Abstract
Autonomous mobile robots perception systems are complex multi-sensors systems. Information from different sensors, placed in different parts of the platforms, need to be related and fused into some representation of the world or robot state. For that, the knowledge of the relative pose (position and rotation) between sensors frames and the platform frame plays a critical role. The process to determine those is called extrinsic calibration. This paper addresses the development of automatic robot calibration tool for Middle Size League Robots with rotating directional cameras, such as the ISePorto team robots. The proposed solution consists on a robot navigating in a path, while acquiring visual information provided by a known target positioned in a global reference frame. This information is then combined with wheel odometry sensors, robot rotative axis encoders and gyro information within an Extend Kalman filter framework, that estimates all parameters required for the sensors angles and position determination related to the robot body frame. We evaluated our solution, by performing several trials and obtaining similar results to the previous used manual calibration procedure, but with a much less time consuming performance and also without being susceptible to human error.

Abstract
This paper describes a new methodology for lane detection in Thin-Layer Chromatography images. An approach based on the continuous wavelet transform is used to enhance the relevant lane information contained in the intensity profile obtained from image data projection. Lane detection proceeds in three phases: the first obtains a set of candidate lanes, which are validated or removed in the second phase; in the third phase, lane limits are calculated, and subtle lanes are recovered. The superior performance of the new solution was confirmed by a comparison with three other methodologies previously described in the literature.

Abstract
A high sensitivity refractive index sensor based on the combination of mechanically induced long period gratings (LPG) and fiber tapers was developed for real-time fuel quality analysis. The sensor was built in a Mach-Zehnder configuration by employing a pair of in-series gratings. In order to enhance sensor sensitivity, the region between both LPGs was tapered down from 125 to 10 mu m. The system was tested by measuring water concentration in ethanol and ethanol concentration in commercial gasoline. The tapered sensor has shown an average sensitivity of 930 nm/RIU, 18 times higher than the non-tapered version. The resolution limit of the system using spectral interrogation was estimated to be 0.06% of ethanol dissolved in gasoline. For the purpose of real-time monitoring, an interrogation system based on white light interferometry (WLI) and virtual instrumentation was employed to evaluate ethanol evaporation in water, avoiding the use of spectral analysis. The WLI system, using phase tracking techniques, enabled us to record the evolution of the ethanol concentration in water with a resolution of 0.005% (v/v).

Abstract
Newman's theorem states that we can take any public-coin communication protocol and convert it into one that uses only private randomness with only a little increase in communication complexity. We consider a reversed scenario in the context of information complexity: can we take a protocol that uses private randomness and convert it into one that only uses public randomness while preserving the information revealed to each player? We prove that the answer is yes, at least for protocols that use a bounded number of rounds. As an application, we prove new direct sum theorems through the compression of interactive communication in the bounded-round setting. Furthermore, we show that if a Reverse Newman's Theorem can be proven in full generality, then full compression of interactive communication and fully-general direct-sum theorems will result. © 2013 IEEE.

Abstract
Operations Research (OR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) disciplines have been playing major roles on the design of new intelligent systems. Recently, different contributions from both fields have been made on the models design for problems with multi-criteria. The credit scoring problem is an example of that. In this problem, one evaluates how unlikely a client will default with his payments. Client profiles are evaluated, being their results expressed in terms of an ordinal score scale (Excelent Good Fair Poor). Intelligent systems have then to take in consideration different criteria such as payment history, mortgages, wages among others in order to commit their outcome. To achieve this goal, researchers have been delving models capable to render these multiple criteria encompassed on ordinal data. The literature presents a myriad of different methods either on OR or AI fields for the multi-criteria models. However, a description of ordinal data methods on these two major disciplines and their relations has not been thoroughly conducted yet. It is key for further research to identify the developments made and the present state of the existing methods. It is also important to ascertain current achievements and what the requirements are to attain intelligent systems capable to capture relationships from data. In this chapter one will describe techniques presented for over more than five decades on OR and AI disciplines applied to multi-criteria ordinal problems.

Abstract
Map-Reduce is a programming model that has its roots in early functional programming. In addition to producing short and elegant code for problems involving lists or collections, this model has proven very useful for large-scale highly parallel data processing. In this work, we present the design and implementation of a high-level parallel construct that makes the Map-Reduce programming model available for Prolog programmers. To the best of our knowledge, there is no Map-Reduce framework native to Prolog, and so the aim of this work is to offer data processing features from which several applications can greatly benefit; the Inductive Logic Programming field, for instance, can take advantage of a Map-Reduce predicate when proving newly created rules against sets of examples. Our Map-Reduce model was comprehensively tested with different applications. Our experiments, using the Yap Prolog system, show that: (i) the model scales linearly up to 24 processors; (ii) a dynamic distributed scheduling strategy performs better than centralized or static scheduling strategies; and (iii) the performance varies significantly with the number of items being sent to each processor at a time. Overall, our Map-Reduce framework presents as a good alternative for both taking advantage of the currently available low cost multi-core architectures and developing scalable data processing applications, native to the Prolog programming language. © 2013 ACM.