Front end development for building automation systems using JavaScript Frameworks

Automation technologies are widely acclaimed to have the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption and energy-related costs in buildings. However, despite the abundance of commercially available technologies, automation in domestic environments keep on meeting commercial failures. The main reason for this is the development process that is used to build the automation applications, which tend to focus more on technical aspects rather than on the needs and limitations of the users. An instance of this problem is the complex and poorly designed home automation front-ends that deter customers from investing in a home automation product. On the other hand, developing a usable and interactive interface is a complicated task for developers due to the multidisciplinary challenges that need to be identified and solved. In this context, the current research work investigates the different design problems associated with developing a home automation interface as well as the existing design solutions that are applied to these problems. The Qualitative Data Analysis approach was used for collecting data from research papers and the open coding process was used to cluster the findings. From the analysis of the data collected, requirements for designing the interface were derived. A home energy management functionality for a Web-based home automation front-end was developed as a proof-of-concept and a user evaluation was used to assess the usability of the interface. The results of the evaluation showed that this holistic approach to designing interfaces improved its usability which increases the chances of its commercial success.

Exploring coordination-driven self-assembly with autonomous chemical robots

The work presented herein focused on the automation of coordination-driven self assembly, exploring methods that allow syntheses to be followed more closely while forming new ligands, as part of the fundamental study of the digitization of chemical synthesis and discovery. Whilst the control and understanding of the principle of pre-organization and self-sorting under non-equilibrium conditions remains a key goal, a clear gap has been identified in the absence of approaches that can permit fast screening and real-time observation of the reaction process under different conditions. A firm emphasis was thus placed on the realization of an autonomous chemical robot, which can not only monitor and manipulate coordination chemistry in real-time, but can also allow the exploration of a large chemical parameter space defined by the ligand building blocks and the metal to coordinate. The self-assembly of imine ligands with copper and nickel cations has been studied in a multi-step approach using a self-built flow system capable of automatically controlling the liquid-handling and collecting data in real-time using a benchtop MS and NMR spectrometer. This study led to the identification of a transient Cu(I) species in situ which allows for the formation of dimeric and trimeric carbonato bridged Cu(II) assemblies. Furthermore, new Ni(II) complexes and more remarkably also a new binuclear Cu(I) complex, which usually requires long and laborious inert conditions, could be isolated. The study was then expanded to the autonomous optimization of the ligand synthesis by enabling feedback control on the chemical system via benchtop NMR. The synthesis of new polydentate ligands has emerged as a result of the study aiming to enhance the complexity of the chemical system to accelerate the discovery of new complexes. This type of ligand consists of 1-pyridinyl-4-imino-1,2,3-triazole units, which can coordinate with different metal salts. The studies to test for the CuAAC synthesis via microwave lead to the discovery of four new Cu complexes, one of them being a coordination polymer obtained from a solvent dependent crystallization technique. With the goal of easier integration into an automated system, copper tubing has been exploited as the chemical reactor for the synthesis of this ligand, as it efficiently enhances the rate of the triazole formation and consequently promotes the formation of the full ligand in high yields within two hours. Lastly, the digitization of coordination-driven self-assembly has been realized for the first time using an in-house autonomous chemical robot, herein named the ‘Finder’. The chemical parameter space to explore was defined by the selection of six variables, which consist of the ligand precursors necessary to form complex ligands (aldehydes, alkineamines and azides), of the metal salt solutions and of other reaction parameters – duration, temperature and reagent volumes. The platform was assembled using rounded bottom flasks, flow syringe pumps, copper tubing, as an active reactor, and in-line analytics – a pH meter probe, a UV-vis flow cell and a benchtop MS. The control over the system was then obtained with an algorithm capable of autonomously focusing the experiments on the most reactive region (by avoiding areas of low interest) of the chemical parameter space to explore. This study led to interesting observations, such as metal exchange phenomena, and also to the autonomous discovery of self assembled structures in solution and solid state – such as 1-pyridinyl-4-imino-1,2,3-triazole based Fe complexes and two helicates based on the same ligand coordination motif.

Planar Odometry from a Radial Laser Scanner. A Range Flow-based Approach

In this paper we present a fast and precise method to estimate the planar motion of a lidar from consecutive range scans. For every scanned point we formulate the range flow constraint equation in terms of the sensor velocity, and minimize a robust function of the resulting geometric constraints to obtain the motion estimate. Conversely to traditional approaches, this method does not search for correspondences but performs dense scan alignment based on the scan gradients, in the fashion of dense 3D visual odometry. The minimization problem is solved in a coarse-to-fine scheme to cope with large displacements, and a smooth filter based on the covariance of the estimate is employed to handle uncertainty in unconstraint scenarios (e.g. corridors). Simulated and real experiments have been performed to compare our approach with two prominent scan matchers and with wheel odometry. Quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate the superior performance of our approach which, along with its very low computational cost (0.9 milliseconds on a single CPU core), makes it suitable for those robotic applications that require planar odometry. For this purpose, we also provide the code so that the robotics community can benefit from it.

Robust Stereo Visual Odometry through a Probabilistic Combination of Points and Line Segments

Most approaches to stereo visual odometry reconstruct the motion based on the tracking of point features along a sequence of images. However, in low-textured scenes it is often difficult to encounter a large set of point features, or it may happen that they are not well distributed over the image, so that the behavior of these algorithms deteriorates. This paper proposes a probabilistic approach to stereo visual odometry based on the combination of both point and line segment that works robustly in a wide variety of scenarios. The camera motion is recovered through non-linear minimization of the projection errors of both point and line segment features. In order to effectively combine both types of features, their associated errors are weighted according to their covariance matrices, computed from the propagation of Gaussian distribution errors in the sensor measurements. The method, of course, is computationally more expensive that using only one type of feature, but still can run in real-time on a standard computer and provides interesting advantages, including a straightforward integration into any probabilistic framework commonly employed in mobile robotics.

Diseño e Implementación de un robot de conocimiento para la extracción de información de los Social Media y Web

Las transformaciones tecnológicas y de información que está experimentando la sociedad, especialmente en la última década, está produciendo un crecimiento exponencial de los datos en todos los ámbitos de la sociedad. Los datos que se generan en los diferentes ámbitos se corresponden con elementos primarios de información que por sí solos son irrelevantes como apoyo a las tomas de decisiones. Para que estos datos puedan ser de utilidad en cualquier proceso de decisión, es preciso que se conviertan en información, es decir, en un conjunto de datos procesados con un significado, para ayudar a crear conocimiento. Estos procesos de transformación de datos en información se componen de diferentes fases como la localización de las fuentes de información, captura, análisis y medición.Este cambio tecnológico y a su vez de la sociedad ha provocado un aumento de las fuentes de información, de manera que cualquier persona, empresas u organización, puede generar información que puede ser relevante para el negocio de las empresas o gobiernos. Localizar estas fuentes, identificar información relevante en la fuente y almacenar la información que generan, la cual puede tener diferentes formatos, es el primer paso de todo el proceso anteriormente descrito, el cual tiene que ser ejecutado de manera correcta ya que el resto de fases dependen de las fuentes y datos recolectados. Para la identificación de información relevante en las fuentes se han creado lo que se denomina, robot de búsqueda, los cuales examinan de manera automática una fuente de información, localizando y recolectando datos que puedan ser de interés.En este trabajo se diseña e implementa un robot de conocimiento junto con los sistemas de captura de información online para fuentes hipertextuales y redes sociales.

ROBOT CEMAR: identificación de las capacidades emprendedoras de sus creadores

El XXI Congreso Latinoamericano sobre Espíritu Empresarial, se realizó en la Universidad Icesi los días 6, 7 y 8 de abril de 2011.

Navegación de un robot móvil sobre terreno irregular con contacto de su brazo con el suelo

En esta tesis se aborda el problema de la navegabilidad de robots móviles sobre terrenos irregulares, los cuales poseen diferentes inclinaciones y variedad de obstáculos. Este tema constituye actualmente una línea de investigación activa dirigida al desarrollo de nuevos robots y, adicionalmente, enfocada al desarrollo de estrategias de navegación eficientes y con el mínimo riesgo de inutilización. En primer lugar se desarrolló el robot móvil Lázaro para navegar en este tipo de terrenos, el cual posee un brazo articulado con una rueda como efector final. Esta rueda le permite al brazo mantener un punto de contacto adicional con el suelo que puede ayudar al robot a compensar situaciones de inestabilidad y sobrepasar algunos obstáculos que pudieran presentarse en estos entornos. Posteriormente, se desarrollaron tres medidas cuantitativas que permiten evaluar la navegabilidad de cualquier robot móvil cuando transita sobre terreno irregular. Estas tres medidas son: un índice de estabilidad, el cual evalúa la propensión al vuelco; un índice de direccionamiento, el cual evalúa la disponibilidad del robot para direccionarse y seguir una trayectoria dada y, por último, un índice de deslizamiento, el cual evalúa la propensión del robot a deslizarse hacia abajo cuando se desplaza sobre superficies inclinadas. Finalmente, se definieron un conjunto de maniobras que puede ejecutar Lázaro y que están dirigidas a garantizar la navegación cuando el robot se desplaza sobre superficies inclinadas o cuando debe sobrepasar obstáculos tales como escalones, rampas o zanjas. Todas las estrategias diseñadas se fundamentan en el uso del brazo como herramienta adicional que posee el robot para mejorar su navegabilidad.

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.

Mimicking the behaviour of idiotypic AIS robot controllers using probabilistic systems

Previous work has shown that robot navigation systems that employ an architecture based upon the idiotypic network theory of the immune system have an advantage over control techniques that rely on reinforcement learning only. This is thought to be a result of intelligent behaviour selection on the part of the idiotypic robot. In this paper an attempt is made to imitate idiotypic dynamics by creating controllers that use reinforcement with a number of different probabilistic schemes to select robot behaviour. The aims are to show that the idiotypic system is not merely performing some kind of periodic random behaviour selection, and to try to gain further insight into the processes that govern the idiotypic mechanism. Trials are carried out using simulated Pioneer robots that undertake navigation exercises. Results show that a scheme that boosts the probability of selecting highly-ranked alternative behaviours to 50% during stall conditions comes closest to achieving the properties of the idiotypic system, but remains unable to match it in terms of all round performance.

Simulador cinemático de un robot manipulador industrial

Este trabajo fin de grado trata sobre la implementación de un simulador cinemático de un robot manipulador industrial, orientado al aprendizaje de los principios de programación y desarrollado mediante la herramienta de software matemático MATLAB, dicho simulador debe tener como características principales ser capaz de emular las características de programación que incorporan los lenguajes a nivel robot y resultar fácilmente accesible a los alumnos de las ingenierías. Asimismo, el simulador tendrá la capacidad de definir los objetos que integran el entorno físico que rodean al robot con el objeto de simular la interacción cinemática del brazo manipulador con dicho entorno. Para ello, primero se realizará un estudio de los lenguajes de nivel robot, en este caso concreto V+, con el objeto de elaborar un catálogo de funciones y estructuras relevantes, concretamente se trataran las estructuras de datos, funciones del robot, etc. A partir de estos, se elaborarán las especificaciones que debe cumplir el simulador cinemático. Por último se realizarán unas prácticas sobre el simulador orientadas al aprendizaje y elaboración de los manuales de usuario del mismo.

Construcción de un prototipo de robot sembrador de maíz Agrobot II

64 p.

CLARK - Smart Clinic Assistant Robot for CGA

En esta presentación se exponen la arquitectura general y el estado actual de desarrollo del sistema CLARK. Dicho sistema tiene como objetivo el despliegue de un asistente robótico para ayudar a un médico en la realización de procedimientos CGA (Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment), de forma que ciertas tareas, tales como la realización de cuestionarios o pruebas de movimiento, puedan ser realizadas por el robot de forma paralela al resto del procedimiento CGA, aumentando así su eficiencia.

Robot acuático hidrostático espectral de rayos laser, para el control larvario de mosquitos de importancia médica en Salud Pública.

Diseñar y construir un robot acuático que destruya la presencia de larvas o pupas de mosquitos en contenedores de agua. Se construyó y se diseñó un robot con materiales reciclables construido con tubos de cañería PVC, lupa, sensores de luz y barrera, motor de fuente 110 v, resistencias, LCR, cargador 9 v y focos led, para que destruya larvas de mosquitos en un contenedor de agua. Como resultado hay una cero prevalencia de índice larvario porque el robot detecta presencia larvaria con sensores y rayos laser activándose automáticamente con el efecto de succión y destrucción larvas en su interior eliminándolas desechas al utilizar filtros de 10 micras y aspas metálicas, el robot se activa por cinco a diez minutos y se apaga automáticamente hasta esperar la alarma otra vez según disposición de larvas. Conclusión el uso del robot acuático en contenedores de agua no se encuentra índices larvarios, así como pupas, que puede ser utilizado como control antilarvario para el combate transmisor de Dengue, Zika, Chikungunya entre otros.
Design and build an aquatic robot to destroy the presence of larvae or pupae of mosquitoes in water containers. It was built and a robot with recyclables built with tubes pipe PVC, magnifier, light sensors and barrier, engine power 110 v, resistors, LCR, charger 9 vy spotlights led, to destroy mosquito larvae was designed in a container of water. As a result there is a zero prevalence Larval rate because the robot detects larval presence sensors and lasers automatically activated with the suction effect and larvae destruction their killing the inner cast off using filters of 10 microns and metal blades, the robot is activated by five to ten minutes to wait automatically turns off the alarm again available as larvae. Conclusion use water in water containers robot is not larval indices and pupae, which can be used as anti larval control for transmitter combat Dengue, Zika, Chikungunya among others.