The Experience of Robesafe Team in CARLA Autonomous Driving Challenge

Robótica e Inteligencia Artificial: Retos y nuevas oportunidades. 10 de diciembre de 2019, ETSII UPM (RoboCity2030)The future of the automotive is focused on achieving total autonomous cars in realistic urban environments. To reach it, many researching teams are working with 3D simulators such as V-REP and Gazebo, due to an easy integration with ROS platform. ROS is a middle-ware for robot code development. It allows easy communication between different systems. It is multilanguage, admitting C++ and Python code programming. Those simulators provide precise motion information, but they are designed for smaller environments like robotic arms, providing unrealistic appearance and very slow performance, being unrecommended for real-time systems in rich worlds like urban cities. CARLA simulator provides high detailed environments in realistic urban situations, being able to train and test control and perception algorithms in complex traffic scenarios, very close to real situations. CARLA Autonomous Driving Challenge was launched in Summer 2019, allowing everyone to test their own control techniques under the same traffic scenarios, scoring its performance regarding traffic rules. Robesafe researching group, from Universidad de Alcalá, submitted to this challenge, with the aim of achieving high results and compare our control and perception techniques with others provided by other teams.Comunidad de Madri

Integrating state-of-the-art CNNs for multi-sensor 3D vehicle detection in real autonomous driving environments

2019 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC), Auckland, New Zealand, 27-30 Oct. 2019This paper presents two new approaches to detect surrounding vehicles in 3D urban driving scenes and their corresponding Bird’s Eye View (BEV). The proposals integrate two state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), such as YOLOv3 and Mask-RCNN, in a framework presented by the authors in [1] for 3D vehicles detection fusing semantic image segmentation and LIDAR point cloud. Our proposals take advantage of multimodal fusion, geometrical constrains, and pre-trained modules inside our framework. The methods have been tested using the KITTI object detection benchmark and comparison is presented. Experiments show new approaches improve results with respect to the baseline and are on par with other competitive state-of-the-art proposals, being the only ones that do not apply an end-to-end learning process. In this way, they remove the need to train on a specific dataset and show a good capability of generalization to any domain, a key point for self-driving systems. Finally, we have tested our best proposal in KITTI in our driving environment, without any adaptation, obtaining results suitable for our autonomous driving application.Ministerio de Economía y CompetitividadComunidad de Madri

Laying the Foundations for a Human-Predator Conflict Solution: Assessing the Impact of Bonelli's Eagle on Rabbits and Partridges

BACKGROUND: Predation may potentially lead to negative effects on both prey (directly via predators) and predators (indirectly via human persecution). Predation pressure studies are, therefore, of major interest in the fields of theoretical knowledge and conservation of prey or predator species, with wide ramifications and profound implications in human-wildlife conflicts. However, detailed works on this issue in highly valuable--in conservation terms--Mediterranean ecosystems are virtually absent. This paper explores the predator-hunting conflict by examining a paradigmatic, Mediterranean-wide (endangered) predator-two prey (small game) system. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We estimated the predation impact ('kill rate' and 'predation rate', i.e., number of prey and proportion of the prey population eaten, respectively) of Bonelli's eagle Aquila fasciata on rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus and red-legged partridge Alectoris rufa populations in two seasons (the eagle's breeding and non-breeding periods, 100 days each) in SE Spain. The mean estimated kill rate by the seven eagle reproductive units in the study area was c. 304 rabbits and c. 262 partridges in the breeding season, and c. 237 rabbits and c. 121 partridges in the non-breeding period. This resulted in very low predation rates (range: 0.3-2.5%) for both prey and seasons. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The potential role of Bonelli's eagles as a limiting factor for rabbits and partridges at the population scale was very poor. The conflict between game profitability and conservation interest of either prey or predators is apparently very localised, and eagles, quarry species and game interests seem compatible in most of the study area. Currently, both the persecution and negative perception of Bonelli's eagle (the 'partridge-eating eagle' in Spanish) have a null theoretical basis in most of this area

Effect of the addition of different waste carbonaceous materials on coal gasification in CO2 atmosphere

YesIn order to evaluate the feasibility of using CO2 as a gasifying agent in the conversion of carbonaceous materials to syngas, gasification characteristics of coal, a suite of waste carbonaceous materials, and their blends were studied by using a thermogravimetric analyser (TGA). The results showed that CO2 gasification of polystyrene completed at 470 °C, which was lower than those of other carbonaceous materials. This behaviour was attributed to the high volatile content coupled with its unique thermal degradation properties. It was found that the initial decomposition temperature of blends decreased with the increasing amount of waste carbonaceous materials in the blends. In this study, results demonstrated that CO2 co-gasification process was enhanced as a direct consequence of interactions between coal and carbonaceous materials in the blends. The intensity and temperature of occurrence of these interactions were influenced by the chemical properties and composition of the carbonaceous materials in the blends. The strongest interactions were observed in coal/polystyrene blend at the devolatilisation stage as indicated by the highest value of Root Mean Square Interaction Index (RMSII), which was due to the highly reactive nature of polystyrene. On the other hand, coal/oat straw blend showed the highest interactions at char gasification stage. The catalytic effect of alkali metals and other minerals in oat straw, such as CaO, K2O, and Fe2O3, contributed to these strong interactions. The overall CO2 gasification of coal was enhanced via the addition of polystyrene and oat straw

HTLV-1 infection in solid organ transplant donors and recipients in Spain

Background: HTLV-1 infection is a neglected disease, despite infecting 10–15 million people worldwide and severe illnesses develop in 10% of carriers lifelong. Acknowledging a greater risk for developing HTLV-1 associated illnesses due to immunosuppression, screening is being widely considered in the transplantation setting. Herein, we report the experience with universal HTLV testing of donors and recipients of solid organ transplants in a survey conducted in Spain. Methods: All hospitals belonging to the Spanish HTLV network were invited to participate in the study. Briefly, HTLV antibody screening was performed retrospectively in all specimens collected from solid organ donors and recipients attended since the year 2008. Results: A total of 5751 individuals were tested for HTLV antibodies at 8 sites. Donors represented 2312 (42.2%), of whom 17 (0.3%) were living kidney donors. The remaining 3439 (59.8%) were recipients. Spaniards represented nearly 80%. Overall, 9 individuals (0.16%) were initially reactive for HTLV antibodies. Six were donors and 3 were recipients. Using confirmatory tests, HTLV-1 could be confirmed in only two donors, one Spaniard and another from Colombia. Both kidneys of the Spaniard were inadvertently transplanted. Subacute myelopathy developed within 1 year in one recipient. The second recipient seroconverted for HTLV-1 but the kidney had to be removed soon due to rejection. Immunosuppression was stopped and 3 years later the patient remains in dialysis but otherwise asymptomatic. Conclusion: The rate of HTLV-1 is low but not negligible in donors/recipients of solid organ transplants in Spain. Universal HTLV screening should be recommended in all donor and recipients of solid organ transplantation in Spain. Evidence is overwhelming for very high virus transmission and increased risk along with the rapid development of subacute myelopath

Rapid subacute myelopathy following kidney transplantation from HTLV-1 donors: role of immunosuppresors and failure of antiretrovirals

Two kidney transplant recipients from a single donor became infected with HTLV-1 (human T-lymphotropic virus type 1) in Spain. One developed myelopathy 8 months following surgery despite early prescription of antiretroviral therapy. The allograft was removed from the second recipient at month 8 due to rejection and immunosuppressors discontinued. To date, 3 years later, this patient remains infected but asymptomatic. HTLV-1 infection was recognized retrospectively in the donor, a native Spaniard who had sex partners from endemic regions. Our findings call for a reappraisal of screening policies on donor-recipient organ transplantation. Based on the high risk of disease development and the large flux of persons from HTLV-1 endemic regions, pre-transplant HTLV-1 testing should be mandatory in Spain

HTLV-1 infection in solid organ transplant donors and recipients in Spain

HTLV-1 infection is a neglected disease, despite infecting 10-15 million people worldwide and severe illnesses develop in 10% of carriers lifelong. Acknowledging a greater risk for developing HTLV-1 associated illnesses due to immunosuppression, screening is being widely considered in the transplantation setting. Herein, we report the experience with universal HTLV testing of donors and recipients of solid organ transplants in a survey conducted in Spain. All hospitals belonging to the Spanish HTLV network were invited to participate in the study. Briefly, HTLV antibody screening was performed retrospectively in all specimens collected from solid organ donors and recipients attended since the year 2008. A total of 5751 individuals were tested for HTLV antibodies at 8 sites. Donors represented 2312 (42.2%), of whom 17 (0.3%) were living kidney donors. The remaining 3439 (59.8%) were recipients. Spaniards represented nearly 80%. Overall, 9 individuals (0.16%) were initially reactive for HTLV antibodies. Six were donors and 3 were recipients. Using confirmatory tests, HTLV-1 could be confirmed in only two donors, one Spaniard and another from Colombia. Both kidneys of the Spaniard were inadvertently transplanted. Subacute myelopathy developed within 1 year in one recipient. The second recipient seroconverted for HTLV-1 but the kidney had to be removed soon due to rejection. Immunosuppression was stopped and 3 years later the patient remains in dialysis but otherwise asymptomatic. The rate of HTLV-1 is low but not negligible in donors/recipients of solid organ transplants in Spain. Universal HTLV screening should be recommended in all donor and recipients of solid organ transplantation in Spain. Evidence is overwhelming for very high virus transmission and increased risk along with the rapid development of subacute myelopathy

A922 Sequential measurement of 1 hour creatinine clearance (1-CRCL) in critically ill patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)

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