Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Board games as a teaching tool for technology classes in Compulsory Secondary Education

Aquest treball estudia la tècnica coneguda com game-based learning, és a dir, l’ús dels jocs com a eina didàctica. Primer que res, es fa recerca sobre els treballs ja existents i es veu que, tot i haver-hi articles sobre game-based learning, és difícil trobar-ne de relacionats amb la tecnologia, més enllà d’ensenyar a programar. A continuació, es revisen els continguts curriculars i les competències de secundària i es relacionen amb alguns jocs de taula ja existents, dels quals es detallen breument les regles de joc. Es veu que hi ha continguts curriculars, pels quals es difícil trobar un joc que hi encaixi. A més a més, es desenvolupa la idea d’un nou joc de taula, basat en el ja existent Party & Co., per treballar alguns dels continguts curriculars pels quals no s’ha trobat cap joc existent que s’hi escaigui. Finalment, s’explica una experiència duta a terme durant el període de pràctiques en el centre escolar al curs de 3r d’ESO. Es disposava de tres grups i en tots tres es va seguir la mateixa programació: classe introductòria expositiva, una sessió de muntatge de robots LEGO, 4 sessions de programació i un petit test. En un dels tres grups, però, es va fer una classe prèvia extra on es va jugar a un joc de taula anomenat RoboRally. Els objectius eren dobles: que aprenguessin la importància de l’algorísmica i que s’ho passessin bé. Els resultats mostren que aquest grup va treballar més i millor. En el treball s’analitzen els resultats obtinguts

Constructing Futures: Outlining a Transhumanist Vision of the Future and the Challenge to Christian Theology of its Proposed Uses of New and Future Developments in Technology

Transhumanists arc committed to re-evaluating the entire human condition and offering proposalsfor transcending mortality, principally by augmenting the human body with mechanical components or by transferring the human mind into intelligent hyper-computers. In this essay, the author\'s methodology is to critique the culture oftranshumanism, arguing, with Barbour, that all technology is tool whose use is determined by the cultural and socialframeworks within which it is utilized. Transhumanism is characterized as morally ambiguous, extremely individualistic, fixated upon health, vitality, and power, ideological, reductionist, and self-deluded. Its proposed use of technology is, thus, highly suspect and deserves a robust theological response

I'm sorry to say, but your understanding of image processing fundamentals is absolutely wrong

The ongoing discussion whether modern vision systems have to be viewed as visually-enabled cognitive systems or cognitively-enabled vision systems is groundless, because perceptual and cognitive faculties of vision are separate components of human (and consequently, artificial) information processing system modeling.Comment: To be published as chapter 5 in "Frontiers in Brain, Vision and AI", I-TECH Publisher, Viena, 200

Software system integration - Middleware - an overview

The integration of different softwares written in different language and based on different platforms can be tricky. In that situation a middleware is necessary to enable the communication between different softwares. The middleware enables the software system not only to share data but also share the services. This paper gives an overview of some of middleware technologies which can be used to integrate different software systems

Importance and applications of robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) in railway maintenance sector: a review

Maintenance, which is critical for safe, reliable, quality, and cost-effective service, plays a dominant role in the railway industry. Therefore, this paper examines the importance and applications of Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS) in railway maintenance. More than 70 research publications, which are either in practice or under investigation describing RAS developments in the railway maintenance, are analysed. It has been found that the majority of RAS developed are for rolling-stock maintenance, followed by railway track maintenance. Further, it has been found that there is growing interest and demand for robotics and autonomous systems in the railway maintenance sector, which is largely due to the increased competition, rapid expansion and ever-increasing expense