Fuzzy PD+I Embedded Control System for a Multi-Phase DC-DC Bidirectional Converter

[EN] In this work is presented the design of a Fuzzy PD+I control system applied to the voltage control of a multi-phase DC-DC power electronic converter. The fuzzy controller has two inputs. The first input, named Error, is the difference between the desired voltage value in the output of the converter and the measured voltage at this particular point; the second input is defined by the changes in the measured voltage of the converter. The control system is embedded in the NI myRIO-1900 development kit, using LabVIEW as programming software employing the embedded system for experimental tests with a prototype of the converter. This control system allows the stabilization of the converter in the buck and boost operation modes, showing an appropriate behavior at the startup and under resistive load changes, presenting acceptable times for DC microgrids future applications while connecting the DC bus with supercapacitors or a battery bank.[ES] En este trabajo se presenta el diseño de un sistema de control difuso PD+I embebido aplicado en el control de voltaje de un convertidor electrónico de potencia bidireccional multi-fase CD-CD. El controlador difuso cuenta con dos entradas, la primera se le denomina Error y es la diferencia entre el valor de voltaje deseado en la salida del convertidor y el voltaje medido en la salida del mismo; la segunda entrada es definida por las variaciones en el voltaje medido. La salida del controlador difuso define las variaciones en el ciclo de trabajo de los interruptores de potencia que controlan el convertidor. El sistema de control difuso se embebió en la tarjeta de desarrollo NI myRIO-1900 utilizando como software de programación LabVIEW, empleando el sistema embebido para realizar pruebas experimentales con el prototipo del convertidor. Con este sistema de control de voltaje se logra estabilizar el convertidor en los modos de operación reductor y elevador, demostrando un adecuado comportamiento del convertidor en el arranque y ante cambios de carga resistiva, manteniendo tiempos aceptables para aplicaciones futuras en micro-redes de CD conectando el bus de CD con un banco de super-capacitores o un banco de baterías.Martínez Nolasco, JJ.; Rodríguez, E.; Rodríguez, H.; Morfin, J.; Padilla, A. (2018). Fuzzy PD+I Embedded Control System for a Multi-Phase DC-DC Bidirectional Converter. Revista Iberoamericana de Automática e Informática industrial. 15(4):457-466. https://doi.org/10.4995/riai.2018.8721OJS457466154Baek J. B., Choi, W. I., Cho, B. H., 2013. 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ROBOT DE DOS GRADOS DE LIBERTAR COMO UNA PLATAFORMA EDUCATIVA PARA ROBÓTICA (A 2-DOF ROBOT AS AN EDUCATIONAL PLATFORM FOR ROBOTICS)

En este trabajo se presenta el inicio del desarrollo de una plataforma de apoyo educativo para la materia de robótica. La plataforma presentada está basada en LabVIEW y cuenta con un robot planar de 2 grados de libertad, construido con actuadores Dynamixel, los cuales son parte de un kit de robótica de Robotis. El objetivo de la plataforma desarrollada es ofrecer al docente un apoyo didáctico en áreas temáticas de la robótica, tales como el cálculo e implementación de la cinemática directa e inversa, planeación de trayectorias y control, en un esfuerzo por motivar al estudiante con un resultado práctico de la teoría revisada en la clase.Palabra(s) Clave: LabVIEW, robótica educativa, robot planar.  AbstractThis work presents the beginning of an educational platform for the robotics subject. The presented platform is based in a 2-dof robot controlled with LabVIEW; the 2-dof robot is built with Dynamixel actuators, which are part from a robotics kit of Robotis. The goal of the developed platform is to offer an educational support in the topics reviewed as part of the robotics subject such as direct and inverse kinematics, planning of trajectories and control, this as an effort to encourage the students with a direct application of the reviewed topics during a robotics’ class.Keywords: 2 dof robot, educational robotics, LabVIEW

Biodiversity recovery of Neotropical secondary forests

Old-growth tropical forests harbor an immense diversity of tree species but are rapidly being cleared, while secondary forests that regrow on abandoned agricultural lands increase in extent. We assess how tree species richness and composition recover during secondary succession across gradients in environmental conditions and anthropogenic disturbance in an unprecedented multisite analysis for the Neotropics. Secondary forests recover remarkably fast in species richness but slowly in species composition. Secondary forests take a median time of five decades to recover the species richness of old-growth forest (80% recovery after 20 years) based on rarefaction analysis. Full recovery of species composition takes centuries (only 34% recovery after 20 years). A dual strategy that maintains both old-growth forests and species-rich secondary forests is therefore crucial for biodiversity conservation in human-modified tropical landscapes. Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved

Kinect v2-Assisted Semi-Automated Method to Assess Upper Limb Motor Performance in Children

The interruption of rehabilitation activities caused by the COVID-19 lockdown has significant health negative consequences for the population with physical disabilities. Thus, measuring the range of motion (ROM) using remotely taken photographs, which are then sent to specialists for formal assessment, has been recommended. Currently, low-cost Kinect motion capture sensors with a natural user interface are the most feasible implementations for upper limb motion analysis. An active range of motion (AROM) measuring system based on a Kinect v2 sensor for upper limb motion analysis using Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) scoring is described in this paper. Two test groups of children, each having eighteen participants, were analyzed in the experimental stage, where upper limbs’ AROM and motor performance were assessed using FMA. Participants in the control group (mean age of 7.83 ± 2.54 years) had no cognitive impairment or upper limb musculoskeletal problems. The study test group comprised children aged 8.28 ± 2.32 years with spastic hemiparesis. A total of 30 samples of elbow flexion and 30 samples of shoulder abduction of both limbs for each participant were analyzed using the Kinect v2 sensor at 30 Hz. In both upper limbs, no significant differences (p < 0.05) in the measured angles and FMA assessments were observed between those obtained using the described Kinect v2-based system and those obtained directly using a universal goniometer. The measurement error achieved by the proposed system was less than ±1° compared to the specialist’s measurements. According to the obtained results, the developed measuring system is a good alternative and an effective tool for FMA assessment of AROM and motor performance of upper limbs, while avoiding direct contact in both healthy children and children with spastic hemiparesis

Upper Limb Movement Measurement Systems for Cerebral Palsy: A Systematic Literature Review

Quantifying the quality of upper limb movements is fundamental to the therapeutic process of patients with cerebral palsy (CP). Several clinical methods are currently available to assess the upper limb range of motion (ROM) in children with CP. This paper focuses on identifying and describing available techniques for the quantitative assessment of the upper limb active range of motion (AROM) and kinematics in children with CP. Following the screening and exclusion of articles that did not meet the selection criteria, we analyzed 14 studies involving objective upper extremity assessments of the AROM and kinematics using optoelectronic devices, wearable sensors, and low-cost Kinect sensors in children with CP aged 4–18 years. An increase in the motor function of the upper extremity and an improvement in most of the daily tasks reviewed were reported. In the population of this study, the potential of wearable sensors and the Kinect sensor natural user interface as complementary devices for the quantitative evaluation of the upper extremity was evident. The Kinect sensor is a clinical assessment tool with a unique markerless motion capture system. Few authors had described the kinematic models and algorithms used to estimate their kinematic analysis in detail. However, the kinematic models in these studies varied from 4 to 10 segments. In addition, few authors had followed the joint assessment recommendations proposed by the International Society of Biomechanics (ISB). This review showed that three-dimensional analysis systems were used primarily for monitoring and evaluating spatiotemporal variables and kinematic parameters of upper limb movements. The results indicated that optoelectronic devices were the most commonly used systems. The joint assessment recommendations proposed by the ISB should be used because they are approved standards for human kinematic assessments. This review was registered in the PROSPERO database (CRD42021257211)

IoT-Based Monitoring System Applied to Aeroponics Greenhouse

The inclusion of the Internet of Things (IoT) in greenhouses has become a fundamental tool for improving cultivation systems, offering information relevant to the greenhouse manager for decision making in search of optimum yield. This article presents a monitoring system applied to an aeroponic greenhouse based on an IoT architecture that provides user information on the status of the climatic variables and the appearance of the crop in addition to managing the irrigation timing and the frequency of visual inspection using an application developed for Android mobile devices called Aeroponics Monitor. The proposed IoT architecture consists of four layers: a device layer, fog layer, cloud layer and application layer. Once the information about the monitored variables is obtained by the sensors of the device layer, the fog layer processes it and transfers it to the Thingspeak and Firebase servers. In the cloud layer, Thingspeak analyzes the information from the variables monitored in the greenhouse through its IoT analytic tools to generate historical data and visualizations of their behavior, as well as an analysis of the system’s operating status. Firebase, on the other hand, is used as a database to store the results of the processing of the images taken in the fog layer for the supervision of the leaves and roots. The results of the analysis of the information of the monitored variables and of the processing of the images are presented in the developed app, with the objective of visualizing the state of the crop and to know the function of the monitoring system in the event of a possible lack of electricity or a service line failure in the fog layer and to avoid the loss of information. With the information about the temperature of the plant leaf and the relative humidity inside the greenhouse, the vapor pressure deficit (VPD) in the cloud layer is calculated; the VPD values are available on the Thingspeak server and in the developed app. Additionally, an analysis of the VPD is presented that demonstrates a water deficiency from the transplanting of the seedling to the cultivation chamber. The IoT architecture presented in this paper represents a potential tool for the study of aeroponic farming systems through IoT-assisted monitoring

Facial Recognition for Drunk People Using Thermal Imaging

Face recognition using thermal imaging has the main advantage of being less affected by lighting conditions compared to images in the visible spectrum. However, there are factors such as the process of human thermoregulation that cause variations in the surface temperature of the face. These variations cause recognition systems to lose effectiveness. In particular, alcohol intake causes changes in the surface temperature of the face. It is of high relevance to identify not only if a person is drunk but also their identity. In this paper, we present a technique for face recognition based on thermal face images of drunk people. For the experiments, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso-Drunk Thermal Face database (PUCV-DTF) was used. The recognition system was carried out by using local binary patterns (LBPs). The LBP features were obtained from the bioheat model from thermal image representation and a fusion of thermal images and a vascular network extracted from the same image. The feature vector for each image is formed by the concatenation of the LBP histogram of the thermogram with an anisotropic filter and the fused image, respectively. The proposed technique has an average percentage of 99.63% in the Rank-10 cumulative classification; this performance is superior compared to using LBP in thermal images that do not use the bioheat model

Coping with poachers in European stalked barnacle fisheries: Insights from a stakeholder workshop

In January 2020, a stakeholder workshop was organized as a knowledge sharing strategy among European stalked barnacle fisheries. Management of this fishery differs greatly among regions and ranges from less organized and governed at large scales (>100 km, coasts of SW Portugal and Brittany in France) to highly participatory systems which are co-managed at small spatial scales (10′s km and less, Galicia and Asturias). Discussions revealed that poaching is ubiquitous, hard to eradicate, and adapts to all types of management. The stakeholders identified some key management initiatives in the fight against poaching: granting professional harvesters with exclusive access to the resource, increasing social capital among harvesters through tenure systems (e.g. Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries) that empower them as stewards of their resource and intensification of surveillance with the active participation of the harvesters. Furthermore, increased cooperation between fishers associations and regional fisheries authorities, improved legal frameworks, adoption of new technologies and the implementation of market-based solutions can also help coping with this systemic problemAgencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PCIN-2016-120Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PCIN-2016-063Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | Ref. BIODIVERSA / 0005/2015Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | Ref. BIODIVERSA / 0006/2015Agence Nationale de la Recherche | Ref. ANR-16-EBI3-0006-01Agence Nationale de la Recherche | Ref. ANR-16-EBI3-0006-02 a ANFundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | Ref. UIDB / 04292/2020Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | Ref. UIDP / 50017 / 2020Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | Ref. UIDB / 50017/2020Principado de Asturias | Ref. PA-18-PF-BP17-184Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades | Ref. FPU2016- 04258Principado de Asturias | Ref. FC-Grupin-IDI-2018- 000201Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED481A-2020/199Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | Ref. SFRH / BD / 135872/2018Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad |Ref. CTM2014-51935-

Biodiversity recovery of Neotropical secondary forests.

Old-growth tropical forests harbor an immense diversity of tree species but are rapidly being cleared, while secondary forests that regrow on abandoned agricultural lands increase in extent. We assess how tree species richness and composition recover during secondary succession across gradients in environmental conditions and anthropogenic disturbance in an unprecedented multisite analysis for the Neotropics. Secondary forests recover remarkably fast in species richness but slowly in species composition. Secondary forests take a median time of five decades to recover the species richness of old-growth forest (80% recovery after 20 years) based on rarefaction analysis. Full recovery of species composition takes centuries (only 34% recovery after 20 years). A dual strategy that maintains both old-growth forests and species-rich secondary forests is therefore crucial for biodiversity conservation in human-modified tropical landscapes