The need of modeling: Experience from the Samothraki Summer University

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Recursos pedagògics per a la sostenibilitat i compromís social

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Sostenibilitat i compromís Social: una competència vista des de l'enginyeria de sistemes

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Mathematical models in education for sustainable development

L’objectiu d’aquest projecte és la realització d’un material docent innovador per a l’ambientalització curricular en les àrees docents de l’Enginyeria de Sistemes, Automàtica i Informàtica Industrial. La primera part del projecte ha consistit en l’edició i publicació del llibre Automàtica i Sostenibilitat, d’Edicions UPC, mentre que la segona part ha consistit en la creació d’uns recursos pedagògics on-line penjats en la web MODEL.UPC.EDU i que són un recull de models matemàtics i la seva implementació amb Java per ser usats en les pràctiques docents d’assignatures de modelització i simulació de sistemes dinàmics. Aquests recursos pedagògics de marcat caràcter sostenibilista poden ser exportats a altres disciplines del món tecnològic.Peer Reviewe

Didactical resources for sustainability

In this paper we discuss the use of computer simulations for sustainable systems. Specifically, we propose laboratory practices for Automatic Control subjects where the plants are sustainable systems. The interest is the simulation of this kind of systems to forecast their behaviour in order to control and actuate over them. In this paper, the use of a didactic material for laboratory practices is explained. This pedagogical resource is published in a web (http://model.upc.edu) where the student can find the practice statements, the explanations and the software to develop sustainable models in form of laboratory practices for the subjects related with simulation and modelling in different engineering degrees, because we have the belief that undergraduate students must receive an Education for Sustainability independently of their career without learning the basic and specifically concepts of the own subject.Postprint (published version

Delayed inverse depth monocular SLAM

The 6-DOF monocular camera case possibly represents the harder variant in the context of simultaneous localization and mapping problem. In the last years, several advances have been appeared in this area; however the application of these techniques to real world applications it’s difficult so far. Recently, the unified inverse depth parametrization has shown to be a good option this challenging problem, in a scheme of EKF for the estimation of the stochastic map and camera pose. In this paper a new delayed initialization scheme is proposed for adding new features to the stochastic map. The results show that delayed initialization can improve some aspects without losing the performance and unified aspect of the original method, when initial reference points are used in order to fix a metric scale in the map.Postprint (published version

Closing loops with a virtual sensor based on monocular SLAM

Monocular simultaneous localization and mapping(SLAM) techniques implicitly estimate camera ego-motion while incrementally building a map of the environment. In monocular SLAM, when the number of features in the system state increases, maintaining a real-time operation becomes very difficult. However, it is easy to remove old features from the state to maintain a stable computational cost per frame. If features are removed from the map, then previously mapped areas cannot be recognized to minimize the robot’s drift; alternatively, in the context of a real-time virtual sensor that emulates typical sensors as laser for range measurements and encoders for dead reckoning, this limitation should not be a problem. In this paper, a novel framework is proposed to build in real time a consistent map of the environment using the virtual-sensor estimations. At the same time, the proposed approach allows minimizing the drift of the camera-robot position. Experiments with real data are presented to show the performance of this frame of work.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A practical method for implementing an attitude and heading reference system

This paper describes a practical and reliable algorithm for implementing an Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS). This kind of system is essential for real time vehicle navigation, guidance and control applications. When low cost sensors are used, efficient and robust algorithms are required for performance to be acceptable. The proposed method is based on an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) in a direct configuration. In this case, the filter is explicitly derived from both the kinematic and rror models. The selection of this kind of EKF configuration can help in ensuring a tight integration of the method for its use in filter-based localization and mapping systems in autonomous vehicles. Experiments with real data show that the proposed method is able to maintain an accurate and drift-free attitude and heading estimation. An additional result is to show that there is no ostensible reason for preferring that the filter have an indirect configuration over a direct configuration for implementing an AHRS system.Postprint (published version

Innovación en la enseñanza de la electrónica de adquisición de datos y control para estudiantes de ingeniería de la rama industrial

La mejora de la calidad en los sistemas de adquisición de datos y de control industrial, dentro del campo de la ingeniería, está íntimamente relacionada con el conocimiento de la base en la que se asientan los sistemas electrónicos para tal fin. Dentro de la oferta de asignaturas optativas en la Escuela de Ingeniería Técnica Industrial de Barcelona (EUETIB) de la Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (UPC), aparecidas a raíz de la puesta en marcha de los actuales planes de estudio de Grado de Ingeniería en la rama industrial, y dentro del marco del EEES, este curso 2011-12 ha aparecido una asignatura, Mecatrónica (MEC), que permite a estudiantes de los citados grados, y que no son de Electrónica, adentrarse en los conocimientos de esta materia. Esta asignatura deriva de la asignatura Electrónica de Adquisición de Datos y Control Industrial (EADCI), que ha permitido, en este caso, al estudiante de la especialidad de Electricidad de la EUETIB, aparecida a raíz de la puesta en marcha del plan de estudios 2002, el estudio de dicha materia. La presente comunicación expone la evolución de la enseñanza de la Electrónica, especialmente para adquisición de datos y control, dentro de los últimos planes de estudio en las diferentes especialidades de Ingeniería Técnica Industrial en la EUETIB, y, actualmente, en los estudios de grado (sin ser de la especialidad de Ingeniería Electrónica). El artículo refleja la filosofía de impartición y contenidos de la asignatura EADCI, de forma que analiza la orientación que se ha pretendido dar, y que ha permitido su rápida adaptación a la nueva asignatura MEC, dentro del nuevo marco de asignaturas ofertadas en la EUETIB en el EEES donde, además de las horas de teoría, problemas y laboratorio, ha de darse cabida a las denominadas ‘actividades dirigidas’ que el nuevo plan contempla.Peer Reviewe

Modelling of tidal power with EasyJava simulations

Recerca d'un model de generació elèctrica a partir de les marees oceàniquesThis report is devoted to the study of a mathematical model to simulte the behaviour of a power generation plant from the ocean tidals. The simulation has been implemented with EasyJava Simulations (EJS) environment.Preprin