Gravel roads form a significant share of the global road network, usually in sparsely populated rural areas. They are important, especially in agriculture, tourism, and forestry, connecting rural to urban areas. This systematic literature study comprises 105 reviewed publications on gravel road maintenance. Review articles on maintenance management practices, especially concerning objective condition assessment and data-driven methods (DDMs), are lacking. Therefore, this review provides a concise overview of current gravel road maintenance practices and ongoing research on objective condition assessment and DDMs for gravel road maintenance. It offers researchers in gravel road maintenance and other related fields a clear indication of where to focus their research efforts, as it suggests the direction for future research. Visual assessment methods are predominant for monitoring the condition of gravel roads, while objective methods and DDMs are not common. Research on gravel roads and their maintenance has increased in the last two decades, especially in North America and Northern Europe. Condition assessment is shifting from subjective to objective methods, utilizing knowledge from technological advancements in image processing, vibration and acoustics analysis, and so forth. There are some excellent research initiatives for objectively assessing the condition of gravel roads and DDMs, but the practical implementation is limited. Implementing objective assessment methods and DDMs generally improves the management of gravel roads with regard to decision-making, maintenance costs, safety, and the stability and comfort of the ride. Objective condition assessment and DMs have the potential to enhance maintenance practices in the maintenance of gravel roads.

There is an increasing need for an effective monitoring strategy for the performance and condition of Down The Hole drilling. To achieve that, it is important to gain knowledge in the physics involved in Down The Hole drilling processes.A logical way to gain such understanding is to develop simulation models that are capable to represent the process. That requires physical understanding and thus, it is an iterative process. To capture the physics, it is essential to couple the axial impact, and the subsequent axial motion, with the rotation of the drill. The indentation into the rock due to impact and the subsequent resistance against rotation will couple the rotation to the axial motion and vice versa. The scenario is complicated due to the non-linear nature in the contacts and the varying stiffness of the rock.This paper presents a methodology that can be used to couple the axial and rotational motions of the DTH drills and explores the pros and cons of such a 3D simulation model.Keywords: DTH, 3D simulation, Condition monitoring

The gravel road network is an important function for rural residents and entrepreneurs. Traditional maintenance of gravel roads is well-functioning but provides a relatively high maintenance cost per unit length of the road, and every maintenance action as well as extraction and transport of new gravel contributes to increased climate impact and resource depletion. Today, maintenance planning is carried out periodically based on the maintenance history, which also is reflected in the economic models and procurement methods. Current maintenance plans may be enhanced and will not be a reliable basis in the future, e.g. due to climate change. Instead, real needs and conditions must be given greater consideration. Today, appropriate maintenance management systems are lacking, e.g. in order to be able to evaluate maintenance deficiencies, prioritize objects and choose the appropriate maintenance action. Moreover, the knowledge available at specific stakeholders is not shared with other actors. In this paper, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) system for gravel road maintenance is proposed in the form of a cloud-based system covering the information needs of stakeholders in the gravel road maintenance ecosystem. Requirement specifications are given for the sub-systems intended for the maintenance executioner and the maintenance planner. The specifications are based on workshops and interviews conducted with stakeholders, where requirements were acquired e.g. in the form of User stories.

Needs for new competences and knowledge arise as industry 4.0 evolves in increasingly digitalized production. This development entails that job transformations and future skills need attention from the perspective of industry 5.0, where human and machine find ways of working together to improve production performance. Facing this perspective, one challenge is a growing need for novel lifelong learning initiatives, to meet emerging and altering occupations for the fulfilment of future skill requirements. This challenge is addressed here by portraying a case where three Swedish universities have formed a distinctive collaboration to develop a flexible (i.e. blended) course for professionals, in the subject of Digitally-enabled production. The purpose is to develop a sustainable collaboration between the universities and create a course format on master level addressing lifelong learning for the increasingly digitalized production. The ambition is to increase the impact of the universities respective efforts by sharing resources and utilizing individual specialized expertise to develop a practical and relevant course that can reach a larger target group. The course encompasses industry 4.0 readiness on three levels of production systems; plant-, production cell-, and component level; to adopt a holistic view of digitalization in production. We followed an action research approach for continuously collecting and documenting our experiences during the course development, implementation, and dissemination of the course. Within the frame of action research, an explorative case study describes and analyzes the initiative. The results highlight challenges and opportunities for succeeding with this form of co-produced course. The joint course gives professionals possibilities to work on cases from their own companies with expert supervision from three manufacturing levels to address complex challenges in industry 4.0 implementation. To conclude, the importance of lifelong learning in relation to the human-centric approach of industry 5.0 is emphasized as a future direction.

Reliable simulations of the DTH drilling cycle are important in understanding the physics related todrilling, which in turn enables development of robust performance and condition monitoring methodologies. The DTH models available today model different aspects of the system like impact, hydraulics etc. separately. There are models available that incorporates hydraulics/pneumatics with onedimensional structural dynamics of the system. A common drawback of such models is that the effectof rotation is neglected. In reality rotation is an integral part of the DTH system and is interconnectedwith other parameters of drilling. This paper focuses on a simple model that combines rotation of thedrill string with the impact and hydraulic mechanics. The aim is to build upon this basic model tofacilitate the development of a more robust and accurate model that represents the condition andperformance monitoring problem.

The key driving factors in using humans and robots in collaborativeapplications for assembly processes are to reduce assembly time, cost and toimprove the human working environment from an ergonomic viewpoint. Currently,there are limited automated procedures in assembly operations in house constructionbecause the traditional type of assembly process depends entirely on manpower.This is common in the assembly process in different industries since assembly isone of the most demanding and intense manufacturing processes, and it is difficultto automate. This paper presents a case study on the implementation of human-robotcollaboration for window assembly by way of an offline robot programmingsimulation. A self-adaptive software architecture that runs on a real-time targetmachine is also proposed for robotic window assembly. The window assemblymethod that will be used in this study is called “Click-In” and is manufactured byFixture System Sweden AB. Apart from robot simulations, detailed suggestions aregiven for building a pilot cell for robot window assembly. The case study presentedin this paper has both economical and ergonomic goals. The economic goal is toreduce the assembly time which will lead to an increase in window production. Byintroducing human-robot collaboration, operators do not need to performuncomfortable assembly operations—rather the robot will perform these unergonomic operations. The feasibility of both goals is verified with offline robotprogramming simulation. 

The gravel road network is an essential function for rural residents and entrepreneurs. Traditional maintenance of gravel roads is well-functioning but provides a relatively high maintenance cost per unit length of the road. In addition, every maintenance action and extraction and transport of new gravel contribute to increased climate impact and resource depletion. Today, maintenance planning is carried out periodically based on the maintenance history, which also is reflected in the economic models and procurement methods. Current maintenance plans may be enhanced and will not be a reliable basis in the future, for instance due to climate change. Instead, real needs and conditions must be given greater consideration. Today, appropriate maintenance management systems are lacking, e.g., to be able to evaluate maintenance deficiencies, prioritize objects and choose the appropriate maintenance action. Moreover, the knowledge available at specific stakeholders is not shared with other actors. In this paper, an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) system for gravel road maintenance is proposed in the form of a cloud-based system covering the information needs of stakeholders in the gravel road maintenance ecosystem. Requirement specifications are given for the subsystems intended for the maintenance executioner and the maintenance planner. The specifications are based on workshops and interviews conducted with stakeholders, where requirements were acquired using techniques such as User stories, Use case scenarios, and mock-up prototypes. System examples corresponding to the requirements specifications are also given.

Automation of the drilling process is a widely spread goal in the rock excavator industry. An intermediate step can be to assist a manual drilling process by informing the operator of the quality of the drilling. To reach the goals, it is thus imperative to have a high performance monitoring system based on physics involved in the drilling process. A necessity to develop such an information system, is insight into the physics involved in the drilling process. This can be gained by using combinations of simulations, lab tests and in-situ tests.

Here, a 1D model representing Down The Hole (DTH) drilling is used. Such a model can be further developed to simulate good and bad performance of drilling. The resulting vibration responses, hydraulic pressure responses, etc. of the system can be analyzed with the purpose to identify possible sources of informative data which can be measured and recorded during a real world rock drilling operation.

Here, a simplified 3D model of the DTH drilling system involving the bit, hammer and the drill string is also made and used together with boundary conditions constituting a simplified model of the rock. The aim here is to find a computationally efficient 3D modeling methodology to simulate the drilling for various conditions, due to various drilling parameter settings. The aim is to develop a 3D model that can be refined further and can be used extensively to understand the DTH drilling process in order to facilitate performance monitoring and in the end automized DTH drilling.

The educational phenomena studied in this paper is remote-controlled physical laboratory environments and their applicability in upper secondary school physics education. In order to gain a better understanding of the situation and needs regarding laboratory activities in the upper secondary school, eight physics teachers were interviewed at six different schools. This revealed that the resources for laboratory activities vary between schools and may be inconsistent with the Swedish National Agency for Education curriculum. Furthermore, 165 upper secondary school students answered a questionnaire survey regarding subject preferences, program choices, views on technology and self-ability, and approach to technology and technology-related situations. The acquired knowledge provides a basis concerning the needs and conditions of teaching and learning within the subject of physics. This new knowledge motivates the development of the Flipped laboratory concept that is introduced in this paper, based on remote-controlled physical laboratories, for upper secondary school.

The paper suggests a remote condition monitoring and maintenance laboratory environment based on theIndustry 4.0 concept. The architecture provides a remote connection with distance students and a test rig, which permitsthem to be able to perform condition monitoring, diagnostic, prognostics, etc. on the equipment. The ICT architecturefollows standards, such as the MIMOSA CRIS and the OSA-CBM. The remote laboratory environment supportslifelong learning as well as relevant training for the modern engineer and highlights the specific requirements of amaintenance engineer. As an example, the objectives and expected learning outcomes for a course in Maintenance 4.0fundamentals are displayed. The expected results are, among others, increased maintenance competences in theindustry, and the improvements of the different maintenance services following a predictive, condition-basedmaintenance strategy.