An approach to vision-based station keeping for an unmanned underwater vehicle

This paper presents an automatic vision-based system for UUV station keeping. The vehicle is equipped with a down-looking camera, which provides images of the sea-floor. The station keeping system is based on a feature-based motion detection algorithm, which exploits standard correlation and explicit textural analysis to solve the correspondence problem. A visual map of the area surveyed by the vehicle is constructed to increase the flexibility of the system, allowing the vehicle to position itself when it has lost the reference image. The testing platform is the URIS underwater vehicle. Experimental results demonstrating the behavior of the system on a real environment are presented

Sistema encastat de monitorització d'informació múltiple: implementació per a vehicles

Aquest projecte es centra en l’àmbit de l’automoció, i la seva finalitat es ampliar la informació que proporciona el fabricant d’un vehicle als usuaris. Un dels punts claus del sistema es que aquest quedi completament integrat, per tant, utilitza dispositius externs inclosos al vehicle com ara el display que anteriorment s’utilitzava per a mostrar informació del radiocasset, i una maneta amb dos botons utilitzada per al control del sistema. El sistema mostra diferents tipus d’informació com ara la velocitat instantània del vehicle, revolucions del motor, velocitat màxima, distància parcial recorreguda, hora i data. A més de mostrar informació, aquest es capaç d’emmagatzemar-la en un suport extraïble per a una posterior explotació a un ordinador convencional. El sistema no està pensat per a ser un projecte tancat, sinó que esta dissenyat per a ser ampliat en quant a funcionalitats, i per tant aquest projecte es considera una primera versió.

R&D cooperation and spillovers: Some empirical evidence

This paper provides some first empirical evidence on the relationshipbetween R&D spillovers and R&D cooperation. The results suggest disentangling different aspects of know-how flows. Firms which rate incoming spillovers more importantly and who can limit outgoing spillovers by a more effective protection of know-how, are more likely to cooperate in R&D. Our analysis also finds that cooperating firms have higher incoming spillovers and higher protection of know-how, indicating that cooperation may serve as a vehicle to manage information flows. Our results thus suggest that on the one hand the information sharing and coordination aspects of incoming spillovers are crucial in understanding cooperation, while on the other hand, protection against outgoing spillovers is important for firms to engage in stable cooperative agreements by reducing free-rider problems. Distinguishing different types of cooperative partners reveals that while managing outgoing spillovers is less critical in alliances with non-commercial research partners than between vertically related partners, the incoming spillovers seem to be more critical in understanding the former type of R&D cooperation.

Marketing móvil en Cataluña: mapa de actores, contenidos y tendencias

El artículo presenta una parte de los resultados de una investigación realizada en 2008 donde se describen y analizan actores, contenidos y tendencias del marketing móvil en Cataluña. El marketing móvil está transformando las formas de comunicación publicitaria, ya que, al tratarse de un medio de comunicación unipersonal, directo e interactivo y gozar de una alta implantación en el mercado, hace que sea un instrumento especialmente atractivo para realizar muchos tipos de acciones de marketing. La investigación traza un primer mapa de la situación, propone una serie de categorías de análisis y futuras tendencias y sienta las bases para futuros estudios más específicos sobre marketing móvil.

Towards a Network Government? A critical analysis of current assessment methods for e-Government

Contemporary public administrations have become increasingly more complex, having to cordinate actions with emerging actors in the public and the private spheres. In this scenario the modern ICTs have begun to be seen as an ideal vehicle to resolve some of the problems of public administration. We argue that there is a clear need to explore the extent to which public administrations are undergoing a process of transformation towards a netowork government linked to the systematic incorporation of ICTs in their basic activities. Through critically analysing a selection of e-government evaluation reports, we conclude that research should be carried out if we are to build a solid government assessment framework based on network-like organisation characteristics.

Reconfigurable Architecture To Estimate The Motion Of An Underwater Vehicle

This work proposes a parallel architecture for a motion estimation algorithm. It is well known that image processing requires a huge amount of computation, mainly at low level processing where the algorithms are dealing with a great numbers of data-pixel. One of the solutions to estimate motions involves detection of the correspondences between two images. Due to its regular processing scheme, parallel implementation of correspondence problem can be an adequate approach to reduce the computation time. This work introduces parallel and real-time implementation of such low-level tasks to be carried out from the moment that the current image is acquired by the camera until the pairs of point-matchings are detected

Improving the oscillating grid method to characterize aquaculture biosolids using a laser beam and image analysis

Quickremovalofbiosolidsinaquaculturefacilities,andspeciallyinrecirculatingaquaculturesystems(RAS),isoneofthemostimportantstepinwastemanagement.Sedimentationdynamicsofbiosolidsinanaquaculturetankwilldeterminetheiraccumulationatthebottomofthetank.

A Grid Supercomputing Enviroment for High Demand Computational Applications

Despite the huge increase in processor and interprocessor network performace, many computational problems remain unsolved due to lack of some critical resources such as floating point sustained performance, memory bandwidth, etc... Examples of these problems are found in areas of climate research, biology, astrophysics, high energy physics (montecarlo simulations) and artificial intelligence, among others. For some of these problems, computing resources of a single supercomputing facility can be 1 or 2 orders of magnitude apart from the resources needed to solve some them. Supercomputer centers have to face an increasing demand on processing performance, with the direct consequence of an increasing number of processors and systems, resulting in a more difficult administration of HPC resources and the need for more physical space, higher electrical power consumption and improved air conditioning, among other problems. Some of the previous problems can´t be easily solved, so grid computing, intended as a technology enabling the addition and consolidation of computing power, can help in solving large scale supercomputing problems. In this document, we describe how 2 supercomputing facilities in Spain joined their resources to solve a problem of this kind. The objectives of this experience were, among others, to demonstrate that such a cooperation can enable the solution of bigger dimension problems and to measure the efficiency that could be achieved. In this document we show some preliminary results of this experience and to what extend these objectives were achieved.

Productive efficiency and regulatory reform: The case of vehicle inspection services

Measuring productive efficiency provides information on the likely effects of regulatory reform. We present a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) of a sample of 38 vehicle inspection units under a concession regime, between the years 2000 and 2004. The differences in efficiency scores show the potential technical efficiency benefit of introducing some form of incentive regulation or of progressing towards liberalization. We also compute scale efficiency scores, showing that only units in territories with very low population density operate at a sub-optimal scale. Among those that operate at an optimal scale, there are significant differences in size; the largest ones operate in territories with the highest population density. This suggests that the introduction of new units in the most densely populated territories (a likely effect of some form of liberalization) would not be detrimental in terms of scale efficiency. We also find that inspection units belonging to a large, diversified firm show higher technical efficiency, reflecting economies of scale or scope at the firm level. Finally, we show that between 2002 and 2004, a period of high regulatory uncertainty in the sample’s region, technical change was almost zero. Regulatory reform should take due account of scale and diversification effects, while at the same time avoiding regulatory uncertainty.

Ampliació i millora d'un vehicle teledirigit

En el projecte Ampliació i millora d’un vehicle teledirigit s’ha dut a terme l’ampliació d’un prototip de vehicle ràdio controlat fent servir dues plaques Arduino Duemilanove. Una es situa en el comandament i l’altra en el vehicle i controlen el comportament dels dos dispositius. Es transmet la informació necessària entre elles a través de dos mòduls XBee que posteriorment se’ls hi incorpora. Les plaques fetes servir en el prototip inicial eren unes SARD-13192 de Freescale i el primer que es fa en aquest sentit és una revisió del codi font utilitzat i l’adaptació a les plaques Arduino. Un acceleròmetre ADXL335 que s’incorpora a una de les plaques permet que el prototip es pugui controlar segons la posició del comandament. A més, un cop finalitzat el nou prototip és capaç de desplaçar-se endavant i endarrere, girar aturat i en moviment, i a diferents velocitats que es representen en tot moment en uns LEDs. També guarda l’últim circuit efectuat que es pot reproduir a voluntat de l’usuari, i emmagatzema les dades del recorregut de tota una sessió per exportar a l’ordinador. Per últim s’han dut a terme les proves necessàries per constatar que totes les millores s’han implementat amb èxit.

Implementació de les físiques d'un vehicle en un videojoc 3D

En la carrera del mundo de los videojuegos por alcanzar insospechables cotas de realismo con las que seguir sorprendiendo y enganchando al público, los motores de física se han convertido en la herramienta de presente y futuro. Atraídos por el auge de esta nueva tecnología, hemos lidiado con los motores referencia hoy día en el mercado, seleccionando luego uno de ellos e implementando un humilde videojuego de carreras como muestra de su potencial y de los conocimientos adquiridos.

Monitorització de rendiment i accounting de centres de computació grid

El Port d'Informació Científica és un centre de Computació Grid de referència que dona suport a comunitats científiques, com el LHC (CERN). Al PIC, trobem una gran varietat de tecnologies que proporcionen serveis al centre. Des de l'arquitectura i elements de la xarxa, fins a recursos informàtics de computació, sistemes d'emmagatzematge a disc i cinta magnètica, bases de dades (ORACLE/PostgreSQL). El projecte consisteix en el disseny i implementació d'una base de dades col·lectora de tota la informació rellevant dels diferents sistemes del centre, i un portal web on mostrar tots els valors i gràfiques, tot basat en programari lliure.

Evaluation of subsidies programs to sell green cars: Impact on prices, quantities and efficiency

During the recent period of economic crisis, many countries have introduced scrappage schemes to boost the sale and production of vehicles, particularly of vehicles designed to pollute less. In this paper, we analyze the impact of a particular scheme in Spain (Plan2000E) on vehicle prices and sales figures as well as on the reduction of polluting emissions from vehicles on the road. We considered the introduction of this scheme an exogenous policy change and because we could distinguish a control group (non-subsidized vehicles) and a treatment group (subsidized vehicles), before and after the introduction of the Plan, we were able to carry out our analysis as a quasi-natural experiment. Our study reveals that manufacturers increased vehicle prices by the same amount they were granted through the Plan (1,000 €). In terms of sales, econometric estimations revealed an increase of almost 5% as a result of the implementation of the Plan. With regard to environmental efficiency, we compared the costs (inverted quantity of money) and the benefits of the program (reductions in polluting emissions and additional fiscal revenues) and found that the Plan would only be beneficial if it boosted demand by at least 30%.

An efficient use of virtualization in grid/cloud environments

Grid is a hardware and software infrastructure that provides dependable, consistent, pervasive, and inexpensive access to high-end computational resources. Grid enables access to the resources but it does not guarantee any quality of service. Moreover, Grid does not provide performance isolation; job of one user can influence the performance of other user’s job. The other problem with Grid is that the users of Grid belong to scientific community and the jobs require specific and customized software environment. Providing the perfect environment to the user is very difficult in Grid for its dispersed and heterogeneous nature. Though, Cloud computing provide full customization and control, but there is no simple procedure available to submit user jobs as in Grid. The Grid computing can provide customized resources and performance to the user using virtualization. A virtual machine can join the Grid as an execution node. The virtual machine can also be submitted as a job with user jobs inside. Where the first method gives quality of service and performance isolation, the second method also provides customization and administration in addition. In this thesis, a solution is proposed to enable virtual machine reuse which will provide performance isolation with customization and administration. The same virtual machine can be used for several jobs. In the proposed solution customized virtual machines join the Grid pool on user request. Proposed solution describes two scenarios to achieve this goal. In first scenario, user submits their customized virtual machine as a job. The virtual machine joins the Grid pool when it is powered on. In the second scenario, user customized virtual machines are preconfigured in the execution system. These virtual machines join the Grid pool on user request. Condor and VMware server is used to deploy and test the scenarios. Condor supports virtual machine jobs. The scenario 1 is deployed using Condor VM universe. The second scenario uses VMware-VIX API for scripting powering on and powering off of the remote virtual machines. The experimental results shows that as scenario 2 does not need to transfer the virtual machine image, the virtual machine image becomes live on pool more faster. In scenario 1, the virtual machine runs as a condor job, so it easy to administrate the virtual machine. The only pitfall in scenario 1 is the network traffic.