Uma interface para o controle de robôs móveis por intermédio de gestos

The main objective of this work was to enable the recognition of human gestures through the development of a computer program. The program created captures the gestures executed by the user through a camera attached to the computer and sends it to the robot command referring to the gesture. They were interpreted in total ve gestures made by human hand. The software (developed in C ++) widely used the computer vision concepts and open source library OpenCV that directly impact the overall e ciency of the control of mobile robots. The computer vision concepts take into account the use of lters to smooth/blur the image noise reduction, color space to better suit the developer's desktop as well as useful information for manipulating digital images. The OpenCV library was essential in creating the project because it was possible to use various functions/procedures for complete control lters, image borders, image area, the geometric center of borders, exchange of color spaces, convex hull and convexity defect, plus all the necessary means for the characterization of imaged features. During the development of the software was the appearance of several problems, as false positives (noise), underperforming the insertion of various lters with sizes oversized masks, as well as problems arising from the choice of color space for processing human skin tones. However, after the development of seven versions of the control software, it was possible to minimize the occurrence of false positives due to a better use of lters combined with a well-dimensioned mask size (tested at run time) all associated with a programming logic that has been perfected over the construction of the seven versions. After all the development is managed software that met the established requirements. After the completion of the control software, it was observed that the overall e ectiveness of the various programs, highlighting in particular the V programs: 84.75 %, with VI: 93.00 % and VII with: 94.67 % showed that the nal program performed well in interpreting gestures, proving that it was possible the mobile robot control through human gestures without the need for external accessories to give it a better mobility and cost savings for maintain such a system. The great merit of the program was to assist capacity in demystifying the man set/machine therefore uses an easy and intuitive interface for control of mobile robots. Another important feature observed is that to control the mobile robot is not necessary to be close to the same, as to control the equipment is necessary to receive only the address that the Robotino passes to the program via network or Wi-Fi.

A formação e o desenvolvimento de arranjos cooperativos sob a ótica da imersão social e da economia dos custos de transação: um estrudo de caso na Coopercam e na Unipesca

The current study analyzes the birth and development of two strategic alliances established between shrimp producers in Rio Grande do Norte: the Unipesca and the Coopercam. To achieve this aim, two approaches which, at first sight, could be considered contradictory were used: the Transactional Costs Economy and Embeddedness. The first approach is fundamentally based in the studies of Williamson (1985; 1991; 1996; 1999; 2000; 2002). Embededness, on the other hand, went through the review of a series of authors, such as Burt (1992), Granovetter (1973; 1985), Uzzi (1997), Gulati (1994; 1995; 1997; 1998; 1999; 2000), Nielsen (2005), Ring (2002), Ring and Van de Ven (1994), Zafirovski (2002), among others. To analyze the birth and development of the cooperatives in this study, Gulati s work (1998) was used. This study shows the steps to be studied for a better comprehension of an alliance: the decision of starting an alliance and the choice of the partners, the decision about the governance structure, the evolution of the alliance and the development of the companies which established this partnership. To carry this study out, a study case accordingly to Yin s proposal (2001) was adopted. Semi-structured interviews with pre-defined plots were conducted in two phases: in the beginning of 2006 and in the beginning of 2007. The subjects from the research were, in 2006, representative members of the main associations and corporations, besides the shrimp producers from the state, when the context of the activity was set. In the second phase, in 2007, representative members from the two cooperatives that were listed above were interviewed the president from Coopercam and the marketing manager from Unipesca. Besides these two members, directors from two important organizations in each of these cooperatives were also interviewed, giving out the necessary information for the research. Secondary data was also collected from the Brazilian Association of Crab producers website, as well as from news from important newspapers in RN, such as Tribuna do Norte. The primary data was analyzed in terms of quality, accordingly to the documental analysis technique. Thus, through the data that was collected, it can be concluded that the reasons that motivated the companies to cooperate can be explained in terms of the transactional costs economy. However, the choice of partners is more connected to aspects approached by the social embededness. When aspects related to development and evolution were analyzed, it could be seen that both aspects from TCE and Embededness were vital to explain the development of the cooperatives mentioned

A Versao 2006 da Equipe POTI de Futebol de Robos o

Auciomar C. T. Cerqueira;Filipe C. A. Lins ; Adelardo A. D. Medeiros ; Pablo J. Alsina1. A versao 2006 da Equipe POTI de futebol de robos. In: CONGRESSO BRASILEIRO DE AUTOMÁTICA,2. Campo Grande, RS, 2006. Anais... Campo Grande: JRI, 2006.

Relações interorganizacionais e confiança no setor da carcinicultura: um estudo de caso na camanor produtos marinhos

This study investigated how the types of confidence based on competence and good will act in the formation and maintenance of cooperation relationships between the Camanor and its partners (Aquatec, Purina, Caçuá, Uvifrios and Malta / Cleyton). It used organizational approaches on networks based primarily on studies of Powell (1987, 1990), Das and Teng (2000, 2001), Child (2001) and Contractor and Lorange (2004) which have described the advantages that cooperative relationships can provide, as well as their limits as alternative governance structures. Confidence has been considered an important factor affecting the actions and development of organizations involved in networks or in strategic alliances (ZAHEER; HARRIS, 2006) and is the most appropriate control mechanism in these situations (SYDOW, 1998). Confidence is seen from two different approaches: the economic and the sociological (ZAHEER; HARRIS, 2006). To facilitate the understanding of confidence some typologies have been created, as proposed by Barney and Hansen (1994), Lane (1998), Das and Teng (2000), Child (2001) and Wever, Martens and Vandenbempt (2005). This study made use of the case study as proposition of Yin (2005). Semi-structured interviews were held with pre-determined routes, in a single stage performed in early 2008. The research subjects were owners and / or responsible for Camanor and its business partners (Aquatec, Purina, Caçuá, Uvifrios and Malta / Cleyton). Also secondary data were collected in several sites related to the industry and enterprises studied, in addition to data collected by previous studies conducted by CARCINEREDES (2006). The primary data were analyzed using the analysing technique of the content proposed by Bardin (1994). Regarding the secondary data, they were qualitatively analyzed according to documentary analysis technique (BARDIN, 1994). Thus, through the data collected, could be concluded that although there is confidence based on good faith in relationships(UZZI, 1998; OF; TENG, 2001), their presence does not determine the formation and / or maintenance of a partnership, serves only in order to facilitate the relationship, making them more flexible. The confidence based on competence (DAS; TENG, 2001) influenced the formation and maintenance of relations studied. Because whether or not to form a relationship with another organization it is used the perception of the partner acts, namely the reputation (image) as decision basis. And it is through the verification of the performance of the partner activities that will determine the continuation of the partnership

A sistematização do conteúdo jogo nas aulas de educação física do ensino fundamental e médio

Since the enactment of LDBEN 9.9394/96, Physical Education began to be understood as a curricular component in school. Thus, we see the need for systematization of content. We observed that the physical education classes at the public schools in Natal/RN from the game content, teachers did not use the existing proposals for systematization. And it was on this reality that the study occurred, aiming to present and discuss a proposal to systematization the game content in physical education classes in elementary and secondary education. Accordingly, we departed of following question: What possibilities of systematization of the game content in school physical education classes?. The methodology used was the action research, which allowed us to structure the intervention plan for the game content, directed to a reflective didactic process. The dialogue with action research provided an opportunity to understand of the proposal of systematization, the knowledge of game content, the planning and process of teaching and learning in physical education lessons developed. We use the proposed systematization the book Educação Física Escolar e Organização Curricular , to direct and organize the lesson plans. As research technique, we use the participant observation, filming, photographic records and field diary, guiding us in the debates and discussions about the field of research. The applications of the lesson plans were carried out in three schools, all located in Natal / RN: Escola Municipal Professora Ivonete Maciel, Escola Municipal Professor Ulisses de Góis e Professor Escola Estadual Josino Macedo. The members of this study were students PIBID-EF-UFRN, teachers, supervisors and school. They made the bridge between research and action, theoretical foundation and pedagogical practice, university and school. The results were advanced for beyond the propositions submitted by the above-mentioned book. For the Elementary School 1, the proposed systematization broadened experiences and learning of knowledge of the game and of playful and body manifestations. Provided an opportunity to know and learn about game of make account, rules, popular games, cooperative games, among others. For Elementary Schools 2 and Middle education, systematized lessons allowed the practical, the incorporation of knowledge of the game and its features: such as rules, origin, meaning of the name, different denominations, among others. The students experienced and learned, popular games, pre-sport games, cooperative games, with recycled material, among others. The treatment from three dimensions of contents: procedural, conceptual and attitudinal, occurred parallel to approach the game content, and in conjunction with our interventions, not being done separately during practice, but an ongoing process during class. This new perspective of work the game, in a systematized way, with applying, description and discussion the activities, allowed elaborate a summary framework of thematizations for game content, by year of teaching

Controle adaptativo robusto para um modelo desacoplado de um robô móvel

This thesis presents a new structure of robust adaptive controller applied to mobile robots (surface mobile robot) with nonholonomic constraints. It acts in the dynamics and kinematics of the robot, and it is split in two distinct parts. The first part controls the robot dynamics, using variable structure model reference adaptive controllers. The second part controls the robot kinematics, using a position controller, whose objective is to make the robot to reach any point in the cartesian plan. The kinematic controller is based only on information about the robot configuration. A decoupling method is adopted to transform the linear model of the mobile robot, a multiple-input multiple-output system, into two decoupled single-input single-output systems, thus reducing the complexity of designing the controller for the mobile robot. After that, a variable structure model reference adaptive controller is applied to each one of the resulting systems. One of such controllers will be responsible for the robot position and the other for the leading angle, using reference signals generated by the position controller. To validate the proposed structure, some simulated and experimental results using differential drive mobile robots of a robot soccer kit are presented. The simulator uses the main characteristics of real physical system as noise and non-linearities such as deadzone and saturation. The experimental results were obtained through an C++ program applied to the robot soccer kit of Microrobot team at the LACI/UFRN. The simulated and experimental results are presented and discussed at the end of the text

Aprendizado por Reforço com Valores deInfluência em Sistemas Multi-Agente

We propose a new paradigm for collective learning in multi-agent systems (MAS) as a solution to the problem in which several agents acting over the same environment must learn how to perform tasks, simultaneously, based on feedbacks given by each one of the other agents. We introduce the proposed paradigm in the form of a reinforcement learning algorithm, nominating it as reinforcement learning with influence values. While learning by rewards, each agent evaluates the relation between the current state and/or action executed at this state (actual believe) together with the reward obtained after all agents that are interacting perform their actions. The reward is a result of the interference of others. The agent considers the opinions of all its colleagues in order to attempt to change the values of its states and/or actions. The idea is that the system, as a whole, must reach an equilibrium, where all agents get satisfied with the obtained results. This means that the values of the state/actions pairs match the reward obtained by each agent. This dynamical way of setting the values for states and/or actions makes this new reinforcement learning paradigm the first to include, naturally, the fact that the presence of other agents in the environment turns it a dynamical model. As a direct result, we implicitly include the internal state, the actions and the rewards obtained by all the other agents in the internal state of each agent. This makes our proposal the first complete solution to the conceptual problem that rises when applying reinforcement learning in multi-agent systems, which is caused by the difference existent between the environment and agent models. With basis on the proposed model, we create the IVQ-learning algorithm that is exhaustive tested in repetitive games with two, three and four agents and in stochastic games that need cooperation and in games that need collaboration. This algorithm shows to be a good option for obtaining solutions that guarantee convergence to the Nash optimum equilibrium in cooperative problems. Experiments performed clear shows that the proposed paradigm is theoretical and experimentally superior to the traditional approaches. Yet, with the creation of this new paradigm the set of reinforcement learning applications in MAS grows up. That is, besides the possibility of applying the algorithm in traditional learning problems in MAS, as for example coordination of tasks in multi-robot systems, it is possible to apply reinforcement learning in problems that are essentially collaborative

Localização e planejamento de caminhos para um robô humanóide e um robô escravo com rodas

This work presents the localization and path planning systems for two robots: a non-instrumented humanoid and a slave wheeled robot. The localization of wheeled robot is made using odometry information and landmark detection. These informations are fused using a Extended Kalman Filter. The relative position of humanoid is acquired fusing (using another Kalman Filter) the wheeled robot pose with the characteristics of the landmark on the back of humanoid. Knowing the wheeled robot position and the humanoid relative position in relation to it, we acquired the absolute position of humanoid. The path planning system was developed to provide the cooperative movement of the two robots,incorporating the visibility restrictions of the robotic system

Um sistema de visão para navegação robusta de uma plataforma robótica semi-autônoma

Large efforts have been maden by the scientific community on tasks involving locomotion of mobile robots. To execute this kind of task, we must develop to the robot the ability of navigation through the environment in a safe way, that is, without collisions with the objects. In order to perform this, it is necessary to implement strategies that makes possible to detect obstacles. In this work, we deal with this problem by proposing a system that is able to collect sensory information and to estimate the possibility for obstacles to occur in the mobile robot path. Stereo cameras positioned in parallel to each other in a structure coupled to the robot are employed as the main sensory device, making possible the generation of a disparity map. Code optimizations and a strategy for data reduction and abstraction are applied to the images, resulting in a substantial gain in the execution time. This makes possible to the high level decision processes to execute obstacle deviation in real time. This system can be employed in situations where the robot is remotely operated, as well as in situations where it depends only on itself to generate trajectories (the autonomous case)

Mapeamento robótico 2,5-D com representação em grade de ocupação-elevação

This work introduces a new method for environment mapping with three-dimensional information from visual information for robotic accurate navigation. Many approaches of 3D mapping using occupancy grid typically requires high computacional effort to both build and store the map. We introduce an 2.5-D occupancy-elevation grid mapping, which is a discrete mapping approach, where each cell stores the occupancy probability, the height of the terrain at current place in the environment and the variance of this height. This 2.5-dimensional representation allows that a mobile robot to know whether a place in the environment is occupied by an obstacle and the height of this obstacle, thus, it can decide if is possible to traverse the obstacle. Sensorial informations necessary to construct the map is provided by a stereo vision system, which has been modeled with a robust probabilistic approach, considering the noise present in the stereo processing. The resulting maps favors the execution of tasks like decision making in the autonomous navigation, exploration, localization and path planning. Experiments carried out with a real mobile robots demonstrates that this proposed approach yields useful maps for robot autonomous navigation

Navegação cooperativa de um robô humanóide e um robô com rodas usando informação visual

This work presents a cooperative navigation systemof a humanoid robot and a wheeled robot using visual information, aiming to navigate the non-instrumented humanoid robot using information obtained from the instrumented wheeled robot. Despite the humanoid not having sensors to its navigation, it can be remotely controlled by infra-red signals. Thus, the wheeled robot can control the humanoid positioning itself behind him and, through visual information, find it and navigate it. The location of the wheeled robot is obtained merging information from odometers and from landmarks detection, using the Extended Kalman Filter. The marks are visually detected, and their features are extracted by image processing. Parameters obtained by image processing are directly used in the Extended Kalman Filter. Thus, while the wheeled robot locates and navigates the humanoid, it also simultaneously calculates its own location and maps the environment (SLAM). The navigation is done through heuristic algorithms based on errors between the actual and desired pose for each robot. The main contribution of this work was the implementation of a cooperative navigation system for two robots based on visual information, which can be extended to other robotic applications, as the ability to control robots without interfering on its hardware, or attaching communication devices

Plataforma Robótica de Baixíssimo Custo para Robótica Educacional

Robots are present each time more on several areas of our society, however they are still considered expensive equipments that are restricted to few people. This work con- sists on the development of control techniques and architectures that make possible the construction and programming of low cost robots with low programming and building complexity. One key aspect of the proposed architecture is the use of audio interfaces to control actuators and read sensors, thus allowing the usage of any device that can produce sounds as a control unit of a robot. The work also includes the development of web ba- sed programming environments that allow the usage of computers or mobile phones as control units of the robot, which can be remotely programmed and controlled. The work also includes possible applications of such low cost robotic platform, including mainly its educational usage, which was experimentally validated by teachers and students of seve- ral graduation courses. We also present an analysis of data obtained from interviews done with the students before and after the use of our platform, which confirms its acceptance as a teaching support tool

RoboEduc: especificação de um software educacional para ensino da robótica às crianças como uma ferramenta de inclusão digital

Because of social exclusion in Brazil and having as focus the digital inclusion, was started in Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte a project that could talk, at the same time, about concepts of collaborative learning and educational robotics , focused on children digitally excluded. In this context was created a methodology that approaches many subjects as technological elements (e. g. informatics and robotics) and school subjects (e. g. Portuguese, Mathematics, Geography, History), contextualized in everyday situations. We observed educational concepts of collaborative learning and the development of capacities from those students, as group work, logical knowledge and learning ability. This paper proposes an educational software for robotics teaching called RoboEduc, created to be used by children digitally excluded from primary school. Its introduction prioritizes a friendly interface, that makes the concepts of robotics and programming easy and fun to be taught. With this new tool, users without informatics or robotics previous knowledge are able to control a robot, previously set with Lego kits, or even program it to carry some activities out. This paper provides the implementation of the second version of the software. This version presents the control of the robot already used. After were implemented the different levels of programming linked to the many learning levels of the users and their different interfaces and functions. Nowadays, has been implemented the third version, with the improvement of each one of the mentioned stages. In order to validate, prove and test the efficience of the developed methodology to the RoboEduc, were made experiments, through practice of robotics, with children for fourth and fifth grades of primary school at the City School Professor Ascendino de Almeida, in the suburb of Natal (west zone), Rio Grande do Norte. As a preliminary result of the current technology, we verified that the use of robots associated with a well elaborated software can be spread to users that know very little about the subject, without the necessity of previous advanced technology knowledges. Therefore, they showed to be accessible and efficient tools in the process of digital inclusion

Um ambiente de suporte ao trabalho cooperativo com aplicação à telemedicina

This dissertation presents a cooperative virtual multimedia enviroment for employing on time medical Field, using a TCP/IP computer network. The Virtual Diagnosis Room environment make it possible to perform cooperative tasks using classical image processing. Synchronous and assynchronous text conversation (chat) and content markup, in order to produce remote cooperative diagnosis. The dissertation also describes the tool in detail and its functions, that enables the interaction among users, along with implementation detals, contributions and weakness of this work

Utilizando a televisão digital como um meio de comunicação para ambientes interativos reais

This Dissertation aims to provide a communication mechanism between Digital TV viewers and interaction devices, such as robots, for example, placed on the environment from which a TV program is being live broadcasted. Such communication mechanism has the objective to allow viewers controll the Interaction Devices through their TV devices, using the broadcast channel present in Interactive Digital TV systems, and receive data from the devices by the broadcast channel. This system was projected as a middlewaer system where the Interaction Devices in the TV program set are interconnected, creating a Interactive Device Network. With this approach, the system is capable of manage the devices on the network, controlling the flow of coming and leaving elements, in a transparent way for the viewers. The system yet allows the Interaction Devices communicate each other, with a integrated communication channel with no worries about the physical communication layer