Ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution Research Articles

Automatic Synthesis of Containerized Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems: A Case Study

Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPSs) are widely regarded as the next generation industrial control systems and as one of the core technologies of the ongoing fourth industrial revolution. Despite its advantages, ICPSs are heavily dependent on the underlying physical process and their synthesis is a customized effort, demanding in terms of resources, which if not conducted carefully may impact the performance of the system. This work proposes a methodology to tackle ICPS synthesis in a systematic way, by using a set of industrial agents that take as input an standardized process description file and automatically deploy a modular ICPS from pre-designed functional containers. Concrete examples on a tanks system and an industrial paste thickener are presented to illustrate the potential of the proposed methodology.

Smart Building Construction Technology, A Digital Innovation for Enhancing Builders Entrepreneurial Sustainability

The building construction industry is currently on the pathway to digitalization in line with the ongoing fourth industrial revolution. However, builders have been quite slow in aligning with the digitalization pathway due to lack of adequate understanding of digital innovative skills. This study aims to develop digital skills needed by builders to become enterprising in the building construction industry. Survey research design was adopted for the study. Two research questions and hypotheses were used to carry out the study. The population for the study comprised 115 male & female practicing builders from some selected building construction industry in South-east states of Nigeria. Structured questionnaire was used to deduce respondent’s perception about digital innovative skills needed for constructing smart buildings. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was determined by the use of Cronbach alpha reliability test which yielded a value of 0.76. Data generated were analyzed using mean to answer research questions. T-test was used to test the hypotheses at probability level of 0.05. findings from the study revealed that BIM, IoT, BSM and data analytics are among the chief digital skills needed by builders to align with the digitalization of building construction industry. The findings further suggested that builders with possession of digital innovative skills promises to stay enterprising in the building construction industry. The study recommended that training opportunities on acquisition of digital skills relevant to the building construction industry should be sought for by all practicing builders in Nigeria to address the evolving dynamics in the built environment.

Multi-Modal Industrial IoT Networks: Recent Advances and Future Challenges

AbstractWhile the ongoing fourth industrial revolution continues to be a major driver behind wireless communication technologies, some environments are so prohibitive that even state-of-the-art solutions can barely achieve ubiquitous wireless connectivity (if at all). For example, in industrial sites with large metal constructions (such as petrochemical plants), highly localized and time-varying changes in wireless link quality are quite common. Oddly enough, much of the capabilities needed to deal with such effects are already present at the physical layer (PHY), but remain largely unexploited by higher protocol layers. In fact, little Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) (IIoT) research has considered harnessing the full multi-modal capabilities of modern multi-PHY/multi-band IoT hardware in general. As such, in this vision paper, we: (1) analyze recent advances towards enabling multi-modal IIoT through link- and routing layer operations; and (2) describe challenges and opportunities for future IIoT deployments, based on the design choices that emerged from said analysis. In summary, we identify a combination of a modified/extended Time-Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) link layer, using either fixed or variable duration timeslots, together with a Parent-Oriented (PO) Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) (RPL) approach to be the most promising way forward.

The Potential of Low-Power, Cost-Effective Single Board Computers for Manufacturing Scheduling

The ongoing fourth industrial revolution is pushing manufacturing towards smart, cognitive, and more adaptable systems. These new paradigms will require a huge number of computational resources. To meet these needs, the evolution of Industrial Internet added a layer of low-power heterogeneous devices with processing capabilities on the edge of the network, closer to the area where it is needed. Single board computers are the most common hardware platform found in the edge nodes. Due to its computation performance and power efficiency, the resources of this layer on the edge should be explored to solve processing demanding tasks. Maybe systems like the enterprise resource planning systems (ERP) and the manufacturing execution systems (MES) that are typically hosted in the industrial cloud can take advantage of sharing services between the cloud and the edge. This work aims to explore the edge layer collaboration with the cloud, sharing computational power to process the manufacturing scheduling problems linked to the ERP and MES. Therefore, in this preliminary study, we investigate the potential of single board computers to solve manufacturing scheduling problems. We present the experiments with four versions of Raspberry Pi, a well-known single board computer, evaluating them from the energy consumption and computation time points of view. Experiments show that it is possible to solve these scheduling problems in a reasonable time, with a lower energy consumption than other high-end computing devices.

Human capital and employment transformation in the context of digitalisation

The ongoing fourth industrial revolution, characterised by the technological singularity, has introduced significant changes in the development scenarios of the global and Russian economy. The changes caused by the new technological mode occur with exponential acceleration, which inevitably transforms the way of life, culture, education model and forms a new system of values, which implies replacing the existing model of human capital with a standard set of highly specialised skills with a new model that promotes the development of flexible skills and abilities on the basis of interdisciplinary approach to learning. In this regard, the article is devoted to the study of transformational forms of employment, its standard and non-standard forms, as well as to the identification of adaptive capabilities of human capital to new forms of employment in the conditions of digital and structural transformation. The methodological basis of the study was the provisions of economic theory and macroeconomic analysis. Based on a comparative analysis, the adaptive capacity of human capital to new forms of employment was evaluated. The research allowed us to classify transformational - new forms and types of employment, identify the main features of new forms of employment, identify the main professional skills in demand in the conditions of digitalisation, and propose possible options for the adaptation of human capital in the era of digitalisation.

Perovskite Piezoelectric-Based Flexible Energy Harvesters for Self-Powered Implantable and Wearable IoT Devices

In the ongoing fourth industrial revolution, the internet of things (IoT) will play a crucial role in collecting and analyzing information related to human healthcare, public safety, environmental monitoring and home/industrial automation. Even though conventional batteries are widely used to operate IoT devices as a power source, these batteries have a drawback of limited capacity, which impedes broad commercialization of the IoT. In this regard, piezoelectric energy harvesting technology has attracted a great deal of attention because piezoelectric materials can convert electricity from mechanical and vibrational movements in the ambient environment. In particular, piezoelectric-based flexible energy harvesters can precisely harvest tiny mechanical movements of muscles and internal organs from the human body to produce electricity. These inherent properties of flexible piezoelectric harvesters make it possible to eliminate conventional batteries for lifetime extension of implantable and wearable IoTs. This paper describes the progress of piezoelectric perovskite material-based flexible energy harvesters for self-powered IoT devices for biomedical/wearable electronics over the last decade.

Industrial digitalization in the industry 4.0 era: Classification, reuse and authoring of digital models on Digital Twin platforms

Digital Twins (DTs) are real-time digital models that allow for self-diagnosis, self-optimization and self-configuration without the need for human input or intervention. While DTs are a central aspect of the ongoing fourth industrial revolution (I4.0), this leap forward may be reserved for the established, large-cap companies since the adoption of digital technologies among Small and Medium-size Enterprises (SMEs) is still modest. The aim of the H2020 European Project ”DIGITbrain” is to support a modular construction of DTs by reusing their fundamental building blocks, i.e., the Models that describe the behavior of the DT, their associated Algorithms and the Data required for the evaluation. By offering these building blocks as a service via a DT Platform (a Digital Twin Environment), the technical barriers among SMEs to adopt these technologies are lowered. This paper describes how digital models can be classified, reused and authored on such DT Platforms. Through experimental analyses of three industrial cases, the paper exemplifies how DTs are employed in relation to product assembly of agricultural robots, polymer injection molding, as well as laser-cutting and sheet-metal forming of aluminum.

Development and evaluation of design guidelines for cognitive ergonomics in human-robot collaborative assembly systems

Industry 4.0 is the concept used to summarize the ongoing fourth industrial revolution, which is profoundly changing the manufacturing systems and business models all over the world. Collaborative robotics is one of the most promising technologies of Industry 4.0. Human-robot interaction and human-robot collaboration will be crucial for enhancing the operator's work conditions and production performance. In this regard, this enabling technology opens new possibilities but also new challenges. There is no doubt that safety is of primary importance when humans and robots interact in industrial settings. Nevertheless, human factors and cognitive ergonomics (i.e. cognitive workload, usability, trust, acceptance, stress, frustration, perceived enjoyment) are crucial, even if they are often underestimated or ignored. Therefore, this work refers to cognitive ergonomics in the design of human-robot collaborative assembly systems. A set of design guidelines has been developed according to the analysis of the scientific literature. Their effectiveness has been evaluated through multiple experiments based on a laboratory case study where different participants interacted with a low-payload collaborative robotic system for the joint assembly of a manufacturing product. The main assumption to be tested is that it is possible to improve the operator's experience and efficiency by manipulating the system features and interaction patterns according to the proposed design guidelines. Results confirmed that participants improved their cognitive response to human-robot interaction as well as the assembly performance with the enhancement of workstation features and interaction conditions by implementing an increasing number of guidelines.

Smart Production Workers in Terms of Creativity and Innovation: The Implication for Open Innovation

This paper presents a framework of employee skills and competencies useful for developing occupational profiles for employees of companies transitioning towards Industry 4.0. The paper consists of a discussion of the theoretical and practical parts of case studies. The theoretical portion was created on the basis of a review of scientific literature and research studies regarding the competencies and skills of employees in the ongoing fourth industrial revolution. This part focuses on the skills profile of an Industry 4.0 employee and an Operator 4.0 (O4.0) from a creativity and innovativeness point of view. The link between the theoretical part and the case study analysis was a general framework for building the competencies and skills of the steelworker in the emerging fourth industrial revolution. The case study analysis covered the framework of competencies and skills of a metallurgist in smart manufacturing built into the organization of steel mills. Recruitment offers of a steel company implementing smart manufacturing (SM) projects and educational programmes of technical universities in the field of metallurgy were analysed. The aim of the study was to develop a framework for the profile of an employee working in an innovative company transforming to I4.0. The publication posed the following research questions (purposes/hypotheses): P1. To what extent do Polish companies in the metallurgical sector pay attention to creativity and innovation issues when looking for employees? P2. To what extent do the profile (portfolio) of metallurgy graduates of Polish technical universities turn their attention to the issues related to creativity and innovation?

SysML modeling of service-oriented system-of-systems

AbstractThe success of the ongoing fourth industrial revolution largely depends on our ways to cope with the novel design challenges arising from a combination of an enormous increase in process and product complexity, as well as the expected autonomy and self-organization of complex and diverse industrial hardware–software installments, often called systems-of-systems. In this paper, we employ the service-oriented architectural paradigm, as materialized in the Eclipse Arrowhead framework, to represent modern systems engineering principles and their open structural principles and, thus, relevance to flexible and adaptive systems. As for adequately capturing the structural aspect, we propose using model-based engineering techniques and, in particular, a SysML-based specialization of systems modeling. The approach is illustrated by a real-life use-case in industrial automation.

Digitalisation of learning: a driving force for higher education modernisation or a humanitarian threat?

The article discusses the problems of modernisation of the system of higher education in the Republic of Belarus related to the implementation of digital forms and methods of education. The inextricable link between the digitalisation of education and the ongoing fourth industrial revolution is revealed. On the basis of empirical data from studies carried out at Belarusian State University, it is shown that Belarusian and foreign students have increased their level of knowledge, skills and competencies in the use of information and communication technologies during a year of study in a pandemic period. Students appreciate the transfer to distance methods of a significant proportion of classes. The author noted that effective digitalisation of education contributes to the growth of the competitiveness of educational institutions. It is concluded that the active use of digitalisation is consistent with the goals of modernisation of the higher education system and does not pose a significant threat to the self-development of students. The results obtained can be used in research of the digitalisation of higher education in Belarus and other EAEU countries, and in teaching the Belarusian and foreign students studying in Belarusian universities.

Priority-Based Energy Sharing and Management Among Prosumers in Smart Grids

Rapid population growth, the ongoing fourth industrial revolution, rising energy demands, global environmental concerns, and uneconomic non-renewable energy drain intensify the need for prosumer communities to bridge the demand-supply gap in electrical energy. To this end, in this paper, we propose a priority-based energy sharing and management model, considering the prosumer community equipped with a renewable energy manager for power production and energy storage by limiting the dependency on available resources. In the proposed model, surplus power is shared within the community due to constraints of power line capacity for traditional grids. In addition, energy sharing is based on two distinct criteria: single-use and multiple-uses. The objective of the proposed model is to maximize the utilization of surplus power at a low per unit energy cost and obtain the optimum economic advantage. We employ a binary integer programming (BIP) technique to solve the formulated problem. The proficiency of the prosumer is the primary focus of the employed strategy. A weight factor is introduced to estimate the intra-dependency of the demand-supply gap and energy cost. Simulation results show that the demand-supply gap in the prosumer community reduces up to 41.8 % without energy storage system. Additionally, the results also validate that including the energy storage system in the prosumer community further reduces the demand-supply gap to 67.33 %.

AI METHODS THAT CAN GENERATE LONGER TEXTS WITH MINIMAL INITIAL INPUT

The article is devoted to the description of the work and the research of text generators generate longer texts with a minimum input of primary information. The research is interdisciplinary of NLP and carried out at the intersection of Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics. The emergence of the growth of web-based textual information has significantly accelerated the development of some scientific fields that have existed for many decades, but in the absence of much access to input data, they have not developed as rapidly as in the past two decades. There have been several promising ideas and experiments in this field for the automatic processing of natural language texts, which have already been implemented in many of the systems used, including many commercial systems. In my research, I try to better understand and compare existing CL applications and their operation in each topic. However, specific applications fall into one topic, with little or no difference in their area of operation and application. The methods NLP in the field of artificial intelligence were described. The most important and traceable form of communication is writing. Artificial intelligence and automation are at the heart of the ongoing fourth industrial revolution. During the research process, the author drew several conclusions during the research process. Among other things, he understood the importance of data vectorization and that any abstract process can be well modelled with mathematical processes. Although the use of different text generators are based on AI, the role of man is not negligible, as setting input parameters and checking output results for different methods still requires human control to this day. The layout and “quality assurance” of the text is the responsibility of AI researchers. Various techniques and methods have evolved and supplemented significantly over the past 20 years, with the latest text generators almost surpassing the framework and quality of text written by a person. This does not mean that in the future we will only read machine-generated text. Intuition and creativity still require the presence of man to this day, the machine processes the set of information we enter or enter and processes the various patterns and then generates texts using them.

INTENSITY OF INNOVATION ACTIVITY AND ITS PROGRESSIVITY IN ENTERPRISES IN SLOVAKIA IN THE ERA OF INDUSTRY 4.0

At present, it is not easy to define and recognise the innovative potential of an enterprise in a market environment. It is about identifying the components, relationships and understanding the concepts, interconnections and achieving the expected economic, social, environmental consequences of introducing and managing innovation. Innovation is associated with increased performance, the creation of new markets and competitive advantage. Enterprises are innovating to defend their existing competitive positions as well as to seek a sustainable competitive advantage. The paper's main goal was to examine the degree of the introduction of innovations in enterprises in Slovakia in the era of Industry 4.0 on the basis of a knowledge base and a questionnaire survey. By applying theoretical knowledge and statistical methods of evaluating the questionnaire survey, we came to potential opportunities for the development of innovation activity in the ongoing fourth industrial revolution in the surveyed enterprises.

Assessment of urban solid waste management systems for Industry 4.0 technology interventions and the circular economy.

The ongoing fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0 (I4.0), is transforming various industries across the globe. At the same time, resource scarcity with high consumption rates has led to the development of the circular economy. Both concepts advocate for sustainable growth and waste minimization. In developing countries, the integrated solid waste management framework is undergoing modification under I4.0 and the circular economy. Urban local bodies are often unable to measure the readiness of their waste management systems to transform under I4.0 and the circular economy. Here the novel concept of Waste 4.0 is developed. 'Waste 4.0' is a readiness assessment tool to promote the comprehensive transformation of municipal solid waste management under I4.0 and circular economy. This tool has eight determinants for assessing the municipal solid waste management of urban local bodies. To validate Waste 4.0 the urban local bodies of Indore and Sagar, India were used as case studies. The readiness index for I4.0 in the municipal solid waste management system in Indore and Sagar was 0.72 and 0.14, respectively. The readiness index for circular economy focus in Indore and Sagar was 0.65 and 0.13, respectively. The Indore urban local body was classified as an 'Experienced' player for I4.0 Intervention and a 'circular economy fast adopter' for circular economy focus under I4.0 readiness. The Sagar urban local body was classified as a 'Hesitator' player for I4.0 Intervention and achieved the 'Business as usual' tag for circular economy focus under I4.0 readiness. With the Waste 4.0 assessment results urban local bodies can better plan and thus transform their municipal solid waste management systems under I4.0 and the circular economy.

Implementation of New Technologies to Improve Safety of Road Transport

The ongoing fourth industrial revolution will fundamentally change the way we live and work. In some areas, innovation are wide spread and visible. In others, more traditional ones like transport safety, the progress is much slower. In this paper, we review the impact of implementation of new technologies and automation on safety of road transport. Besides improving safety of transport, we can also use these technologies to improve efficiency and reduce environmental impact of transport. To emphasize the practical side of implementing new technologies, we did a research on past good practices and concrete examples of implementation of new technologies into transport. However, this paper focuses on the direct relationship between implementation of new technologies and automation on one side and increasing security, measured in saved human lives on the other.

Plans to Activate Investment between Korea and Russia during Putin's Fourth Term – Focusing on High Value-added Industries

The main goal of this study is to identify policy implications for investment cooperation between Korea and Russia in the 4th term of President Putin and to seek ways to increase mutual investment. In particular, case studies were conducted of various investment cooperation projects by Russia with other countries amid the ongoing fourth industrial revolution, aiming to suggest more practical approaches to increase Korean investment in Russia. Marking the 30 years since establishment of diplomatic relations between Korea and Russia, we need to look back on economic cooperation between the two countries and seek ways to develop cooperation one step further. We are seeing fundamental changes in the industrial structure due to reorganization of the international order and digital transformation – such as competition be-tween the United States and China, the establishment of strategic cooperative relations between China and Russia (the so-called fourth industrial revolution), ecosystem disturbances due to climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, etc. It is necessary to prepare a new type of cooperation strategy in consideration of the fundamental change of paradigm.

Sociotype and cultural evolution: The acceleration of cultural change alongside industrial revolutions

The present work explores, from the vantage point of the sociotype, the dramatic acceleration of cultural change alongside the successive industrial revolutions, particularly in the ongoing information era. Developed within the genotype-phenotype-sociotype conceptual triad, the sociotype means the average social environment that is adaptively demanded by the “social brain” of each individual. For there is a regularity of social interaction, centered on social bonding and talking time, which has been developed as an adaptive trait, evolutionarily rooted, related to the substantial size increase of human groups. A quantitative approach to the sociotype basic traits shows fundamental competitive interrelationships taking place within an overall “attention economy.” Approaching these figures via the Planckian Distribution Equation, they can be connected with many other competitive processes taking place in the biological, economic, and cultural realms. Concerning culture, the cognitive limits of the individual, which we consider commensurate with the sociotype general limitations, impose by themselves a strict boundary on the cultural items effectively handled by each individual, fostering the overall competition and decay. Further, the emergence of differentiated generations with ample discrepancy in styles of life, social aspirations, and dominant technologies would represent a systematic bias in the competition and replacement of cultural items. Intriguingly, the cultural acceleration detected in modern societies alongside the successive industrial revolutions, with an ostensible climax in the ongoing fourth industrial revolution –the information era– might be itself a paradoxical consequence of the sociotype's dynamic constancy.

Design of Human-Centered Collaborative Assembly Workstations for the Improvement of Operators’ Physical Ergonomics and Production Efficiency: A Case Study

Industrial collaborative robotics is one of the main enabling technologies of Industry 4.0. Collaborative robots are innovative cyber-physical systems, which allow safe and efficient physical interactions with operators by combining typical machine strengths with inimitable human skills. One of the main uses of collaborative robots will be the support of humans in the most physically stressful activities through a reduction of work-related biomechanical overload, especially in manual assembly activities. The improvement of operators’ occupational work conditions and the development of human-centered and ergonomic production systems is one of the key points of the ongoing fourth industrial revolution. The factory of the future should focus on the implementation of adaptable, reconfigurable, and sustainable production systems, which consider the human as their core and valuable part. Strengthening actual assembly workstations by integrating smart automation solutions for the enhancement of operators’ occupational health and safety will be one of the main goals of the near future. In this paper, the transformation of a manual workstation for wire harness assembly into a collaborative and human-centered one is presented. The purpose of the work is to present a case study research for the design of a collaborative workstation to improve the operators’ physical ergonomics while keeping or increasing the level of productivity. Results demonstrate that the achieved solution provides valuable benefits for the operators’ working conditions as well as for the production performance of the companies. In particular, the biomechanical overload of the worker has been reduced by 12.0% for the right part and by 28% for the left part in terms of manual handling, and by 50% for the left part and by 57% for the right part in terms of working postures. In addition, a reduction of the cycle time of 12.3% has been achieved.

Processes of innovations implementation into Industry 4.0. automotive industry standards

Industry 4.0 is a designation for the automation of production and labour market changes that this will bring. It is based on the boom of digitization, robotization and automation. The Industry 4.0 concept brings the benefits of increasing productivity, reducing costs and making mistakes they result from the involvement of more sophisticated machines in all company processes. The aim of this article is to present the ongoing fourth Industrial revolution (Industry 4.0.) and the impact of innovations in the company. Implementation of innovations are presented, innovation cycle itself and innovations effect on companies. Industry 4.0 makes full use of emerging technologies and rapid development of machines and tools to cope with global challenges in order to improve industry levels. Also, concepts of innovation and digitization are currently a central task for future competitiveness. Therefore, companies are establishing brand new departments focused on innovations in Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0 and digital transformation bring new opportunities in the areas of customer search, improving product offerings, and new opportunities for creating and delivering value, thus opening up new ways to create profit. First part theoretically describes various approaches to this problematic, description of four industrial revolutions and Industry 4.0. itself. Next implementation of innovations is presented, innovation cycle itself and innovations effect on companies. The last part of the article covers innovations in context of Industry 4.0. (both methods and technology) within the automotive industry. Main impact of the work is that this article puts in correlation both importance of the ongoing fourth industrial revolution with innovations in the company. It is very interesting, that these innovations with modern technologies help companies to operate more effectively.