Nanoparticulate sol-gel pretreatments as barrier coatings and adhesion promoters for metallic corrosion protection

The Spanish University Carlos III de Madrid has developed sol-gel coatings for the corrosion protection of alloys. Sol-gel coatings represent a physical barrier between the metallic substrate and the aggressive environment of exposition and act as adhesion promoters through interfacial bonding. Optimization of the coating’s properties may be easily achivied by changing the processing parameters and formulation of the layer. Interest in licensing the applied patent or technical cooperation with companies that would like to incorporate this technology

Deep Neural Networks for the Recognition and Classification of Heart Murmurs Using Neuromorphic Auditory Sensors

Auscultation is one of the most used techniques for detecting cardiovascular diseases, which is one of the main causes of death in the world. Heart murmurs are the most common abnormal finding when a patient visits the physician for auscultation. These heart sounds can either be innocent, which are harmless, or abnormal, which may be a sign of a more serious heart condition. However, the accuracy rate of primary care physicians and expert cardiologists when auscultating is not good enough to avoid most of both type-I (healthy patients are sent for echocardiogram) and type-II (pathological patients are sent home without medication or treatment) errors made. In this paper, the authors present a novel convolutional neural network based tool for classifying between healthy people and pathological patients using a neuromorphic auditory sensor for FPGA that is able to decompose the audio into frequency bands in real time. For this purpose, different networks have been trained with the heart murmur information contained in heart sound recordings obtained from nine different heart sound databases sourced from multiple research groups. These samples are segmented and preprocessed using the neuromorphic auditory sensor to decompose their audio information into frequency bands and, after that, sonogram images with the same size are generated. These images have been used to train and test different convolutional neural network architectures. The best results have been obtained with a modified version of the AlexNet model, achieving 97% accuracy (specificity: 95.12%, sensitivity: 93.20%, PhysioNet/CinC Challenge 2016 score: 0.9416). This tool could aid cardiologists and primary care physicians in the auscultation process, improving the decision making task and reducing type-I and type-II errors.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-

NAVIS: Neuromorphic Auditory VISualizer Tool

This software presents diverse utilities to perform the first post-processing layer taking the neuromorphic auditory sensors (NAS) information. The used NAS implements in FPGA a cascade filters architecture, imitating the behavior of the basilar membrane and inner hair cells and working with the sound information decomposed into its frequency components as spike streams. The well-known neuromorphic hardware interface Address-Event-Representation (AER) is used to propagate auditory information out of the NAS, emulating the auditory vestibular nerve. Using the information packetized into aedat files, which are generated through the jAER software plus an AER to USB computer interface, NAVIS implements a set of graphs that allows to represent the auditory information as cochleograms, histograms, sonograms, etc. It can also split the auditory information into different sets depending on the activity level of the spike streams. The main contribution of this software tool is that it allows complex audio post-processing treatments and representations, which is a novelty for spike-based systems in the neuromorphic community and it will help neuromorphic engineers to build sets for training spiking neural networks (SNN).Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2012-37868-C04-0

Stereo Matching in Address-Event-Representation (AER) Bio-Inspired Binocular Systems in a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)

In stereo-vision processing, the image-matching step is essential for results, although it involves a very high computational cost. Moreover, the more information is processed, the more time is spent by the matching algorithm, and the more ine cient it is. Spike-based processing is a relatively new approach that implements processing methods by manipulating spikes one by one at the time they are transmitted, like a human brain. The mammal nervous system can solve much more complex problems, such as visual recognition by manipulating neuron spikes. The spike-based philosophy for visual information processing based on the neuro-inspired address-event-representation (AER) is currently achieving very high performance. The aim of this work was to study the viability of a matching mechanism in stereo-vision systems, using AER codification and its implementation in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Some studies have been done before in an AER system with monitored data using a computer; however, this kind of mechanism has not been implemented directly on hardware. To this end, an epipolar geometry basis applied to AER systems was studied and implemented, with other restrictions, in order to achieve good results in a real-time scenario. The results and conclusions are shown, and the viability of its implementation is proven.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-

Feedstocks development for Metal Injection Moulding

Today, more tan 90% of used feedstock for MIM in Europe, came from BASF (exclusive patent), with low possibility for change compositions or costs (in Japan or USA, the percentage is quite smaller). In our research group (Powder Technology Group) we can develop new feedstocks formulation that can be used directly by the MIM parts manufacturers and fulfilling their composition requirements. Interest in licensing the applied patent or commercial agreement with technical assistance with companies that would like to incorporate this technology

A Microcontroller Based System for Controlling Patient Respiratory Guidelines

The need of making improvements in obtaining (in a non-invasive way) and monitoring the breathing rate parameters in a patient emerges due to (1) the great amount of breathing problems our society suffer, (2) the problems that can be solved, and (3) the methods used so far. Non-specific machines are usually used to carry out these measures or simply calculate the number of inhalations and exhalations within a particular timeframe. These methods lack of effectiveness and precision thus, influencing the capacity of getting a good diagnosis. This proposal focuses on drawing up a technology composed of a mechanism and a user application which allows doctors to obtain the breathing rate parameters in a comfortable and concise way. In addition, such parameters are stored in a database for potential consultation as well as for the medical history of the patients. For this, the current approach takes into account the needs, the capacities, the expectations and the user motivations which have been compiled by means of open interviews, forum discussions, surveys and application uses. In addition, an empirical evaluation has been conducted with a set of volunteers. Results indicate that the proposed technology may reduce cost and improve the reliability of the diagnosis.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

Protección frente a la corrosión metálica mediante pretratamientos sol-gel nanoparticulados promotores de adhesión metal/pintura orgánica

La Universidad española Carlos III de Madrid ha desarrollado recubrimientos de tipo sol-gel aplicados para la protección frente a la corrosión de aleaciones metálicas. Dichos recubrimientos constituyen una barrera física entre el metal y los agentes agresivos externos y aumentan la adherencia metal/pintura orgánica de aplicación posterior mediante uniones en interfase. La modificación de las variables del proceso de síntesis y la formulación del recubrimiento permiten optimizar sus propiedades. Se busca la licencia de la patente solicitada o un acuerdo de cooperación técnica con empresas que deseen incorporar esta tecnología

Performance Analysis of Non-Ideal MIMO Systems in Fading Channels

En esta tesis se aborda el análisis de prestaciones de sistemas MIMO bajo ciertas condiciones no ideales. Se han considerado limitaciones realistas como son las interferencias co-canal, el canal de retorno con velocidad limitada, y la correlación espacial entre antenas. Bajo estas condiciones, se han analizado las probabilidades de error y de outage para sistemas MIMO que incluyen técnicas de conformación de haz en el transmisor y/o distintas técnicas de diversidad espacial en el receptor. Con el fin de obtener expresiones cerradas y exactas par los indicadores de rendimiento mencionados, se han desarrollo nuevos métodos o herramientas matemáticas que facilitan o, en algunos casos, hacen posible el análisis. En primer lugar, se han obtenido nuevas expresiones cerradas para las integrales del tipo Lipschitz-Hankel y para la distribución de los elementos de la diagonal de matrices Wishart complejas. Posteriormente, estos resultados han sido aplicados al análisis de prestaciones de distintos sistemas MIMO en condiciones no-ideales. Concretamente, se han obtenido nuevas expresiones cerrradas de la probabilidad de outage para: sistemas MRC con interferencia co-canal, sistemas MIMO con correlación espacial entre antenas, y sistemas MIMO MRC con un canal de retorno limitado en velocidad. Además, se han obtenido expresiones cerradas para la probabilidad de error en sistemas de diversidad en recepción que emplean modulaciones no coherentes y no ortogonales