Performance evaluation over HW/SW co-design SoC memory transfers for a CNN accelerator

Many FPGAs vendors have recently included embedded processors in their devices, like Xilinx with ARM-Cortex A cores, together with programmable logic cells. These devices are known as Programmable System on Chip (PSoC). Their ARM cores (embedded in the processing system or PS) communicates with the programmable logic cells (PL) using ARM-standard AXI buses. In this paper we analyses the performance of exhaustive data transfers between PS and PL for a Xilinx Zynq FPGA in a co-design real scenario for Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) accelerator, which processes, in dedicated hardware, a stream of visual information from a neuromorphic visual sensor for classification. In the PS side, a Linux operating system is running, which recollects visual events from the neuromorphic sensor into a normalized frame, and then it transfers these frames to the accelerator of multi-layered CNNs, and read results, using an AXI-DMA bus in a per-layer way. As these kind of accelerators try to process information as quick as possible, data bandwidth becomes critical and maintaining a good balanced data throughput rate requires some considerations. We present and evaluate several data partitioning techniques to improve the balance between RX and TX transfer and two different ways of transfers management: through a polling routine at the userlevel of the OS, and through a dedicated interrupt-based kernellevel driver. We demonstrate that for longer enough packets, the kernel-level driver solution gets better timing in computing a CNN classification example. Main advantage of using kernel-level driver is to have safer solutions and to have tasks scheduling in the OS to manage other important processes for our application, like frames collection from sensors and their normalization.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-

A Sensor Fusion Horse Gait Classification by a Spiking Neural Network on SpiNNaker

The study and monitoring of the behavior of wildlife has always been a subject of great interest. Although many systems can track animal positions using GPS systems, the behavior classification is not a common task. For this work, a multi-sensory wearable device has been designed and implemented to be used in the Doñana National Park in order to control and monitor wild and semiwild life animals. The data obtained with these sensors is processed using a Spiking Neural Network (SNN), with Address-Event-Representation (AER) coding, and it is classified between some fixed activity behaviors. This works presents the full infrastructure deployed in Doñana to collect the data, the wearable device, the SNN implementation in SpiNNaker and the classification results.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2012-37868-C04-02Junta de Andalucía P12-TIC-130

Embedded neural network for real-time animal behavior classification

Recent biological studies have focused on understanding animal interactions and welfare. To help biolo- gists to obtain animals’ behavior information, resources like wireless sensor networks are needed. More- over, large amounts of obtained data have to be processed off-line in order to classify different behaviors.There are recent research projects focused on designing monitoring systems capable of measuring someanimals’ parameters in order to recognize and monitor their gaits or behaviors. However, network unre- liability and high power consumption have limited their applicability.In this work, we present an animal behavior recognition, classification and monitoring system based ona wireless sensor network and a smart collar device, provided with inertial sensors and an embeddedmulti-layer perceptron-based feed-forward neural network, to classify the different gaits or behaviorsbased on the collected information. In similar works, classification mechanisms are implemented in aserver (or base station). The main novelty of this work is the full implementation of a reconfigurableneural network embedded into the animal’s collar, which allows a real-time behavior classification andenables its local storage in SD memory. Moreover, this approach reduces the amount of data transmittedto the base station (and its periodicity), achieving a significantly improving battery life. The system hasbeen simulated and tested in a real scenario for three different horse gaits, using different heuristics andsensors to improve the accuracy of behavior recognition, achieving a maximum of 81%.Junta de Andalucía P12-TIC-130

Event-based Row-by-Row Multi-convolution engine for Dynamic-Vision Feature Extraction on FPGA

Neural networks algorithms are commonly used to recognize patterns from different data sources such as audio or vision. In image recognition, Convolutional Neural Networks are one of the most effective techniques due to the high accuracy they achieve. This kind of algorithms require billions of addition and multiplication operations over all pixels of an image. However, it is possible to reduce the number of operations using other computer vision techniques rather than frame-based ones, e.g. neuromorphic frame-free techniques. There exists many neuromorphic vision sensors that detect pixels that have changed their luminosity. In this study, an event-based convolution engine for FPGA is presented. This engine models an array of leaky integrate and fire neurons. It is able to apply different kernel sizes, from 1x1 to 7x7, which are computed row by row, with a maximum number of 64 different convolution kernels. The design presented is able to process 64 feature maps of 7x7 with a latency of 8.98 s.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-

Accuracy Improvement of Neural Networks Through Self-Organizing-Maps over Training Datasets

Although it is not a novel topic, pattern recognition has become very popular and relevant in the last years. Different classification systems like neural networks, support vector machines or even complex statistical methods have been used for this purpose. Several works have used these systems to classify animal behavior, mainly in an offline way. Their main problem is usually the data pre-processing step, because the better input data are, the higher may be the accuracy of the classification system. In previous papers by the authors an embedded implementation of a neural network was deployed on a portable device that was placed on animals. This approach allows the classification to be done online and in real time. This is one of the aims of the research project MINERVA, which is focused on monitoring wildlife in Do˜nana National Park using low power devices. Many difficulties were faced when pre-processing methods quality needed to be evaluated. In this work, a novel pre-processing evaluation system based on self-organizing maps (SOM) to measure the quality of the neural network training dataset is presented. The paper is focused on a three different horse gaits classification study. Preliminary results show that a better SOM output map matches with the embedded ANN classification hit improvement.Junta de Andalucía P12-TIC-1300Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-

Educational challenges and opportunities in the knowledge society

Vivimos en un mundo complejo (sociedad del conocimiento) y en un tiempo de incertidumbre, de acelerado y continuo proceso de cambio. Unos cambios impulsados por modelos políticos (económicos) hacia la liberalización (de mercancías, servicios, capitales, trabajo….) y otros propulsados por el desarrollo de las tecnologías (y en especial de las de la información y comunicación). Las tecnologías se encuentran inmersas en todos los ámbitos de nuestra vida; a unos nos solucionan problemas (nos permiten acceder a ingentes cantidades de información, nos posibilitan procesos hasta ahora duros y pesados, nos acercan a realidades asombrosas...), pero a otros les produce inquietud, temor… (imposibilidad de acceder a un puesto de trabajo o su pérdida). Estos acelerados cambios tienen lugar en un entorno altamente competitivo (que requiere nuevos productos y servicios de forma continuada) y en una economía globalizada (libre circulación de mercancías y profesionales). Un mundo que también nos plantea, en el ámbito educativo, importantes retos a los que debemos hacer frente. Ante esta situación se pone de manifiesto la consideración y análisis de los procesos educativos, pues la formación obtenida en las instituciones educativas tienen una caducidad marcada por las cambiantes transformaciones y exigencias en las cualificaciones, en los cambios culturales y relacionales (modelos organizativos), en la transformación del mercado laboral, de la sociedad…. Es necesario considerar la formación como una exigencia creciente en el campo de los recursos humanos; y que ésta debe ser asumida como uno más de los servicios que el Estado y otras instituciones ofrecen permanentemente a los ciudadanos, como un producto de consumo para el bienestar social. Y en este sentido hemos de preguntarnos por las características del modelo formativo que habría de responder a esta demanda y su gestión. Un modelo que, contando con la profesionalidad de sus agentes, debería considerar el valor de la participación (comunidad educativa) y la autonomía (pedagógica, de organización y de gestión) de los centros educativos para contextualizar y desarrollar su proyecto educativo. ¿Qué posibilidades nos ofrecen los actuales marcos normativos (LOE y LOU)? ¿qué cambios normativos deberían promoverse? En la sociedad del conocimiento, en la que estamos viviendo, cada individuo debe ir construyendo, de forma progresiva y continua, su proyecto de cualificación para convertir las oportunidades del contexto en realidades personales. Hablamos de un proceso de aprendizaje a lo largo de la vida, en el que la formación, en un sentido amplio, se entiende como un proceso de adquisición de conocimientos, de valores, de normas, de formación de actitudes, de capacitación progresiva para gestionar la propia vida y la vida en común, para interpretar e intervenir en nuestro entorno (social, cultural, productivo...). En definitiva, un proceso para ser persona. En este trabajo1 pretendemos hacer una aproximación, desde una perspectiva educativa a los retos y exigencias que nos plantea el contexto actual, así como a las oportunidades que nos brindan los desarrollos tecnológicos de la sociedad del conocimiento. Enmarcaremos nuestras aportaciones desde el enfoque de la educación a lo largo de la vida, la formación en competencias básicas y la significación de la colaboración en los procesos educativos

Analysis of the presence of sustainability in Higher Education Degrees of the Spanish university system

This paper analyzes the extent to which sustainability is present in the curricula of the 16 Education Degree programs belonging to the EDINSOST project: 6 Early Childhood Education Degrees, 7 Primary Education Degrees, 2 Pedagogy Degrees and 1 Social Education Degree. The results obtained suggest that sustainability is present in all Degrees, but not uniformly so. A great disparity is observed in the number of subjects that develop sustainability, with an average of 22.63 subjects per Degree. The competency most present is the ‘ Application of ethical principles related to the values of sustainability in personal and professional behaviors, ’ while the least present is ‘ Sustainable use of resources and prevention of negative impacts on the natural and social environment. ’Sustainability is not developed uniformly in the different universities either. Three universities (UAM, UCA and UIC) develop sustainability competencies at 100%, while others such as the USAL do so at only 50

Anti-angiogenic therapy based on the binding receptors

This paper deals with a nonlinear system of partial differential equations modeling the effect of an anti-angiogenic therapy based on an agent that binds specific receptors of the endothelial cells. We study the time-dependent problem as well as the stationary problem associated to it.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovació

Intestinal microbiota and colorectal cancer

Colorectal cancer may be influenced by changes in the intestinal microbiota that affect the mucosa and cause an immune response capable of producing inflammatory effects. Although there are still few studies in this regard, it is necessary to emphasize the need to expand the studies on this topic and to state the usefulness of the new technologies based on metagenomics.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech