TORP: The Open Robot Project A Framework for Module-Based Robots

The development of robots has shown itself as a very complex interdisciplinary research field. The predominant procedure for these developments in the last decades is based on the assumption that each robot is a fully personalized project, with the direct embedding of hardware and software technologies in robot parts with no level of abstraction. Although this methodology has brought countless benefits to the robotics research, on the other hand, it has imposed major drawbacks: (i) the difficulty to reuse hardware and software parts in new robots or new versions; (ii) the difficulty to compare performance of different robots parts; and (iii) the difficulty to adapt development needs-in hardware and software levels-to local groups expertise. Large advances might be reached, for example, if physical parts of a robot could be reused in a different robot constructed with other technologies by other researcher or group. This paper proposes a framework for robots, TORP (The Open Robot Project), that aims to put forward a standardization in all dimensions (electrical, mechanical and computational) of a robot shared development model. This architecture is based on the dissociation between the robot and its parts, and between the robot parts and their technologies. In this paper, the first specification for a TORP family and the first humanoid robot constructed following the TORP specification set are presented, as well as the advances proposed for their improvement.

An integrated approach to identification and conservation of medicinal plants in the tropical forest - A Brazilian experience

An integrated and interdisciplinary research programme with native medicinal plants from tropical forests has been performed in order to obtain new forest products for sustainable use in regional markets vis-à-vis ecosystem conservation. For the success of this programme ethnopharmacological studies are very important with respect to (i) identification of useful plants including medicinal and aromatic species; (ii) recuperation and preservation of traditional knowledge about native plants; and (iii) identification of potential plants with economic value. The plants are selected with a view to evaluate efficacy and safety (pharmacological and toxicological studies), and phytochemical profile and quality control (phytochemical and chromatographic characterization). These studies are very important to add value to plant products and also to mitigate unscrupulous exploitation of medicinal plants by local communities, since multiple use of plants represents an excellent strategy for sustaining the tropical ecosystem through ex situ and in situ conservation. Thus, conservation of tropical resources is possible in conjunction with improvements in the quality of life of the traditional communities and production of new products with therapeutic, cosmetic and 'cosmeceutic' value. © NIAB 2005.

TORP: An open standard framework for humanoid robots

Humanoid robots are an extremely complex interdisciplinary research field. Particularly, the development of high size humanoid robots usually requires joint efforts and skills from groups that are in many different research centers around the world. However, there are serious constraints in this kind of collaborative development. Some efforts have been made in order to propose new software frameworks that can allow distributed development with also some degree of hardware abstraction, allowing software reuse in successive projects. However, computation represents only one of the dimensions in robotics tasks, and the need for reuse and exchange of full robot modules between groups are growing. Large advances could be reached if physical parts of a robot could be reused in a different robot constructed with other technologies by other researcher or group. This paper proposes a new robot framework, from now on called TORP (The Open Robot Project), that aims to provide a standard architecture in all dimensions (electrical, mechanical and computational) for this collaborative development. This methodology also represents an open project that is fully shared. In this paper, the first robot constructed following the TORP specification set is presented as well as the advances proposed for its improvement. © 2010 IEEE.

Enfrentamento do problema das divergências de tradução por um sistema de tradução automática: um exercício exploratório

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Perceptions of environmental change and use of traditional knowledge to plan riparian forest restoration with relocated communities in Alcantara, Eastern Amazon

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Concepções de alunos do ensino médio sobre o tema água: subsídios para o planejamento de atividades investigativas interdisciplinares

Meaningful learning occurs when new knowledge to be aggregated are grounded in other students already possess. In preparing didactic sequences for teaching concepts, one should take into account these concepts and knowledge to produce more effective and lasting learning, and build new concepts that will become subsumes for subsequent learning. This research was developed in a subproject linked to institutional Scholarship Program Initiation to Teaching (PIBID) of a Universidade Estadual Paulista. The proposal is based on the articulation of the Public School and the University, strengthening the initial training of undergraduates, and continued teacher network, improving the quality of education. The proposed work is based on interdisciplinary research and teaching by investigation. Undergraduates in Biology, Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry jointly propose interdisciplinary teaching activities and investigative applied to high school students of Public School partner. To survey the views of these students on the theme Water, they were asked to draw up an essay entitled "The importance of water", with the aim of organizing information for planning a teaching strategy that articulates the disciplines of training of undergraduates. In this paper we present a qualitative analysis of these essays, performed based on content analysis. The analysis allowed to identify existing concepts in students' cognitive structure and classify them into adequate and inadequate compared to scientifically accepted concepts. Several misconceptions were raised indicating the need to produce didactic sequences that in addition to working the concepts presented in the curriculum of disciplines take into consideration the possibility of more meaningful learning. This research produced the elucidation of existing concepts, indicating where deficiencies were larger. One major contribution was the realization that concepts that may be considered by teachers as simple and already acquired by the students often come so misguided in their explanations. From the results obtained, integrated activities have been planned and implemented, and more relevant to the needs of students aiming to recover and enrich the knowledge they possessed, encouraging the use of scientific concepts and their application to daily living situations.

DNA for nano-bio scale computation of chemical formalisms using Higher Order Logic (HOL) and analysis using an interdisciplinary approach

Bio-molecular computing, 'computations performed by bio-molecules', is already challenging traditional approaches to computation both theoretically and technologically. Often placed within the wider context of ´bio-inspired' or 'natural' or even 'unconventional' computing, the study of natural and artificial molecular computations is adding to our understanding of biology, physical sciences and computer science well beyond the framework of existing design and implementation paradigms. In this introduction, We wish to outline the current scope of the field and assemble some basic arguments that, bio-molecular computation is of central importance to computer science, physical sciences and biology using HOL - Higher Order Logic. HOL is used as the computational tool in our R&D work. DNA was analyzed as a chemical computing engine, in our effort to develop novel formalisms to understand the molecular scale bio-chemical computing behavior using HOL. In our view, our focus is one of the pioneering efforts in this promising domain of nano-bio scale chemical information processing dynamics.