This paper describes the design of a multi-part mirror catadioptric vision system and its use for self-localization and detection of relevant objects in soccer robots. The mirror and associated algorithms have been used in robots participating in the middle-size league of RoboCup -The World Cup of Soccer Robots.

Vision-based hand gesture recognition is an area of active current research in computer vision and machine learning. Being a natural way of human interaction, it is an area where many researchers are working on, with the goal of making human computer interaction (HCI) easier and natural, without the need for any extra devices. So, the primary goal of gesture recognition research is to create systems, which can identify specific human gestures and use them, for example, to convey information. For that, visionbased hand gesture interfaces require fast and extremely robust hand detection, and gesture recognition in real time. Hand gestures are a powerful human communication modality with lots of potential applications and in this context we have sign language recognition, the communication method of deaf people. Sign languages are not standard and universal and the grammars differ from country to country. In this paper, a real-time system able to interpret the Portuguese Sign Language is presented and described. Experiments showed that the system was able to reliably recognize the vowels in real-time, with an accuracy of 99.4% with one dataset of features and an accuracy of 99.6% with a second dataset of features. Although the implemented solution was only trained to recognize the vowels, it is easily extended to recognize the rest of the alphabet, being a solid foundation for the development of any vision-based sign language recognition user interface system.

Rapid Prototyping is a recently developed technique that 'prints' a component, instead of manufacturing it in traditional terms, by using materials ranging from photopolymers to thermoplastics, including paper. Since these materials are in most cases not suitable for assessement purposes a new approach has been created. It has similar 'build up' technique but uses metal as raw material. The process entails the use of a gas metal arc fusion welding robot which deposits successive layers of metal in such a way that it forms a 3D solid component. This process can also be considered a manufacturing process for low volume production.

This paper presents a road surface scanning system that operates with a trichromatic line scan camera with light emitting diode (LED) lighting achieving road surface resolution under a millimeter. It was part of a project named Roadkills—Intelligent systems for surveying mortality of amphibians in Portuguese roads, sponsored by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation. A trailer was developed in order to accommodate the complete system with standalone power generation, computer image capture and recording, controlled lighting to operate day or night without disturbance, incremental encoder with 5000 pulses per revolution attached to one of the trailer wheels, under a meter Global Positioning System (GPS) localization, easy to utilize with any vehicle with a trailer towing system and focused on a complete low cost solution. The paper describes the system architecture of the developed prototype, its calibration procedure, the performed experimentation and some obtained results, along with a discussion and comparison with existing systems. Sustained operating trailer speeds of up to 30 km/h are achievable without loss of quality at 4096 pixels’ image width (1 m width of road surface) with 250 µm/pixel resolution. Higher scanning speeds can be achieved by lowering the image resolution (120 km/h with 1 mm/pixel). Computer vision algorithms are under development to operate on the captured images in order to automatically detect road-kills of amphibians.

2015),"Design and experimental study of a new thrown robot based on flexible structure", Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:368933 [] For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to present the methodology and the results on the design and development of an autonomous, golf ball picking robot, for driving ranges. Design/methodology/approach -The strategy followed to develop a commercial product is presented, based on prior identification requirements, which consist of picking up golf balls on a driving range in a safe and efficient way. Findings -A fully working prototype robot has been developed. It uses two driving wheels and a third cast wheel, and pushes a standard gang which collects the balls from the ground. A hybrid information system was implemented in order to provide a statistically relevant prediction of golf balls location, to optimize the path the robot has to follow in order to reduce time and cost. Autonomous navigation was developed and tested on a simulation environment. Research limitations/implications -Preliminary results showed that the new path planning algorithm Twin-RRT * is able to form closed loop trajectories and improve the result over time. Kinematic constraints were already taken into account on the algorithm. This sampling based algorithm has potential usage in solving other TPP (Travelling Purchaser Problem) related problems. Practical implications -The prototype feasibility is being tested in real driving ranges. It has autonomy of up to 8 h per day. It is capable of collecting up to 1,200 balls in one single journey. It weighs 130 kg and is capable of climbing slopes of up to 228. The maximum speed is 8 km/h and the robot takes 140 min to completely sweep a 25,000 m 2 field at 7.2 km/h (2 m/s) average speed. Social implications -There are about 30,000 golf practice fields, of which 18,000 are located in the USA and Canada. In some countries the golf industry represents more than 15 per cent of tourism GNP. In a typical practice field, about 10,000 balls have to be picked up every day. Originality/value -An important contribution of this paper is the algorithm for path planning in ord...

Hand gestures are a powerful way for human communication, with lots of potential applications in the area of human computer interaction. Vision-based hand gesture recognition techniques have many proven advantages compared with traditional devices, giving users a simpler and more natural way to communicate with electronic devices. This work proposes a generic system architecture based in computer vision and machine learning, able to be used with any interface for humancomputer interaction. The proposed solution is mainly composed of three modules: a pre-processing and hand segmentation module, a static gesture interface module and a dynamic gesture interface module. The experiments showed that the core of vision-based interaction systems can be the same for all applications and thus facilitate the implementation. In order to test the proposed solutions, three prototypes were implemented. For hand posture recognition, a SVM model was trained and used, able to achieve a final accuracy of 99.4%. For dynamic gestures, an HMM model was trained for each gesture that the system could recognize with a final average accuracy of 93.7%. The proposed solution as the advantage of being generic enough with the trained models able to work in real-time, allowing its application in a wide range of human-machine applications.

A one-year fungal survey of a water bottling plant was conducted in order to evaluate the incidence and fluctuations of the mycobiota. The dominant fungal genera in order of highest numbers isolated were Penicillium, Cladosporium and Trichoderma followed by Aspergillus, Paecilomyces, and others. As expected, the highest number of isolates were collected during the warmer months, particularly May and June. Indeed during these two months there were more fungi present in the water, indicating that during those times of the year when fungal contamination is high, 0.4 mm filters should be changed on a more regular basis. In order to assess whether contamination was single or multi-loci, molecular methods based on the PCR were used for Penicillium brevicompactum. Overall, fungal contamination arose from multiple sources. Some P. brevicompactum strains were very "alike" and were detected during different sampling times, indicating that they were endemic to the plant. There was no evidence to suggest that fungi detected in the source water passed through to other parts of the plant. However, there was evidence that fungal strains isolated from the water filter were detected elsewhere in the factory, confirming the need to change filters more regularly during periods of high fungal contamination. In order to improve quality control a HACCP programme was implemented and Best Practice Guidelines introduced.

The development of a computational multibody knee model able to capture some of the fundamental properties of the human knee articulation is presented. This desideratum is reached by including the kinetics of the real knee articulation. The research question is whether an accurate modeling of the condyle contact in the knee will lead to reproduction of the complex combination of flexion/extension, abduction/adduction, and tibial rotation observed in the real knee. The model is composed by two anatomic segments, the tibia and the femur, whose characteristics are functions of the geometric and anatomic properties of the real bones. The biomechanical model characterization is developed under the framework of multibody systems methodologies using Cartesian coordinates. The type of approach used in the proposed knee model is the joint surface contact conditions between ellipsoids, representing the two femoral condyles, and points, representing the tibial plateau and the menisci. These elements are closely fitted to the actual knee geometry. This task is undertaken by considering a parameter optimization process to replicate experimental data published in the literature, namely that by Lafortune and his coworkers in 1992. Then kinematic data in the form of flexion/extension patterns are imposed on the model corresponding to the stance phase of the human gait. From the results obtained, by performing several computational simulations, it can be observed that the knee model approximates the average secondary motion patterns observed in the literature. Because the literature reports considerable inter-individual differences in the secondary motion patterns, the knee model presented here is also used to check whether it is possible to reproduce the observed differences with reasonable variations of bone shape parameters. This task is accomplished by a parameter study, in which the main variables that define the geometry of condyles are taken into account. It was observed that the data reveal a difference in secondary kinematics of the knee in flexion versus extension. The likely explanation for this fact is the elastic component of the secondary motions created by the combination of joint forces and soft tissue deformations. The proposed knee model is, therefore, used to investigate whether this observed behavior can be explained by reasonable elastic deformations of the points representing the menisci in the model.