Abstract

Abstract
Real-Time For the Masses (RTFM) is a set of languages and tools being developed to facilitate embedded software development and provide highly efficient implementations geared to static verification. The RTFM-kernel is an architecture designed to provide highly efficient and predicable Stack Resource Policy based scheduling, targeting bare metal (singlecore) platforms. We contribute beyond prior work by introducing a platform independent timer abstraction that relies on existing RTFM-kernel primitives. We develop two alternative implementations for the ARM Cortex-M family of MCUs: a generic implementation, using the ARM defined SysTick- /DWT hardware; and a target specific implementation, using the match compare/free running timers. While sacrificing generality, the latter is more exible and may reduce overall overhead. Invariants for correctness are presented, and methods to static and run-time verification are discussed. Overhead is bound and characterized. In both cases the critical section from release time to dispatch is less than 2us on a 100MHz MCU. Queue and timer mechanisms are directly implemented in the RTFM-core language and can be included in system-wide scheduling analysis.

Abstract

Abstract
Roads have multiple effects on wildlife; amphibians are one of the groups more intensely affected by roadkills. Monitoring roadkills is expensive and time consuming. Automated mapping systems for detecting roadkills, based on robotic computer vision techniques, are largely necessary. Amphibians can be recognised by a set of features as shape, size, colouration, habitat and location. This species identification by using multiple features at the same time is known as "jizz". In a similar way to human vision, computer vision algorithms must incorporate a prioritisation process when analysing the objects in an image. Our main goal here was to give a numerical priority sequence of particular characteristics of roadkilled amphibians to improve the computing and learning process of algorithms. We asked hundred and five amateur and professional herpetologists to answer a simple test of five sets with ten images each of roadkilled amphibians, in order to determine which body parts or characteristics (body form, colour, and other patterns) are used to identify correctly the species. Anura was the group most easily identified when it was roadkilled and Caudata was the most difficult. The lower the taxonomic level of amphibian, the higher the difficulty of identifying them, both in Anura and Caudata. Roadkilled amphibians in general and Anura group were mostly identified by the Form, by the combination of Form and Colour, and finally by Colour. Caudata was identified mainly on Form and Colour and on Colour. Computer vision algorithms must incorporate these combinations of features, avoiding to work exclusively in one specific feature.

Abstract
Herdade da Contenda (HC), located in Moura municipality, Beja district (Alentejo province) in the south of Portugal (southwestern Iberia Peninsula), is a national hunting area with 5270ha. The development of an integrated system that aims to make the management of the natural and cultural heritage resources will be very useful for an effective management of this area. This integrated system should include the physical characterization of the territory, natural conservation, land use and land management themes, as well the cultural heritage resources. This paper presents a new tool for an integrated environmental management system of the HC, which aims to produce maps under a GIS open source environment (QGIS). The application is composed by a single button which opens a window. The window is composed by twelve menus (File, DRASTIC, Forest Fire Risk, Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), Bioclimatic Index, Cultural Heritage, Fauna and Flora, Ortofoto, Normalizes Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Digital Elevation Model (DEM), Land Use Land Cover Cover (LULC) and Help. Several inputs are requires to generate these maps, e.g. DEM, geologic information, soil map, hydraulic conductivity information, LULC map, vulnerability and economic information, NDVI. Six buttons were added to the toolbar which allows to manipulate the information in the map canvas: Zoom in, Zoom out, Pan, Print/Layout and Clear. This integrated and open source GIS environment management system was developed for the HC area, but could be easily adapted to other natural or protected area. Despite the lack of data, the methodology presented fulfills the objectives.

Abstract
Schedulability analyses, while valuable in theoretical research, cannot be used in practice to reason about the timing behaviour of a real-time system without including the overheads induced by the implementation of the scheduling algorithm. In this paper, we provide an overhead-aware schedulability analysis based on demand bound functions for two hard real-time semi-partitioned scheduling algorithms, EDFWM- and C=D. This analysis is based on a novel implementation that uses a global clock to reduce the overheads incurred due to the release jitter of migrating subtasks. The analysis is used to guide the respective off-line task assignment and splitting procedures. Finally, results of an evaluation are provided highlighting how the different algorithms perform with and without a consideration of overheads.