INCAS3 » Seminars

Robotics, the new technology wave

YvonnevandenBerg — Mon, 06 May 2013 08:00:32 +0000

Robotics is expected to be the new technology wave which will get ubiquitous applications in our society. The robotics is a greatly multidisciplinary field which had applications from inspection to cure to home services. An overview of the field will be given and some specific scientific challenges presented.

About the speaker

Stefano Stramigioli received the M.Sc. with honors (cum laude) in 1992 and the Ph.D with honors (cum laude) in 1998. Between the two degrees he worked as a researcher at the University of Twente. Since 1998 he has been faculty member and he is currently full professor of Advanced Robotics and chair holder of the Control Engineering group at the University of Twente. He is an officer and Senior Member of IEEE. He has been Director of the Strategic Research Orientation of the IMPACT of the University of Twente. He has more than 150 publications including 4 books, book chapters, journal and conference contributions. He is the emeritus Editor in Chief of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine which he brought to be the journal of robotics with the highest IF (3.0), Editor in Chief of the IEEE ITSC Newsletter, he is a member of the Editorial Board of the Springer Journal of Intelligent Service Robotics and he is currently the Vice President for Member Activities of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. He has been an AdCom member for IEEE RAS. He is a member of the ESA Topical Team on Dynamics of Prehension in Micro-gravity and its application to Robotics and Prosthetics.

Source: https://www.ce.utwente.nl/smi/UT-Stefano-Personal-Site/Welcome.html

Accelerating sequential computer vision algorithms using commodity parallel hardware

YvonnevandenBerg — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:00:58 +0000

From 2004 onwards the clock frequency of CPUs has not increased significantly. Computer vision applications have an increasing demand for more processing power. The only way to get more performance is to go for parallel programming. The presentation will give an overview of development in parallel architectures and programming techniques for CPUs and Graphics Processor Units (GPUs). This approach can be applied to other domains than Computer Vision.

About the speaker

Jaap van de Loosdrecht is, or has been:

Manager Centre of Expertise in Computer Vision, NHL Hogeschool, September 1989 – Present, www.nhl.nl/computervision
Director and owner of Van de Loosdrecht Machine Vision BV, March 2001 – Present, www.vdlmv.nl
Student at Limerick Institute of Technology (Ireland), research master “Accelerating sequential machine vision algorithms using commodity parallel hardware”, September 2011 – June 2013
Co-author of Open University course “In Parallel” (Occam/Transputers, 199x)
Project manager at University Twente, TUMULT (Twente University MULTi processor); contribution to distributed OS, 1985-1987

Dr. Malcolm Wilson, Petroleum Technology Research Centre

YvonnevandenBerg — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 09:00:16 +0000

This presentation will focus on the extensive suite of research programs currently under development by the PTRC, including research in the areas of heavy oil, bitumen, conventional oil and new enabling technologies. A particular focus will be on the heavy oil reservoirs in Saskatchewan that see poor production returns (as little as 2 to 5% recovery) and the significant amount of sand that is produced with the oil in these reservoirs. This oil, water and sand production often leaves gaps within the reservoir (or “wormholes”) that make increasing production difficult. New technologies, such as microsensors (from INCAS³) offer significant potential for mapping reservoirs and increasing production. These technologies, as well as others related to solvent injection, CO2-EOR, microbial EOR, and water reduction techniques will also be discussed.

About Malcolm Wilson

Malcolm Wilson is executive director of the PTRC and president of the PI Innovation Centre, and was formerly the Director of the Office of Energy and Environment at the University of Regina. He has extensive experience in CO₂ storage development, and was involved in the initiation of the IEAGHG Weyburn-Midale CO₂ Monitoring and Storage Project, including editing the final report of phase I. Wilson was a member of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) team of scientists that were awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and was lead author on the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage. In 2008, he participated in the development of the International Performance Assessment Centre for Geologic Storage of Carbon Dioxide (IPAC-CO₂), an independent organization that addresses the growing demand for expertise in sub-surface reservoirs for the geological storage of CO₂.

About PTRC

The Petroleum Technology Research Centre in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, was founded in 1998 as a joint venture between government (both Canadian federal and Saskatchewan provincial) and the private sector to help develop the capacity within Saskatchewan to conduct enhanced oil recovery research. Canada’s oil resources are notoriously difficult-to-access, with the example of Alberta’s oil sands and Saskatchewan’s extensive heavy oil deposits along its Western border, both of which offer huge potential resources but, with present technologies, limited production. The PTRC has developed over the past 15 years an extensive enhanced oil recovery program that looks at several key areas of technology that will help improve production from these resources while also lessening environmental impacts.

Integrated Environmental Assessment: linking science, policy and practice

YvonnevandenBerg — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 14:30:21 +0000

This presentation will give a brief overview of the research of the Environmental Systems Analysis group, Wageningen University, in the field of Integrated Environmental Assessment. Some examples of the application in policy and practice will be given, with special attention for the topic of ecosystem service assessment and valuation and the relation with the PhD project by Yafei Wang on the role of ecosystem services on improving (indoor) environmental quality in the urban environment.

About the speaker

Rudolf de Groot is Associate Professor in Integrated Ecosystem Assessment & Management with the Environmental Systems Analysis Group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. He is a Landscape Ecologist by training and has worked for over 25 years on ecological-economic analysis of impact of land use and climate change on ecosystem services as a tool for sustainable planning and management.

De Groot published over 100 scientific papers, including 2 books, and was involved as Coordinating Lead author in the UN-supported Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2001-2005) www.maweb.org and the recently published study on “The Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity” (TEEB 2008-2010) www.teebweb.org

He is a member of the Editorial Board of several Journals, including “Conservation Letters” and “Regional Environmental Change” and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal on “Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services and Management” and Topic Editor of the new Elsevier Journal “Ecosystem Services: Science, Policy & Practice”

He is Global Theme leader on Ecosystem Services of the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM) and Chair of the Ecosystem Services Partnership (www.es-partnership.org), a worldwide network to enhance the science and practical application of ecosystem services assessment.

Giant resonances: Compression modes and nuclear incompressibility

YvonnevandenBerg — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 09:00:19 +0000

More than seven decades ago, the isovector giant dipole resonance (IVGDR) was discovered in g-ray absorption spectra. Its macroscopic properties such as excitation energy, width and exhaustion of the Thomas-Reiche-Kuhn sum rule were determined in the following years for stable nuclei up to uranium.

A rich spectrum of other giant resonances of different multipolarities and spin and isospin structure was expected on theoretical grounds. In the seventies, the isoscalar giant quadrupole resonance (ISGQR) was first discovered in electron scattering followed by the isoscalar giant monopole resonance (ISGMR) in inelastic a scattering.

A historical overview of the discovery of giant resonances will be given and their description in terms of macroscopic and microscopic models will be outlined. Special attention will be given to the study of the ISGMR and the isoscalar giant dipole resonance (ISGDR) because they are compression modes and their excitation energies are dependent on the compression modulus of the nucleus. The nuclear matter incompressibility and the asymmetry term, key parameters of the equation of state (EOS) of nuclear matter, have been determined through comparison of experimental results with microscopic calculations of doubly-closed shell nuclei and systematics of ISGMR in stable Sn and Cd isotopes, respectively. The importance of EOS for astrophysical phenomena (supernova explosions and neutron stars) will be discussed.

With the advent of radioactive beam facilities perspectives for giant resonance studies in the ‘near’ future will be outlined.

About the speaker

Muhsin N. Harakeh was born on December 14, 1947. He graduated from State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1974 in experimental nuclear physics. After two postdoc periods in the Netherlands and Denmark, he was appointed in 1978 assistant professor at KVI (Nuclear Physics Accelerator Institute) of University of Groningen, and associate professor in 1982. In 1985 he was appointed full professor at Free University of Amsterdam. In 1993 he returned to KVI as full professor and Deputy Director. In 1996 he was appointed Director of KVI. At the end of December 2008, he retired as Director of KVI and took a sabbatical leave of two years: one year at GANIL, Caen and another year at GSI, Darmstadt. His research interests are in nuclear structure, nuclear astrophysics, few-body physics and astroparticle physics. He has served on many programme advisory committees of international facilities, scientific advisory committees of institutes and evaluation committees of institutes, physics departments, etc., and a number of times as chairman. He was the first director of the International Research School FANTOM. He has been chairman of the Editorial Board of Nuclear Physics News International, and is associate editor of two international nuclear physics journals. He has been a member of NuPECC (Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee), a committee that sets policy decisions for the nuclear physics community in Europe, from beginning of 1996 till end of 2008 and has been chair of this committee for three years 2003-2005. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society since 1994 and member of the Academy of Europe (Academia Europaea) since 2008. He has been decorated as Officer in the order of Oranje-Nassau for his achievements. He has been chairman and member of several organising committees of international conferences, summer schools, and also member of many international advisory committees of international conferences, symposia, workshops, etc.

Short Range Radio Research in Twente

YvonnevandenBerg — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 08:00:03 +0000

One of the challenges in the design of wireless sensor networks is to realize the connectivity between the sensor nodes through low-power, ad-hoc radio links. Analyzing and designing such links form the mission of the Short Range Radio Group at the University of Twente. Mark Bentum and Arjan Meijerink will describe some of the main physical-layer issues in short range radio communications, including RF interference and the impact of the propagation channel, and outline the activities of the group in this area.

About the speakers:

Arjan Meijerink

was born in Almelo, the Netherlands, in 1976. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering (both with honours) from the University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands, in 2001 and 2005, respectively.
In 2000 he was a Trainee at Ericsson Business Mobile Networks in Enschede, developing error concealment techniques for Bluetooth voicelinks. From 2001 to 2005 he was a Research Assistant in the Telecommunication Engineering Group, carrying out his PhD research in the Coherence Multiplexing project, resulting in the thesis Coherence multiplexing for optical communication systems. From 2005 to 2007 he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the same group, working on photonic beamformers for broadband phased array receive antennas, using fully integrated, ring resonator-based optical beamforming networks. This involved the system-level design, theoretical performance analysis, and experimental prototyping of dedicated beamformers for airborne satellite reception (the SMART project) and radio astronomy (the Broadband Photonic Beamformer project).
From 2007 to 2011 he pursued a tenure track as an Assistant Professor in the Telecommunication Engineering Group. In 2009 he was a Visiting Lecturer in the Wireless Communications Research Group at the Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, U.K., and in 2010 he was a Visiting Scholar in the Wireless Devices and Systems (WiDeS) Group at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, U.S.A.
In 2011 he obtained a tenured position as an Assistant Professor in the Telecommunication Engineering Group.

Mark Bentum

was born in Smilde, The Netherlands, in 1967. He received the MSc degree in Electical Engineering (with honours) from the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands, in August 1991. In December 1995 he received his PhD degree for his thesis “Interactive Visualization of Volume Data” also from the University of Twente.
From December 1995 to June 1996 he was a research assistant at the University in the field of signal processing for mobile telecommunications and medical data processing. In June 1996 he joined the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy (ASTRON). He was in various positions at ASTRON. In 2005 he was involved in the eSMA project in Hawaii to correlate the Dutch JCMT mm-telescope with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) of Harvard University. From 2005 to 2008 he was responsible for the construction of the first software radio telescope in the world, LOFAR (Low Frequency Array).
In 2008 he became an Associate Professor in the Telecommunication Engineering Group at the University of Twente. He is now involved with research and education in mobile radio communications. His current research interests are short range radio communications, novel receiver technologies (eg. in the field of radio astronomy) and sensor networks.
He is a Member of the IEEE, NERG, KIVI and the Dutch Pattern Recognition Society and has acted as a reviewer for various conferences and journals.

Multisensory space: multidimensional representations in visual, auditory and haptic working memory

YvonnevandenBerg — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 08:00:50 +0000

Our cognition of space is inherently multimodal. We build our spatial awareness by integrating information from different modalities such as vision, hearing and haptics. To adapt and react to our surroundings, we also need to integrate spatial information with non-spatial information, like the identity of perceptual objects and the temporal order in which events take place. Such multidimensional information is maintained in working memory for further processing and action.
In my talk, I will present recent studies in haptics, auditory and visual working memory, which investigated similarities and differences across sensory modalities in the mechanisms of feature-to-location binding. Together, our results lead to an articulated scenery in which the mechanisms of feature binding depend on several factors, like sensory modality of the input (vision, hearing, haptics), attention in encoding (focused, divided), and the nature of the features to integrate (location, identity, serial order).

About the speaker:

Franco Delogu is a postdoctoral scholar at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University. His main research project is MultisensorySpace, an IEF Marie Curie Fellowship project which investigates how spatial information is encoded and represented in memory. He follows a multisensory approach including the analysis of spatial processes in vision, hearing and haptics. He is also interested in how spatial memory is associated with non-spatial dimensions like the identity or the temporal dynamics of stimuli. His other interests include: multifeature binding in auditory working memory, crossmodal interactions in perception and working memory, auditory influences in visual perception of transparency, neurophysiological correlates of sensorimotor integration in musicians.

Towards understanding Dutch automatically

YvonnevandenBerg — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 08:00:46 +0000

Automatic language analysis is a first step towards the understanding
of natural language by computer. In this presentation I show why
language analysis is required, what problems it faces, and how some of
these problems have been solved. In our work, we focus on written Dutch.

In the first part of the presentation, I will motivate why automated syntactic analysis
(which words belong together, and which relations hold among groups of words)
is required if your goal is to understand natural language by computer.
A difficult problem in automated syntactic analysis is constituted by the
inherent ambiguity of natural language. Although this ambiguity is hardly
ever a problem for humans, for computers this problem is rather fundamental.

We present Alpino: an automated syntactic analyzer. In Alpino, ambiguities
are resolved by means of a statistical model (based on Maximum-Entropy).
I will focus on some aspects of the ambiguity resolution model, with special
emphasis on the use of a set of features which characterize the likelihood
that two words are combined in a particular syntactic relationship. Such
features are based on very large automatically analysed corpora (more than
one billion words). We also present formal evaluation results.

About the speaker:

Gertjan van Noord (1961) was born in Culemborg. After obtaining a masters degree (cum laude) in General Linguistics at the university of Leiden he worked on a PhD project with the subject of ‘reversibilty in natural language processing’ at the University of Utrecht. Since 1992 he is affiliated to department of Humanities Computing at the University of Groningen. He currenly holds a professorship at this department. He is on the Executive Board of the Association of Computational Linguistics (currently vice-president elect) and is co-founder of Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands working-group. He served in a number of similar positions (theme leader for the NWO and many other chairs, editorial boards, etc).

System identification

YvonnevandenBerg — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:00:17 +0000

Mathematical models are crucial in many scientific fields. Modelling that starts from first principles can then be a good start. For operational use in real practice, however, the model should be in good accordance with experimental data. The aim of this presentation is to introduce methods for the determination or identification of static/dynamic models starting from prior system’s knowledge, given data and the model objective, and to estimate the unknown parameters. In practice, the main model objectives are prediction, experiment design and management/control. The main application fields are the agro/biotechnology, environmental sciences and food science. In particular, attention will be paid to (recursive) parameter estimation.

About the speaker:

Associate Professor (b. 1956), received his M.Sc. degree in Hydrology and Water Management from the Wageningen Agricultural University in 1984, and the Ph.D. degree for his work on set-membership identification and prediction of ill-defined systems, with application to a water quality system, from the University of Twente, The Netherlands, in 1989. From May 1989 to December 1990 he worked as a research fellow on batch process control in the Process Control Group of the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Twente. Since 1991 he is with the Systems and Control Group. His research interests include (robust) identification and control of uncertain dynamic systems, in particular environmental/ecological and biotechnical systems.

He is author of the book – System Identification: an Introduction, Springer Verlag, UK, 2011.

Identifying features of movement patterns: quantifying variability and stability characteristics

YvonnevandenBerg — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:00:01 +0000

The ability to walk is an important requirementnd unrestrained participation in society. Therefore, for people confronted with neuromuscular or orthopedic pathology or the normal process of aging, retaining or regaining walking ability is an important goal. In the presentation measures to quantify postural and gait control will be discussed from a theoretical concept of coordination dynamics. Coordination dynamics is a theoretical approach that explicates variability as an inherent property of human movement and in doing so it provides an expedient window into the coordination of system components as well as its stable and adaptive features. Diffreent methods and (multivariate) analysis for quantifying stability and variability and its consequence for clinical analysis of postural and gait control. will be discussed.

About the speaker:

After having obtained a degree in physiotherapy in Amsterdam, and having worked as a physiotherapist in the Netherlands and USA, Claudine studied Movement Science at the Free University at Amsterdam. She stayed here for a PhD on the effects of lower backpain on the coordination of walking en its relation to pain experience and behavior. She further researched identification of movement and behavioral factors accompanying several groups, like elderly, and people with orthopaedic afflictions, CVA or Parkinson’s disease. She is interested in the way people adapt motor activities like walking and balancing and the consequences it has for every day functioning. The goal of he research is the improve diagnosis and development and optimization of interventions. Since 2008 she is affiliated with the centre for movement sciences of the University of Groningen.