Root rot and gummosis caused by Phytophthora spp. are considered one of the most important citrus diseases in Brazil. Symptoms infection plants associated with lesions on bark at base plant, roots, even lower branches. Inappropriately performed cultural practices, such as excessive irrigation practices that result reduced aeration soil drainage, favor disease. The objective this study was to ev...

Robotic devices are becoming a popular alternative to the traditional physical therapy as a mean to enhance functional recovery after stroke; they offer more intensive practice opportunities without increasing time spent on supervision by the treating therapist. An ideal behavior for these systems would consist in emulating real therapists by providing anticipated force feedback to the patients...

Since the early 1970s, environmental agencies have focussed most of their attention on large point sources and transport sources of air pollutants. The myriad of small sources scattered throughout suburban Australia, such as people’s heating appliances, lawnmowers and suburban restaurants, have received little attention. Perhaps this is simply because they are so dispersed or they may have been...

RedBlade is a multi-functional autonomous vehicle with two seasonal configurations which allow it to plow snow in the winter and mow grass in the summer. This vehicle participated in the Institute of Navigation’s (ION) 1 st Autonomous Snowplow Competition in January 2011 and in the 8 th ION Robotic Lawnmower Competition in June 2011. It won 2 nd place in the former. This report presents the des...

Traditionally, in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics, representations of the self have been conspicuously absent. Capabilities of systems are listed explicitly by developers during construction and choices between behavioral options are decided based on search, inference, and planning. In robotics, while knowledge of the external world has often been acquired through experience,...

We introduce a robotic wheelchair that can move with a companion collaboratively to facilitate easy communication between them. The system uses the Laser Range Sensor attached horizontally on the companion’s shoulder level for observing the companion’s position to follow him/her. The system tracks the companion’s position and orientation to move with the companion and to avoid collision with hi...

The increase of human needs has pushed the robotics sector to evolve even more. One area that begins to bloom in robotic systems are semi-autonomous or autonomous monitoring and guarding vehicles from a distance. The present platform is an example of such a system. It will be the analysis of its design, construction and operation. The operator driving the vehicle will have video feed and additi...

Land mines are noisome and indiscriminate weapons that are simple to place, but difficult to remove. On the surface, robotics is ideally suited to the tedious, challenging, and dangerous removal task. However, prior attempts at robotic clearance, while promising in the laboratory, have had limited success in the field. The demining problem is particularly challenging due to the exceptional vari...

Robotic wheelchairs should move among humans without bringing about uncomfortable situation to them. This paper tackles this issue to propose a method of navigation in indoor environments with presence of humans based on the observation of head information obtained from color and range images. Initially head regions in the color image are tracked and their orientations are estimated using AdaBo...