Estudi GPGPU dedicat al processament de neuroimatges

La tecnologia GPGPU permet paral∙lelitzar càlculs executant operacions aritmètiques en els múltiples processadors de que disposen els xips gràfics. S'ha fet servir l'entorn de desenvolupament CUDA de la companyia NVIDIA, que actualment és la solució GPGPU més avançada del mercat. L'algorisme de neuroimatge implementat pertany a un estudi VBM desenvolupat amb l'eina SPM. Es tracta concretament del procés de segmentació d'imatges de ressonància magnètica cerebrals, en els diferents teixits dels quals es composa el cervell: matèria blanca, matèria grisa i líquid cefaloraquidi. S'han implementat models en els llenguatges Matlab, C i CUDA, i s'ha fet un estudi comparatiu per plataformes hardware diferents.

Disseny i implementació hardware d'algorismes de reconeixement de caràcters per comptadors d'aigua

Aquest projecte consisteix en l'estudi, comparació i implementació en hardware d'algoritmes de reconeixement de caràcters per integrar en un sistema intel·ligent de captura d'imatges. Aquest sistema, integrat per una càmera amb format i característiques específiques i que anirà acoblat a un comptador d'aigua tradicional, en captarà imatges i les enviarà per RF al punt de recepció de la companyia. L'objectiu principal consisteix en aconseguir un disseny que redueixi al màxim la quantitat d'informació per transmetre, tenint en compte les limitacions de l'entorn.

Competition between TV platforms

The aim of this paper is to identify the factors that affect the market penetration of pay television by studying the competition that exists between three types of technology (satellite, cable and ADSL). We distinguish three groups of factors: the level of market competition, the level of competition in the industry and the quality of the product being offered. Our results seem to indicate that as market concentration increases, the television service can achieve greater penetration. This relationship is specifically captured by the level of intra- and inter-platform competition. We also examine the relationship between free television channels and pay television and find that as the amount of time dedicated to the broadcasting of advertising by the former increases, the number of subscribers to pay TV rises. Finally, we examine product quality by introducing the effect of holding the rights to broadcast Professional Football League matches and an HBO or Showtime produced series. Our results suggest that these variables are critical for the penetration of pay television.

Análisis de prestaciones de sistemas de comunicaciones inalámbricas en aplicaciones de robótica: sistema hardware

Una característica importante de la robótica es la comunicación entre sistema base y robot que puede establecerse de forma remota. Ello representa la base del proyecto que se describe a continuación, el cual se descompone de dos partes, una por cada miembro del proyecto: Sistema software y sistema hardware. En el sistema software analizaremos las diferentes tecnologías inalámbricas (características, funcionamiento, seguridad, etc.), se realizará una comparativa de los diferentes módulos de comunicación y finalmente decidiremos aquellos que nos interesa para la implementación en Radiofrecuencia (RF) y Bluetooth. En este sistema también estudiaremos la interfaz gráfica que se utilizará, así como los programas creados en este entorno para realizar las implementaciones. En el sistema hardware trataremos de realizar el control de dos periféricos de forma independiente, un servomotor y un sonar, que nos servirán como ejemplo para analizar una posible comunicación entre varios robots y un PC. Por lo tanto, en este apartado analizaremos a fondo los diferentes componentes que harán posible tanto la comunicación, vía RF y Bluetooth, como el control de los diferentes dispositivos.

Eficiència de màquines virtuals en diferents configuracions de hardware i software

Estudi de l'eficiència de màquines virtuals en diferents configuracions de hardware i software en entorns de proves i de producció.

Módulo de modelado hardware GISCMO

Este proyecto tiene como objetivo desarrollar un aplicativo en formato web capaz de dar soporte al modelado de equipos hardware para su posterior publicación en librerías. El proyecto se incluye en un entorno de trabajo constituido por una serie de herramientas de las que nuestro proyecto es una pequeña pero importante parte. Nuestro objetivo comprenderá la creación y posterior gestión de modelos de equipos hardware para ser utilizados por los proyectistas de instalaciones de control industrial, que generen sus trabajos mediante el uso del entorno de desarrollo GISCMO (Gestor integrado de sistemas de control y modelado de objetos).

Contribution to Asterisk Open Source Project

With this final master thesis we are going to contribute to the Asterisk open source project. Asterisk is an open source project that started with the main objective of develop an IP telephony platform, completely based on Software (so not hardware dependent) and under an open license like GPL. This project was started on 1999 by the software engineer Mark Spencer at Digium. The main motivation of that open source project was that the telecommunications sector is lack of open solutions, and most of the available solutions are based on proprietary standards, which are close and not compatible between them. Behind the Asterisk project there is a company, Digum, which is the project leading since the project was originated in its laboratories. This company has some of its employees fully dedicated to contribute to the Asterisk project, and also provide the whole infrastructure required by the open source project. But the business of Digium isn't based on licensing of products due to the open source nature of Asterisk, but it's based on offering services around Asteriskand designing and selling some hardware components to be used with Asterisk. The Asterisk project has grown up a lot since its birth, offering in its latest versions advanced functionalities for managing calls and compatibility with some hardware that previously was exclusive of proprietary solutions. Due to that, Asterisk is becoming a serious alternative to all these proprietaries solutions because it has reached a level of maturity that makes it very stable. In addition, as it is open source, it can be fully customized to a givenrequirement, which could be impossible with the proprietaries solutions. Due to the bigness that is reaching the project, every day there are more companies which develop value added software for telephony platforms, that are seriously evaluating the option of make their software fully compatible withAsterisk platforms. All these factors make Asterisk being a consolidated project but in constant evolution, trying to offer all those functionalities offered by proprietaries solutions. This final master thesis will be divided mainly in two blocks totally complementaries. In the first block we will analyze Asterisk as an open source project and Asterisk as a telephony platform (PBX). As a result of this analysis we will generate a document, written in English because it is Asterisk project's official language, which could be used by future contributors as an starting point on joining Asterisk. On the second block we will proceed with a development contribution to the Asterisk project. We will have several options in the form that we do the contribution, such as solving bugs, developing new functionalities or start an Asterisk satellite project. The type of contribution will depend on the needs of the project on that moment.

Disseny i implementació d'un conjunt de perifèrics de comunicació per a la seva incorporació en nous dissenys hardware del grup de robòtica i visió per computador

El grupo de robòtica i Visió fabricó la tarjeta gráfica MAGCL para el tratamiento de imágenes en tiempo real, en la que se incluyó un conector IDC20 proveniente de parte del bus de datos, de la FPGA que contiene, destinado a futuras aplicaciones. Con este proyecto se quiere aprovechar este conector para la comunicación de la placa con un PC, y se desarrollarán los puertos de comunicación serie RS232 y USB, Universal Serial Bus.El objetivo de este proyecto es establecer la comunicación de la tarjeta gráfica con un PC a través de estos dos tipos de puerto. Una vez conseguida la comunicación, quedan una serie de librerías hardware que pueden ayudar en la realización de futuros proyectos. La placa posee una FPGA (field programable gate array) destinada al desarrollo, pero programando esas librerías sobre otros componentes, se pueden utilizar estos puertos de forma permanente o exclusiva

Electoral Platforms, Implemented Policies, and Abstention

Recent studies of American politics evidence that political polarization of both the electorate and the political elite have moved 'almost in tandem for the past half century' (McCarty et al., 2003, p.2), and that party polarization has steadily increased since the 1970s. On the other hand, the empirical literature on party platforms and implemented policies has consistently found an imperfect but nonnegligible correlation between electoral platforms and governmental policies: while platforms tend to be polarized, policies are moderate or centrist. However, existing theoretical models of political competition are not manifestly compatible with these observations. In this paper, we distinguish between electoral platforms and implemented policies by incorporating a non-trivial policy-setting process. It follows that voters may care not only about the implemented policy but also about the platform they support with their vote. We find that while parties tend to polarize their positions, the risk of alienating their constituency prevents them from radicalizing. The analysis evidences that the distribution of the electorate, and not only the (expected) location of a pivotal voter, matters in determining policies. Our results are consistent with the observation of polarized platforms and moderate policies, and the alienation and indifference components of abstention.

Interconnection among academic journal platforms: Multilateral versus bilateral interconnection

Electronic academic journal websites provide new services of text and/or datamining and linking, indispensable for e¢ cient allocation of attention among abun-dant sources of scienti?c information. Fully realizing the bene?t of these servicesrequires interconnection among websites. Motivated by CrossRef, a multilateralcitation linking backbone, this paper performs a comparison between multilateralinterconnection through an open platform and bilateral interconnection, and ?ndsthat publishers are fully interconnected in the former regime while they can be par-tially interconnected in the latter regime for exclusion or di¤erentiation motives.Surprisingly, if partial interconnection arises for di¤erentiation motive, exclusion ofsmall publisher(s) occurs more often under multilateral interconnection. We also?nd that in the case of multilateral interconnection, a for-pro?t platform inducesless exclusion than an open platform. Various other extensions are analyzed.

Electoral platforms, implemented policies and abstention

Recent studies of American politics evidence that political polarization of both the electorate and the political elite have moved 'almost in tandem for the past half century' (McCarty et al., 2003, p.2), and that party polarization has steadily increased since the 1970s. On the other hand, the empirical literature on party platforms and implemented policies has consistently found an imperfect but nonnegligible correlation between electoral platforms and governmental policies: while platforms tend to be polarized, policies are moderate or centrist. However, existing theoretical models of political competition are not manifestly compatible with these observations.In this paper, we distinguish between electoral platforms and implemented policies by incorporating a non-trivial policy-setting process. It follows that voters may care not only about the implemented policy but also about the platform they support with their vote. We find that while parties tend to polarize their positions, the risk of alienating their constituency prevents them from radicalizing. The analysis evidences that the distribution of the electorate, and not only the (expected) location of a pivotal voter, matters in determining policies. Our results are consistent with the observation of polarized platforms and moderate policies, and the alienation and indifference components of abstention.

Parallelizing remote sensing image geometric correction

Remote sensing spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions of images, acquired over a reasonably sized image extent, result in imagery that can be processed to represent land cover over large areas with an amount of spatial detail that is very attractive for monitoring, management, and scienti c activities. With Moore's Law alive and well, more and more parallelism is introduced into all computing platforms, at all levels of integration and programming to achieve higher performance and energy e ciency. Being the geometric calibration process one of the most time consuming processes when using remote sensing images, the aim of this work is to accelerate this process by taking advantage of new computing architectures and technologies, specially focusing in exploiting computation over shared memory multi-threading hardware. A parallel implementation of the most time consuming process in the remote sensing geometric correction has been implemented using OpenMP directives. This work compares the performance of the original serial binary versus the parallelized implementation, using several multi-threaded modern CPU architectures, discussing about the approach to nd the optimum hardware for a cost-e ective execution.

Creation and Validation of Chronojump-Boscosystem: A Free Tool to Measure Vertical Jumps

Measuring the height of the vertical jump is an indicator of the strength and power of the lower body. The technological tools available to measure the vertical jump are black boxes and are not open to third-party verification or adaptation. We propose the creation of a measurement system called Chronojump-Boscosystem, consisting of open hardware and free software. Methods: A microcontroller was created and validated using a square wave generator and an oscilloscope. Two types of contact platforms were developed using different materials. These platforms were validated by the minimum pressure required for activation at different points by a strain gauge, together with the on/off time of our platforms in respect of the Ergojump-Boscosystem platform by a sample of 8 subjects performing submaximal jumps with one foot on each platform. Agile methodologies were used to develop and validate the software. Results: All the tools fall under the free software / open hardware guidelines and are, in that sense, free. The microcontroller margin of error is 0.1%. The validity of the fiberglass platform is 0.95 (ICC). The management software contains nearly 113.000 lines of code and is available in 7 languages.

Crear dispositivo para personas sordas (plataforma hardware Arduino)

El trabajo expuesto en la presente memoria tiene como objetivo la creación de un prototipo de avisos para gente sorda. El sistema se encargará de facilitar la interactuación entre una persona con problemas auditivos y los señales sonoros que pueden hallarse en una casa. El prototipo se ha desarrollado a partir de la plataforma hardware Arduino, un Smartphone con sistema operativo Android y la tecnología de comunicaciones inalámbricas Bluetooth y ZigBee.