Isaías García

Reducing fuel consumption in weed and pest control using robotic tractors

Method to reduce fuel consumption of robotic tractors on weed and pest control.This method reduces the emission of atmospheric pollutants.A system consumption model is implemented and validated.The system energy behavior is predicted using a 3D representation of the field.The results are demonstrated experimentally using real agricultural machines. A significant problem exists concerning contamination of the environment, especially air pollution, and the consequent climatic change. Considering that agricultural vehicles that use fossil fuels emit significant amounts of atmospheric pollutants, the main objective of this paper is to include techniques to reduce the fuel consumption in the controls system of robotic tractors used in agriculture tasks and thereby reduce the atmospheric emissions from these automated applications. To achieve this goal, the first step is to analyze fuel consumption in real time for each of the applications to be improved and to implement the consumption model of a robotic tractor for each task, considering the mechanical energy variations, the performance losses, the energy used to overcome friction and the energy required by the given task. For calculating the mechanical energy, the model considers the potential energy of the system, which is a function of the mass, elevation and gravity. The terrain elevations are estimated from GeoTIFF images of DEM data, which have a pixel size equal to 1arc second (approximately 30m at the Equator), and an accuracy of integer meters. Regarding the system mass, the possible loss of mass from applying the treatment is considered. For estimating the frictional forces, the rolling resistance coefficient of the terrain surface conditions is used.The consumption model has been validated experimentally using real agricultural vehicles and implements within the RHEA project (FP7-NMP 245986), in which the instantaneous fuel consumption was measured.This fuel reduction method is applied to three different treatments: weed control on herbaceous crops through the spraying of herbicides, weed control on fire-resistant crops with wide furrows through plowing and flame treatment, and pest control on trees through fumigation using insecticides.Finally, a fuel reduction procedure is applied to each task using the system model implemented to predict the energy requirements. This enables one to find the optimum path plan with respect to fuel consumption. These theoretical results are compared with the experimental results. In addition, the goal is to demonstrate the fuel reduction technique by performing field experiments to show that the use of this method of fuel reduction leads to an reduced fuel consumption and thus reduces atmospheric emissions from agricultural tasks. The results obtained revealed that this fuel reduction method significantly reduces the energy requirements, with the consequent reduction in fuel consumption and atmospheric pollutant emissions.

AN INTELLIGENT TUTORING SYSTEM BASED ON A DOMAIN ONTOLOGY FOR THE DESIGN OF LEAD-LAG CONTROLLERS

Abstract The modeling of domains is today a technique with growing acceptance into the software community. Domain models allow the information to be represented in the computer at higher abstraction levels than in the usual applications, so improving the human to machine and machine to machine interactions. This paper deals with the application of such modeling paradigm to the control engineering education field, showing how the knowledge of this domain can be represented in a conceptual structure called ontology which is used as the base for building an Intelligent Tutoring System, a software tool used in the emerging field of e-learning.

A Web-Based Tool for Automatic Data Collection, Curation, and Visualization of Complex Healthcare Survey Studies including Social Network Analysis

There is a great concern nowadays regarding alcohol consumption and drug abuse, especially in young people. Analyzing the social environment where these adolescents are immersed, as well as a series of measures determining the alcohol abuse risk or personal situation and perception using a number of questionnaires like AUDIT, FAS, KIDSCREEN, and others, it is possible to gain insight into the current situation of a given individual regarding his/her consumption behavior. But this analysis, in order to be achieved, requires the use of tools that can ease the process of questionnaire creation, data gathering, curation and representation, and later analysis and visualization to the user. This research presents the design and construction of a web-based platform able to facilitate each of the mentioned processes by integrating the different phases into an intuitive system with a graphical user interface that hides the complexity underlying each of the questionnaires and techniques used and presenting the results in a flexible and visual way, avoiding any manual handling of data during the process. Advantages of this approach are shown and compared to the previous situation where some of the tasks were accomplished by time consuming and error prone manipulations of data.

Ontologies as knowledge representation structures for CACSD software

In the software building practice there is today a shift toward model based software development, rooted in the ideas coming from artificial intelligence and software engineering. The so-called domain ontologies are the conceptual structures where the knowledge models are represented. This paper shows the possibilities of the use of ontologies as the main components for computer-aided control system design applications. The paper shows how control engineering knowledge can be represented into an ontology and how this representation can be used inside a software application. An example is presented based on the development of an ontology and an application for the design of lead-lag controllers with techniques from the classical control theory.

An ontology-based expert system and interactive tool for computer-aided control engineering education

This paper shows the experience in the development of an ontology-based expert system for the field of control engineering education. The particular characteristics of the knowledge in this domain and some of the conceptualization strategies used are shown. Also the prototype expert system built is described, showing how the ontology-based nature of the software supposes a benefit for people learning design techniques in the field of control engineering.

The Influence of Adolescents’ Social Networks on Alcohol Consumption: A Descriptive Study of Spanish Adolescents Using Social Network Analysis

In adolescence, friends are important due to their influence on the acquisition of habits such as alcohol consumption. However, there is a lack of studies that describe the structural context of adolescents, which would be useful to implement prevention strategies. Therefore, our research question was how adolescent friendship networks influence alcohol consumption. Our goal was to determine the structural profile of adolescent at-risk alcohol users and their relational context in the classroom. We designed a descriptive cross-sectional study based on social network analysis to analyze structural patterns. We recruited 195 students. Social-network and alcohol-consumption variables were analyzed using the UCINET and STATA programs. Some 86.67% of participants had consumed alcohol at some time in their lives and the prevalence of at-risk alcohol use was higher in females (50.48% vs. 49.52%; OR: 1.84; CI 95%: 0.99–3.43%; p = 0.036). The lower the intensity of friendship, the more contacts adolescent at-risk alcohol users had within the network, and the easier it was for them to access their peers. Consequently, we conclude that the structure of a class is a key factor that merits further research.

Techniques and Utilities to Improve the Design, Development and Debugging of Multiagent Applications with Agile Principles

Construction and use of software agents for industrial and business computer systems is a well-known subject for professional development teams. But the full potential of Agent-Oriented programming usually remains hidden to these groups and agents are usually not exploited to their full potential. This study shows the description and implementation of a number of techniques created to face the construction of agents composed of a number of behaviors that may be debugged and revised in a step-by-step fashion, both at design and at runtime. The set of techniques also include a mechanism for managing the orchestration of behaviors, what gives the development teams insight on the final behavior resulting from the combination of the individual ones. These techniques allow the application of agile software development principles to multiagent environments, making it easier to integrate these kind of software artifacts into complex projects using this paradigm. The paper also describes two practical sample use cases where these techniques are employed: the application of the techniques to the simple JADE DummyAgent and to complex rule-based agents that run behaviors based on CLIPS or JESS rules.

A Qualitative Study of Secondary School Teachers’ Perception of Social Network Analysis Metrics in the Context of Alcohol Consumption among Adolescents

Adolescence is a transitional period during which a number of changes occur. Social relationships established during this period influence adolescent behaviour and affect academic performance or alcohol consumption habits, among other issues. Teachers are very important actors in observing and guiding the evolution of their students, and should therefore have the appropriate knowledge and tools to gain insight into the complex social relationships that exist in their classes. The use of social network analysis (SNA) techniques may be helpful in order to study and monitor the evolution of these social networks. This study tries to understand how teachers perceive SNA metrics from an intuitive point of view. Using this information, useful tools could be created that allow teachers to use SNA techniques to improve their understanding of student relationships. A number of interviews with different teachers were held in secondary schools in Spain, allowing SNA concepts to be related to the everyday terms used by the teachers to characterize their students. Results from the study have an impact on questionnaire design for gathering data from students in order to perform an SNA analysis and on the design of software applications that can help teachers to understand the results of this analysis.

Distributed knowledge-based computer-aided control education environment

Abstract ONTO-Cele is a knowledge-based educational software for control engineering that solves and presents to the student the process for controller design with the root locus method. This software generates a huge amount of data by firing rules against the problem data and storing it in a knowledge base that is later used to feed a graphical user interface to interact with the student. The software is computation intensive and its execution time can be reduced by making it work in a distributed architecture, in such a way that some of the rules are executed concurrently. The paper shows a solution based on the use of a multi-agent paradigm, giving details about its implementation and presenting the results obtained.

A web-based multi-agent system approach to document engineering

Document engineering is the automatic or semiautomatic process that assists a documental department of a company in the gathering, storing, retrieving and generation of articles and documents, and also in the distribution of these documents. A web-based multi-agent system was chosen as the best approach to build such a system, providing a flexible and scalable solution that not only automates but also improves the initial manual work. Several artificial intelligence techniques were studied and developed. This paper describes the solution designed, the text document classifier, the query subsystem, the automatic document generation subsystem and the web interfaces.