Mobile robot for autonomous golf balls picking

This paper describes a robot to collect golf balls in a driving range, operating as autonomous and/or remotely operated. It uses a set of sensors which gives the robot capacities of surrounding environment perception and digital image processing to search for the balls in places with higher concentrations of balls. This system avoids stopping the players for ball collection permitting a higher use rate of the field

O urbanismo conveniente luso-brasileiro na formação de povoações em Minas Gerais no século XVIII

The settlement of villages in the old colonial province of Minas Gerais obeyed certain principles of what was considered decent, convenient and adequate. Such principles were based on rules, doctrines and habits inherent to the Luso-Brazilian architecture of that time. The historical analysis of these aspects leads to a critical review of some consolidated assumptions in historiography, such as the one for which the settlements aforementioned would have appeared in a spontaneous, irregular and disordered fashion. Because they are evident in the remaining settlements and period art treatises and documents, these aspects lead to the consideration of a true art of populating, based on certain values and habits, which we call convenient Luso-Brazilian urbanism.A formação de povoações na capitania de Minas Gerais no século XVIII estava condicionada a preceitos de decoro, conveniência e adequação. Esses preceitos constituíam regras, doutrinas e costumes muito relevantes à arte luso-brasileira de edificar arquiteturas e cidades naquele tempo. A consideração histórica desses aspectos nos conduz à revisão crítica de uma série de compreensões consolidadas na historiografia, como, por exemplo, a de que essas povoações seriam espontâneas, irregulares e desordenadas. Pela importância com que se evidenciam nas povoações remanescentes, nos tratados artísticos e nos documentos coevos, tais aspectos nos levam a cogitar em uma verdadeira arte de povoar fundamentada nesses valores e costumes, arte a que denominamos urbanismo conveniente luso-brasileiro

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Software development of an application to control and monitor a mobile platform to collect golf balls

Dissertação submetida à Universidade do Minho para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrónica Industrial e ComputadoresO golfe é um desporto que necessita de grande prática e concentração. Para obter tais capacidades são criados campos de treinos onde existem entre outros, o treino de primeira batida designado por driving range que permitem ao jogador aperfeiçoar a posição de batida e o alcance máximo da bola. Este tipo de treino necessita de grande stock de bolas e um sistema de constante recolha de bolas de golfe simultaneamente à batida das mesmas, o que pode originar perigo para quem recolhe as bolas e elevada despesa para um elevado stock de bolas. Para reduzir estes inconvenientes desenvolveuse uma plataforma móvel de recolha autónoma de bolas de golfe com detecção das bolas localmente, com auxílio de visão computacional. O presente trabalho consiste no desenvolvimento de software de processamento de imagem para detecção de bolas de golfe, de maneira a direccionar a plataforma móvel para locais de maior concentração de bolas num campo de treinos de golfe. Desenvolvimento de software de monitorização remota do ambiente à volta do robô, através de diversos sensores – implementação de protocolos de comunicação entre três unidades de processamento (unidade de processamento contínuo, unidade de processamento de imagem e unidade de visualização remota). A metodologia de processamento de imagem usada baseia-se na procura de contornos de uma imagem de escala de cinzentos, com aplicação de filtros de suavização seguidos de filtros de realce de contornos. Depois de detectados contornos na imagem, são aplicados critérios de selecção dos contornos de modo a seleccionar apenas objectos (bolas de golfe) definidos através de características tais como raio, cor do ponto central, etc. Estas características são obtidas e calibradas através do estudo de várias imagens obtidas no campo de treinos de golfe a diferentes níveis de incidência solar.The golf is an elitist sport that needs great practice and concentration. In order to get such capabilities training camps are created to practice, among others, training of first strike (called driving range) allowing the player to improve ball hit quality and also to achieve long distance balls. This type of training requires a huge stock of balls and a system to constantly collect the golf balls, without stopping the players, which can cause danger to anyone who collects the balls and also a higher budget due to the amount of balls in stock. To reduce these drawbacks an autonomous mobile platform has been developed to collect golf balls where the balls detection is made with the help of computer vision. This work consists of developing image processing software to detect the golf balls, in order to target the mobile platform for places of higher concentration of balls in a driving range. Software development for remote monitoring of the robot surroundings, through various sensors - implementation of protocols for communication between three units of processing (continuous processing unit, image processing unit and the remote display unit) was the second task. The image processing methodology used is based on the demand for grayscale image contours, applying smoothing filters followed by highlight of contours. After detecting the image contours, criteria for the selection of contours in order to select only objects (golf balls) are applied, defined by characteristics such as radius, color of the central pixel, and so on. These characteristics are obtained and calibrated through the study of various images obtained in the driving range at different levels of solar incidence

Dualidades nas propostas editoriais de música antiga brasileira Editorial propositions's dichotomies in Brazilian early music

A partir da primeira publicação de caráter musicológico de música brasileira do século XVIII, realizada em 1951 por Francisco Curt Lange (Archivo de Música Religiosa de la "Capitania Geral das Minas Gerais"), surgiram iniciativas brasileiras que manifestaram as mais variadas propostas editoriais. O estudo das edições produzidas no país nas últimas cinco décadas revela várias dualidades, dentre as quais as dez mais importantes serão abordadas neste artigo: 1) publicação ou circulação informal; 2) Gesamtausgaben ou Denkmähler; 3) edição acadêmica ou edição prática; 4) fontes de um único acervo ou de vários; 5) obra isolada ou coletânea; 6) trabalho individual ou trabalho de equipe; 7) obras inéditas ou já divulgadas; 8) financiamento privado ou de instituições governamentais; 9) apenas partitura ou partituras e partes; 10) divulgação em papel ou em meios eletrônicos. Além da identificação dessas dualidades, o objetivo deste artigo é tentar compreender o seu significado e relacioná-las às atuais perspectivas editoriais da música antiga no país.<br>Departing from the first musicological publication about eighteenth-century Brazilian music by Francisco Curt Lange in 1951 (Archivo de Música Religiosa de la "Capitania Geral das Minas Gerais"), other initiatives appeared in Brazil manifesting a wide range of editorial solutions. The study of the editions produced in this country in the last five decades reveals several dichotomies, ten of the most important being: 1) published work or informal circulation; 2) Gesamtausgaben or Denkmähler; 3) academic edition or interpretive edition; 4) sources from one or several collections; 5) isolated work or collective works; 6) individual work or team-work; 7) unpublished works or previously published works; 8) private funding or governmental funding; 9) scores only or scores and parts; 10) paper or digital/electronic publishing. Besides the identification of those dichotomies, the objective of this paper is to understand their meanings and relate them to the current editorial perspectives of early music in Brazil