Abstract

Abstract
Human pressure is pushing many of our natural resources to their limits in various regions of the world. Optimize their use is an urgent need. The management of agro-industry has been aware of that need, seeking to improve the productivity and reduce waste throughout the production process, as well by increasing the distribution efficiency of their products. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can support the control/management of the process inputs and outputs in various activities. This article attempts to describe a complete mushroom production chain. The information system developed by the agro-industry company studied allows to acquire, in real-time, the information about what is being produced (quantity and type of mushroom), which products are to be delivered to the different clients and which should be the planning for the next few days. © 2011 AISTI.

Abstract
One important issue in a machining robotic cell is the location of the workpiece with respect to the robot. The feasibility of the task, the quality of the final work and the energy consumption, just to mention a few, are all dependent upon it. This can be formulated as an optimization problem where the objective functions are chosen in order to meet desired performance criteria. Typically, the complexity of the problems and the large number of optimization parameters that, usually, are involved, make the genetic algorithms an appropriate tool in this context. In this paper, two optimization problems are formulated: firstly, the power consumed by the manipulator is considered and the problem is solved using a single-objective genetic algorithm; then the stiffness of the manipulator is also included and the respective optimization problem is solved using a multi-objective genetic algorithm. Simulation results are presented for a parallel manipulator robotic cell.

Abstract
Dynamic modeling is of great importance regarding computer simulation and advanced control of parallel manipulators. Dynamic modeling of parallel manipulators presents an inherent complexity, mainly due to system closed-loop structure and kinematic constraints. In this paper an approach based on the manipulator generalized momentum is explored and applied to the dynamic modeling of a Stewart platform. The generalized momentum is used to compute the kinetic component of the generalized force acting on each manipulator rigid body. Analytic expressions for the rigid bodies' inertia and Coriolis and centripetal terms matrices are obtained, which can be added, as they are expressed in the same frame. Gravitational part of the generalized force is obtained using the manipulator potential energy.

Abstract
This study presents a method to measure the displacement fields on the surface of planar objects with sub-pixel resolution, by combining image correlation with a differential technique. First, a coarse approximation of the pixel level displacement is obtained by cross-correlation (CC). Two consecutive images, taken before and after the application of a given deformation, are recursively split in sub-images, and the CC coefficient is used as the similarity measure. Secondly, a fine approximation is performed to assess the sub-pixel displacements by means of an optical flow method based on a differential technique. To validate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method, several numerical tests were carried out on computer-generated images. Moreover, real images from a static test were also processed for estimating the displacement resolution. The results were compared with those obtained by a commercial digital image correlation code. Both methods showed similar and reliable results according to the proposed tests.

Abstract
In this paper, a digital image correlation (DIC) method coupling cross-correlation with spatio-temporal differential techniques was proposed for assessing discontinuous displacement fields. The accuracy and robustness of the algorithm was assessed on a set of numerical tests by processing computer generated speckled-pattern images. Fracture mechanical tests in mode I were considered, in which both in-plane and out-of-plane rigid-body movements were taken into account. The ability for recovering the analytical asymptotic displacement field in mode I was analysed, and stress intensity factor, crack opening displacement and crack tip location were used as quantitative parameters for validation purposes. Throughout these tests, the results obtained with the proposed method were systematically compared to the ones from Aramis DIC-2D commercial code. Globally, the results computed from both methods are in good agreement with reference values. However, due to the high spatial resolution (point-wise characteristic), a better matching of the displacements in the neighbour of discontinuities could be obtained by the proposed method.