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Energy is a critical element in the sustainable conversation of our planet. As global demand continues to increase, renewable systems are being deployed, but renewable resources are intermittent. Research shows that by combining systems in a hybrid manner, emissions can be reduced and quality of life improved. This case study focuses on the south-east region of Ireland. Two domestic scenarios are investigated. Housing developments of 800 and 2,000 houses are studied with hybrid alternatives. HOMER is used to gather electrical generation data, carbon emissions and cost analysis. Qualitative research investigated Ireland’s energy policies, and three experts were interviewed.

There are three basic strategies in End-of-Life Management (the “3-R” possibilities): Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Additionally, “Recover” can be added to enhance the method to a “4-R” theory: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover. Recover describes the energy recovery from the waste stream. This possibility should not be left out. As the fifth and last option, the strategy landfill is mentioned. This is not an EoL option in the narrow sense, but it is still very important in waste treatment nowadays. There exist some early approaches in the literature to support the decision for a special EoL strategy but they are mostly applicable only in a narrow, specialized field. Therefore in this contribution the current state of the art in (semi) automated disassembly will be described by means of some realized examples. Finally an outlook on further necessary developments with special emphasis to TECIS is given.

There has been considerable focus on building inclusion and diversity into engineering careers and education, especially in developed countries, but despite this, the percentages for minorities remain unchanged over decades. The multi-cultural interaction of TECIS was a springboard for the launch of a working group to investigate the reasons for this lack of improvement. The genesis of this working group occurred in Sozopol, Bulgaria at the TECIS 2019 conference where twenty-three researchers from over ten countries came together to discuss the lack of women and other marginalized groups in engineering. The objective of this paper is threefold, to outline the future direction of the inclusion and diversity working group in TECIS, to support and foster greater knowledge of gender diversity in engineering education and to outline future research activities that could make a substantial contribution to our understanding of diversity issues in engineering in addition to making best practice recommendations that can be used in the engineering industry. The scope of this paper is limited to women in engineering. Future work will look at other inclusion and diversity issues in STEM.

The IFAC TC on “Supplemental Ways for Improving International Stability – SWIIS” is one of the longest situated in IFAC. According to first ideas during the IFAC World Congress in Kyoto 1981 this IFAC – at that time - Working Group organised in 1983 the first Workshop in this highly interdisciplinary field in Austria. Meanwhile a Technical Committee in IFAC, SWIIS was always a bridge between (control) engineers and various other disciplines to open IFAC to other related fields. It‘s a tradition to present on nearly each IFAC World Congress an update of this dynamic TC. Therefore in this contribution the role of process and manufacturing automation especially control engineering will be presented and discussed based on previous papers. In addition Ethics and Diversity are shortly discussed. As an indicator selected Keywords of the main sponsored events of this TC were used. This contribution is based on Kopacek,P, L.Stapleton, M.Dimirovski (2017).

In March 2020 the world as we know it was shaken to the core by the Covid-19 global pandemic. This crisis has had a significant impact on the EU27 economy and triggered unprecedented policy responses across Europe and the globe. Collaborative Robotics, or Cobots, have made a significant difference to many manufacturing plants by facilitating social distancing between workers, introducing flexibility on the factory floor and allowing the plants to manufacture high quality items for use in the medical field. California-based DCL Logistics, a third-party logistics company, decided to employ Cobots to manage a 30% increase in orders in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak and the Cobots have led to a 300% increase in productivity and a 60% jump in labor cost savings [1]. This paper will look at these flexible robots and discuss the benefits they brought to manufacturing in a time of global crisis.

Modern maintenance is continually concerned with the issue of cost. Equally, there is a need to capture tacit information from an aging workforce. The computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) is an essential part of both these aims, but can it be considered a cost-oriented measure in its own right? This paper examines the role of a CMMS in cost-oriented maintenance as both a decision-making tool and data repository, in the context of an Irish medical device production facility.

The term “Cost oriented humanoid robots (COHR)” was introduced some years ago, These robots will be able to support humans in everyday life like on the working place, in the household, in leisure and entertainment, and should be available on the market for a reasonable price. This paper describes a communication method used to operate in industry where multiple robots are required. In this configuration one of the robots is considered as the lead while the other one performs as a follow. The operations performed from the collective operation of the two robots aim to reach a coherence to allow applications that require multiple robots to be performed seamlessly. The development of this work was based on humanoid robots though it can be expanded to any robot platform based on a given application.

Engineering Management is a classical subject since more than 50 years. Some times ago there was a discussion about differences of Technology and Engineering Management. Meanwhile, not only because of the innovations in Technology as well as in Management, it was recognized that there is no really difference and the new abbreviation “TEMS” was introduced but concerning the educational aspects Engineering Management is frequently used. Therefore in this contribution some educational aspects of Engineering Management will be outlined and shortly discussed. After an introduction and a short history of Engineering Management the since nearly 25 years running postgraduate, executive program at TU Wien is taken as an example for discussing educational aspects. Finally some relations to TECIS are given.

In industry, an increased need for further education past the traditional apprenticeship is recognised. There is a known issue with aging maintenance workforce and loss of tacit knowledge through retirement. This paper investigates the skills and knowledge required for the modern maintenance workplace and how this might be implemented in a technician population. Potential educational and pedagogical solutions are offered in this paper, as well as a practical example. Finally, a specific course of learning is suggested.

The article describes different approaches for connecting the teen sized humanoid robot Archie with IoT devices. Main goal of the project is to develop a cost oriented autonomous humanoid robot to assist humans in daily life tasks, thus Archie robot’s natural habitat will be our homes and workplaces. Methods for ROS integration of remote internet enabled sensors, actuators and other devices are described. Test with real life use cases are performed. MQTT M2M protocol have been used for connecting to internet enabled IoT devices. Smart home hubs, which connect either locally or to the cloud, IoT devices, that use the Zigbee or Z-Wave and other protocols, rather than only Wi-Fi connected devices, are disused. Finally, we have successfully implemented and tested 3 different approaches for connecting Archie robot to IoT devices, which gives the robot the ability to interact with the environment by receiving data and the ability to control the thousands of IoT devices available on the market.

Robotics unifies two disciplines: Science and humanities. The effort to design roboethics should make the unity of these two disciplines a primary assumption. This means that experts shall view Robotics as a whole - in spite of the current early stage which recalls a melting pot. Some decades ago social aspects of robotics were discussed. Because of the results and the rapid development of this field ethical issues became more and more important. Therefore the term roboethics was introduced in the literature. The main goal of this contribution is to present and discuss this subject, probably at the first time, from the viewpoint of robotics. First an overview from a practical, robotics viewpoint will be given including an outlook on Production 4.0 (5.0). Then a short presentation of currently and in the future available robots and some ideas about the ethical problems are discussed. Special emphasis is on the ethical behavior of the system “human-robot” and “End of Life - EoL” management.

In Ireland 2019 there is an obvious lack of female engineers in the workplace. This paper investigates the reasons why this is so and if gender diversity is needed in engineering? A qualitative and quantitative study was carried out and the results discussed. Comparison with international data is made and an analysis of the reasons behind the low figures is offered. Finally, potential solutions to attracting and keeping females engaged in engineering are proposed.

Industry 4.0 has brought about a revolution in how the manufacturing industry operates, from the product concept generation to the automated, high-tech factories that fabricate the products. Manufacturing systems are fully integrated, multi-robot and collaborative. The key elements of Industry 4.0 are information and communications technology (ICT), connectedness, sensor technology, robotics and innovative production systems. Smart manufacturing systems producing smart products. The result of this highly automated environment of Industry 4.0 is that the humans are at risk of no longer playing a valuable role. This paper asks the following questions: Can we ensure that humans have a place in the highly automated workplace of the future (Industry 5.0) by optimizing human capital? Can the traditional educational provider supply the skills required to educate this modern worker or do we require an innovative educational system?

The use of robots for any manufacturing process is present in almost every industry nowadays. Nevertheless, automating the manufacturing process has always been a challenge for every one of them due to costs and complexity of adding this kind of automation. Acquiring robotic equipment in a concentrated market where the vendors have locked-in their clients can be expensive. In addition to this, the development of intern-factory made solutions has a very steep learning curve and it is not easily achievable. Due to these barriers small and medium size players can’t easily jump into this revolution.

This contribution deals with social and ethical aspects of automation. Because of the fast development of manufacturing automation, especially in the field of robotics, there is increasing emphasis on using modern robotics in Production 4 (5).0. Therefore, the main goal of this contribution is to give an overview about the state of the art and further development trends in this field. Special emphasis will be on new approaches like the new generation of collaborative robots (COBOTS). This yields to new questions in ethical and social sciences like the education of the operators (robocooperators). For the first time legal aspects of robots in manufacturing automation and their influences on ethics and social issues are introduced and shortly discussed with special emphasis to SME’s.

Managing and using IT services is considered very important for modern businesses to improve their performance. IT Governance supports businesses to plan and control the IT investments to achieve their business objectives. IT Governance is part of enterprise governance which contributes to the management of IT resources, with focus on prioritization and justification of IT investments, controlling, budgeting and defining authorization levels. IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is one of the IT Governance frameworks that provides a systematic approach to IT Governance. In reference to this research, the study is based on secondary data. The study is focused on understanding the ITIL framework in relation to IT Governance. Additionally, this paper contributes to IT investments and IT resource management in an organization, starting with technological changes, reduction of operating costs, maintenance, decisionmaking process with the focus to improve organization sustainability.

Recently there has been an approach to adopt Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) in different industries. While companies in production sector struggle to maintain their presence in the marketplace, the need for new methodologies and tools has become critical. Adopting PLM varies from business to business and the downside has been determined to be the cost and longevity. Many authors have stated that PLM helps companies regarding innovation and faster product delivery to the market, however, such studies require more time and effort to scientifically provide strong evidence. The overall aim of the study is to investigate the PLM presence in Kosovo and Albania. The research base relies on literature review in reference to PLM relevant importance to the industry, definition, and questioner interviews with companies. The study provides the current self-evaluation of the current state of PLM drivers through statistical means.

The field of manufacturing automation is one of the fastest growing in technology not only because of the rapid developments of IT hard- and software as well as micro-, nano- and femto-technologies for the development of new materials. Therefore in production automation we have the new headlines new materials, smart products, smart factories, Internet of things (IoT), production 4.0. This requires Multi Robot Systems or Multi Agent Systems (MAS) consisting of cooperative industrial, mobile and probably in the future humanoid intelligent robots acting as a team for solving common tasks. In addition they have to be cooperative. The tasks of the robots must perform the mechanism of cooperation and the system performance. Production 4.0 requires the replacement of the Central Control Computer by a distributed, networked Computer System. From the side of Automation in this paper the latest trends in manufacturing automation will be presented. Concerning the problems of SME‘s to introduce Production 4.0 first ideas on “Cost Oriented Production 4.0 - Production 4.5” will be discussed. From the side of TECIS both disciplines will raise some new social and ethical questions related to humans.

The field of humanoid robots is currently overwhelming. Therefore it is necessary to give an overview by arranging these robots in groups. Until now there was only a first trial from the commercial side in 4 categories (Professional, Amateur, Toy and Cost Oriented Robots). The present work tries to propose a meaningful classification of actually available humanoid robots being stable at least for some time from a technological viewpoint. Four groups are generated according to their main tasks Robotainment (“Fluffy”), Infosistance (“Hero”), Rescue (“Buddy”) and AI (“Mr.Brain”). These sample groups involve 14 species, which are presently available and produced by some Universities and Companies. Exemplarily they are classified into the given groups. Further developments associated with artificial intelligence might merge those groups, still keeping the main orientation of their aims. This might be seen as the limitations of (any) today’s classification of humanoid robots. Based on the results some “Cost Oriented Humaoid Robots – COHR” can be identified and compared. Finally ethical and social aspects of humanoid robots will be outlined and discussed.

This article presents the service robot ROBCO 18 and how it is designed to be cost-oriented. The purpose of ROBCO 18 is to support elderly and disabled, acting as a personal home assistant. The robot will be able effectively to assist people in their homes. The robot is designed to be cost-oriented, using low-cost devices and components. Robot control software has been developed to allow various interfaces and control methods to be used. The robot software system optimizes and distributes data from the robot’s sensors and actuators. In this way, elderly and disabled people are safe in handling the robot and can choose their convenient method of robot control. Finally, we conducted experiments with elderly people to test how the robot is performing different tasks. As a conclusion usability review of the Cost Oriented Tele-Controlled Service Robot for Increasing the Quality of Life of Elderly and Disabled -ROBCO 18 is presented.

The panel discussion involves the organisers and one author from each of four papers presented in a session on engineering ethics, emerging challenges and socio-cultural effects. The papers consider a wide range of issues of great importance to the engineering community and beyond it to the population as a whole. They include the contribution of engineering to sustainable development, the need for more women engineers, roboethics and the development of a low cost robotic arm to support independence. The discussion will involve the audience in further consideration of the issues raised in the session and enable them to both make contributions and put questions to the panel.

Dimirovski, Georgi M. (Dogus Author) The IFAC TC 9.5 “Supplemental Ways for Improving International Stability – SWIIS” was one of the longest IFAC communities dating back to the 1981 World Congress in Kyoto. In 1983 Austria hosted the first IFAC SWIIS Workshop attracting a unique range of inter-disciplinary contributions. SWIIS expanded into an IFAC Technical Committee (TC 9.5) as a bridge between control scientists and automation engineers and various other disciplines with the common theme of improving human living conditions and explore contributions to a stable and sustainable planet. Whilst the “heartbeat” of TC 9.5 has remained, the scope has expanded as the TC grew and developed, and the world changed to the present status and perspective.This contribution starts with a short history of SWIIS and because of the changing scope the transformation to TECIS in 2011. This was necessary for including new actual topics. Finally an outlook in the future, emphasising new topics, will be given in this paper.