Humanoid robots, unmanned rovers, entertainment pets, drones, and so on are great examples of mobile robots. They can be distinguished from other robots by their ability to move autonomously, with enough intelligence to react and make decisions based on the perception they receive from the environment. Mobile robots must have some source of input data, some way of decoding that input, and a way of taking actions (including its own motion) to respond to a changing world. The need to sense and adapt to an unknown environment requires a powerful cognition system. Nowadays, there are mobile robots that can walk, run, jump, and so on like their biological counterparts. Several fields of robotics have arisen, such as wheeled mobile robots, legged robots, flying robots, robot vision, artificial intelligence, and so on, which involve different technological areas such as mechanics, electronics, and computer science. In this article, the world of mobile robots is explored including the new trends. These new trends are led by artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, network communication, cooperative work, nanorobotics, friendly human-robot interfaces, safe human-robot interaction, and emotion expression and perception. Furthermore, these news trends are applied to different fields such as medicine, health care, sports, ergonomics, industry, distribution of goods, and service robotics. These tendencies will keep going their evolution in the coming years.

Highlights Application of fsQCA to analyze the future impact of digital transformation on the automotive industry. The disruptive effect of the introduction of electric vehicles on the market is considered. Government policies regarding the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the automotive sector have been taken into account. The methodology has been successfully applied to the automotive industry in Spain. Small and medium-sized enterprises lack digital transformation strategies, which may have a dramatic effect in the long term in Spain.

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Abstract:Analytical models have been exhaustively used to study simple seawater intrusion problems and the sustainable management of groundwater resources in coastal aquifers because of its simplicity, easy implementation, and low computational cost. Most of these models are based on the sharp-interface approximation and the Ghyben-Herzberg relation, and their governing equations are expressed in terms of a single potential theory to calculate critical pumping rates in a coastal pumping scenario. The GhybenHerzberg approach neglects mixing of fresh water and seawater and implicitly assumes that salt water remains static. Therefore, the results of the analytical solutions may be inaccurate and unacceptable for some real-complex case studies. This paper provides insight into the validity of sharp-interface models to deal with seawater intrusion in coastal aquifers, i.e. when they can be applied to obtain accurate enough results. For that purpose, this work compares sharp-interface solutions, based on the Ghyben-Herzberg approach, with numerical three-dimensional variable-density flow simulations for a set of heterogeneous groundwater flow and mass transport parameters, and different scenarios of spatially distributed recharge values and spatial wells placement. The numerical experiment has been carried out in a 3D unconfined synthetic aquifer using the finite difference numerical code SEAWAT for solving the coupled partial differential equations of flow and density-dependent transport. This paper finds under which situations the sharp-interface solution gives good predictions in terms of seawater penetration, transition zone width and critical pumping rates. Additionally, the simulation runs indicate to which parameters and scenarios the results are more sensitive.

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Abstract. Any change in the components of the water balance in a coastal aquifer, whether natural or anthropogenic, can alter the freshwater–salt water equilibrium. In this sense climate change (CC) and land use and land cover (LULC) change might significantly influence the availability of groundwater resources in the future. These coastal systems demand an integrated analysis of quantity and quality issues to obtain an appropriate assessment of hydrological impacts using density-dependent flow solutions. The aim of this work is to perform an integrated analysis of future potential global change (GC) scenarios and their hydrological impacts in a coastal aquifer, the Plana Oropesa-Torreblanca aquifer. It is a Mediterranean aquifer that extends over 75 km2 in which important historical LULC changes have been produced and are planned for the future. Future CC scenarios will be defined by using an equi-feasible and non-feasible ensemble of projections based on the results of a multi-criteria analysis of the series generated from several regional climatic models with different downscaling approaches. The hydrological impacts of these CC scenarios combined with future LULC scenarios will be assessed with a chain of models defined by a sequential coupling of rainfall-recharge models, crop irrigation requirements and irrigation return models (for the aquifer and its neighbours that feed it), and a density-dependent aquifer approach. This chain of models, calibrated using the available historical data, allow testing of the conceptual approximation of the aquifer behaviour. They are also fed with series representatives of potential global change scenarios in order to perform a sensitivity analysis regarding future scenarios of rainfall recharge, lateral flows coming from the hydraulically connected neighbouring aquifer, agricultural recharge (taking into account expected future LULC changes) and sea level rise (SLR). The proposed analysis is valuable for improving our knowledge about the aquifer, and so comprises a tool to design sustainable adaptation management strategies taking into account the uncertainty in future GC conditions and their impacts. The results show that GC scenarios produce significant increases in the variability of flow budget components and in the salinity.