TIGRE - An autonomous ground robot for outdoor exploration

13th International Conference on Autonomous Robot Systems (Robotica), 2013

Multi-μ: an Ada 95 based architecture for fault tolerance support of real-time systems

This paper presents an architecture (Multi-μ) being implemented to study and develop software based fault tolerant mechanisms for Real-Time Systems, using the Ada language (Ada 95) and Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components. Several issues regarding fault tolerance are presented and mechanisms to achieve fault tolerance by software active replication in Ada 95 are discussed. The Multi-μ architecture, based on a specifically proposed Fault Tolerance Manager (FTManager), is then described. Finally, some considerations are made about the work being done and essential future developments.

EMMON: a WSN system architecture for large scale and dense real-time embedded monitoring

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have attracted growing interest in the last decade as an infrastructure to support a diversity of ubiquitous computing and cyber-physical systems. However, most research work has focused on protocols or on specific applications. As a result, there remains a clear lack of effective, feasible and usable system architectures that address both functional and non-functional requirements in an integrated fashion. In this paper, we outline the EMMON system architecture for large-scale, dense, real-time embedded monitoring. EMMON provides a hierarchical communication architecture together with integrated middleware and command and control software. It has been designed to use standard commercially-available technologies, while maintaining as much flexibility as possible to meet specific applications requirements. The EMMON architecture has been validated through extensive simulation and experimental evaluation, including a 300+ node test-bed, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest single-site WSN test-bed in Europe to date.

Addressing software impact in the design of remote laboratories

Remote Laboratories or WebLabs constitute a first-order didactic resource in engineering faculties. However, in many cases, they lack a proper software design, both in the client and server side, which degrades their quality and academic usefulness. This paper presents the main characteristics of a Remote Laboratory, analyzes the software technologies to implement the client and server sides in a WebLab, and correlates these technologies with the characteristics to facilitate the selection of a technology to implement a WebLab. The results obtained suggest the adoption of a Service Oriented Laboratory Architecture-based approach for the design of future Remote Laboratories so that client-agnostic Remote Laboratories and Remote Laboratory composition are enabled. The experience with the real Remote Laboratory, WebLab-Deusto, is also presented.

Estudo Focado no Utilizador de Software Gratuito para Modelação e Visualização 3D Realista

Computação gráfica um campo que tem vindo a crescer bastante nos últimos anos, desde áreas como cinematográficas, dos videojogos, da animação, o avanço tem sido tão grande que a semelhança com a realidade é cada vez maior. Praticamente hoje em dia todos os filmes têm efeitos gerados através de computação gráfica, até simples anúncios de televisão para não falar do realismo dos videojogos de hoje. Este estudo tem como objectivo mostrar duas alternativas no mundo da computação gráfica, como tal, vão ser usados dois programas, Blender e Unreal Engine. O cenário em questão será todo modelado de raiz e será o mesmo nos dois programas. Serão feitos vários renders ao cenário, em ambos os programas usando diferentes materiais, diferentes tipos de iluminação, em tempo real e não de forma a mostrar as várias alternativas possíveis.