Concerns over food security have risen sharply in recent years. The growing human population, coupled with the shrinking agriculture resources, caused many governments and international conglomerates around the world to seek new ways to improve agriculture efficiency. This has lead to increased interest, and spending, in Agriculture Robotics. In Part 1 of this work, research activities on agriculture robotics were reviewed, with many showing promising results. However, agriculture robots remain experimental and far from being implemented on large operational scales. This paper investigates the possible reasons for this phenomena, by continuing the review of agriculture robots, only this time focusing on practicality and feasibility. Upon extensive review and analysis, the authors concluded that practical agriculture robots rely not only on advances in robotics, but also on the presence of a support infrastructure. This infrastructure encompasses all services and technologies needed by agriculture robots while in operation, this include a reliable wireless connection, an effective framework for Human Robot Interaction (HRI) between robots and agriculture workers, and a framework for software sharing and re-use. Without such infrastructure being in place, agriculture robots, no matter how advanced in design they could be, would remain impractical and infeasible. However, for many organizations, the technological and monitory costs of establishing such infrastructure could be very prohibitive, which renders agriculture robots uneconomical and enviable. Therefore, the paper concludes that the key to practical agriculture robotics is to find a novel, cost-effective, and a reliable approach to develop the support infrastructure needed for agriculture robots.

The global need for energy has grown in tandem with mankind’s development and spread. This has resulted in an increase in the use of fossil energy sources, a decline in these sources and an increase in pollution, necessitating the search for renewable energy sources. One of the important ways to reduce pollution resulting from the increasing consumption of fossil energy is to enhance the sources of solar energy, of which photovoltaic cells (PV) are one of its most important tools. Therefore, it was necessary to pay attention to improving its efficiency for it to become a promising source of clean energy. PVs turn solar energy into electricity; however, the amount of electricity generated decreases as the temperature of the cells rises in response to the sun’s heat. Cooling of the optical surfaces is one of the most important elements to consider while running solar PV systems to obtain maximum efficiency. The electrical efficiency of PVs is enhanced when suitable cooling technology is used, and the rate of cell breakdown is reduced over time, extending the life of the PV panels. There are many materials used to remove unwanted heat in PV cells, and in recent years, the focus has been on integrating nanomaterials in specific proportions with traditional cooling materials such as water to improve their thermal properties. As a bio-material that is environmentally friendly, renewable, sustainable, inexpensive and has high mechanical properties, cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are one of the most promising materials for improving the properties of cooling materials for cooling PV cells and improving their performance.

In a Robot Operating System (ROS) application, robot software is often distributed across multiple networked components, forming the ROS network, where every component acts as server and/or a client, and publishing and/or receiving robot data simultaneously. For indoor robots, a local ROS network, through a Wi-Fi hotspot, is sufficient. But for outdoor robots, a remote ROS network is needed to connect the ROS application to the cloud. Although a number of cloud-based solutions support this, implementing them is challenging, as they need to be configured to facilitate ROS's unique, multidirectional, and simultaneous flow of robot data. This article presents Port Forwarding as an alternative approach, which offers a private, secured, and a direct ROS-to-ROS, eliminating the need for a dedicated middleware and its configuration and setup complexities. But Port Forwarding has its own challenges; chiefly, the beforehand knowledge of Internet addresses of all networked components and the need to update port forwarding settings when these addresses change, which they often do. This article addresses this issue (and others) and presents a detailed procedure for setting Port Forwarding for ROS applications, highlighting configuration, and troubleshooting steps. Also, the article compares between Port Forwarding and cloud-based solutions, in terms of setup, performance, and others. Results show that robot performance under Port Forwarding is on par with cloud-based solutions, but it required a fraction of setup time. The authors developed a set of shell scripts that monitor the Internet addresses of all networked components and auto-update Port Forwarding settings when they change, solving this issue. With this, Port Forwarding could be considered a viable option for ROS system networks, on par with cloud-based solutions.

In recent years, floods have increased in frequency and intensity, causing tremendous hardship. In badly affected regions, mostly the rural areas, Weir-type floodgates are the only measure against floods. However, these manually operated gates are numerous and scattered over vast areas. This makes flood mitigation efforts very challenging, which causes severe devastation. Current solutions to automate the floodgates are expensive, black-boxed, and focused on individual gates. In this paper, we present a Centralized Flood Monitoring and Coordination System developed through the Internet of Things (IoT) and other open-source technologies. For this work, we developed a working prototype of an autonomous floodgate that opens/closes according to the level of water. We also developed the required program to allow the gate controller to publish its data through the IoT gateway to the cloud. The data was then captured and viewed on a number of IoT clients, both for individuals and groups of floodgates, in real time. The developed system proved successful as the autonomous gates were monitored remotely through the established IoT framework, with room for future development and improvement. This paper serves as a proof of concept and a preparation for real, on-site implementation of the IoT-floodgates.

Pipeline or mass transport line are the chief applications which are typically involved in the oil and gas industries. After various background studies, the pipeline involved in such industries comes from a high technology design and material of use. Hence, inspection and maintenance must be done frequently to ensure the pipeline can be used in an excellent working state. The inspection on pipeline must be done before and after its maintenance. However, it is difficult to inspect within the pipe to ensure it is in good condition. Currently, various new types of technology are used for inspection purposes specifically by means of the Non-Destructive Testing, but it highly costly. Thus, this project focuses on the design and development of an inspection robot to perform a pipeline inspection. Some applications that can accommodate to the designing of a robot is that the robot is able to manoeuvre inside the pipeline wirelessly and give a visual interface while proceeding it. Therefore, this project shows the development processes included in the design and development of an inspection robot for the oil and gas applications.