Development and automation of a robotic welding cell Using machine vision in Halcon programming environment

The current Project is developed in ACRO, Automatisering Centrum Research en Opleiding. ACRO is a Research and project Group in the field of automation, it offers a complete package of trainings and services in automation. The project consists in the upgrade of a robotic welding cell into a complete automated application through the implementation of a visual recognition system. In order to achieve this big objective the total project have been segmented into three different task: 1. The installation and functionality of the robotic welding cell without machine vision. 2. Introduction, development and achievement of a vision solution that provides the position and orientation information of the recognised pieces to the industrial robot. 3. Encapsulation of the vision solution deployed into a visual basic environment to offer a friendly interface to the different users and operators. Following the technology used in the project it can be encompassed into three different systems (they will be extensively described in section 3 of this paper): Robotic System. Welding System. Vision System. The final objective piece to recognise and weld is a metal cylinder that will be fixed into a flat square piece. This piece has been selected attending to its welding and visual recognition challenges, which can represent an acceptable example of the potential of the final welding cell once the solution is properly developed. Actually, the current project isn´t an isolated development carried out by ACRO, it is also inside a bigger industrial project developed by different partners and it has the company Sirris as a main contractor. Sirris is the collective centre of the Belgian technological industry. They help companies in the implementation of technological innovations, enabling them to strengthen their competitive position over the long-term. Their employees visit companies on site, offer them technological advice, launch innovation paths, and provide guidance until they reach the implementation phase. It is their aim to find concrete solutions to the real challenges facing Belgian entrepreneurs. The project is called “Smart Factories. Towards the Factory of the Future”. It began in 2012 and it will finish in May of 2016. The goal of the project is support the manufacturing industry in Flanders by the development of intelligent factories increasing substantially the manufacturing production. The result is create a flexible production system able to produce small series with productivity in order to response to the current market trends. A list of concrete steps have been defined in order to achieve the purpose of the project. There are a total of seven technological phases: 1. Zero ramp-up: production of small test series or trial products to check that the specifications of the project are satisfied. 2. Safe human-robot interaction: safe human-robot work in order to the production remain accessible for operators. 3. Auto programming: challenge of achieve the automated programming of the robot according with the information captured by the vision system. 4. Intelligent automated quality control: integration and automation of quality control where the series are controlled 100 per cent. 5. Offline robot programming: development of the required software to ensure complex robot can be programmed remotely. 6. Remote monitoring production: generation of feed-back in order to achieve real-time monitoring. 7. To stand-alone to network manufacturing cells: cells created in the project doesn’t work as isolated islands there are communication with each other and with a Smart Factory. In that way as a final objective once the project is finished, we are focus on the achievement of a real robotic welding cell that presents small, flexible and functional characteristics for companies that does not have the necessarily incomes to invest in the expensive robotic welding solution already implemented in the market.Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería IndustrialUniversidad Politécnica de Cartagen

Sirena: Autonomous integrated system for naval recognition and exploration

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Un modelo de análisis para incorporar los Itinerarios Didácticos en el aula de Educación Primaria. Su aplicación a la Gran Vía madrileña

Se aporta un Modelo de Itinerario didáctico que ha sido diseñado, implementado y valorado con alumnado de 6º de Primaria por la Gran Vía madrileña, pero al mismo tiempo aplicable a cualquier ciudad. Dos son principalmente los ejes vertebradores de este Modelo, por un lado la Educación Patrimonial, y por otro la elección del itinerario didáctico como herramienta pedagógica, que, en este Modelo, se diseña, implementa y valora en una parte céntrica y popular, como es la Gran Vía madrileña. A didactic Itinerary Model is provided which has been designed, implemented and evaluated with students in the 6th year of Primary School on the Gran Vía in Madrid, but which is also applicable to any city. There are two main backbones of this Model, on the one hand, Heritage Education, and on the other, the choice of the didactic itinerary as a pedagogical tool, which, in this Model, is designed, implemented and evaluated in a central and popular part of the city, such as the Gran Vía in Madrid.Centro Universitario de Magisterio ESCUNI, Madrid. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Universidad de Granada. Instituto de Secundaria Torrente Ballester de Madrid. Grupo de Investigación UNES de la UGR

Effectiveness of a strategy that uses educational games to implement clinical practice guidelines among Spanish residents of family and community medicine (e-EDUCAGUIA project):A clinical trial by clusters

This study was funded by the Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias FIS Grant Number PI11/0477 ISCIII.-REDISSEC Proyecto RD12/0001/0012 AND FEDER Funding.Background: Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) have been developed with the aim of helping health professionals, patients, and caregivers make decisions about their health care, using the best available evidence. In many cases, incorporation of these recommendations into clinical practice also implies a need for changes in routine clinical practice. Using educational games as a strategy for implementing recommendations among health professionals has been demonstrated to be effective in some studies; however, evidence is still scarce. The primary objective of this study is to assess the effectiveness of a teaching strategy for the implementation of CPGs using educational games (e-learning EDUCAGUIA) to improve knowledge and skills related to clinical decision-making by residents in family medicine. The primary objective will be evaluated at 1 and 6months after the intervention. The secondary objectives are to identify barriers and facilitators for the use of guidelines by residents of family medicine and to describe the educational strategies used by Spanish teaching units of family and community medicine to encourage implementation of CPGs. Methods/design: We propose a multicenter clinical trial with randomized allocation by clusters of family and community medicine teaching units in Spain. The sample size will be 394 residents (197 in each group), with the teaching units as the randomization unit and the residents comprising the analysis unit. For the intervention, both groups will receive an initial 1-h session on clinical practice guideline use and the usual dissemination strategy by e-mail. The intervention group (e-learning EDUCAGUIA) strategy will consist of educational games with hypothetical clinical scenarios in a virtual environment. The primary outcome will be the score obtained by the residents on evaluation questionnaires for each clinical practice guideline. Other included variables will be the sociodemographic and training variables of the residents and the teaching unit characteristics. The statistical analysis will consist of a descriptive analysis of variables and a baseline comparison of both groups. For the primary outcome analysis, an average score comparison of hypothetical scenario questionnaires between the EDUCAGUIA intervention group and the control group will be performed at 1 and 6months post-intervention, using 95% confidence intervals. A linear multilevel regression will be used to adjust the model. Discussion: The identification of effective teaching strategies will facilitate the incorporation of available knowledge into clinical practice that could eventually improve patient outcomes. The inclusion of information technologies as teaching tools permits greater learning autonomy and allows deeper instructor participation in the monitoring and supervision of residents. The long-term impact of this strategy is unknown; however, because it is aimed at professionals undergoing training and it addresses prevalent health problems, a small effect can be of great relevance. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02210442.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Aprendizaje por refuerzo mediante métodos de búsqueda de política en sistemas electromecánicos

[EN] The aim of this master thesis is to study the state of art of reinforment learning, particularly those based on policy search methods and to apply such techniques to a 3DOFs inverted pendulum mechanism. The controller must learn an "optimal control" policy that maximizes the reward (as a cost function) without using any model. The controller will learn on-policy or off-policy a closed loop feedback control law to set the pendulum on its marginally stable vertical position. This work is oriented to students who want to extend further work on his/her PhD. thesis in complex robot systems.[ES] El objetivo de la tesina es estudiar las técnicas de aprendizaje por refuerzo con métodos basados en búsqueda de políticas para sistemas electromecánicos, pudiendo se estas aplicarse a una plataforma de 3 DOFs de péndulo invertido. En las técnicas de aprendizaje por refuerzo el controlador debe aprender cual es la política de "control óptima" que maximiza su recompensa (definida mediante una función de coste) sin la utilización de ningún modelo. El controlador aprenderá en línea o fuera de línea una ley de control en bucle cerrado mediante experimentación hasta que consiga colocar el péndulo en su posición vertical de equilibrio inestable. La tesina está enfocada a futuros doctorandos que quieran realizar la tesis en este ámbito, con extensión a sistemas robóticos más complejos.Pastor Alcaraz, JM. (2016). Aprendizaje por refuerzo mediante métodos de búsqueda de política en sistemas electromecánicos. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/77698TFG

Symbolic analysis of brain dynamics detects negative stress

The electroencephalogram (EEG) is the most common tool used to study mental disorders. In the last years, the use of this recording for recognition of negative stress has been receiving growing attention. However, precise identification of this emotional state is still an interesting unsolved challenge. Nowadays, stress presents a high prevalence in developed countries and, moreover, its chronic condition often leads to concomitant physical and mental health problems. Recently, a measure of time series irregularity, such as quadratic sample entropy (QSEn), has been suggested as a promising single index for discerning between emotions of calm and stress. Unfortunately, this index only considers repetitiveness of similar patterns and, hence, it is unable to quantify successfully dynamics associated with the data temporal structure. With the aim of extending QSEn ability for identification of stress from the EEG signal, permutation entropy (PEn) and its modification to be amplitude-aware (AAPEn) have been analyzed in the present work. These metrics assess repetitiveness of ordinal patterns, thus causal information within each one of them and obtaining improved estimates of predictability. Results have shown that PEn and AAPEn present a discriminant power between emotional states of calm and stress similar to QSEn, i.e., around 65%. Additionally, they have also revealed complementary dynamics to those quantified by QSEn, thus suggesting a synchronized behavior between frontal and parietal counterparts from both hemispheres of the brain. More precisely, increased stress levels have resulted in activation of the left frontal and right parietal regions and, simultaneously, in relaxing of the right frontal and left parietal areas. Taking advantage of this brain behavior, a discriminant model only based on AAPEn and QSEn computed from the EEG channels P3 and P4 has reached a diagnostic accuracy greater than 80%, which improves slightly the current state of the art. Moreover, because this classification system is notably easier than others previously proposed, it could be used for continuous monitoring of negative stress, as well as for its regulation towards more positive moods in controlled environment

Sirena: Autonomous integrated system for naval recognition and exploration

Peer Reviewe

Child Head Circumference and Placental MFSD2a Expression Are Associated to the Level of MFSD2a in Maternal Blood During Pregnancy

©. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by /4.0/ This document is the Published Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in [Frontiers in Endocrinology]. To access the final edited and published work see[10.3389/fendo.2020.00038

I Jornadas de Salidas Profesionales UPCT. Ingeniería y Arquitectura

Desde el Vicerrectorado de Innovación y Empresa de la UPCT y el Centro de Orientación e Información de Empleo, se dio a conocer las múltiples posibilidades laborales que tienen las titulaciones que se imparten, de la mano de profesionales del sector, estudiantes titulados y profesores de los Centros. El acto estaba dirigido a futuros estudiantes universitarios, padres, orientadores de IES y cualquier persona interesada. Estudiantes preuniversitarios y sus familiares llenaron el salón de actos del edificio Cajamar en Murcia para conocer las titulaciones técnicas de la Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena y sus salidas profesionales de la mano de profesores, exalumnos que describieron su trayectoria laboral y empresas que emplean a egresados de la UPCT

Cardiac troponin and COVID-19 severity: Results from BIOCOVID study.

Myocardial injury is a common finding in COVID-19 strongly associated with severity. We analysed the prevalence and prognostic utility of myocardial injury, characterized by elevated cardiac troponin, in a large population of COVID-19 patients, and further evaluated separately the role of troponin T and I. This is a multicentre, retrospective observational study enrolling patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 who were hospitalized in 32 Spanish hospitals. Elevated troponin levels were defined as values above the sex-specific 99th percentile upper reference limit, as recommended by international guidelines. Thirty-day mortality was defined as endpoint. A total of 1280 COVID-19 patients were included in this study, of whom 187 (14.6%) died during the hospitalization. Using a nonspecific sex cut-off, elevated troponin levels were found in 344 patients (26.9%), increasing to 384 (30.0%) when a sex-specific cut-off was used. This prevalence was significantly higher (42.9% vs 21.9%; P  In this multicentre study, myocardial injury was a common finding in COVID-19 patients. Its prevalence increased when a sex-specific cut-off and cardiac troponin T were used. Elevated troponin was an independent predictor of 30-day mortality, irrespective of cardiac troponin assay and cut-offs to detect myocardial injury. Hence, the early measurement of cardiac troponin may be useful for risk stratification in COVID-19