Ismael Etxeberria-Agiriano

Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea | UPV/EHU · Computer Languages and Systems

Traditional approaches for developing automation systems consider system itself hardly can be changed. Current challenges in automation applications include the need of autoreconfiguration in response to process changes or event triggering. In order to face these requirements, new automation methodologies are necessary. Component-based technologies...

Robot Operating System (ROS) is a middleware for connecting different components of robots. However, its use is becoming more popular in other domains such as in the automotive sector where initial prototypes have been customized and deployed in cars for demonstrating different functional purposes. Nevertheless, ROS has not been yet tested enough t...

Knowledge flow of technology is important for continuous growth and extension of science. Patent data analysis has facilitated this knowledge acquisition. The available patent information crosses borders, corresponds and interacts with new inventions to give new strength and dimension to the technology. Therefore, the patent citation information fu...

The automotive industry is applying the latest technological advances in order to provide safety and security to drivers and pedestrians. In this sense, Robot Operating System (ROS) is used as a middleware to be adapted and deployed in cars. However, ROS has not been tested enough to be used in safety environments. Therefore, this paper reports an...

In this paper a modular generic architecture for cyber-physical systems based on free open software components is presented. The architecture is implemented over inexpensive components frequently found in information and communication technology contexts. More specifically, the robot operating system middleware abstracts communication among multipl...

This paper presents a generic architecture for the design of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) based on inexpensive and easily available hardware and open source software components. . This architecture provides a framework aimed at building CPS in a robust, flexible and modular way. The presented architecture intends to ease the construction of this ki...

Until recently, Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) were largely isolated from corporate systems by means of proprietary protocols, which facilitated their protection against cyber-attacks under the principle of security through obscurity. However, the widespread adoption of the new communication technologies, such as the Internet prot...

Until recently, Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) were largely isolated from corporate systems by means of proprietary protocols, which facilitated their protection against cyber-attacks under the principle of security through obscurity. However, the widespread adoption of the new communication technologies, such as the Internet prot...

This paper presents a generic architecture for the design of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) based on inexpensive and easily available hardware and open source software components. This architecture provides a framework aimed at building CPS in a robust, flexible and modular way. The presented architecture intends to ease the construction of this kind...

Este artículo describe un framework para su uso en Sistemas Ciberfísicos (CPS), con el objetivo de facilitar la implementación de un sistema distribuido de adquisición de datos de sensores y otras mediciones, su computación y envío de órdenes a actuadores. Esta arquitectura se puede implementar en diferentes dominios de aplicación. Cada uno de los...

Hasta hace unos años, los Sistemas de Control y Automatización Industrial o IACS (Industrial Automation and Control Systems) estaban en gran medida asilados de los sistemas corporativos, lo cual facilitaba su seguridad frente a ciberataques. Sin embargo, la generalización del uso de Internet y las comunicaciones inalámbricas ha cambiado este panora...

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are well suited for both research and teaching. In this paper the architecture for the design of CPS controllers based on free hardware and software is presented. The advantages of this system include its flexibility, its modular structure facilitating concurrent development and its robustness, with easy evolution of ex...

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) algorithms face two main difficulties: the curse of dimensionality, and environment non-stationarity due to the independent learning processes carried out by the agents concurrently. In this paper we formalize and prove the convergence of a Distributed Round Robin Q-learning (D-RR-QL) algorithm for cooperat...

This paper shows experimental results on electromyography (EMG)-based system control applied to motorized orthoses. Biceps and triceps EMG signals are captured through two biometrical sensors, which are then filtered and processed by an acquisition system. Finally an output/control signal is produced and sent to the actuators, which will then perfo...

Performing reinforcement learning-based control of systems whose state space has many Undesired Terminal States (UTS) experiences severe convergence problems. We define UTS as terminal states without associated positive reward information. They appear in the training of over-constrained systems, when breaking a constraint implies that all the effor...

This work is aimed at optimizing the wind turbine rotor speed setpoint algorithm. Several intelligent adjustment strategies have been investigated in order to improve a reward function that takes into account the power captured from the wind and the turbine speed error. After different approaches including Reinforcement Learning, the best results w...

Building Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) is highly multidisciplinary as it requires mastering several disciplines such as embedded computing, control and communications theory. It therefore seems appropriate setting challenges to students in the final years of study in this area. This paper presents an educational experience developed by the students...

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are highly multidisciplinary systems that involve disciplines such as embedded computing, control theory and communication technology. Even though building this kind of systems is a challenging task, its introduction during the last courses of computer science and engineering university degrees has proven very valuable...

In the past, automation systems were hardly considered for changes during their lifetime due to their complexity. However, nowadays, their integration with other systems in time is considered as an important issue at design. In addition, automation applications demand new capabilities such as dynamic configuration or run-time reconfiguration in res...

Feedback controllers for ball screw feed drives may provide great accuracy in positioning, but have no close analytical solution to derive the desired controller. Reinforcement Learning (RL) is proposed to provide autonomous adaptation and learning of them. The RL paradigm allows different approaches, which are tested in this paper looking for the...

Continuous Action-Critic Learning Automaton (CACLA) offers an interesting alternative to traditional control approaches to feedback control problems. In this paper, we report results obtained on an inertial model of a feed drive with potentially sub-optimal parameter setting and designer decisions. Namely, we have tested different reward signals, d...

The goal of this paper is to show EMG based system control applied to motorized orthoses. Through two biometrical sensors it captures biceps and triceps EMG signals, which are then filtered and processed by an acquisition system. Finally an output/control signal is produced and sent to the actuators, which will then perform the proper movement. The...

In this paper we study the use of Reinforcement Learning Actor-Critic methods to learn the control of a ball-screw feed drive. We have tested three different actors: Q-value based, Policy Gradient and CACLA actors. We have paid special attention to the sensibility to suboptimal learning gain tuning. As a benchmark, we have used randomly-initialized...

DDS is a recent specification aimed at providing high-performance publisher/subscriber middleware solutions. Despite being a very powerful flexible technology, it may prove complex to use, especially for the inexperienced. This work provides some guidelines for connecting software components that represent a new generation of automation devices (su...

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) integrate embedded computers that control physical processes. Application domains for CPS may be found in intelligent buildings, healthcare, transportation and factory automation, among many others. Typically, they are based on low profile computing elements, such as sensors and actuators that must communicate to carry...

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) involve the interconnection of heterogeneous computing devices which are closely integrated with the physical processes under control. Often, these systems are resource-constrained and require specific features such as the ability to adapt in a timeliness and efficient fashion to dynamic environments. Also, they must s...

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are integrations of computation and physical processes. This kind of systems is being increasingly used in different domains such as healthcare, transportation, process control, manufacturing or electric power grids. CPS interact with the physical world and must operate dependably, safely, securely, efficiently and, fre...

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) form an emerging discipline that integrates embedded computers with the physical processes under control. Typically, Cyber-Physical applications include low profile computing components, such as sensors and actuators that must communicate to carry out complex tasks. They may be found in different applications domains e....

Modern companies must be able to react in a timely way to changes in production and financial information since quick responses provide advantages against competition. As a matter of example, in automated trading systems a delay of 1 ms may be worth $1M. In addition, nowadays business decisions are made on the basis of increasing volumes of informa...

This paper presents a CORBA wrapper which encapsulates a generic anthropomorphic industrial robot. Since this wrapper abstracts the communications, building applications that require remote manipulation or coordination of several devices may be easily achieved by using it. This article describes an implementation of this wrapper over a real-time op...

Industrial robots play a key role in automation applications. Frequently, vendors provide proprietary communication interfaces that are difficult to use in distributed applications. Nowadays, the adoption of new technologies is opening new possibilities at the robot controllers even when devices with low resources are used. With regards to communic...

Typically, distributed applications in automation require grouping the exchanged information in several layers that form the so-called automation pyramid. The bottom layers of this pyramid require exchanging short and frequent data with real-time constrains whereas the top layers use data of larger size with less restrictive constraints. Traditiona...

Although a few industrial automation systems have also been implemented with DDS, this standard has not yet gained much significance in factory automation applications for several reasons. One of these reasons is that since DDS is aimed at a broad range of application domains and it may be necessary to provide certain guidelines in order to use it...

El desarrollo de las TICs ha supuesto una revolución para la industria de la información. Hace dos décadas a la hora de comprar un disco, una película o un libro, todavía existía la percepción de estar pagando sobre todo por el soporte físico. Las copias analógicas suponían una pérdida de calidad y eran la opción de aquellas personas que, de todas...

This paper describes the different communication patterns followed in industrial communications and maps them into DDS (Data Distribution Service) which is a recent middleware specification. This specification follows the publisher/subscriber paradigm and it is characterized by providing an API that allows tuning the QoS (Quality of Service) of the...

This work presents several experiments that may be executed over a simple automatic water level system. More specifically, the plant consists of a water tank in which the level must remain uniform independently of the outgoing flow. The laboratory has been implemented over two different but complementary ways: (1) A virtual laboratory that was buil...

The IEC61499 is an open standard for distributed control and automation. The interface between control software and hardware or communications is achieved by means of the so-called Service Interface Function Blocks (SIFB). This paper presents the guidelines to build communication SIFBs based on the emerging OMG DDS (Data Distribution Service) middl...

Load sharing mechanisms in loosely coupled systems require some means to dynamically select the candidates for migration. The behavior of various candidate selection strategies is simulated and their performance is analyzed compared to the so-called Reliable Friend (RF) policy. The results show that the RF policy does not introduce much traffic und...

In this paper we criticize the existing contradictions in the context of bone marrow donor records in Spain. On the one hand there is the necessity to register as many patients as possible to maximize the opportunities to access a bone marrow transplant and on the other the always important economic issue of having to perform the relevant histocomp...

This paper studies the behaviour of linear dynamical systems which are excited by stochastic processes. The proposed technique is based on the decomposition of the input process in power series, which give a solution to the stochastic differential equation and provide a statistical description of the output process. This allows solving the stochast...

Enacted in July 2007, the Law on Biomedical Research (Ley de Investigación Biomédica, Ley 14/2007) provides a specific and novel regime for biobanks in Spain. This is not a specific law for biobanks, but a more general one attempting to strike the difficult balance between scientific advancement and traditional ethical values in the regulation of h...

This dissertation is focused on the study of the decentralised scheduling problem in heterogeneous distributed computer systems, with special emphasis on schedulers able to react to the system workload dynamically. For such schedulers, there is a compromise between the overheads incurred in keeping track of the information on the changing load and...

The spectrum of transmission proposed in this paper is a graphical view of the execution of a set of processes on two different nodes within a multinode distributed system. This may assist analysis of the remote execution problem for the purpose of load sharing. Keywords: Distributed Computer Systems, Load Sharing, Process Migration

A very simple algorithm is proposed for maintaining the load information in a computer network supporting load balancing. With this algorithm, each node always has the identity of an underloaded node, if such an underloaded node exists at that moment. When there is a process that cannot be locally executed due to some time constraints, migration wi...