Boeing (United States)

Starting in the 1970s with robots that were physically isolated from contact with their human co-workers, robots now collaborate with human workers towards a common task goal in a shared workspace. This type of robotic device represents a new era of workplace automation. Industrial robotics is rapidly evolving due to advances in sensor technology, artificial intelligence (AI), wireless communications, mechanical engineering, and materials science. While these new robotic devices are used mainly in manufacturing and warehousing, human-robot collaboration is now seen across multiple goods-producing and service-delivery industry sectors. Assessing and controlling the risks of human-robot collaboration is a critical challenge for occupational safety and health research and practice as industrial robotics becomes a pervasive feature of the future of work. Understanding the physical, psychosocial, work organization, and cybersecurity risks associated with the increasing use of robotic technologies is critical to ensuring the safe development and implementation of industrial robotics. This commentary provides a brief review of the uses of robotic technologies across selected industry sectors; the risks of current and future industrial robotic applications for worker and employer alike; strategies for integrating human-robot collaboration into a health and safety management system; and the role of robotic safety standards in the future of work.

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Hand-intensive manufacturing processes, such as composite layup and textile draping, require significant human dexterity to accommodate task complexity. These strenuous hand motions often lead to musculoskeletal disorders and rehabilitation surgeries. Here we develop a data-driven ergonomic risk assessment system focused on hand and finger activity to better identify and address these risks in manufacturing. This system integrates a multi-modal sensor testbed that captures operator upper body pose, hand pose, and applied force data during hand-intensive composite layup tasks. We introduce the Biometric Assessment of Complete Hand (BACH) ergonomic score, which measures hand and finger risks with greater granularity than existing risk scores for upper body posture (Rapid Upper Limb Assessment, or RULA) and hand activity level (HAL). Additionally, we train machine learning models that effectively predict RULA and HAL metrics for new participants, using data collected at the University of Washington in 2023. Our assessment system, therefore, provides ergonomic interpretability of manufacturing processes, enabling targeted workplace optimizations and posture corrections to improve safety.

We report the design of chip-based building blocks for a photon addition module where one or more photons are coherently added via stimulated emission to a weak source light signal to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio.

Abstract The theory of Odle et al. for the z‐average of branched polycondensates is extended to the general case of co‐cross‐linking of primary chains with different functionalities. Examples are given for free radical and step growth polymerization. For polycondensates, assuming surplus of one functionality and complete conversion, a simple formula for the degree of polymerization DPz for functional groups is derived: (fw, fz, gw, gz: weight and z‐averages of the functionalities of the monomers). The formula is applied to the branched step growth polymerization of monomers A2 + Af +B2 with reactive groups A and B and functionalities 2 and f > 2. The functionality f has practically no influence on the weight averages DPw and Mw if calculated as a function of the relative branching density ρr = ρ/ρc, where ρc = Af, c/(Af, c + A2) and Af, c is the critical value at the gel point. The z‐averages become increasingly larger with increasing f and the ratio DPz(f)/DPz(f = 3) is linear in ρr and f.

The circulation of a high-lift airfoil is enhanced using a spanwise array of fluidically oscillating wall jets to engender a Coanda-like effect on the suction surface near the cove between the flap and the main element. The actuation jets manipulate the interaction between the main element boundary layer and the cove jet to overcome flow separation over the flap and yield high-lift performance that is comparable to or better than conventional high-lift airfoils. The fluidic actuation enables effective operation at larger flap deflections while diminishing the sensitivity to cove characteristics. The performance of the actuator array varies with both the jet momentum coefficient and the spanwise periodic jet spacing. It is shown that the lift increment per jet, which for a sufficiently sparse jet array is invariant with jet spacing, diminishes as jet spacing is reduced due to spanwise jet interactions. Accordingly, the overall lift increment scales with the number of active jets and jet density, and a characteristic spanwise jet spacing is identified for optimal performance.

Abstract Frequency response analysis often provides a great deal of information about the system response over the entire range of operation. This can be computationally expensive if time‐domain methods are used, especially for large structural models. Presence of non‐linearity in the system makes it difficult to employ standard frequency response analysis techniques, which are linear in nature. If the system contains mild‐nonlinearities and the response of the system can be assumed to be periodic, it is possible to obtain nonlinear frequency response of the system using harmonic balance techniques. This paper presents the application of the harmonic balance method for solving nonlinear structural dynamics problems. To improve robustness of the solution and capture unstable branches, the continuation procedure technique is included along with the harmonic balance method. The method developed has been implemented in MSC Nastran SOL 128.