Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are spreading their usage in many areas, including last-mile distribution. In this research, a UAV is used for performing light parts delivery to workstation operators within a manufacturing plant, where GPS is no valid solution for indoor positioning. A generic localization solution is designed to provide navigation using RFID received signal strength measures and sonar values. A system on chip computer is onboarded with two missions: first, compute positioning and provide communication with backend software; second, provide an artificial vision system that cooperates with UAV’s navigation to perform landing procedures. An Industrial Internet of Things solution is defined for workstations to allow wireless mesh communication between the logistics vehicle and the backend software. Design is corroborated through experiments that validate planned solutions.

Although the Stirling engine was invented in 1816, this heat engine still continues to be investigated due to the variety of energy sources that can be used to power it (e.g., solar energy, fossil fuels, biomass, and geothermal energy). To study the performance of these machines, it is necessary to develop and simulate models under different operating conditions. In this paper, we present a one-dimensional dynamic model based on components from Trnsys: principally, a lumped mass and a heat exchanger. The resulting model is calibrated using GenOpt. Furthermore, the obtained model can be used to simulate the machine both under steady-state operation and during a transient response. The results provided by the simulations are compared with data measured in a Stirling engine that has been subjected to different operating conditions. This comparison shows good agreement, indicating that the model is an appropriate method for transient thermal simulations. This new proposed model requires few configuration parameters and is therefore easily adaptable to a wide range of commercial models of Stirling engines. A detailed analysis of the system results reveals that the power is directly related to the difference of temperatures between the hot and cold sources during the transient and steady-state processes.

This article describes a simple model obtained from a commercial Stirling engine and used for heating a caravan. The Stirling engine has been tested in the lab under different electrical load conditions, and the operating points obtained are presented. As an application of the model, a series of transient simulations was performed using TRNSYS. During these simulations, the caravan is traveling throughout the day and is stationary at night. Therefore, during the night-time hours, the heating system is turned on by means of the Stirling engine. The study was performed for each month of the year in different European cities. The different heating demand profiles for different cities induce variation in the electricity production, as it has been assumed that electricity is only generated when the thermal demand requires the operation of the Stirling system. As a result, a comparison of the expected power generation in different European cities is presented.