Abstract
Omni-directional robots are becoming more and more common in recent robotic applications. They offer improved ease of maneuverability and effectiveness at the expense of increased complexity. Frequent applications include but are not limited to robotic competitions and service robotics. The goal of this work is to find a precise dynamical model in order to predict the robot behavior. Models were found for two real world omni-directional robot configurations and their parameters estimated using a prototype that can have 3 or 4 wheels. Simulations and experimental runs are presented in order to validate the presented work.

Abstract
VITRUVsim is a numerical tool with as much as possible physics included. Inputs are the source parameters (flux, morphology, position...) and outputs are sequences of observed fringes and/or reduced visibilities. VITRUVsim is written in a portable and free language Yorick(4).

Abstract

Abstract
Three-dimensional (3 D) objects' reconstruction using just bi-dimensional (21)) images has been a major research topic in Computer Vision. However, it is still a hard problem to solve, when automation, speed and precision are required and/or the objects present complex shapes and visual properties. In this paper, we compare two Active Computer Vision methods commonly used for the 3D reconstruction of objects from image sequences, acquired with a single off-the-shelf CCD camera: Structure From Motion (SFM) and Generalized Voxel Coloring (GVC) SFM recovers the 3D shape of an object using the camera(s)'s or object's movement, while VC is a volumetric method that uses photoconsistency measures to build a 31) model for the object. Both methods considered do not impose any kind of restrictions to the relative motion involved.

Abstract
The availability of small inexpensive sensor elements enables the employment of large wired or wireless sensor networks for feeding control systems. Unfortunately, the need to transmit a large number of sensor measurements over a network negatively affects the timing parameters of the control loop. This paper presents a solution to this problem by representing sensor measurements with an approximate representation-an interpolation of sensor measurements as a function of space coordinates. A priority-based medium access control (MAC) protocol is used to select the sensor messages with high information content. Thus, the information from a large number of sensor measurements is conveyed within a few messages. This approach greatly reduces the time for obtaining a snapshot of the environment state and therefore supports the real-time requirements of feedback control loops.

Abstract
Distributed real-time system, such as factory automation systems, require that computer nodes communicate with a known and low hound on the communication delay. This can be achieved with traditional time division multiple access (TDMA). But improved flexibility and simpler upgrades are possible through the use of TDMA with slot-skipping (TDMA/SS), meaning that a slot is skipped whenever it is not used and consequently the slot after the skipped slot starts earlier. We propose a schedulahility analysis for TDMA/SS. We assume knowledge of all message streams in the system, and that each node schedules messages in its output queue according to deadline monotonic. Firstly, we present a non-exact (but fast) analysis and then, at the cost of computation time, we also present an algorithm that computes exact queuing times.