Abstract
This paper aims to develop grasping and manipulation capability along with autonomous navigation and localization in a wheelchair-mounted robotic arm to serve patients. Since the human daily environment is dynamically varied, it is not possible to enable the robot to know all the objects that would be grasped. We present an approach to enable the robot to detect, grasp and manipulate unknown objects. We propose an approach to construct the local reference frame that can estimate the object pose for detecting the grasp pose of an object. The main objective of this paper is to present the grasping and manipulation approach along with a navigating and localization method that can be performed in the human daily environment. A grid map and a match algorithm is used to enable the wheelchair to localize itself using a low-power computer. The experimental results show that the robot can manipulate multiple objects and can localize itself with great accuracy.

Abstract
The importance and concern given to the autonomy and independence of elderly people and patients suffering from some kind of disability has been growing significantly in the last few decades. Intelligent wheelchairs (IW) are technologies that can increase the autonomy and independence of this kind of population and are nowadays a very active research area. This paper presents a Data Analysis System (DAS) that provides an adapted command language to an user of the IW. This command language is a set of input sequences that can be created using inputs from an input device or a combination of the inputs available in a multimodal interface. The results show that there are statistical evidences to affirm that the mean of the evaluation of the DAS is higher than the mean of the evaluation of the command language recommend by the health specialist (p value = 0.002) with a sample of 11 cerebral palsy users. This work demonstrates that it is possible to adapt an intelligent wheelchair interface to the user even when the users present heterogeneous and severe physical constraints.

Abstract
In RoboCup Middle Size league (MSL) the main referee uses assisting technology, controlled by a second referee, to support him, in particular for conveying referee decisions for robot players with the help of a wireless communication system. In this paper a vision-based system is introduced, able to interpret dynamic and static gestures of the referee, thus eliminating the need for a second one. The referee's gestures are interpreted by the system and sent directly to the Referee Box, which sends the proper commands to the robots. The system is divided into four modules: a real time hand tracking and feature extraction, a SVM (Support Vector Machine) for static hand posture identification, an HMM (Hidden Markov Model) for dynamic unistroke hand gesture recognition, and a FSM (Finite State Machine) to control the various system states transitions. The experimental results showed that the system works very reliably, being able to recognize the combination of gestures and hand postures in real-time. For the hand posture recognition, with the SVM model trained with the selected features, an accuracy of 98,2% was achieved. Also, the system has many advantages over the current implemented one, like avoiding the necessity of a second referee, working on noisy environments, working on wireless jammed situations. This system is easy to implement and train and may be an inexpensive solution.

Abstract
The sports community needs technological aid to extract accurate statistics and performance data from both practice sessions and games. To obtain such information, players must be tracked over time and their movements processed so that individual actions and team plays are simultaneously analyzed. In order to perform this analysis in an automated, formal and accurate way, the authors developed a cost conscientious processing system fed by two overhead cameras (roughly one video stream for each half-field). Players are detected by vest colors, and Fuzzy Logic is used to allow for a given color to be shared by different teams. Color models for the background and the teams are dynamic over time to make up for changes in natural lighting conditions and consequent color changes. Player tracking is further enhanced using Kalman Filtering. Some examples of the analysis, made possible by the proposed system, are shown. Results are based on videos collected during the Portuguese Handball SuperCup competition for the year 2011.

Abstract
Robotic autonomous driving is a very complex task that tries to replicate the human behavior when performing such task. This paper presents a high-level overview of an architecture applicable for small-scale vehicles in autonomous driving competitions. A special emphasis is given on the sensory and navigation sub-systems since they are the most prominent intelligent decision layers. The former is almost entirely based on computer vision, processing the raw image content from two ordinary and inexpensive "web-cams", conveying further relevant information to the later, on a real-time basis. The proposed architecture was implemented with minimal interventions to an Ackermann-like vehicle which was originally designed for recreational purposes, serving as a "proof of concept" of the developed system. Results show that a low-cost, scalable and modular system can be easily integrated on regular small-scale vehicles obtaining exciting results at a minimal cost.

Abstract
Nowadays, there are many technologies that support location systems involving intrusive and nonintrusive equipment and also varying in terms of precision, range, and cost. However, the developers some time neglect the noise introduced by these systems, which prevents these systems from reaching their full potential. Focused on this problem, in this research work a comparison study between three different filters was performed in order to reduce the noise introduced by a location system based on RFID UWB technology with an associated error of approximately 18 cm. To achieve this goal, a set of experiments was devised and executed using a miniature train moving at constant velocity in a scenario with two distinct shapes-linear and oval. Also, this train was equipped with a varying number of active tags. The obtained results proved that the Kalman Filter achieved better results when compared to the other two filters. Also, this filter increases the performance of the location system by 15% and 12% for the linear and oval paths respectively, when using one tag. For a multiple tags and oval shape similar results were obtained (11-13% of improvement).