Representation of odometry errors on occupancy grids

SOUZA, Anderson A. S. ; SANTANA, André M. ; BRITTO, Ricardo S. ; GONÇALVES, Luiz Marcos G. ; MEDEIROS, Adelardo A. D. Representation of Odometry Errors on Occupancy Grids. In: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INFORMATICS IN CONTROL, AUTOMATION AND ROBOTICS, 5., 2008, Funchal, Portugal. Proceedings... Funchal, Portugal: ICINCO, 2008.

Cerâmica de Santo Antônio do Potengi: entre tradição e modernidade

In the Rio Grande do Norte, the craftsmanship is generating of economy, it involves a significant number of people and is diversified in its raw materials and particular type. As reference of the craft local, the ceramics supplied the primary necessities in the utilitarian domestic servants, acquired piety in the religious figures, were toy in infantile amusements and, finally, gained status of pure ornament. By its historical representation, the district of Santo Antônio do Potengi is considered the most important center of manufacture of craftpottery in the State. The work of the potters continues in that locality anchored between the familiar inheritance and the participation each more influential time of the public politics destined to the sector situation verified for visible alterations in the shape of the pottery from the decade of 1990 with the implantation of a cooperative destined to the collective production. We observe in this passage, that such actions in the measure where they objectify to structuralize conditions ideal to support the artisan making, do not benefit in significant way the social development them craftsmen. It is important not to lose of sight that exists some involved dimensions in this process and that these surpass the common interest for the object and the consequent economic connotation of its commercialization. They are knowledge that imply in the access to raw materials, in the peculiar of the formal aspects and productive methods, in the contextual relations organized to defend the survival of the activity

A representação social do cuidado no Programa Saúde da Família na cidade do Natal

The aim of this study was to learn about the social representations of the care provided by the Family Health Program (FHP) in the city of Natal, Brazil and determine how these representations guide the daily actions of doctors, dentists, nurses, nurse s assistants and oral health assistants during the work process. In this sense, we used the theoreticalmethodological approach to the Theory of Social Representations. For data collection, we used the following instruments: a two-part questionnaire, where the first part recorded sociodemographic data and the second part was adapted to the free word association technique (FWAT), which was applied to 90 professionals belonging to 18 FHP units. Interviews were also used as collection instruments. These were based on inductive stimuli and on direct observations of 30 of these professionals. After a superficial reading of the material, we constructed a corpus from which ten categories emerged. To analyze FWAT we used lexicographic analysis, combining frequency and the mean order of responses. The interviews and sociodemographic variables were analyzed using content analysis and descriptive statistical analysis, respectively. The study showed that the central nucleus of the social representation in question is composed of the elements attention, receptivity and love, revealing that the subjects have different understandings of the FHP care process and that the knowledge accumulated in this respect is supported by an approximate vision of the meaning of care. However, traditional elements with trivializing connotations about care predominate, which compromises the development of strategies to overcome traditional practices. In the set of analyses, we were able to capture the invariance of a contradiction: on one hand, professionals know and affirm the importance of providing care for FHP patients; on the other, the experience of daily practice translates into the negation of this concept. In this contradictory context, professionals build gradual and successive syntheses that allow them to act and affirm themselves by associating information from their academic formation, structured knowledge acquired in other experiences, values and symbols of their daily routine. Thus, they shape and reshape themselves, according to what is concretely and specifically required, at the same time both plural and multiple. The composition of the central nucleus indicates that any measure that intends to modify attitudes that is, the daily actions of FHP professionals with respect to care must take into account and give priority to the debate about the redefining of the semantic fields of the central nucleus (love/attention/receptivity and humanization), especially those of love and attention

Tornar-se, ser e viver do professorado: entre regularidades e variações identitárias

The main aim of this research has been to analyze the identity patterns of the teacher s staff of fundamental education public schools in the Metropolitan Area of Natal-RN. It sets out from the hypothesis that being a teacher within this context grows out of the regularities of a specific habitus, which, according to Bourdieu, develops into mental schemes of thought and action within a specific social group. This habitus forms the basis on which is built the social representation of being a teacher prevailing in the group, as well as the symbolic differences that typify its identity variations. Three data sources have been fundamental in building up this thesis: (a) formative essays of students graduating from a Higher Teacher s Formation Course, as well as observing some of the public defense of these essays during field work; (b) a questionnaire aimed at classifying economically, socially, and culturally a sample of public teachers of the Natal-RN county; and (c) submitting a sub-sample of this group to the process of Multiple Classification Procedures (MCP). The analysis of data was done according to the multidimensional, non-parametric statistical procedures of both the Category Content Analysis and Enunciation Analysis methods. The results of the analysis took into account an ample set of variables, its associations and implications, the cultural and social profile of the population under scrutiny, their life styles, as well as the strategies they developed in the process of becoming a teacher, and the social representation of being a teacher . We came to the conclusion that the social identity of the teachers corps, or as we prefer to say it being a teacher , is a result of a set of regularities produced by the habitus that gives social shape and meaning to the existence of the group proper. We note the existence of identity variations caused by the variables (a) educational level; and (b) mode of action in fundamental education (if these are the first or last grades where the subjects operate). However, these variations will not break the power of the regularities that give shape, meaning, and social visibility to the group. The social representation of being a teacher points to the tensions, ambiguities, and trends inherent to common sense, as well as to a strong tendency to reassign a new meaning to being a teacher. Our thesis, therefore, is that the identity configuration of the teachers corps under scrutiny is characterized by an integrative synthesis, by-product of a habitus that is superimposed, and at the same time co-exists with different identity variations

Seleção seqüencial de descritores por análise da semântica para recuperação de imagens baseada no conteúdo

With the rapid growth of databases of various types (text, multimedia, etc..), There exist a need to propose methods for ordering, access and retrieve data in a simple and fast way. The images databases, in addition to these needs, require a representation of the images so that the semantic content characteristics are considered. Accordingly, several proposals such as the textual annotations based retrieval has been made. In the annotations approach, the recovery is based on the comparison between the textual description that a user can make of images and descriptions of the images stored in database. Among its drawbacks, it is noted that the textual description is very dependent on the observer, in addition to the computational effort required to describe all the images in database. Another approach is the content based image retrieval - CBIR, where each image is represented by low-level features such as: color, shape, texture, etc. In this sense, the results in the area of CBIR has been very promising. However, the representation of the images semantic by low-level features is an open problem. New algorithms for the extraction of features as well as new methods of indexing have been proposed in the literature. However, these algorithms become increasingly complex. So, doing an analysis, it is natural to ask whether there is a relationship between semantics and low-level features extracted in an image? and if there is a relationship, which descriptors better represent the semantic? which leads us to a new question: how to use descriptors to represent the content of the images?. The work presented in this thesis, proposes a method to analyze the relationship between low-level descriptors and semantics in an attempt to answer the questions before. Still, it was observed that there are three possibilities of indexing images: Using composed characteristic vectors, using parallel and independent index structures (for each descriptor or set of them) and using characteristic vectors sorted in sequential order. Thus, the first two forms have been widely studied and applied in literature, but there were no records of the third way has even been explored. So this thesis also proposes to index using a sequential structure of descriptors and also the order of these descriptors should be based on the relationship that exists between each descriptor and semantics of the users. Finally, the proposed index in this thesis revealed better than the traditional approachs and yet, was showed experimentally that the order in this sequence is important and there is a direct relationship between this order and the relationship of low-level descriptors with the semantics of the users

Adaptação eletrônica de um leitor mecânico de coto, investigação e desenvolvimento de interface CAD

Due to advances in the manufacturing process of orthopedic prostheses, the need for better quality shape reading techniques (i.e. with less uncertainty) of the residual limb of amputees became a challenge. To overcome these problems means to be able in obtaining accurate geometry information of the limb and, consequently, better manufacturing processes of both transfemural and transtibial prosthetic sockets. The key point for this task is to customize these readings trying to be as faithful as possible to the real profile of each patient. Within this context, firstly two prototype versions (α and β) of a 3D mechanical scanner for reading residual limbs shape based on reverse engineering techniques were designed. Prototype β is an improved version of prototype α, despite remaining working in analogical mode. Both prototypes are capable of producing a CAD representation of the limb via appropriated graphical sheets and were conceived to work purely by mechanical means. The first results were encouraging as they were able to achieve a great decrease concerning the degree of uncertainty of measurements when compared to traditional methods that are very inaccurate and outdated. For instance, it's not unusual to see these archaic methods in action by making use of ordinary home kind measure-tapes for exploring the limb's shape. Although prototype β improved the readings, it still required someone to input the plotted points (i.e. those marked in disk shape graphical sheets) to an academic CAD software called OrtoCAD. This task is performed by manual typing which is time consuming and carries very limited reliability. Furthermore, the number of coordinates obtained from the purely mechanical system is limited to sub-divisions of the graphical sheet (it records a point every 10 degrees with a resolution of one millimeter). These drawbacks were overcome by designing the second release of prototype β in which it was developed an electronic variation of the reading table components now capable of performing an automatic reading (i.e. no human intervention in digital mode). An interface software (i.e. drive) was built to facilitate data transfer. Much better results were obtained meaning less degree of uncertainty (it records a point every 2 degrees with a resolution of 1/10 mm). Additionally, it was proposed an algorithm to convert the CAD geometry, used by OrtoCAD, to an appropriate format and enabling the use of rapid prototyping equipment aiming future automation of the manufacturing process of prosthetic sockets.

Ser(Tão) Seridó em suas cartografias espaciais

The aim of this work is to analyze the spatial frames of reference of the Seridó a region Iocated in the hinterlands of Rio Grande do Norte state from the following texts: Homens de Outrora (1941), by Manuel Dantas; Seridó (1954), by José Augusto Bezerra de Medeiros; Velhos Costumes do Meu Sertão (1965), by Juvenal Lamartine de Faria; and Sertões do Seridó (1980), by Oswaldo Lamartine de Faria. The historiographical discourse will be investigated as to representations of space and the frames of reference that demarcate it. We highlight the space of 1 as delimited by the subjectivity and significances expressed by each author, considering closely the relation between author, writing and body, either in historiography or in the subjects that give shape to the Seridó region in their writings. The Seridó is particularly framed in the relevant historiography as the hinterland (sertão) space, where the drought is a representation referred to recurrently, and as a space of fight , in which man and nature would be in constant struggle, challenging each other. Spatial frames of reference are then situated between the 1 and notions of hinterland and fight with nature