Transmisión verbal y comunicación : bases para una evaluación positiva de los errores del aprendizaje

A partir de un modelo de educación como acción comunicativa, se trata de analizar inductivamente el tipo de dificultades que ofrece aquél para su realización práctica, considerando que los intercambios educativos se realizan sobre la basc de un modelo de transmisión verbal que constituye el medio para el aprendizaje. Mediante la conceptualización de una evaluación que realmente ofrezca información al sistema del cual depende, se llega a la consideración de que los errores del aprendizaje tienen un alto valor comunicativo, que en sí mismos son informativos y pueden ofrecer pistas de acción si no se descartan ni se evitan pues responden a elaboraciones cognitivas propias. Finalmente se destaca el papel de los mensajes educativos como vínculos entre docente y discente, agentes de un proceso comunicativo que les exige mutua participación.This article springs from an education concept as a communicative action. Inductivcly, the object is to analyze the difficulties about its practical fulfilment, and considering that educative messages are established on a verbal transmission model which becomes the way of learning. A feed-back process is identified in relation to the value of learning errors, which can be used in teaching to increase educative possibilities: each error has a determinate cognitive processing that should be considered. Finally educative messages are shown in a communicative process where teacher and pupil emerge as synthetic poles that condition each other

Enhancing smart environments with mobile robots

Sensor networks are becoming popular nowadays in the development of smart environments. Heavily relying on static sensor and actuators, though, such environments usually lacks of versatility regarding the provided services and interaction capabilities. Here we present a framework for smart environments where a service robot is included within the sensor network acting as a mobile sensor and/or actuator. Our framework integrates on-the-shelf technologies to ensure its adaptability to a variety of sensor technologies and robotic software. Two pilot cases are presented as evaluation of our proposal.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

An assisted navigation method for telepresence robots

Telepresence robots have emerged as a new means of interaction in remote environments. However, the use of such robots is still limited due to safety and usability issues when operating in human-like environments. This work addresses these issues by enhancing the robot navigation through a collaborative control method that assists the user to negotiate obstacles. The method has been implemented in a commercial telepresence robot and a user study has been conducted in order to test the suitability of our approach.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

OLT: A Toolkit for Object Labeling Applied to Robotic RGB-D Datasets

In this work we present the Object Labeling Toolkit (OLT), a set of software components publicly available for helping in the management and labeling of sequential RGB-D observations collected by a mobile robot. Such a robot can be equipped with an arbitrary number of RGB-D devices, possibly integrating other sensors (e.g. odometry, 2D laser scanners, etc.). OLT first merges the robot observations to generate a 3D reconstruction of the scene from which object segmentation and labeling is conveniently accomplished. The annotated labels are automatically propagated by the toolkit to each RGB-D observation in the collected sequence, providing a dense labeling of both intensity and depth images. The resulting objects’ labels can be exploited for many robotic oriented applications, including high-level decision making, semantic mapping, or contextual object recognition. Software components within OLT are highly customizable and expandable, facilitating the integration of already-developed algorithms. To illustrate the toolkit suitability, we describe its application to robotic RGB-D sequences taken in a home environment.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. Spanish grant pro- gram FPU-MICINN 2010 and the Spanish projects TAROTH: New developments toward a Robot at Home (DPI2011-25483) and PROMOVE: Advances in mobile robotics for promoting independent life of elders (DPI2014-55826-R

Probability and Common-Sense: Tandem Towards Robust Robotic Object Recognition in Ambient Assisted Living

The suitable operation of mobile robots when providing Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) services calls for robust object recognition capabilities. Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGMs) have become the de-facto choice in recognition systems aiming to e ciently exploit contextual relations among objects, also dealing with the uncertainty inherent to the robot workspace. However, these models can perform in an inco herent way when operating in a long-term fashion out of the laboratory, e.g. while recognizing objects in peculiar con gurations or belonging to new types. In this work we propose a recognition system that resorts to PGMs and common-sense knowledge, represented in the form of an ontology, to detect those inconsistencies and learn from them. The utilization of the ontology carries additional advantages, e.g. the possibility to verbalize the robot's knowledge. A primary demonstration of the system capabilities has been carried out with very promising results.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Environmental aesthetics and psychological wellbeing: Relationships between preference judgements for urban landscapes and other relevant affective responses

In the general field of Environmental Psycholgy an increasing number of studies propose that subjects' general well-being can be significantly increased as a result of contact with environments considered to have high aesthetic value. The present study has attempted to study the possible effects of the contemplation of everyday landscapes on citizens' emotional well-being, identifying some of the main affective responses associated with aesthetic judgment of urban landscapes. Relevant data have been obtained by means of a photographic questionnaire administered inidividually to a representative sample of adolescents living in Seville, Spain. The results suggest that aesthetic appraisal responses play an important role from an affective point of view, given that these respnses are closey associated with the most important variables that configure -according to various studies- the two fundamental dimensions (pleasure and arousal) of the global significance of physical environments.En el ámbito general de los estudios de psicología ambiental, un creciente número de trabajos ha planteado que el bienestar general de los individuos puede verse incrementado significativamente por el contacto de los mismos con ambientes considerados de alto valor estético. En línea con lo anterior, en la presente investigacion se ha perseguido estudiar los efectos que la contemplación de los paisajes cotidianos puede ejercer sobre el bienestar emocional de los ciudadanos, identificando algunas de las principales respuestas afectivas que se encuentran asociadas a los juicios estéticos por paisajes urbanos.La información requerida se ha recogido a través de un cuestionario fotográfico administrado de manera individualizada, por encuestadores preparados a tal efecto, a una muestra representativa de los adolescentes residentes en Sevilla capital. Los resultados obtenidos ubican a las respuestas de valoración estética en una situación de privilegio desde un punto de vista afectivo. Ello, porque dichas respuestas se encuentran estrechamente asociadas a las variables más importantes que configuran -según han delimitado diferentes estudios- las dos dimensiones fundamentales (placer y arousal) del significado global que los entornos físicos poseen para los individuos

Automated analysis of feature models: Quo vadis?

Feature models have been used since the 90's to describe software product lines as a way of reusing common parts in a family of software systems. In 2010, a systematic literature review was published summarizing the advances and settling the basis of the area of Automated Analysis of Feature Models (AAFM). From then on, different studies have applied the AAFM in different domains. In this paper, we provide an overview of the evolution of this field since 2010 by performing a systematic mapping study considering 423 primary sources. We found six different variability facets where the AAFM is being applied that define the tendencies: product configuration and derivation; testing and evolution; reverse engineering; multi-model variability-analysis; variability modelling and variability-intensive systems. We also confirmed that there is a lack of industrial evidence in most of the cases. Finally, we present where and when the papers have been published and who are the authors and institutions that are contributing to the field. We observed that the maturity is proven by the increment in the number of journals published along the years as well as the diversity of conferences and workshops where papers are published. We also suggest some synergies with other areas such as cloud or mobile computing among others that can motivate further research in the future.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-70560-RJunta de Andalucía TIC-186

Experiences on a motivational learning approach for robotics in undergraduate courses

This paper presents an educational experience carried out in robotics undergraduate courses from two different degrees: Computer Science and Industrial Engineering, having students with diverse capabilities and motivations. The experience compares two learning strategies for the practical lessons of such courses: one relies on code snippets in Matlab to cope with typical robotic problems like robot motion, localization, and mapping, while the second strategy opts for using the ROS framework for the development of algorithms facing a competitive challenge, e.g. exploration algorithms. The obtained students’ opinions were instructive, reporting, for example, that although they consider harder to master ROS when compared to Matlab, it might be more useful in their (robotic related) professional careers, which enhanced their disposition to study it. They also considered that the challenge-exercises, in addition to motivate them, helped to develop their skills as engineers to a greater extent than the skeleton-code based ones. These and other conclusions will be useful in posterior courses to boost the interest and motivation of the students.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

UPGMpp: a Software Library for Contextual Object Recognition

Object recognition is a cornerstone task towards the scene understanding problem. Recent works in the field boost their perfor- mance by incorporating contextual information to the traditional use of the objects’ geometry and/or appearance. These contextual cues are usually modeled through Conditional Random Fields (CRFs), a partic- ular type of undirected Probabilistic Graphical Model (PGM), and are exploited by means of probabilistic inference methods. In this work we present the Undirected Probabilistic Graphical Models in C++ library (UPGMpp), an open source solution for representing, training, and per- forming inference over undirected PGMs in general, and CRFs in par- ticular. The UPGMpp library supposes a reliable and comprehensive workbench for recognition systems exploiting contextual information, in- cluding a variety of inference methods based on local search, graph cuts, and message passing approaches. This paper illustrates the virtues of the library, i.e. it is efficient, comprehensive, versatile, and easy to use, by presenting a use-case applied to the object recognition problem in home scenes from the challenging NYU2 dataset.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. Spanish grant program FPU-MICINN 2010 and the Spanish projects “TAROTH: New developments toward a robot at home” (Ref. DPI2011-25483) and “PROMOVE: Advances in mobile robotics for promoting independent life of elders” (Ref. DPI2014-55826-R