Sharif Digital Repository

This paper presents the design characteristics of a new robot Assistant for Social Aims (RASA), being an upper-torso humanoid robot platform currently under final stages of development. This project addresses the need for developing affordable humanoid platforms designed to be utilized in new areas of social robotics research, primarily teaching Persian Sign Language (PSL) to children with hearing disabilities. RASA is characterized by three features which are hard to find at the same time in today’s humanoid robots: its dexterous hand-arm systems enabling it to perform sign language, low development cost, and easy maintenance. In this paper, design procedures and considerations are briefly... 

It is now a common approach pursued by programmers to develop new software systems using Object-Oriented Application Frameworks such as Spring, Struts and, Eclipse. This improves the quality and the maintainability of the code. Furthermore, it reduces development cost and time. However, the main problem is that these frameworks usually have a complicated Application Programming Interface (API), and typically suffer from the lack of enough documentation and appropriate user manuals. To solve these problems, programmers often refer to existing sample applications of those frameworks to learn how to implement the desired functionality in their own code. This is called the Monkey See, Monkey Do... 

This paper introduces a novel robotic platform, called RASA (Robot Assistant for Social Aims). This educational social robot is designed and constructed to facilitate teaching Persian Sign Language (PSL) to children with hearing disabilities. There are three predominant characteristics from which design guidelines of the robot are generated. First, the robot is designed as a fully functional interactive social robot with children as its social service recipients. Second, it comes with the ability to perform PSL, which demands a dexterous upper-body of 29 actuated degrees of freedom. Third, it has a relatively low development cost for a robot in its category. This funded project, addresses... 

This paper introduces a novel robotic platform, called RASA (Robot Assistant for Social Aims). This educational social robot is designed and constructed to facilitate teaching Persian Sign Language (PSL) to children with hearing disabilities. There are three predominant characteristics from which design guidelines of the robot are generated. First, the robot is designed as a fully functional interactive social robot with children as its social service recipients. Second, it comes with the ability to perform PSL, which demands a dexterous upper-body of 29 actuated degrees of freedom. Third, it has a relatively low development cost for a robot in its category. This funded project, addresses... 

Fast charging stations are vital components for public acceptance of electric vehicle (EV). The stations are connected to the electric grid and can recharge an electric vehicle in less than 20. min. Charging station development is highly influenced by the government policy in allocating station development costs. This paper presents a Mixed-Integer Non-Linear (MINLP) optimization approach for optimal placing and sizing of the fast charging stations. The station development cost, EV energy loss, electric gird loss as well as the location of electric substations and urban roads are among the factors included in the proposed approach. Geographic information has been used to determine EV energy... 

Nowadays, software product line is an approach to reduce costs of software development, decrease time to market, and increase capabilities of reuse in designing and exploiting software development processes. Moreover, other quality attributes of the project domain should be considered to enhance quality of the product. Meanwhile, taking advantage of software product line makes developers capable of estimating development costs and time to market in a more realistic way. However, old approaches to estimate cost of development and foresee time to market are not suitable enough for software product line. In this paper, some important business parameters and a way to calculate cost and time to... 

Fast-charging stations are connected to the electric grid and can fully charge an electric vehicle (EV) in less than half an hour. The capacity and location of the charging stations bring the costs to the electric grid operator, as well as to the station owner and EV user. A zonal approach has been proposed in this paper to determine the optimal place and capacity of fast-charging stations. Station development cost and the expected costs incurred by the EV user and the grid operator due to EV charging have also been included in the proposed approach. The geographic characteristics associated with the electric substations, urban roads, and city zones have also been considered in the proposed... 

The sustainable design of the waste-management system is of crucial importance for cities like Tehran, capital of Iran. Tehran’s municipal solid-waste management has adopted modern practices and technologies very slowly. This study proposes the optimum pathway to reach maximum environmental benefits as well as the most cost-effective technologies according to the financial limits. The hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA)–emergy approach is applied to utilize the life cycle emissions as an inventory database to estimate the ecosystem services provided by the natural ecosystem to dilute the emissions and compensate raw material consumption. Among organic waste-treatment options, composting is... 

Choosing the right location for the sustainable development of offshore wind energy plays an important role in the success of renewable projects. In this regard, in the present study, a new application of the hybrid Fuzzy-SWARA & Fuzzy-WASPAS method was presented to prioritize the suitable area for developing offshore wind projects. For a case study, five regions with high potential for offshore wind energy in the Persian-Gulf have been investigated. Economic assessment was evaluated using the Levelized Cost of energy method. Evaluation of offshore wind farms has been analyzed from various aspects including technical, economic, social, environmental and risk. The SWARA was used for weighting...