A survey of technologies and applications for climbing robots locomotion and adhesion

The interest in the development of climbing robots has grown rapidly in the last years. Climbing robots are useful devices that can be adopted in a variety of applications, such as maintenance and inspection in the process and construction industries. These systems are mainly adopted in places where direct access by a human operator is very expensive, because of the need for scaffolding, or very dangerous, due to the presence of an hostile environment. The main motivations are to increase the operation efficiency, by eliminating the costly assembly of scaffolding, or to protect human health and safety in hazardous tasks. Several climbing robots have already been developed, and other are under development, for applications ranging from cleaning to inspection of difficult to reach constructions. A wall climbing robot should not only be light, but also have large payload, so that it may reduce excessive adhesion forces and carry instrumentations during navigation. These machines should be capable of travelling over different types of surfaces, with different inclinations, such as floors, walls, or ceilings, and to walk between such surfaces (Elliot et al. (2006); Sattar et al. (2002)). Furthermore, they should be able of adapting and reconfiguring for various environment conditions and to be self-contained. Up to now, considerable research was devoted to these machines and various types of experimental models were already proposed (according to Chen et al. (2006), over 200 prototypes aimed at such applications had been developed in the world by the year 2006). However, we have to notice that the application of climbing robots is still limited. Apart from a couple successful industrialized products, most are only prototypes and few of them can be found in common use due to unsatisfactory performance in on-site tests (regarding aspects such as their speed, cost and reliability). Chen et al. (2006) present the main design problems affecting the system performance of climbing robots and also suggest solutions to these problems. The major two issues in the design of wall climbing robots are their locomotion and adhesion methods. With respect to the locomotion type, four types are often considered: the crawler, the wheeled, the legged and the propulsion robots. Although the crawler type is able to move relatively faster, it is not adequate to be applied in rough environments. On the other hand, the legged type easily copes with obstacles found in the environment, whereas generally its speed is lower and requires complex control systems. Regarding the adhesion to the surface, the robots should be able to produce a secure gripping force using a light-weight mechanism. The adhesion method is generally classified into four groups: suction force, magnetic, gripping to the surface and thrust force type. Nevertheless, recently new methods for assuring the adhesion, based in biological findings, were proposed. The vacuum type principle is light and easy to control though it presents the problem of supplying compressed air. An alternative, with costs in terms of weight, is the adoption of a vacuum pump. The magnetic type principle implies heavy actuators and is used only for ferromagnetic surfaces. The thrust force type robots make use of the forces developed by thrusters to adhere to the surfaces, but are used in very restricted and specific applications. Bearing these facts in mind, this chapter presents a survey of different applications and technologies adopted for the implementation of climbing robots locomotion and adhesion to surfaces, focusing on the new technologies that are recently being developed to fulfill these objectives. The chapter is organized as follows. Section two presents several applications of climbing robots. Sections three and four present the main locomotion principles, and the main "conventional" technologies for adhering to surfaces, respectively. Section five describes recent biological inspired technologies for robot adhesion to surfaces. Section six introduces several new architectures for climbing robots. Finally, section seven outlines the main conclusions.

Intra-hospital organ and tissue donation coordination project: cost-effectiveness and social benefits

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the viability of a professional specialist in intra-hospital committees of organ and tissue donation for transplantation. METHODS Epidemiological, retrospective and cross-sectional study (2003-2011 and 2008-2012), which was performed using organ donation for transplants data in the state of Sao Paulo, Southeastern Brazil. Nine hospitals were evaluated (hospitals 1 to 9). Logistic regression was used to evaluate the differences in the number of brain death referrals and actual donors (dependent variables) after the professional specialist started work (independent variable) at the intra-hospital committee of organ and tissue donation for transplantation. To evaluate the hospital invoicing, the hourly wage of the doctor and registered nurse, according to the legislation of the Consolidation of Labor Laws, were calculated, as were the investment return and the time elapsed to do so. RESULTS Following the nursing specialist commencement on the committee, brain death referrals and the number of actual donors increased at hospital 2 (4.17 and 1.52, respectively). At hospital 7, the number of actual donors also increased from 0.005 to 1.54. In addition, after the nurse started working, hospital revenues increased by 190.0% (ranging 40.0% to 1.955%). The monthly cost for the nurse working 20 hours was US$397.97 while the doctor would cost US$3,526.67. The return on investment was 275% over the short term (0.36 years). CONCLUSIONS This paper showed that including a professional specialist in intra-hospital committees for organ and tissue donation for transplantation proved to be cost-effective. Further economic research in the area could contribute to the efficient public policy implementation of this organ and tissue harvesting model.

Recuperação parcial da água de lavagem dos filtros utilizados no tratamento da água de piscinas de uso público

Mestrado em Engenharia Química. Ramo optimização energética na indústria química

Promoting adverse drug reaction reporting: comparison of different approaches

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE To describe different approaches to promote adverse drug reaction reporting among health care professionals, determining their cost-effectiveness. METHODS We analyzed and compared several approaches taken by the Northern Pharmacovigilance Centre (Portugal) to promote adverse drug reaction reporting. Approaches were compared regarding the number and relevance of adverse drug reaction reports obtained and costs involved. Costs by report were estimated by adding the initial costs and the running costs of each intervention. These costs were divided by the number of reports obtained with each intervention, to assess its cost-effectiveness. RESULTS All the approaches seem to have increased the number of adverse drug reaction reports. We noted the biggest increase with protocols (321 reports, costing 1.96 € each), followed by first educational approach (265 reports, 20.31 €/report) and by the hyperlink approach (136 reports, 15.59 €/report). Regarding the severity of adverse drug reactions, protocols were the most efficient approach, costing 2.29 €/report, followed by hyperlinks (30.28 €/report, having no running costs). Concerning unexpected adverse drug reactions, the best result was obtained with protocols (5.12 €/report), followed by first educational approach (38.79 €/report). CONCLUSIONS We recommend implementing protocols in other pharmacovigilance centers. They seem to be the most efficient intervention, allowing receiving adverse drug reactions reports at lower costs. The increase applied not only to the total number of reports, but also to the severity, unexpectedness and high degree of causality attributed to the adverse drug reactions. Still, hyperlinks have the advantage of not involving running costs, showing the second best performance in cost per adverse drug reactions report.

Fabrication of the three-dimensional dendritic Ni-Co films by electrodeposition on stainless steel substrates

Co-deposition of nickel and cobalt was carried out on austenitic stainless steel (AISI 304) substrates by imposing a square waveform current in the cathodic region. The innovative procedure applied in this work allows creating a stable, fully developed, and open porous three-dimensional (3D) dendritic structure, which can be used as electrode for redox supercapacitors. This study investigates in detail the influence of the applied current density on the morphology, mass, and chemical composition of the deposited Ni-Co films and the resulting 3D porous network dendritic structure. The morphology and the physicochemical composition were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (W). The electrochemical behavior of the materials was evaluated by cyclic voltammetry (CV). The results highlight the mechanism involved in the coelectrodeposition process and how the lower limit current density tailors the film composition and morphology, as well as its electrochemical activity.

Social welfare with a foreign competitor

In this paper, we consider a mixed market in which a state-owned welfare-maximizing public (domestic) firm competes against a profit-maximizing private (foreign) firm. We suppose that the domestic firm is less eflScient than the foreign firm. However, the domestic firm can lower its marginal costs by conducting cost-reducing R&D investment. We examine the impacts of entry of a foreign firm on decisions upon cost-reducing R&D investment by the domestic firm and how these affect the domestic welfare.

Privatization and entry of a foreign firm with demand uncertainty

We investigate the effects of trade with a foreign firm and privatization of the domestic pubUc firm on an incentive for the domestic firm to reduce costs by undertaking R&D investment, under demand uncertainty. We suppose that the domestic firm is less efficient than the foreign firm. However, the domestic firm can lower its marginal costs by conducting cost-reducing R&D investment. We examine the impacts of entry of a foreign firm, and the effects of demand uncertainty, on decisions upon cost-reducing R&D investment by the domestic firm and how these affect the domestic welfare.

On international cost-sharing of pharmaceutical R&D

Ramsey pricing has been proposed in the pharmaceutical industry as a principle to price discriminate among markets while allowing to recover the (fixed) R&D cost. However, such analyses neglect the presence of insurance or the fund raising costs for most of drug reimbursement. By incorporating these new elements, we aim at providing some building blocks towards an economic theory incorporating Ramsey pricing and insurance coverage. We show how coinsurance affects the optimal prices to pay for the R&D investment. We also show that under certain conditions, there is no strategic incentive by governments to set coinsurance rates in order to shift the financial burden of R&D. This will have important implications to the application of Ramsey pricing principles to pharmaceutical products across countries.

Custeio baseado em atividades: concepção e implementação numa empresa de serviços

Trabalho de Projeto apresentado ao Instituto de Contabilidade e Administração do Porto para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Contabilidade e Finanças, sob orientação de Paulino Manuel Leite da Silva

Land use/ land cover change and its impact on soil erosion process in Begnas Tal Rupa Tal watershed using geospatial tools, Kaski district, Nepal

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies

Economia energética por medição de cor em linha do açúcar à saída das centrífugas no processo de refinação da rama de açúcar

Mestrado em Engenharia Química

The Neogene of the Lower Tagus Basin (Portugal)

Revista Española de Paleontologia 19 (2), 229-242

The Serravallian-Tortonian boundary in the lower Tagus Basin (Portugal) and the new GSSP of the Tortonian stage

Revista electrónica de Ciências da Terra,http://e-terra.geopor.pt,Geociences on-line journal, Vol. 6, nº1

Low-cost vibration sensors: tendencies and applications in condition monitoring of machines and structures

Trabalho Final de Mestrado para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Mecânica