iviz: A ROS Visualization App for Mobile Devices

In this work, we introduce iviz, a mobile application for visualizing ROS data. In the last few years, the popularity of ROS has grown enormously, making it the standard platform for open source robotic programming. A key reason for this success is the availability of polished, general-purpose modules for many tasks, such as localization, mapping, path planning, and quite importantly, data visualization. However, the availability of the latter is generally restricted to PCs with the Linux operating system. Thus, users that want to see what is happening in the system with a smartphone or a tablet are stuck with solutions such as screen mirroring or using web browser versions of rviz, which are difficult to interact with from a mobile interface. More importantly, this makes newer visualization modalities such as Augmented Reality impossible. Our application iviz, based on the Unity engine, addresses these issues by providing a visualization platform designed from scratch to be usable in mobile platforms, such as iOS, Android, and UWP, and including native support for Augmented Reality for all three platforms. If desired, it can also be used in a PC with Linux, Windows, or macOS without any changes.Comment: This work has 7 pages and 7 figures. The repository of the project can be found in https://github.com/KIT-ISAS/iviz/tree/deve

Clinkering and hydration study of non-active and active Belite-Alite-Ye'elimite (BAY) cements

The aim of AIM is to promote industry-driven, interdisciplinary research in material science and engineering in order to provide leading-edge, sustainable solutions to the challenges facing engineers in today’s changing society and environment. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/aim/conference-info/37ccsThe manufacturing process of ye'elimite rich cements emit about 15-37% less CO2 to the atmosphere than OPC. Cements that contain belite, ye’elimite and ferrite, known as BYF cements, are promising eco-friendly binders. However, belite, their main phase, shows a slow hydrating behaviour; therefore the corresponding mortars present lower mechanical strengths than OPC at early ages. To solve this problem, BYF clinkers can be activated by: i) forming alite jointly with belite and ye’elimite during clinkering, known as BAY clinkers. The alite and ye’elimite reaction with water should develop high mechanical strengths at early ages, besides, belite contributes to later curing times. ii) A second activation is based on the stabilisation of alpha forms of belite by dopants. The objective of this work is to obtain two types of BAY clinkers (standard and active BAY) using CaF2 as mineraliser and borax as dopant agent to stabilize alpha forms of belite phase. After that, anhydrite was added as sulphate source to obtain the corresponding cements. The hydration behaviour of these cements has been studied through rheological and x-ray diffraction measurements, the latter combined with Rietveld quantitative phase analysis. In addition, mechanical and dimensional properties of BAY mortars are also presented and discussed.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Nanocrystalline cathodes for PC-SOFCs based on BCZY

Perovskites based on BaCeO3-δ exhibit the highest proton conductivity among this class of materials, however, they are susceptible to hydration and carbonation in presence of water vapor and CO2 [1]. In contrast, the chemical stability of BaZrO3-based protonic conductors is better, but they require sintering temperatures as high as 1700 ºC and suffer from high intrinsic grain boundary resistance, limiting the final performance. Partial substitution of Zr for Ce in Ba(Ce0.9-xZrx)Y0.2O3-δ allows obtaining electrolytes with both high proton conductivity and good chemical stability. The performance of a PC-SOFC at low temperatures depends significantly on the ohmic resistance of the electrolyte, although it can be lowered by reducing the electrolyte thickness. Another important limiting factor is the increase of the cathode polarization resistance due to the thermally activated nature of the oxygen reduction reaction. For this reason, it is essential to obtain high efficiency cathodes operating at reduced temperatures. In this work, BaCe0.6Zr0.2Y0.2O3-δ (BCZY) powders were prepared by freeze-drying precursor method. These powders were mixed with a Zn-containing solution as sintering additive in order to obtain dense pellets with submicrometric grain size at only 1200 ºC. After that, La0.6Sr0.4Co0.8Fe0.2O3 nanocrystalline electrodes were deposited symmetrically onto dense pellets BCZY by conventional spray-pyrolysis [3]. The structure, microstructure and electrochemical properties of these electrodes have been examined by XRD, FE-SEM and impedance spectroscopy. The stability of these electrodes at intermediate temperatures was evaluated as a function of time. These nanocrystalline cathodes exhibit a substantial improvement of the electrode polarization resistance with respect to the same materials prepared by screen-printing method at high sintering temperatures, e.g. 0.7 and 3.2 cm2 at 600 ºC for LSCF cathodes prepared by spray-pyrolysis and screen-printing method respectively (Figure). An anode supported cell with composition LSCF/BCZY/NiO-BCZY was also prepared to test the electrochemical performance.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Observability-based Placement of Inertial Sensors on Robotic Manipulators for Kinematic State Estimation

In recent years, the demand for accurate and delay-free kinematic state estimates, especially regarding acceleration, led to the adoption of inertial sensors placed along the kinematic chain of robotic manipulators. With state-of-the-art signal processing algorithms, arbitrary setups of accelerometers and gyroscopes can be deployed, raising the question of where and how many sensors should be placed for an optimal estimation quality. This paper presents a novel observability-based approach to answer this question independent of a specific estimator implementation. For this purpose, methods for calculating the required sensor measurement ranges and predicting the estimation quality regarding velocity and acceleration are introduced and discussed. The resulting procedure is validated successfully by comparing predicted and actual estimation quality for two example manipulators, indicating that it can provide meaningful aid to a design engineer