Suchergebnisse

Rigorous mapping of climatic patterns outstands as one of the mayor issues concerningclimatic change. This paper investigates the extent of the bioclimatic approach to develop a rigorouscartographic methodology to express climatic diversity patterns. Michoacan, Mexico was chosen torepresent a region of complex geo-ecological layout where the Nearctic and Neotropical biogeographicalrealms converge. Bioclimatic indices were computed and their spatial expression was processed in aGeographic Information System. Ground verification was performed at 93 sites across the province. Inaddition, from 2010 until 2012, more than 2000 kilometers of roads were surveyed to gather data onisobioclimate boundaries. In total, one macrobioclimate, two bioclimate s, four thermotypes, fiveombrotypes and 14 isobioclimates were distinguished in Michoacan. The Tropical pluviseasonal bioclimatewas the predominant bioclimate, covering 56.17% of the province. The Tropical xeric covers 43.82% and theTropical pluvial is practically negligible, covering 0.01% of the entire province. The relevance of theoutcome is discussed in light of its potential use for assessing likely effects of climatic change. ; The National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico (CONACYT) awarded a PhD scholarship tothe first author. Financial, institutional and logisticsupport was provided by UNAM-DGAPA (projectIN202214) as well as by SUMA, former government ofthe Province of Michoacan; and project AECID 2010-2012 ; SI

TERESA is a socially intelligent semi-autonomous telepresence system that is currently being developed as part of an FP7-STREP project funded by the European Union. The ultimate goal of the project is to deploy this system in an elderly day centre to allow elderly people to participate in social events even when they are unable to travel to the centre. In this paper, we present an overview of our progress on TERESA. We discuss the most significant scientific and technical challenges including: understanding and automatically recognizing social behaviour; defining social norms for the interaction between a telepresence robot and its users; navigating the environment while taking into account social features and constraints; and learning to estimate the social impact of the robot's actions from multiple sources of feedback. We report on our current progress on each of these challenges, as well as our plans for future work.