Studying the evolution of libre software projects using publicly available data

Libre software projects offer abundant information about themselves in publicly available storages (source code snapshots, CVS repositories, etc), which are a good source of quantitative data about the project itself, and the software it produces. The retrieval (and partially the analysis) of all those data can be automated, following a simple methodology aimed at characterizing the evolution of the project. Since the base information is public, and the tools used are libre and readily available, other groups can easily reproduce and review the results. Since the characterization offers some insight on the details of the project, it can be used as the basis for qualitative analysis (including correlations and comparative studies). In some cases, this methodology could also be used for proprietary software (although usually losing the benefits of peer review). This approach is shown, as an example, applied to MONO, a libre software project implementing parts of the .NET framewor

Multi-agent versus multi-robot and other byzantine discussions

P. 1-3This special issue of the Journal of Physical Agents is devoted to multi-robot systems. Some might perhaps argue that the term should have been ”multi-agent systems” or ”physical multi-agent systems”, in accordance with the title of the journal. In any language, there are clusters of several words with closely similar meanings. Expressions in science and technology are no exceptions, although they are supposed to be more specific. In particular, in the world of computer science, the term ”agent” has become a buzzword and has to be combined with numerous adjectives to be correctly understood. This short introductory article will try to justify why the name was chosen for the journal, but not for this special issue, the intended scope of the journal and the contents of this issueS

ABC2 an agenda based multi-agent model for robots control and cooperation

This paper presents a model for the control of autonomous robots that allows cooperation among them. The control structure is based on a general purpose multi-agent architecture using a hybrid approach made up by two levels. One level is composed of reactive skills capable of achieving simple actions by their own. The other one uses an agenda used as an opportunistic planning mechanism to compound, activate and coordinate the basic skills. This agenda handles actions both from the internal goals of the robot or from other robots. This two level approach allows the integration of real-time response of reactive systems needed for robot low-level behavior, with a classical high level planning component that permits a goal oriented behavior. The paper describes the architecture itself, and its use in three different domains, including real robots, as well as the issues arising from its adaptation to the RoboCup simulator domai

Special issue about advances in Physical Agents

Nowadays, there are a lot of Spanish groups which are doing research in areas related with physical agents: they use agent-based technologies concepts, especially industrial applications, robotics and domotics (physical agents) and applications related to the information society, (software agents) highlighting the similarities and synergies among physical and software agents. In this special issue we will show several works from those groups, focusing on the recent advances in Physical Agents

Implementing human-acceptable navigational behavior and fuzzy controller for an autonomous robot

Robots are just starting to appear in peopled environments but in order to be accepted by humans, they should obey basic people’s social rules. In particular, they have to be able to move around without disturbing people. This means that they have to obey the social rules that manage the movement of people, for example following virtual lanes when moving through corridors, not crossing in front of moving people, etc. In this paper some of these aspects are explained, as well as the implementation of preliminaries works to implement the proposed solutions are described. So, a slight modification to the Lane-Curvature Method is presented to improve the behavior of a mobile robot when crossing people in a corridor. Other works needed to test this modifications in the robot Amelia of the Reliable Autonomous Systems Lab, as the implementation of a fuzzy controller, are also described in this pape

La Ley de Servicios de la Sociedad de la Información desde la perspectiva de la libertad de información

En este artículo intentaremos analizar la LSSI haciendo especial hincapié en los aspectos relacionados con la libertad de la información y las implicaciones para la auditoría informátic

Comparative Cognition: Animals and Robots

P. 31-32One of the major scientific contributions of CompCog has been to provide a unified system to collate research methods and results across various animal species, including humans, and also artificial creatures (robots). The systematic collection of data produced by different research groups would enhance the study of social cognition in an operationally comparative way. In the project an on-line video tagging system has been developed. Another contribution has been the use of mobile robots to test the abilities of ethologistsS

Graphical user interface in JDE robots applications

JDE is an ethology inspired architecture for designing applications both in autonomous and teleoperated robots. In this paper we will outline the JDE architecture, present some tools included in the JDE suite and show several examples of different applications built using it. Experiments carried out using this suite will be described and the obtained results discussed. We will make emphasis on the Graphical User Interfaces of the examples, like those in Fig. 1. JDE suite provides a exible way to build such interfaces and controls the execution time devoted to them in the applications. The GUIs provide visual objects to graphically command the actuators and to display the sensor data, like laser, sonar, encoders readings or images from robot cameras. Using them, JDE lets us operate and monitor different mobile robots where monitorization or tele-operation is required. The GUIs also allow the visualization of internal states and structures of the control program, and so they are a useful tool for debugging. JDE suite includes two socket servers (oculo and otos) which provide sensors readings and motor commands. These servers can be used both locally or remotely, which makes them really convenient for tele-operation and tele-supervision. They de ne a standard mes- sage protocol which eases the development of new applications and their portability across dfferent robot platform

Dynamic gridmaps: comparing building techniques

P. 5-22Mobile robots need to represent obstacles in their surroundings, even moving ones, to make right movement decisions. For higher autonomy the robot should automatically build such representation from its sensory input. This paper compares the dynamic character of several gridmap building techniques: probabilistic, fuzzy, theory of evidence and histogramic. Two criteria are defined to rank such dynamism in the representation: time to show a new obstacle and time to show a new hole. The update rules for first three such techniques hold associative property which confers them static character, inconvenient for dynamic environments. Major contribution of this paper is the introduction of two new approaches are presented to improve the perception of mobile obstacles: one uses a differential equation to update the map and another uses majority voting in a limited memory per cell. Their dynamisms are also evaluated and the results presentedS

Dynamic gridmaps: comparing building techniques

Mobile robots need to represent obstacles in their surroundings, even moving ones, to make right movement decisions. For higher autonomy the robot should automatically build such representation from its sensory input. This paper compares the dynamic character of several gridmap building techniques: probabilistic, fuzzy, theory of evidence and histogramic. Two criteria are defined to rank such dynamism in the representation: time to show a new obstacle and time to show a new hole. The update rules for first three such techniques hold associative property which confers them static character, inconvenient for dynamic environments. Major contribution of this paper is the introduction of two new approaches are presented to improve the perception of mobile obstacles: one uses a differential equation to update the map and another uses majority voting in a limited memory per cell. Their dynamisms are also evaluated and the results presented