Odometria visual baseada em técnicas de structure from motion

Visual Odometry is the process that estimates camera position and orientation based solely on images and in features (projections of visual landmarks present in the scene) extraced from them. With the increasing advance of Computer Vision algorithms and computer processing power, the subarea known as Structure from Motion (SFM) started to supply mathematical tools composing localization systems for robotics and Augmented Reality applications, in contrast with its initial purpose of being used in inherently offline solutions aiming 3D reconstruction and image based modelling. In that way, this work proposes a pipeline to obtain relative position featuring a previously calibrated camera as positional sensor and based entirely on models and algorithms from SFM. Techniques usually applied in camera localization systems such as Kalman filters and particle filters are not used, making unnecessary additional information like probabilistic models for camera state transition. Experiments assessing both 3D reconstruction quality and camera position estimated by the system were performed, in which image sequences captured in reallistic scenarios were processed and compared to localization data gathered from a mobile robotic platform

Ambiente de simulação híbrido integrando hysys e rede industrial Foundation Fieldbus aplicado ao controle de uma coluna de destilação

The main purpose of this work is to develop an environment that allows HYSYS R chemical process simulator communication with sensors and actuators from a Foundation Fieldbus industrial network. The environment is considered a hybrid resource since it has a real portion (industrial network) and a simulated one (process) with all measurement and control signals also real. It is possible to reproduce different industrial process dynamics without being required any physical network modification, enabling simulation of some situations that exist in a real industrial environment. This feature testifies the environment flexibility. In this work, a distillation column is simulated through HYSYS R with all its variables measured and controlled by Foundation Fieldbus devices

Técnicas visuais de localização e mapeamento simultâneos sem extração de primitivas geométricas da imagem

In Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM - Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), a robot placed in an unknown location in any environment must be able to create a perspective of this environment (a map) and is situated in the same simultaneously, using only information captured by the robot s sensors and control signals known. Recently, driven by the advance of computing power, work in this area have proposed to use video camera as a sensor and it came so Visual SLAM. This has several approaches and the vast majority of them work basically extracting features of the environment, calculating the necessary correspondence and through these estimate the required parameters. This work presented a monocular visual SLAM system that uses direct image registration to calculate the image reprojection error and optimization methods that minimize this error and thus obtain the parameters for the robot pose and map of the environment directly from the pixels of the images. Thus the steps of extracting and matching features are not needed, enabling our system works well in environments where traditional approaches have difficulty. Moreover, when addressing the problem of SLAM as proposed in this work we avoid a very common problem in traditional approaches, known as error propagation. Worrying about the high computational cost of this approach have been tested several types of optimization methods in order to find a good balance between good estimates and processing time. The results presented in this work show the success of this system in different environments

Roteamento em Redes de Sensores Sem Fios Com Base Em Aprendizagem Por Reforço

The use of wireless sensor and actuator networks in industry has been increasing past few years, bringing multiple benefits compared to wired systems, like network flexibility and manageability. Such networks consists of a possibly large number of small and autonomous sensor and actuator devices with wireless communication capabilities. The data collected by sensors are sent directly or through intermediary nodes along the network to a base station called sink node. The data routing in this environment is an essential matter since it is strictly bounded to the energy efficiency, thus the network lifetime. This work investigates the application of a routing technique based on Reinforcement Learning s Q-Learning algorithm to a wireless sensor network by using an NS-2 simulated environment. Several metrics like energy consumption, data packet delivery rates and delays are used to validate de proposal comparing it with another solutions existing in the literature

Relação entre a tensão aplicada e a sensação de desconforto nos músculos isquiotibiais durante o alongamento

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Phytase immobilization on modified electrodes for amperometric biosensing

Phytase (myo-inositol hexaphosphate phosphohydrolase) and phytic acid (myo-inositol hexaphosphate) play an important environmental role, in addition to being a health issue in food industry. Phytic acid is antinutritional due to its ability to chelate metal ions and may also react with proteins decreasing their bioavailability. In this work, we produced biosensors with phytase immobilized in Layer-by-Layer (LbL) films, which could detect phytic acid with a detection limit of 0.19 mmol L-1, which is sufficient to detect phytic acid in seeds of grains and vegetables. The biosensosrs consisted of LbL films containing up to eight bilayers of phytase alternated with poly(allylamine) hydrochloride (PAH) deposited onto an indium-tin oxide (ITO) substrate modified with Prussian Blue. Amperometric detection was conducted in an acetate buffer solution (at pH 5.5) at room temperature, with the biosensor response attributed to the formation of phosphate ions. In subsidiary experiments with the currents measured at 0.0 V (vs. SCE), we demonstrated the absence of effects from some interferents, pointing to a good selectivity of the biosensor. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The photothermal transparent transducer method applied to the spectroscopy of liquids

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

LWiSSy: uma linguagem específica de domínio para modelagem de sistemas de redes de sensores e atuadores sem fio

The field of Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSAN) is fast increasing and has attracted the interest of both the research community and the industry because of several factors, such as the applicability of such networks in different application domains (aviation, civil engineering, medicine, and others). Moreover, advances in wireless communication and the reduction of hardware components size also contributed for a fast spread of these networks. However, there are still several challenges and open issues that need to be tackled in order to achieve the full potential of WSAN usage. The development of WSAN systems is one of the most relevant of these challenges considering the number of variables involved in this process. Currently, a broad range of WSAN platforms and low level programming languages are available to build WSAN systems. Thus, developers need to deal with details of different sensor platforms and low-level programming abstractions of sensor operational systems on one hand, and they also need to have specific (high level) knowledge about the distinct application domains, on the other hand. Therefore, in order to decouple the handling of these two different levels of knowledge, making easier the development process of WSAN systems, we propose LWiSSy (Domain Language for Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks Systems), a domain specific language (DSL) for WSAN. The use of DSLs raises the abstraction level during the programming of systems and modularizes the system building in several steps. Thus, LWiSSy allows the domain experts to directly contribute in the development of WSANs without having knowledge on low level sensor platforms, and network experts to program sensor nodes to meet application requirements without having specific knowledge on the application domain. Additionally, LWiSSy enables the system decomposition in different levels of abstraction according to structural and behavioral features and granularities (network, node group and single node level programming)

Patient comfort in periapical examination using digital receptors

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Accuracy of zoomed digital image in the detection of periodontal bone defect: in vitro study

Objectives: (1) To evaluate the intraobserver agreement related to image interpretation and (2) to compare the accuracy of 100%, 200% and 400% zoomed digital images in the detection of simulated periodontal bone defects.Methods: Periodontal bone defects were created in 60 pig hemi-mandibles with slow-speed burs 0.5 mm, 1.0 mm, 1.5 mm, 2.0 mm and 3.0 mm in diameter. 180 standardized digital radiographs were made using Schick sensor and evaluated at 100%, 200% and 400% zooming. The intraobserver agreement was estimated by Kappa statistic (kappa). For the evaluation of diagnostic accuracy receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed followed by chi-square test to compare the areas under ROC curves according to each level of zooming.Results: For 100%, 200% and 400% zooming the intraobserver agreement was moderate (kappa = 0.48, kappa = 0.54 and kappa = 0.43, respectively) and there were similar performances in the discrimination capacity, with ROC areas of 0.8611 (95% CI: 0.7660-0.9562), 0.8600 (95% CI: 0.7659-0.9540), and 0.8368 (95% CI: 0.7346-0.9390), respectively, with no statistical significant differences (chi(2)-test; P = 0.8440).Conclusions: A moderate intraobserver agreement was observed in the classification of periodontal bone defects and the 100%, 200% and 400% zoomed digital images presented similar performances in the detection of periodontal bone defects.

Development of an AMR-ACB Array for Gastrointestinal Motility Studies

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Voltammetric sensing of the fuel dye marker Solvent Blue 14 by screen-printed electrodes

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Detecção de falhas em estruturas inteligentes usando otimização por nuvem de partículas: fundamentos e estudo de casos

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Evaluation of digital optical density of bone repair in rats medicated with ketoprofen

O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar a influência do cetoprofeno sobre o processo de reparação óssea em tíbias de ratos, por meio da análise da densidade óptica digital. Vinte ratos da linhagem Wistar foram divididos em 2 grupos: um grupo controle (sem tratamento) e um grupo tratado com cetoprofeno. Os procedimentos experimentais consistiram de: anestesia, cirurgia, administração do cetoprofeno e exame radiográfico. As imagens radiográficas foram adquiridas empregando-se o sensor digital Visualix GX-S-HDI™ e um aparelho de raios X. As radiografias foram realizadas nos períodos baseline (inicial), 7, 14, 21 e 30 dias pós-operatório, sendo a densidade óptica (DO) avaliada por meio do sistema Vix winTM 1.4. Os valores médios da leitura da do obtidos foram analisados estatisticamente por meio de ANOVA e teste de Tukey com nível de significância de 5%. No grupo controle, houve diferença estatisticamente significante (p=0,001) entre o tempo e a DO, enquanto no grupo tratado com cetoprofeno a diferença não foi estatisticamente significante (p=0,100). O grupo controle apresentou as menores proporções de do (%) no 1º e 7º dias e as maiores proporções de do (%) no 14º, 21º e 30º dias, com diferença estatisticamente significante (p=0,001). Não houve diferença estatisticamente significante (p=0,100) entre as proporções médias de do (%) no grupo tratado, independentemente do período de avaliação. Os achados deste trabalho sugerem que houve influência do cetoprofeno sobre o processo de reparo ósseo, uma vez que na primeira semana o medicamento proporcionou aumento na densidade óptica e provocou atraso na neoformação óssea após o 21º dia.

A new method for extending the range of conductive polymer sensors for contact force

This paper describes a technique for extending the force range of thin conductive polymer force sensors used for measuring contact force. These sensors are conventionally used for measuring force by changing electrical resistance when they are compressed. The new method involves measuring change in electrical resistance when the flexible sensor, which is sensitive to both compression and bending, is sandwiched between two layers of spring steel, and the structure is supported on a thin metal ring. When external force is applied, the stiffened sensor inside the spring steel is deformed within the annular center of the ring, causing the sensor to bend in proportion to the applied force. This method effectively increases the usable force range, while adding little in the way of thickness and weight. Average error for loads between 10 N and 100 N was 2.2 N (SD = 1.7) for a conventional conductive polymer sensor, and 0.9 N (SD = 0.4) using the new approach. Although this method permits measurement of greater loads with an error less than 1 N, it is limited since the modified sensor is insensitive to loads less than 5 N. These modified sensors are nevertheless useful for directly measuring normal force applied against handles and tools and other situations involving forceful manual work activities, such as grasp, push, pull, or press that could not otherwise be measured in actual work situations.