Aquiles Medeiros Filgueira Burlamaqui

HYPERPRESENCE-an application environment for control of multi-user agents in mixed reality spaces

The HYPERPRESENCE system proposed in this work is a mix between hardware and software platforms developed for control of multi-user agents in a mixed reality environment. The hardware is basically composed of robot systems that manipulate objects and move in a closed, real environment and a video camera, imaging system. The environment can be any place that provides or needs interactions with virtual environments for showing results or else to allow manipulation in it via a virtual reality interface. The software part is composed of three main systems: an acquisition module for position control, a tower (hardware) communication module for manipulating the robots and a multi user VRML server for managing virtual spaces and to provide synchronism between the real places and the virtual ones. We present the design and implementation solution adopted for the HYPERPRESENCE architecture. We analyze problems with communication protocols, precision of positioning, how to relate physical and virtual objects and show our solutions for these problems.

Method for Reading Sensors and Controlling Actuators Using Audio Interfaces of Mobile Devices

This article presents a novel closed loop control architecture based on audio channels of several types of computing devices, such as mobile phones and tablet computers, but not restricted to them. The communication is based on an audio interface that relies on the exchange of audio tones, allowing sensors to be read and actuators to be controlled. As an application example, the presented technique is used to build a low cost mobile robot, but the system can also be used in a variety of mechatronics applications and sensor networks, where smartphones are the basic building blocks.

Educ-AR: A tool for assist the creation of augmented reality content for education

The article presents a software tool that provides an easy way to creates augmented reality presentations. This tool allows the user to authoring his own presentation without a help of a programmer. The tool is supported by a web portal that provides the account creation and a database to storage the presentations created by the users.

RoboEduc: A pedagogical tool to support educational robotics

In this paper, we reflect upon the employment of educational robotics as a tool to help the learning process inside elementary school. The primary objective is to introduce an environment for educational robotics, creating a basis for adoption of new educational methods. Based on such technological tools, we came out with a motivating and innovative instrument in the process of teaching and learning that can be used as a tool against digital exclusion. We show experiments and results of a digital inclusion project running at the periphery of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The main objective is to lead children to learn about and accept the new technological resources, in this case computers and robots. We report the learning process of digitally excluded children as well as the benefits of educational robotics in the intellectual formation of marginalized children in Brazilian society. We verify, in practice, that robots and computer can be combined as a very nice tool to enrich and stimulate the teaching work, optimizing the pedagogical practice. This is a social initiative that certainly benefits present and future generations.

Interperception on Shared Virtual Environments

In this work we introduces the concept of interdimensional virtual environments and proposes to it creation an architecture based on the client-server model. Our architecture allows the users with different resources sharing the same environment in a transparent way, same that users are connected by a different graphical interfaces. This interdimensionality provides by the system is possible thanks to the use of a component in the serving side that if put in charge to carry through, when necessary, the transformation of the messages of a dimension for another one, removing or adding indispensable information to the different customers of the system

Sharing virtual acoustic spaces over interactive TV programs - presenting "Virtual Cheering" application

The work presents a proposal for a new class of interactive television programs, which we call immersive television programs. This class of programs promotes group creation to engage in common and cooperative activities in digital television platforms supporting acoustic space sharing. The paper also includes one example of an entertainment program named Virtual Cheering.

Visual identification of medicine boxes using features matching

This paper proposes to use visual features matching in the identification of medicine boxes for visually impaired people. We use a camera device, available in several popular devices such as computers, televisions and cell phones, to identify relevant features on medicine box. After box detection, audio files are played to inform about dosage, indications and contraindications of the medication. Making use of this vision system can help many visually impaired people to take the right medicine at the time indicated in advance by the doctor. Experiments with 15 blindfolded volunteers demonstrated that 93% of them believes that the system was useful or very useful to identify the medicine boxes.

T-SCORM: Uma Extensão do Padrão SCORM para Apoiar o Projeto de Conteúdos Educacionais para t-Learning

A educacao a distancia tem ganhado significativa atencao tanto na academia quanto nas iniciativas governamentais. Neste contexto, cresce tambem a preocupacao com a avaliacao da qualidade dos diversos aspectos destes cursos mediados pelas tecnologias da informacao e comunicacao. Apesar de muitos trabalhos discutirem diversos aspectos da avaliacao em Ead, a literatura carece de relatos de experiencia que, especialmente, abordem os cursos tecnicos a distancia que possuem especificidades relevantes. Assim, este trabalho relata uma experiencia onde se avalia e adapta uma das propostas existentes na literatura de avaliacao mediada por foruns, ao contexto dos cursos tecnicos a distancia, constituindo-se esta adaptacao e sua discussao as principais contribuicoes do mesmo.Em Educacao a Distância mediada por meio de Ambientes Virtuais de Aprendizagem, foruns de discussao sao um instrumento importante e amplamente utilizado na articulacao de debates e discussoes entre os atores envolvidos no processo de ensino e aprendizagem. Com a ampla utilizacao dos foruns muitas mensagens sao trocadas e isso, por vezes, excede a capacidade de monitoramento por parte dos professores e tutores. O presente trabalho apresenta a concepcao de um classificador de mensagens de foruns que classifica as mensagens em positivas ou negativas, a fim de identificar mensagens que necessitam de maior atencao. Este trabalho aplica conceitos de mineracao de textos, com o algoritmo SVM obtendo taxas de acerto satisfatorias.Este artigo apresenta o framework Contagious, cujo proposito e estabelecer diretrizes que norteiem a construcao de redes sociais online orientadas a Difusao de Inovacoes. Compreendo-se o fenomeno das redes sociais online como consequencia natural do carater social do ser humano, vislumbrou-se esse meio tecnologico de comunicacao e interacao social como potencial ferramenta para a extensao de praticas educativas, com vistas a formacao do carater integral do cidadao. Para isso, foi adotada a teoria de Difusao de Inovacoes, propria das ciencias sociais. As contribuicoes deste trabalho, portanto, compreendem duas vertentes: a) o mapeamento de principios de uma teoria social na forma de recursos computacionais e; b) um enfoque orientado a educacao sobre as redes sociais online.A proposta do trabalho consiste em desenvolver um sistema para ser usado no celular como ferramenta de auxilio para alfabetizacao, utilizando-se de imagens e sons como forma de facilitar o aprendizado. Como metodo de desenvolvimento utiliza-se o processo P@PSEduc (Processo Agil para Software Educativo) e a ferramenta JME (Java Micro Edition).O crescente uso e difusao de tecnologias Web, a ubiquidade de ferramentas educacionais vem proporcionado verdadeiras revolucoes nos ambientes de ensino. Atualmente, sabe-se que nao mais se deve tratar alunos de forma homogenea, como se assim os fossem. Em face disso, este artigo apresenta um sistema adaptativo de apoio a aprendizagem colaborativa, cujo tema e a construcao e representacao do conhecimento por meio de mapas mentais multimidia. Tal sistema, baseia-se na Teoria da Carga Cognitiva, cuja preocupacao primaria e a facilidade com a qual as informacoes sao processadas pelos individuos.

NPi-Cluster: A Low Power Energy-Proportional Computing Cluster Architecture

This paper presents the NPi-Cluster, an energy proportional computing cluster that automatically powers ON or OFF the number of running machines according to the actual processing demand. A theoretical model is proposed, discussed, and implemented on a cluster composed of Raspberry Pi computer boards designed and built in order to test the proposed system architecture. Experimental results show adequate performance of the proposed platform when compared with other web servers running on traditional server architectures, but with considerably less power consumption. The power consumption of the entire cluster is about 14 W when running at maximum performance. In this situation, the system is able to handle more than 450 simultaneous requests, with about 1000 transactions per second, making it possible to be used as a server capable of handling real web workloads with acceptable quality of service. When the requests demand is reduced to a minimum, the power consumption is dynamically reduced until less than 2 W. Additionally, the proposed cluster architecture also provides high availability by reducing single points of failure on the system.

On Monocular Visual Odometry for Indoor Ground Vehicles

In this work, a Visual Odometry system estimating camera position and orientation based solely on image meausurements is proposed. The system is built on the fundamentals of Structure from Motion theory, requiring only a single calibrated camera to estimate positional information. Experiments were conducted on publicly available datasets with associated Ground Truth, in which a consumer grade web camera was employed as the systems sensor on realistic indoor scenarios. The proposed system resulted in absolute localization error rates ranging from 2.10% to 3.39% of the travelled distance at processing rates of up to 5Hz, performing better than wheel odometry in certain situations and being equip arable to similar approaches present in the robotics literature.