Simulation Environment for Multi-Robot Cooperative 3D Target Perception

4th International Conference, SIMPAR 2014, Bergamo, Italy, October 20-23, 2014

Estado da Arte da Computação Evolutiva Aplicada à Eletrónica

A Computação Evolutiva enquadra-se na área da Inteligência Artificial e é um ramo das ciências da computação que tem vindo a ser aplicado na resolução de problemas em diversas áreas da Engenharia. Este trabalho apresenta o estado da arte da Computação Evolutiva, assim como algumas das suas aplicações no ramo da eletrónica, denominada Eletrónica Evolutiva (ou Hardware Evolutivo), enfatizando a síntese de circuitos digitais combinatórios. Em primeiro lugar apresenta-se a Inteligência Artificial, passando à Computação Evolutiva, nas suas principais vertentes: os Algoritmos Evolutivos baseados no processo da evolução das espécies de Charles Darwin e a Inteligência dos Enxames baseada no comportamento coletivo de alguns animais. No que diz respeito aos Algoritmos Evolutivos, descrevem-se as estratégias evolutivas, a programação genética, a programação evolutiva e com maior ênfase, os Algoritmos Genéticos. Em relação à Inteligência dos Enxames, descreve-se a otimização por colônia de formigas e a otimização por enxame de partículas. Em simultâneo realizou-se também um estudo da Eletrónica Evolutiva, explicando sucintamente algumas das áreas de aplicação, entre elas: a robótica, as FPGA, o roteamento de placas de circuito impresso, a síntese de circuitos digitais e analógicos, as telecomunicações e os controladores. A título de concretizar o estudo efetuado, apresenta-se um caso de estudo da aplicação dos algoritmos genéticos na síntese de circuitos digitais combinatórios, com base na análise e comparação de três referências de autores distintos. Com este estudo foi possível comparar, não só os resultados obtidos por cada um dos autores, mas também a forma como os algoritmos genéticos foram implementados, nomeadamente no que diz respeito aos parâmetros, operadores genéticos utilizados, função de avaliação, implementação em hardware e tipo de codificação do circuito.

Towards realistic core-failure-resilient scheduling and analysis

Presented at IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS 2015). 1 to 4, Dec, 2015. San Antonio, U.S.A..

Real-Time Support in the Proposal for Fine-Grained Parallelism in Ada

Presented at Work in Progress Session, IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS 2015). 1 to 3, Dec, 2015. San Antonio, U.S.A..

Parallel Software framework for time-critical many-core systems

The recent technological advancements and market trends are causing an interesting phenomenon towards the convergence of High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Embedded Computing (EC) domains. On one side, new kinds of HPC applications are being required by markets needing huge amounts of information to be processed within a bounded amount of time. On the other side, EC systems are increasingly concerned with providing higher performance in real-time, challenging the performance capabilities of current architectures. The advent of next-generation many-core embedded platforms has the chance of intercepting this converging need for predictable high-performance, allowing HPC and EC applications to be executed on efficient and powerful heterogeneous architectures integrating general-purpose processors with many-core computing fabrics. To this end, it is of paramount importance to develop new techniques for exploiting the massively parallel computation capabilities of such platforms in a predictable way. P-SOCRATES will tackle this important challenge by merging leading research groups from the HPC and EC communities. The time-criticality and parallelisation challenges common to both areas will be addressed by proposing an integrated framework for executing workload-intensive applications with real-time requirements on top of next-generation commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) platforms based on many-core accelerated architectures. The project will investigate new HPC techniques that fulfil real-time requirements. The main sources of indeterminism will be identified, proposing efficient mapping and scheduling algorithms, along with the associated timing and schedulability analysis, to guarantee the real-time and performance requirements of the applications.

Immediate effects of hip mobilization with movement in patients with hip osteoarthritis: A randomised controlled trial

Background Mobilization with movement (MWM) has been shown to reduce pain, increase range of motion (ROM) and physical function in a range of different musculoskeletal disorders. Despite this evidence, there is a lack of studies evaluating the effects of MWM for hip osteoarthritis (OA). Objectives To determine the immediate effects of MWM on pain, ROM and functional performance in patients with hip OA. Design Randomized controlled trial with immediate follow-up. Method Forty consenting patients (mean age 78 ± 6 years; 54% female) satisfied the eligibility criteria. All participants completed the study. Two forms of MWM techniques (n = 20) or a simulated MWM (sham) (n = 20) were applied. Primary outcomes: pain recorded by numerical rating scale (NRS). Secondary outcomes: hip flexion and internal rotation ROM, and physical performance (timed up and go, sit to stand, and 40 m self placed walk test) were assessed before and after the intervention. Results For the MWM group, pain decreased by 2 points on the NRS, hip flexion increased by 12.2°, internal rotation by 4.4°, and functional tests were also improved with clinically relevant effects following the MWM. There were no significant changes in the sham group for any outcome variable. Conclusions Pain, hip flexion ROM and physical performance immediately improved after the application of MWM in elderly patients suffering hip OA. The observed immediate changes were of clinical relevance. Future studies are required to determine the long-term effects of this intervention.

Generalized convolution

The paper revisits the convolution operator and addresses its generalization in the perspective of fractional calculus. Two examples demonstrate the feasibility of the concept using analytical expressions and the inverse Fourier transform, for real and complex orders. Two approximate calculation schemes in the time domain are also tested.

Effective swimmer’s action during the grab start technique

The external forces applied in swimming starts have been often studied, but using direct analysis and simple interpretation data processes. This study aimed to develop a tool for vertical and horizontal force assessment based on the swimmers' propulsive and structural forces (passive forces due to dead weight) applied during the block phase. Four methodological pathways were followed: the experimented fall of a rigid body, the swimmers' inertia effect, the development of a mathematical model to describe the outcome of the rigid body fall and its generalization to include the effects of the inertia, and the experimental swimmers' starting protocol analysed with the inclusion of the developed mathematical tool. The first three methodological steps resulted in the description and computation of the passive force components. At the fourth step, six well-trained swimmers performed three 15 m maximal grab start trials and three-dimensional (3D) kinetic data were obtained using a six degrees of freedom force plate. The passive force contribution to the start performance obtained from the model was subtracted from the experimental force due to the swimmers resulting in the swimmers' active forces. As expected, the swimmers' vertical and horizontal active forces accounted for the maximum variability contribution of the experimental forces. It was found that the active force profile for the vertical and horizontal components resembled one another. These findings should be considered in clarifying the active swimmers' force variability and the respective geometrical profile as indicators to redefine steering strategies.

A filter inexact-restoration method for nonlinear programming

A new iterative algorithm based on the inexact-restoration (IR) approach combined with the filter strategy to solve nonlinear constrained optimization problems is presented. The high level algorithm is suggested by Gonzaga et al. (SIAM J. Optim. 14:646–669, 2003) but not yet implement—the internal algorithms are not proposed. The filter, a new concept introduced by Fletcher and Leyffer (Math. Program. Ser. A 91:239–269, 2002), replaces the merit function avoiding the penalty parameter estimation and the difficulties related to the nondifferentiability. In the IR approach two independent phases are performed in each iteration, the feasibility and the optimality phases. The line search filter is combined with the first one phase to generate a “more feasible” point, and then it is used in the optimality phase to reach an “optimal” point. Numerical experiences with a collection of AMPL problems and a performance comparison with IPOPT are provided.

Gesture based interface for image annotation

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

Modeling assembly program with constraints. A contribution to WCET problem

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Lógica Computacional

Teaching mathematics using Massive Open Online Courses

Distance learning - where students take courses (attend classes, get activities and other sort of learning materials) while being physically separated from their instructors, for larger part of the course duration - is far from being a “new event”. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, this has been done through Radio, Mail and TV, taking advantage of the full educational potential that these media resources had to offer at the time. However, in recent times we have, at our complete disposal, the “magic wonder” of communication and globalization - the Internet. Taking advantage of a whole new set of educational opportunities, with a more or less unselfish “look” to economic interests, focusing its concern on a larger and collective “welfare”, contributing to the development of a more “equitable” world, with regard to educational opportunities, the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were born and have become an important feature of the higher education in recent years. Many people have been talking about MOOCs as a potential educational revolution, which has arrived from North America, still growing and spreading, referring to its benefits and/or disadvantages. The Polytechnic Institute of Porto, also known as IPP, is a Higher Education Portuguese institution providing undergraduate and graduate studies, which has a solid history of online education and innovation through the use of technology, and it has been particularly interested and focused on MOOC developments, based on an open educational policy in order to try to implement some differentiated learning strategies to its actual students and as a way to attract future ones. Therefore, in July 2014, IPP launched the first Math MOOC on its own platform. This paper describes the requirements, the resulting design and implementation of a mathematics MOOC, which was essentially addressed to three target populations: - pre-college students or individuals wishing to update their Math skills or that need to prepare for the National Exam of Mathematics; - Higher Education students who have not attended in High School, this subject, and who feel the need to acquire basic knowledge about some of the topics covered; - High School Teachers who may use these resources with their students allowing them to develop teaching methodologies like "Flipped Classroom” (available at http://www.opened.ipp.pt/). The MOOC was developed in partnership with several professors from several schools from IPP, gathering different math competences and backgrounds to create and put to work different activities such video lectures and quizzes. We will also try to briefly discuss the advertising strategy being developed to promote this MOOC, since it is not offered through a main MOOC portal, such as Coursera or Udacity.

A learning approach to swarm-based path detection and tracking

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores

Linear amplification with multiple nonlinear devices

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e Computadores

Algorithms for information extraction and signal annotation on long-term biosignals using clustering techniques

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Biomédica