to this will obviously depend on what you know of your friend’s goals and aspirations. There are two components here that would be difficult to implement in a robot. In the first place, the robot would need to have a rich knowledge of itself, including personal motivations, weaknesses, strengths, history of successes and failures, etc. Second, its own identity should overlap with that of his human companion enough to provide a shared knowledge that is meaningful and genuine.
Since we are still far from being able to develop robots with such a human-like empathy, robotic system developers need to understand when to show empathy, at what level and in what contexts. For example, empathy may not be necessary in a washing machine, but it is clear that an empathic behavior can improve the performance of robotic applications in areas such as education or the home. On the other hand, pre-programmed empathic behaviors can become annoying and ineffective. For example, there are studies that indicate that drivers come to refuse (as an act of rebellion) to listen to a car that repeatedly says: “you seem to be tired and should stop.”
In this sense, one of the lines of research in which CARTIF participates is in the development of robots and social avatars with the capacity to recognize and express emotions, and to do so in a way that suits their operating environment and the services that they are offering. In this line, and as members of the European robotics platform euRobotics AISBL(Association Internationale Sans But Lucratif) we actively interact with other European centers of recognized prestige within the group “Natural Interaction with Social Robots”, which goal is the discussion and dissemination of cutting-edge advances at European level in the field of interaction between humans and social robots.
One of the recent activities carried out in this context has been the European Robotics Forum held last March in Edinburgh, where we had the opportunity to discuss with members of the group precisely the needs, recommendations and future lines in the development of robots with empathic capacity. From the discussions that took place in this forum, I would like to summarize the following notes which, although of a general nature, will surely mark the European trends in research on social robotics in the coming years:
It is necessary to continue researching what empathy means for different types of robots, such as exoskeletons, social robots, service robots, manufacturing robots, etc. And investigate how those robots can express empathy in their respective contexts of application.
Empathic interaction must be a dynamic process that evolves in order to build a relationship with the user over time. Preprogrammed repetitive behaviors are not perceived as empathic by the user, especially when the behavioral tips used to activate robot actions are known to the user.
Because robots do not possess the physiological processes that allow them to be empathic, the solution is to detect the socio-emotional signals transmitted by humans and have the robots mimic the empathic behavioral responses that would be displayed by humans.
During experimentation with empathic robots, we should make use of systems that are sufficiently complex and have the necessary capabilities to investigate the different aspects of empathic behavior and to quantitatively assess their impact. After studying the different aspects of empathic interaction, the most relevant aspects could be selected and realized in simple and low-cost systems for commercialization.
Public initiatives like ‘Connected Industry 4.0’ are developing measures that allow the industrial fabric to benefit from the intensive use of ICT in all areas of its activity. These initiatives are linked to the term Industry 4.0, which refers to the challenge of carrying out the 4th Industrial Revolution through the transformation of industrial sector by the enabling technologies incorporation: 3D printing, robotization, sensors and embedded systems, augmented reality, artificial vision, predictive maintenance, cybersecurity, traceability, big data, etc.
Construction sector, as the industrial one, is immersed in a deep metamorphosis before the irruption of these new technologies. The economic crisis has been very intense in this market. As a strategy for its recovery, it must its particular revolution, taking full advantage of the opportunities offered by enabling technologies. For this reason, the ‘Construction 4.0’ concept appears as a necessity to digitize the construction through the incorporation of enabling technologies adapted to their particularities.
In this sector, it is the first time that a revolution is built ‘a priori’, which gives us the opportunity both to companies and to research centres to participate actively in the future.
In CARTIF, we work along this line by means of some projects that apply these technologies. In the case of the BIM (Building Information Modeling), which proposes to manage the complete cycle of the project through a digital 3D model, we develop improvements to include all the actor of the value chain.
With reference to 3D printing, a methodology that allows the construction of objects layer by layer, obtaining singular pieces or with complex geometries, CARTIF applies technologies to the direct printing on vertical surfaces for the rehabilitation of facades.
If we talk about robotization, besides the fact that making specific robots to certain tasks, adapt existing machines increasing their autonomy and safety of operators. In this line, we collaborate to develop monitoring and navigation technologies for the automatic guidance of machinery and to detect risks situations between machinery and operators.
With all these innovations, the future of construction is promising, if and when this research would be considered as an essential basis for its growth.
