Classical planning is the problem of nding a sequence of actions that take an agent from an initial state to a desired goal situation, assuming deter- ministic outcomes for actions and perfect information. Satis cing planning seeks to quickly nd low-cost solutions with no guarantees of optimality. The most e ective approach for satis cing planning has proved to be heuristic search using non-admissible heuristics. In this thesis, we introduce several such heuristics that are able to take into account costs on actions, and there- fore try to minimize the more general metric of cost, rather than length, of plans, and investigate their properties and performance. In addition, we show how the problem of planning with soft goals can be compiled into a classical planning problem with costs, a setting in which cost-sensitive heuristics such as those presented here are essential. / La plani caci on cl asica es el problema que consiste en hallar una secuencia de acciones que lleven a un agente desde un estado inicial a un objetivo, asum- iendo resultados determin sticos e informaci on completa. La plani caci on \satis cing" busca encontrar una soluci on de bajo coste, sin garant as de op- timalidad. La b usqueda heur stica guiada por heur sticas no admisibles es el enfoque que ha tenido mas exito. Esta tesis presenta varias heur sticas de ese g enero que consideran costes en las acciones, y por lo tanto encuentran soluciones que minimizan el coste, en lugar de la longitud del plan. Adem as, demostramos que el problema de plani caci on con \soft goals", u objetivos opcionales, se puede reducir a un problema de plani caci on clasica con costes en las acciones, escenario en el que heur sticas sensibles a costes, tal como las aqu presentadas, son esenciales.

Cette thèse étudie l'intégration de repères phonétiques dans la reconnaissance automatique de la parole (RAP) continue à grand vocabulaire. Les repères sont des événements à temps discret indiquant la présence d’événements phonétiques dans le signal de parole. Le but est de développer des détecteurs de repères qui sont motivés par la connaissance phonétique afin de modéliser quelques événements phonétiques plus précisément. La thèse présente deux approches de détection de repères, qui utilisent l'information extraite par segments et étudie deux méthodes différentes pour intégrer les repères dans le décodage, qui sont un élagage basé sur les repères et une approche reposant sur les combinaisons pondérées. Alors que les deux approches de détection de repères présentées améliorent les performance de reconnaissance de la parole comparées à l'approche de référence, elles ne surpassent pas les prédictions phonétiques standards par trame. Ces résultats indiquant que la RAP guidée par des repères nécessite de l'information phonétique très hétérogène pour être efficace, la thèse présente une troisième méthode d'intégration conçue pour intégrer un nombre arbitraire de flux de repères hétérogènes et asynchrones dans la RAP. Les résultats indiquent que cette méthode est en effet en mesure d'améliorer le système de référence, pourvu que les repères fournissent de l'information complémentaire aux modèles acoustiques standards. / This thesis studies the integration of phonetic landmarks into standard statistical large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR). Landmarks are discrete time instances that indicate the presence of phonetic events in the speech signal. The goal is to develop landmark detectors that are motivated by phonetic knowledge in order to model selected phonetic classes more precisely than it is possible with standard acoustic models. The thesis presents two landmark detection approaches, which make use of segment-based information and studies two different methods to integrate landmarks into the decoding, which are landmark-based pruning and a weighted combination approach. While both approaches improve speech recognition performance compared to the baseline using weighted combination of landmarks and acoustic scores during decoding, they do not outperform standard frame-based phonetic predictions. Since these results indicate that landmark-driven LVCSR requires the integration of very heterogeneous information, the thesis presents a third integration framework that is designed to integrate an arbitrary number of heterogeneous and asynchronous landmark streams into LVCSR. The results indicate that this framework is indeed ale to improve the baseline system, as soon as landmarks provide complementary information to the regular acoustic models.

Medical imaging technologies such as MRI, CT, PET, etc. enable the use of higher resolution 3D digital image data for research and clinical treatment. The new technologies provide improved spatial resolution at the cost of increased data processing time. Manual identification of anatomical landmarks is still a common practice in many neuroimaging and other medical imaging applications but it is labor-intensive, subjective, and suffers from intra-/inter- rater inconsistency. This work explored one way of estimating a landmark constellation automatically, consistently, and efficiently. The proposed method demonstrated a successful application on how to effectively utilize image processing in tackling clinical challenges. It is shown that the cooperation of spatial localization using linear model prediction with evolutionary principal components and local search estimation using statistical shape models is capable of effectively extracting important landmark detection information from both morphometric relationships of landmarks and consistent intensity distribution of images. It is accurate (compared to 1.6 mm root mean squared errors of manual labeling of brain landmarks), consistent, reliable in predicting many salient midbrain point landmarks such as ac, pc, MPJ, etc. in a longitudinal, multisubject environment, and throughout large datasets with different modalities and image information such as orientation, spacing, and origin. The framework of linear model estimation method using evolutionary principal components and the idea of local search using statistical shape models are generalized to the detection task for arbitrary number of landmarks in other organs, creatures, or even any other physical objects in the world as long as the landmarks present intensity consistency and satisfy regularity in spatial organization.

Introducción: La introducción de la tomografía computarizada de haz cónico (CBCT) y su aplicación clínica a la imagen craneofacial tridimensional (3D) supone una herramienta diagnóstica esencial para el clínico. Objetivos: 1-Evaluar la reproducibilidad en la localización de puntos cefalométricos pertenecientes a tejidos duros del cráneo sobre imágenes escaneadas con un equipo CBCT 2-Comprobar si los valores de diferentes mediciones de las reconstrucciones 3D del CBCT se pueden comparar a las mediciones realizadas sobre imágenes 2D de la telerradiografía lateral de cráneo y comparar también si existen diferencias entre dos tipos diferentes de software de CBCT. 3-Diseñar un método cefalométrico 3D y determinar tres planos de referencia en cada uno de los ejes del espacio. Aplicar dicho análisis sobre una muestra de pacientes a los que se les ha realizado un CBCT. Material y Método: Se recogió una muestra global de 90 pacientes que tenían realizado un CBCT i-Cat®. 1-Para hallar la reproducibilidad, 15 CBCTs fueron seleccionados. Dos observadores localizaron 41 puntos en 3 ocasiones con el software NemoCeph 3D®. Se calcularon los Coeficientes de Correlación Intraclase (ICC) intra e interexaminador y se hallaron los errores de localización y asociados al método de medida de cada uno de los puntos. 2-Se seleccionaron 8 casos que tenían realizado además del CBCT, una telerradiografía lateral de cráneo convencional. Las telerradiografías se tomaron con el cefalostato Orthophos Plus DS® y se evaluaron con el software Dental Studio NX®, mientras que las reconstrucciones 3D (CBCT) se evaluaron con dos software diferentes, NemoCeph 3D® e InVivo5®. Un observador midió en dos ocasiones 10 medidas angulares y 3 lineales en cada uno de los registros, hallándose las correlaciones entre los tres tipos de métodos. 3-Se diseñó una cefalometría 3D y se empleó la muestra de los 90 CBCT para hallar los valores cefalométricos descriptivos de cada una de las variables creadas en cada una de las áreas de estudio: patrón facial, clase esquelética, relación maxilo-mandibular, medidas transversales, asimetrías, proporción facial y análisis dentoalveolar; mediante el cálculo de medias y desviaciones típicas, así como correlaciones de las diferentes variables entre sí y en función de la edad y del sexo. Resultados: 1-La reproducibilidad en la localización de los puntos cefalométricos para todos los ejes fue elevada (ICC ≥0.9) en las medidas intraobservador e interobservador. Analizando cada uno de los puntos por separado se encontró que el valor promedio de su desviación típica en todos los ejes fue igual a 1.0 mm. 2-No se encontraron diferencias estadísticamente significativas para ninguna de las medidas entre la telerradiografía lateral de cráneo y los CBCT, siendo los niveles de significación para todas las mediciones ICC>0.65. 3-Se ha creado un plano vertical de referencia (Na, S, Ba) así como diversos planos auxiliares y medidas lineales. Se han establecido las medias y desviaciones típicas de cada una de las variables del análisis 3D estudiadas, estableciendo así mismo diferentes correlaciones que nos sirven para la posterior creación de una base de datos. Conclusiones: 1-Se encontró elevada reproducibilidad en la localización de todos los puntos cefalométricos. Los puntos nasion, silla, basion, suturas frontocigomáticas, puntos anteriores de la rama, primer molar superior izquierdo e incisivo superior se pueden considerar como puntos altamente reproducibles para poder ser empleados en los análisis cefalométricos tridimensionales. 2-Es posible emplear la mayor parte de los valores establecidos en 2D para las mediciones 3D. Así mismo, las mediciones 3D no difieren entre NemoCeph 3D e InVivo5®, pudiéndose realizar las mediciones indistintamente en cualquiera de los dos software. 3-Se ha diseñado un método cefalométrico tridimensional dividido por áreas de interés que puede servir como punto de partida para la evaluación y medición de las características craneofaciales de todos aquellos pacientes que precisen como registro diagnóstico un CBCT. / Introduction: Cone Beam Computerized Tomography (CBCT) allows the possibility of modifying some of the diagnostic tools used in orthodontics, such as cephalometry. The aims were 1-To assess intra and inter-observer reliability in the location of anatomical landmarks belonging to hard tissues of the skull in images taken with a CBCT device, 2-To assess whether the values of different measurements taken on 3D reconstructions from CBCT are comparable with those taken on 2D images from conventional lateral cephalometric radiographs (LCR) 3-To introduce planes of reference and create a cephalometric analysis appropriated to the 3D reality. Study design: 90 patients who had a CBCT (i-Cat®) as a diagnostic register were selected. 1-To assess the reproducibility 15 CBCT were analysed. 41 landmarks were defined on the three spatial axes (X,Y,Z) and located by two observers at different times with the NemoCeph 3D® software. 2-To compare 13 measurements between LCR (Orthophos Plus DS®) and CBCT, 8 patients who had both registers were selected. Measurements were done with softwares Dental Studio NX® (LCR), NemoCeph 3D® (CBCT) e InVivo5® (CBCT). 3-To create and evaluate three spatial planes and a 3D analysis divided in different areas of interest, the 90 CBCT were selected. Results: 1- Intra- and inter-examiner reliability was high, both being ICC ≥ 0.99, with the best frequency on axis Z. 2- No statistically significant differences were found for the angular and linear measurements between the LCR and the CBCTs for any measurement being the correlation levels ICC<0.65. 3- Mean values, standard deviations and correlations of each one of the measurements defined on the 3D analysis were evaluated for all patients. Conclusions: 1-High reliability was found for all the landmarks. The most reliable ones were: Nasion, Sella, Basion, left Porion, point A, anterior nasal spine, Pogonion, Gnathion, Menton, frontozygomatic sutures, first lower molars and upper and lower incisors. 2-No statistically significant differences were found between measurements taken on the LCR and CBCT and in those taken between the two CBCTs. 3-A new 3D analysis has been created and can be applied to measure and evaluate those patients who require a CBCT as a diagnostic register.

The aim of this paper is to examine the layout of public spaces and its effect on human behavior with focus on the relation between pedestrians and cyclists movement patterns in a specific path. The study emanates from the security aspect of pedestrians and cyclists, and builds upon previous theories and empirical studies about perception, security, information design, environmental psychology and behavior. The result shows that individual behavior and movement pattern differs with age, purpose, physical- and other conditions, and layout of the surroundings. A design proposal for improved layout of a path and a node between different oncoming paths has been developed to aid the users’ needs, where a separation of walkways and bike lanes forms zones of security for the purpose of better orientation and a better flow between the users. / Syftet med arbetet är att undersöka det offentliga rummets utformning och dess påverkan på det mänskliga beteendet med fokus på att studera relationen mellan gång-och cykeltrafikanternas rörelsemönster i ett specifikt gång-och cykelstråk. Studien utgår från trygghetsaspekten mellan gång- och cykeltrafikanter och bygger på samtida forskning om trafikanternas beteenden, teorier om perception, informationsdesign, stadsplanering, miljöpsykologi, samt empiriska studier. Resultatet visar att trafikanternas beteende och rörelsemönster skiljer sig beroende på ålder, mål med färden, fysiskt tillstånd och de egna förutsättningarna, samt omgivningen. Ett gestaltningsförslag på en förbättrad utformning av ett gång-och cykelstråk och en knutpunkt mellan olika mötande stråk har tagits fram utifrån trafikanternas behov, där en separering av gång -och cykelbana bildar olika trygghetszoner som ska bidra till en bättre orientering och ett bättre flöde mellan trafikanterna.

In mobile robot applications, it is an important issue for a robot to know where it is. Accurate localization becomes crucial for navigation and map building applications because both route to follow and positions of the objects to be inserted into the map highly depend on the position of the robot in the environment. For localization, the robot uses the measurements that it takes by various devices such as laser rangefinders, sonars, odometry devices and vision. Generally these devices give the distances of the objects in the environment to the robot and proceesing these distance information, the robot finds its location in the environment. In this thesis, two vision-based robot localization algorithms are implemented. The first algorithm uses artificial landmarks as the objects around the robot and by measuring the positions of these landmarks with respect to the camera system, the robot locates itself in the environment. Locations of these landmarks are known. The second algorithm instead of using artificial landmarks, estimates its location by measuring the positions of the objects that naturally exist in the environment. These objects are treated as natural landmarks and locations of these landmarks are not known initially. A three-wheeled robot base on which a stereo camera system is mounted is used as the mobile robot unit. Processing and control tasks of the system is performed by a stationary PC. Experiments are performed on this robot system. The stereo camera system is the measurement device for this robot.

智慧型手機的用途已從語音溝通延伸轉變為多功能導向的的生活工具。目 前多數的智慧型手機均具備攝影鏡頭,而此模組更已被公認為基本的標準 配備。使用者透過手機,可以輕易且自然地拍攝感興趣的物體、景色或文 字等,並且建立屬於自己的影像資料庫。在眾多的手機軟體中,旅遊類的 程式是其中一種常見整合內容與多項感測模組的應用實例。在行動平台上, 設計一個影像辨識系統服務可以大幅地協助遊客們在旅途中去瞭解、認識 知名的地標、建築物、或別具意義的物體與文字等。 然而在行動平台上的可用資源是有限的,因此想要在行動平台上開發有效 率的影像辨識系統,是頗具挑戰性的任務。如何在準確率與計算成本之間 取得最佳的平衡點往往是行動平台上開發影像辨識技術的最重要課題。 根據上述的目標,本研究擬於行動平台上設計、開發行動影像搜尋與智慧 型文字辨識系統。具體而言,我們將在影像搜尋上整合兩個全域的特徵描 述子,並針對印刷與手寫字體去開發智慧型文字辨識系統。實驗結果顯示, 在行動影像搜尋與文字辨識的效能測試部分,前三名的辨識率皆可達到的 80%。 / The roles of smart phones have extended from simple voice communications to multi-purpose applications. Smart phone equipped with miniaturized image capturing modules are now considered standard. Users can easily take pictures of interested objects, scenes or texts, and build their own image database. Travel-type mobile app is one example that takes advantage of the array of sensors on the device. A mobile image search engine can bring much convenience to tourists when they want to retrieve information regarding specific landmarks, buildings, or other objects. However, devising an effective image recognition system for smart phone is a quite challenging task due to the complexity of image search and pattern recognition algorithms. Image recognition techniques that strike a balance between accuracy and efficiency need to be developed to cope with limited resources on mobile platforms. Toward the above goal, this thesis seeks to design effective mobile visual search and intelligent character recognition systems on mobile platforms. Specifically, we propose two global feature descriptors for efficient image search. We also develop an intelligent character recognition engine that can handle both printed and handwritten texts. Experimental results show that the accuracy reaches 80% for top-3 candidates in visual search and intelligent character recognition tasks.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:51:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 BernardoMG_DISSERT.pdf: 4591185 bytes, checksum: c7ae79de538136930afccd5734d324de (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-20 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / Having as reference the fundamentals of regional innovation systems (RIS) and the policy guidelines defined in the regionalization program implemented by the federal government, this study focus on the analysis of the so-called "Landmark Region", northern coast of Polo Costa das Dunas-RN, in order to indicate how the historical and cultural resources can support innovation in the tourism of the region, represented here by the cities of Pedra Grande and S?o Miguel do Gostoso. This is a descriptive research, using qualitative methods of data collection and analysis, configuring, still, as a case study. Data were gathered from literature, documents, semi-structured interviews and mainly by participant observation methods. The results show a great diversity of cultural resources in the region, both material and immaterial, which however are disarticulated, and need to be worked in order to be included in the tourism productive chain. The main opportunity for innovation regards the return of the Landmark to the region, an invaluable monument, with the construction of a memorial. Taking in account the relevance of the monument and the growth of the region, we conclude that the return of the Landmark to its place of origin, in conjunction with other cultural resources, could attract a flow of cultural tourists. This fact could be, as the theory suggests, characterized as market or niche innovation, as the region is dominated by the sun and sea and wind sports tourism / Tendo como refer?ncia os fundamentos dos sistemas regionais de inova??o (RIS) e nas diretrizes pol?ticas definidas no programa de regionaliza??o implantado pelo governo federal, este estudo se concentrou na an?lise da denominada "Regi?o do Marco", litoral norte do Polo Costa das Dunas-RN, a fim de indicar de que forma os recursos hist?rico-culturais podem fundamentar inova??o no turismo na regi?o, aqui representada pelos munic?pios de Pedra Grande e S?o Miguel do Gostoso. A pesquisa tem car?ter descritivo, utilizando metodologia qualitativa no levantamento e an?lise de informa??es, configurando-se, ainda, como um estudo de caso. Os dados foram levantados a partir de pesquisa bibliogr?fica, documental, entrevista semiestruturada e, principalmente, pelo m?todo de observa??o participante. Os resultados mostram uma grande diversidade de recursos culturais na regi?o, tanto materiais como imateriais, que contudo se encontram desarticulados, e precisam ser trabalhados para que possam ser inclu?dos na cadeia produtiva do turismo. A principal oportunidade de inova??o diz respeito ? volta do Marco ? regi?o, monumento de valor inestim?vel, com a constru??o de um memorial. Pela relev?ncia do monumento e pela evidencia??o da regi?o, conclu?mos que a volta do Marco ao seu local de origem, em articula??o com os demais recursos culturais, poder? atrair um fluxo de turistas culturais, caracterizando-se assim, como sugere a teoria, como inova??o de mercado ou nicho, em um regi?o dominada pelo turismo de sol e mar e de esportes ? vela

[pt] A dificuldade de locomoção de pedestres cegos é um problema complexo constituído das dificuldades de percepção e de orientação. Parte da dificuldade de percepção é identificar pontos de referência, que é necessário para que indivíduos montem uma representação do espaço, orientem-se nesse espaço e definam trajetórias para se locomover. Nessa pesquisa, foram desenvolvidos e investigados wearables para apoiar indivíduos cegos a identificar pontos de referência. O primeiro Estudo de Caso foi realizado para investigar uma maneira de evitar o masking, problema causado pela tecnologia que consiste numa sobrecarga cognitiva e no prejuízo temporário da capacidade do indivíduo de sensoriar o ambiente com seus sentidos. Para investigar o masking, foram realizados Estudos de Caso com participantes cegos e wearables propostos nessa pesquisa. A partir dos estudos, conclui-se que o wearable dessa pesquisa foi bem sucedido em evitar o masking e essa abordagem foi considerada uma alternativa válida para pesquisadores que investigam esse problema em outros contextos. No segundo Estudo de Caso, já com o masking controlado, concluiu-se que o wearable proposto nessa pesquisa possibilita aos indivíduos cegos explorar mais pontos de referência em relação à exploração exclusivamente com a bengala. Essa pesquisa contribui também com um conjunto de recomendações para projetistas de wearables para mobilidade de cegos. / [en] The difficulty in the locomotion of blind pedestrians is a complex problem that comprises the difficulties of perception and orientation. Part of the difficulty of perception is the identification of landmarks, which is necessary for the orientation process and also the acquisition of a spatial representation. The spatial representation will be used later when orientating in this space and for defining paths to move from a given place to another. In this research, wearables were investigated aiming at supporting blind persons in the task of identifying of landmarks. The first step was to investigate a way to avoid masking, a problem caused by technology that is characterized by a cognitive overload and the harmful interference of technology in the wearer’s capabilities of sensing the environment through their senses. In order to investigate masking, a Case Study was designed and carried out with a group of blind subjects. As a result, the wearable succeeded in avoiding masking. The approach used is considered useful as an alternative for researchers that investigate this problem in other contexts. Besides avoiding the masking, the proposed wearable enabled blind individuals explore more landmarks when compared to the approach of exploring with a white cane. Furthermore, this research also contributes with a set of recommendations for designers of wearables for blind mobility.

Generally, the issue of valuation of listed buildings has been long discussed, probably because here more than anywhere else depends on perspective on the price of real estate, the purpose for which the price is to be determined and the type of price or value to be determined or set. The goal of this thesis is to make an appraisement of a specific non-standard realty, using both the market value method and the determined value method. The realties of interest are: The Lukavec chateau, the memorial of Antonín Sova and the chateau park including utilities and landscaping. The first part of the thesis is mainly focused on the problematics and methodology of calculating the market value based on collation to the comparable realties. The theoretical part of the thesis is analyzing the problematics of appraisement of the heritage listed realties, non-commercial realties, non-construction lands, permanently overgrown lands, brownfields, cemetery realties and the genius loci phenomenon.