Data normalization and integration in robotic systems using web services technologies

The robotics is one of the most active areas. We also need to join a large number of disciplines to create robots. With these premises, one problem is the management of information from multiple heterogeneous sources. Each component, hardware or software, produces data with different nature: temporal frequencies, processing needs, size, type, etc. Nowadays, technologies and software engineering paradigms such as service-oriented architectures are applied to solve this problem in other areas. This paper proposes the use of these technologies to implement a robotic control system based on services. This type of system will allow integration and collaborative work of different elements that make up a robotic system.

Applying reactive models to column experiments to assess the hydrogeochemistry of seawater intrusion: optimising ACUAINTRUSION and selecting cation exchange coefficients with PHREEQC

Three sets of laboratory column experimental results concerning the hydrogeochemistry of seawater intrusion have been modelled using two codes: ACUAINTRUSION (Chemical Engineering Department, University of Alicante) and PHREEQC (U.S.G.S.). These reactive models utilise the hydrodynamic parameters determined using the ACUAINTRUSION TRANSPORT software and fit the chloride breakthrough curves perfectly. The ACUAINTRUSION code was improved, and the instabilities were studied relative to the discretisation. The relative square errors were obtained using different combinations of the spatial and temporal steps: the global error for the total experimental data and the partial error for each element. Good simulations for the three experiments were obtained using the ACUAINTRUSION software with slight variations in the selectivity coefficients for both sediments determined in batch experiments with fresh water. The cation exchange parameters included in ACUAINTRUSION are those reported by the Gapon convention with modified exponents for the Ca/Mg exchange. PHREEQC simulations performed using the Gains-Thomas convention were unsatisfactory, with the exchange coefficients from the database of PHREEQC (or range), but those determined with fresh water – natural sediment allowed only an approximation to be obtained. For the treated sediment, the adjusted exchange coefficients were determined to improve the simulation and are vastly different from those from the database of PHREEQC or batch experiment values; however, these values fall in an order similar to the others determined under dynamic conditions. Different cation concentrations were simulated using two different software packages; this disparity could be attributed to the defined selectivity coefficients that affect the gypsum equilibrium. Consequently, different calculated sulphate concentrations are obtained using each type of software; a smaller mismatch was predicted using ACUAINTRUSION. In general, the presented simulations by ACUAINTRUSION and PHREEQC produced similar results, making predictions consistent with the experimental data. However, the simulated results are not identical to the experimental data; sulphate (total S) is overpredicted by both models, most likely due to such factors as the kinetics of gypsum, the possible variations in the exchange coefficients due to salinity and the neglect of other processes.

Fénix: a flexible information exchange data model for natural language processing

In this paper we describe Fénix, a data model for exchanging information between Natural Language Processing applications. The format proposed is intended to be flexible enough to cover both current and future data structures employed in the field of Computational Linguistics. The Fénix architecture is divided into four separate layers: conceptual, logical, persistence and physical. This division provides a simple interface to abstract the users from low-level implementation details, such as programming languages and data storage employed, allowing them to focus in the concepts and processes to be modelled. The Fénix architecture is accompanied by a set of programming libraries to facilitate the access and manipulation of the structures created in this framework. We will also show how this architecture has been already successfully applied in different research projects.