Upper Limb Portable Motion Analysis System Based on Inertial Technology for Neurorehabilitation Purposes

Here an inertial sensor-based monitoring system for measuring and analyzing upper limb movements is presented. The final goal is the integration of this motion-tracking device within a portable rehabilitation system for brain injury patients. A set of four inertial sensors mounted on a special garment worn by the patient provides the quaternions representing the patient upper limb’s orientation in space. A kinematic model is built to estimate 3D upper limb motion for accurate therapeutic evaluation. The human upper limb is represented as a kinematic chain of rigid bodies with three joints and six degrees of freedom. Validation of the system has been performed by co-registration of movements with a commercial optoelectronic tracking system. Successful results are shown that exhibit a high correlation among signals provided by both devices and obtained at the Institut Guttmann Neurorehabilitation Hospital.

An example of Learning based on competences: Use of Maxima in Linear Algebra for Engineers

This paper analyzes the role of Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) in a model of learning based on competences. The proposal is an e-learning model Linear Algebra course for Engineering, which includes the use of a CAS (Maxima) and focuses on problem solving. A reference model has been taken from the Spanish Open University. The proper use of CAS is defined as an indicator of the generic ompetence: Use of Technology. Additionally, we show that using CAS could help to enhance the following generic competences: Self Learning, Planning and Organization, Communication and Writing, Mathematical and Technical Writing, Information Management and Critical Thinking.

An abstract machine based execution model for computer architecture design and efficient implementation of logic programs in parallel.

The term "Logic Programming" refers to a variety of computer languages and execution models which are based on the traditional concept of Symbolic Logic. The expressive power of these languages offers promise to be of great assistance in facing the programming challenges of present and future symbolic processing applications in Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge-based systems, and many other areas of computing. The sequential execution speed of logic programs has been greatly improved since the advent of the first interpreters. However, higher inference speeds are still required in order to meet the demands of applications such as those contemplated for next generation computer systems. The execution of logic programs in parallel is currently considered a promising strategy for attaining such inference speeds. Logic Programming in turn appears as a suitable programming paradigm for parallel architectures because of the many opportunities for parallel execution present in the implementation of logic programs. This dissertation presents an efficient parallel execution model for logic programs. The model is described from the source language level down to an "Abstract Machine" level suitable for direct implementation on existing parallel systems or for the design of special purpose parallel architectures. Few assumptions are made at the source language level and therefore the techniques developed and the general Abstract Machine design are applicable to a variety of logic (and also functional) languages. These techniques offer efficient solutions to several areas of parallel Logic Programming implementation previously considered problematic or a source of considerable overhead, such as the detection and handling of variable binding conflicts in AND-Parallelism, the specification of control and management of the execution tree, the treatment of distributed backtracking, and goal scheduling and memory management issues, etc. A parallel Abstract Machine design is offered, specifying data areas, operation, and a suitable instruction set. This design is based on extending to a parallel environment the techniques introduced by the Warren Abstract Machine, which have already made very fast and space efficient sequential systems a reality. Therefore, the model herein presented is capable of retaining sequential execution speed similar to that of high performance sequential systems, while extracting additional gains in speed by efficiently implementing parallel execution. These claims are supported by simulations of the Abstract Machine on sample programs.

University authentication system based on Java card and digital X.509 certificate

This article presents a solution to the problem of strong authentication, portable and expandable using a combination of Java technology and storage of X.509 digital certificate in Java cards to access services offered by an institution, in this case, the technology of the University of Panama, ensuring the authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and non repudiation.

Web-based education in Spanish Universities. A Comparison of Open Source E-Learning Platforms

Web-based education or „e-learning‟ has become a critical component in higher education for the last decade, replacing other distance learning methods, such as traditional computer training or correspondence learning. The number of university students who take on-line courses is continuously increasing all over the world. In Spain, nearly a 90% of the universities have an institutional e-learning platform and over 60% of the traditional on-site courses use this technology as a supplement to the traditional face-to-face classes. This new form of learning allows the disappearance of geographical barriers and enables students to schedule their own learning process, among some other advantages. On-line education is developed through specific software called „e-learning platform‟ or „virtual learning environment‟ (VLE). A considerable number of web-based tools to deliver distance courses are currently available. Open source software packages such as Moodle, Sakai, dotLRN or Dokeos are the most commonly used in the virtual campuses of Spanish universities. This paper analyzes the possibilities that virtual learning environments provide university teachers and learners and offers a technical comparison among some of the most popular e-learning learning platforms.

A Recommendation Framework Based on the Analytic Network Process and its Application in the Semantic Technology Domain

When users face a certain problem needing a product, service, or action to solve it, selecting the best alternative among them can be a dicult task due to the uncertainty of their quality. This is especially the case in the domains where users do not have an expertise, like for example in Software Engineering. Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methods are methods that help making better decisions when facing the complex problem of selecting the best solution among a group of alternatives that can be compared according to different conflicting criteria. In MCDM problems, alternatives represent concrete products, services or actions that will help in achieving a goal, while criteria represent the characteristics of these alternatives that are important for making a decision.

Assessment of "mobile mapping system": A GIS-based support methodology

In this article, the authors examine the current status of different elements that integrate the landscape of the municipality of Olias del Rey in Toledo (Spain). A methodology for the study of rural roads, activity farming and local hunting management. We used Geographic Information Technologies (GIT) in order to optimize spatial information including the design of a Geographic Information System (GIS). In the acquisition of field data we have used vehicle "mobile mapping" instrumentation equipped with GNSS, LiDAR, digital cameras and odometer. The main objective is the integration of geoinformation and geovisualization of the information to provide a fundamental tool for rural planning and management.

A cybernetic theory about computer interfaces and human factors within a framework of technological innovation

This paper is based on the following postulates taken from a book recently published by this author (Sáez-Vacas, 1990(1)): a) technological innovation in a company is understood to be the process and set of changes that the company undergoes as a result of a specific type of technology; b) the incorporation of technology in the company does not necessarily result in innovation, modernization and progress; c) the very words "modernization" and "progress" are completely bereft of any meaning if isolated from the concept of complexity in its broadest sense, including the human factor. Turning to office technology in specific, the problem of managing office technology for business innovation purposes can be likened to the problem of managing third level complexity, following the guidelines of a three-level complexity model proposed by the author some years ago

Adaptive cross-device videoconferencing solution for wireless networks based on QoS monitoring

The increase in CPU power and screen quality of todays smartphones as well as the availability of high bandwidth wireless networks has enabled high quality mobile videoconfer- encing never seen before. However, adapting to the variety of devices and network conditions that come as a result is still not a trivial issue. In this paper, we present a multiple participant videoconferencing service that adapts to different kind of devices and access networks while providing an stable communication. By combining network quality detection and the use of a multipoint control unit for video mixing and transcoding, desktop, tablet and mobile clients can participate seamlessly. We also describe the cost in terms of bandwidth and CPU usage of this approach in a variety of scenarios.

Implementation of a building automation system based on semantic modeling

This paper presents an Ontology-Based multi-technology platform designed to avoid some issues of Building Automation Systems. The platform allows the integration of several building automation protocols, eases the development and implementation of different kinds of services and allows sharing information related to the infrastructure and facilities within a building. The system has been implemented and tested in the Energy Efficiency Research Facility at CeDInt-UPM.

Cognitive neurorehabilitation based on interactive video technology

Cognitive impairment is the main cause of disability in developed societies. New interactive technologies help therapists in neurorehabilitation in order to increase patients’ autonomy and quality of life. This work proposes Interactive Video (IV) as a technology to develop cognitive rehabilitation tasks based on Activities of Daily Living (ADL). ADL cognitive task has been developed and integrated with eye-tracking technology for task interaction and patients’ performance monitoring.

NFC based remote control of services for interactive spaces

Ubiquitous computing (one person, many computers) is the third era in the history of computing. It follows the mainframe era (many people, one computer) and the PC era (one person, one computer). Ubiquitous computing empowers people to communicate with services by interacting with their surroundings. Most of these so called smart environments contain sensors sensing users’ actions and try to predict the users’ intentions and necessities based on sensor data. The main drawback of this approach is that the system might perform unexpected or unwanted actions, making the user feel out of control. In this master thesis we propose a different procedure based on Interactive Spaces: instead of predicting users’ intentions based on sensor data, the system reacts to users’ explicit predefined actions. To that end, we present REACHeS, a server platform which enables communication among services, resources and users located in the same environment. With REACHeS, a user controls services and resources by interacting with everyday life objects and using a mobile phone as a mediator between himself/herself, the system and the environment. REACHeS’ interfaces with a user are built upon NFC (Near Field Communication) technology. NFC tags are attached to objects in the environment. A tag stores commands that are sent to services when a user touches the tag with his/her NFC enabled device. The prototypes and usability tests presented in this thesis show the great potential of NFC to build such user interfaces.

Design of equalized ROADMs devices with flexible bandwidth based on LCoS technology

This paper describes the theory, design, applications and performance of a new Reconfigurable Add-drop Multiplexer (ROADM) with flexible bandwidth allocation. The device can address several wavelengths at the input to four output fibers, according to the holograms stored in a SLM (Spatial Light Modulator), where all the outputs are equalized in power. All combinations of the input wavelengths are possible at the different output fibers. Each fiber has assigned all the signals with the same bandwidth; the possible bandwidths are 12.5GHz, 25GHz, 50GHz and 100GHz, according to ITU-T 694.1 Recommendation. It is possible to route several signals with different bandwidth in real time thanks to Liquid Crystal over Silicon (LCoS) technology.

Context modelling for natural Human Computer Interaction applications in e-health

The conception of IoT (Internet of Things) is accepted as the future tendency of Internet among academia and industry. It will enable people and things to be connected at anytime and anyplace, with anything and anyone. IoT has been proposed to be applied into many areas such as Healthcare, Transportation，Logistics, and Smart environment etc. However, this thesis emphasizes on the home healthcare area as it is the potential healthcare model to solve many problems such as the limited medical resources, the increasing demands for healthcare from elderly and chronic patients which the traditional model is not capable of. A remarkable change in IoT in semantic oriented vision is that vast sensors or devices are involved which could generate enormous data. Methods to manage the data including acquiring, interpreting, processing and storing data need to be implemented. Apart from this, other abilities that IoT is not capable of are concluded, namely, interoperation, context awareness and security & privacy. Context awareness is an emerging technology to manage and take advantage of context to enable any type of system to provide personalized services. The aim of this thesis is to explore ways to facilitate context awareness in IoT. In order to realize this objective, a preliminary research is carried out in this thesis. The most basic premise to realize context awareness is to collect, model, understand, reason and make use of context. A complete literature review for the existing context modelling and context reasoning techniques is conducted. The conclusion is that the ontology-based context modelling and ontology-based context reasoning are the most promising and efficient techniques to manage context. In order to fuse ontology into IoT, a specific ontology-based context awareness framework is proposed for IoT applications. In general, the framework is composed of eight components which are hardware, UI (User Interface), Context modelling, Context fusion, Context reasoning, Context repository, Security unit and Context dissemination. Moreover, on the basis of TOVE (Toronto Virtual Enterprise), a formal ontology developing methodology is proposed and illustrated which consists of four stages: Specification & Conceptualization, Competency Formulation, Implementation and Validation & Documentation. In addition, a home healthcare scenario is elaborated by listing its well-defined functionalities. Aiming at representing this specific scenario, the proposed ontology developing methodology is applied and the ontology-based model is developed in a free and open-source ontology editor called Protégé. Finally, the accuracy and completeness of the proposed ontology are validated to show that this proposed ontology is able to accurately represent the scenario of interest.

NURBS-Based Geometry Parameterization for Aerodynamic Shape Optimization

La motivación de esta tesis es el desarrollo de una herramienta de optimización automática para la mejora del rendimiento de formas aerodinámicas enfocado en la industria aeronáutica. Este trabajo cubre varios aspectos esenciales, desde el empleo de Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS), al cálculo de gradientes utilizando la metodología del adjunto continuo, el uso de b-splines volumétricas como parámetros de diseño, el tratamiento de la malla en las intersecciones, y no menos importante, la adaptación de los algoritmos de la dinámica de fluidos computacional (CFD) en arquitecturas hardware de alto paralelismo, como las tarjetas gráficas, para acelerar el proceso de optimización. La metodología adjunta ha posibilitado que los métodos de optimización basados en gradientes sean una alternativa prometedora para la mejora de la eficiencia aerodinámica de los aviones. La formulación del adjunto permite calcular los gradientes de una función de coste, como la resistencia aerodinámica o la sustentación, independientemente del número de variables de diseño, a un coste computacional equivalente a una simulación CFD. Sin embargo, existen problemas prácticos que han imposibilitado su aplicación en la industria, que se pueden resumir en: integrabilidad, rendimiento computacional y robustez de la solución adjunta. Este trabajo aborda estas contrariedades y las analiza en casos prácticos. Como resumen, las contribuciones de esta tesis son: • El uso de NURBS como variables de diseño en un bucle de automático de optimización, aplicado a la mejora del rendimiento aerodinámico de alas en régimen transónico. • El desarrollo de algoritmos de inversión de punto, para calcular las coordenadas paramétricas de las coordenadas espaciales, para ligar los vértices de malla a las NURBS. • El uso y validación de la formulación adjunta para el calculo de los gradientes, a partir de las sensibilidades de la solución adjunta, comparado con diferencias finitas. • Se ofrece una estrategia para utilizar la geometría CAD, en forma de parches NURBS, para tratar las intersecciones, como el ala-fuselaje. • No existen muchas alternativas de librerías NURBS viables. En este trabajo se ha desarrollado una librería, DOMINO NURBS, y se ofrece a la comunidad como código libre y abierto. • También se ha implementado un código CFD en tarjeta gráfica, para realizar una valoración de cómo se puede adaptar un código sobre malla no estructurada a arquitecturas paralelas. • Finalmente, se propone una metodología, basada en la función de Green, como una forma eficiente de paralelizar simulaciones numéricas. Esta tesis ha sido apoyada por las actividades realizadas por el Área de Dinámica da Fluidos del Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA), a través de numerosos proyectos de financiación nacional: DOMINO, SIMUMAT, y CORESFMULAERO. También ha estado en consonancia con las actividades realizadas por el departamento de Métodos y Herramientas de Airbus España y con el grupo Investigación y Tecnología Aeronáutica Europeo (GARTEUR), AG/52. ABSTRACT The motivation of this work is the development of an automatic optimization strategy for large scale shape optimization problems that arise in the aeronautics industry to improve the aerodynamic performance; covering several aspects from the use of Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS), the calculation of the gradients with the continuous adjoint formulation, the development of volumetric b-splines parameterization, mesh adaptation and intersection handling, to the adaptation of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) algorithms to take advantage of highly parallel architectures in order to speed up the optimization process. With the development of the adjoint formulation, gradient-based methods for aerodynamic optimization become a promising approach to improve the aerodynamic performance of aircraft designs. The adjoint methodology allows the evaluation the gradients to all design variables of a cost function, such as drag or lift, at the equivalent cost of more or less one CFD simulation. However, some practical problems have been delaying its full implementation to the industry, which can be summarized as: integrability, computer performance, and adjoint robustness. This work tackles some of these issues and analyse them in well-known test cases. As summary, the contributions comprises: • The employment of NURBS as design variables in an automatic optimization loop for the improvement of the aerodynamic performance of aircraft wings in transonic regimen. • The development of point inversion algorithms to calculate the NURBS parametric coordinates from the space coordinates, to link with the computational grid vertex. • The use and validation of the adjoint formulation to calculate the gradients from the surface sensitivities in an automatic optimization loop and evaluate its reliability, compared with finite differences. • This work proposes some algorithms that take advantage of the underlying CAD geometry description, in the form of NURBS patches, to handle intersections and mesh adaptations. • There are not many usable libraries for NURBS available. In this work an open source library DOMINO NURBS has been developed and is offered to the community as free, open source code. • The implementation of a transonic CFD solver from scratch in a graphic card, for an assessment of the implementability of conventional CFD solvers for unstructured grids to highly parallel architectures. • Finally, this research proposes the use of the Green's function as an efficient paralellization scheme of numerical solvers. The presented work has been supported by the activities carried out at the Fluid Dynamics branch of the National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA) through national founding research projects: DOMINO, SIMUMAT, and CORESIMULAERO; in line with the activities carried out by the Methods and Tools and Flight Physics department at Airbus and the Group for Aeronautical Research and Technology in Europe (GARTEUR) action group AG/52.