Juan Carlos López

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Castilla-La Mancha

Camera Pose Estimation (CPE) is vital in augmented reality, virtual reality, and assisted living applications (AAL). While many software solutions exist, hardware-based solutions are more complex due to resource constraints (like memory, timing, etc.) This work uses a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based hardware accelerator to detect square...

The global trend of increasing life expectancy introduces new challenges with far-reaching implications. Among these, the risk of falls among older adults is particularly significant, affecting individual health and the quality of life, and placing an additional burden on healthcare systems. Existing fall detection systems often have limitations, i...

In image processing, a connected components algorithm is a method used to identify and label the different objects or regions present in a digital image. This algorithm can be useful for a variety of image processing tasks, such as object recognition, image segmentation, and feature extraction. This work presents the implementation of a single-pass...

The automation of insect pest control activities implies the use of classifiers to monitor the temporal and spatial evolution of the population using computer vision algorithms. In this regard, the popularisation of supervised learning methods represents a breakthrough in this field. However, their claimed effectiveness is reduced regarding working...

Energy neutrality in an energy harvesting Internet of Things (IoT) device ensures continuous operation of the device by trading performance with energy consumption, and a way to achieve this is by adopting a task-based model. In this model, the device embeds several alternative tasks with different ratio energy-cost/quality and a scheduler that, de...

As the term smart begins to move away from inflationary usage, mostly related to communication capabilities, and towards a more effective dimension, there is room for research into the systematic process of transforming the things that were not originally designed to be smart. Such a process is referred to as smartification, which evokes the digita...

Lossy compression solutions have grown up during the last decades because of the increment of the data rate in the new-generation hyperspectral sensors, however linear compression techniques include useless information on regions of little interest for the final application and at the same time scarce information on areas of interest. In this paper...

The increasing trend in the percentage of older people among the European population, and in the number of older people living alone, poses a number of challenges, some of which can be addressed from digital solutions monitoring and supporting comfort, physical activity and health. Nowadays, research efforts seek to ensure, through technology-based...

Hyperspectral imaging opens up new opportunities for masked face recognition via discrimination of the spectral information obtained by hyperspectral sensors. In this work, we present a novel algorithm to extract facial spectral-features from different regions of interests by performing computer vision techniques over the hyperspectral images, part...

Overnight postural changes and surveillance are two important issues to provide assistance to older individuals particularly when there is reduced mobility and cognitive decline. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of a cost-effective monitoring system based on force sensing resistors, to provide assistance to caregivers and facilitate the p...

Despite the technology advances in the field of virtual assistant and activity monitoring devices, older adults are still reluctant to embrace this technology, specially when it comes to employ it to manage health-related issues. This paper presents a work in progress for a virtual caregiver, based on the Internet of Thing paradigm, that employs di...

The main objective of this work is to determine whether social networks can be used to improve self-management skills in people with Intellectual or Developmental Disability (IDD) given the high rate of acceptance of such tools among them. The proposed methodology applies an employment-based intervention to evaluate whether social network services...

The active and healthy ageing paradigm is gaining momentum as technology is turning the futuristic scenarios envisioning smart homes into reality. An ecosystem of services and devices devoted to risk prevention, prediction and early intervention will support older people in extending the time they live independently. Despite the similarities found...

COVID-19 has become a global pandemic during 2020 due to its high contagiousness and the high mobility of the world’s population today. In just one year, this virus has caused millions of infections and deaths worldwide. These numbers will continue to grow until the population becomes immune to the virus thanks to an effective vaccine. Until this i...

Motion estimation is the cornerstone of main video compression standards, which are based on the reduction of the temporal redundancy between consecutive frames. Although the mechanism is simple, the best method, Full Search, uses a brute-force approach which is not suited for real-time applications. This work introduces a high performance architec...

High-Level Synthesis (HLS) tools help engineers to deal with the complexity of building heterogeneous embedded systems that make it use of reconfigurable technology. Also, HLS opens up a way for introducing, into the development flow of custom hardware components, techniques well known in the software industry such as Test-Driven Development (TDD)....

High-Level Synthesis (HLS) tools provide facilities for the development of specialized hardware accelerators (HWacc). However, the verification stage is still the longest phase in the development life-cycle. Unlike in the software industry, HLS tools lack testing frameworks that could cover the whole design flow, especially the on-board verificatio...

The fields of robotics and game consoles offer an interesting and broad range of lab platforms with appropriate characteristics for teaching Computer Architecture concepts. This work analyzes the impact of one approach based on game consoles and another one based on robotics from a triple dimension: student motivation, acquired knowledge, and perce...

To make sustainable large IoT deployments in smart cities, a promising approach is to develop a new generation of solar energy harvesting IoT devices based on the concept of energy neutrality. Key to this concept are the models for the forecast of energy production, which provide input to the energy-neutral schedulers governing the activities of th...

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm poses a great variety of application domains where million of devices work uninterruptedly to improve some aspect of our lives. To support the continuous execution of the applications working on the devices, energy harvesting systems enable to extract the energy found naturally in the environment (for instance...

High-Level Synthesis (HLS) allows engineers to build complex FPGA-based solutions by reducing the time-to-market; contrarily, HLS introduces some problems such as lost of control of the generated RTL and the signal observability during the development process. This fact demands an on-board debugging ecosystem so as to make HLS technology a successf...

People suffering from rheumatoid arthritis are normally prescribed with physical exercises. The realization of these exercise routines should be supervised to prevent wrongly adopted postures or bad movements that end up harming the affected articulations. The motivational component associated with a supervised session is also important. On the con...

High-Level Synthesis (HLS) provides a simple way to implement complex applications using Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices. Unfortunately, this technology introduces non-negligible problems related to verification: speed, accuracy and behavior mismatch between co-simulation and implementation. This paper presents RC-Unity, a heterogeneou...

Real-time video image processing requires video compression techniques. Efficient Motion Estimation (ME) and Motion Compensation (MC) algorithms and their successful hardware implementation are the key to video compression. Work on developing and implementing efficient ME and MC algorithms for multi-camera systems is ongoing. The low power consumpt...

This poster shows a mind-map approach to the State-of -the-art search into multi-camera motion tracking. It has been found the tracking systems mainly focused on people and vehicle tracking in both indoor and outdoor conditions, tracking under occlusion, tracking for surveillance, single and multi-view tracking, etc. The review search also found us...

Resumen-La fase de verificación es una de las fases más importantes dentro del ciclo de vida de un pro-ducto, debido a que de ella depende en gran medida el time-to-market del mismo. En losúltimoslos´losúltimos años el flujo de diseño hardware para sistemas basados en FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays) ha evolucionado notablemente, permitiendo...

This article presents an Internet of Things architecture for Smart Homes that specifically targets service composition and reconfiguration as enablers for the actuation and smart behavior capabilities. To this end, the main challenge that has to be addressed is the support to a seamless integration, composition, and reconfiguration of Internet of T...

High-Level Synthesis (HLS) allows Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) developers to easily implement complex applications in silicon, addressing the ever-growing size and complexity of modern embedded reconfigurable systems. Unfortunately, in spite of these advancements, new non-negligible verification problems arise. For instance, the co-simulati...

Rankings are a valuable element for city-comparison purposes since results withdrawn from these comparisons can, eventually, support the evaluation of strategic decisions taken by cities. Smart city rankings are not an exception and, as they draw more attention, the number of them exponentially increases. This paper evaluates the appropriateness of...

This research is intended to evaluate the suitability of a common-sense-based approach for providing causal explanations to power quality disturbances and, more specifically, to voltage-sage events, with the aim of improving the security and reliability of the electrical grid. Since voltage sags are one of the most common power-quality disturbance...

With the growing amount of multimedial content over the internet and broadcast systems, mechanisms for efficient information organization, manipulation and transmission are becoming indispensable. Optimization of the multimedia search and retrieval processes is nowadays an important area of development due to the difficulty to browse, filter and ma...

Outdoor IoT applications usually exploit energy harvesting systems to guarantee virtually uninterrupted operations. However, the use of energy harvesting poses issues concerning the optimization of the utility of the application while guaranteeing energy neutrality of the devices. In this context, we propose a new dynamic programming algorithm for...

This paper presents an architecture for smart buildings based on common-sense reasoning using the IndoorGML standard. The main objective is the construction of a knowledge model that allows inferring information that is not explicitly defined in that model. The main challenges addressed are: 1) the modeling of the concepts presented by the standard...

This paper proposes and analyzes the use of the Arduino Zero board as the lab platform for the Computer Structure course that constitutes an essential part of Computer Science studies. The understanding of the main functional blocks of a computer, addressing the main concepts included in the course syllabus, is reinforced by mean of the hands-on ex...

This work presents a novel approach for automatic epilepsy seizure detection based on EEG analysis that exploits the underlying non-linear nature of EEG data. In this paper, two main contributions are presented and validated: the use of non-linear classifiers through the so-called kernel trick and the proposal of a Bag-of-Words model for extracting...

The design of multimedia systems is becoming a more and more challenging task due to the combination of growing functionalities and strict performance requirements along with reduced time-to-market. In this context, the OpenMAX initiative defines a standard interface for the development and interconnection of HW and SW multimedia components. Howeve...

Diabetes is a chronic disease that requires continuous medical care and patient self-monitoring processes. The control of the glucose level in blood is a task that the patient needs to perform to prevent hypoglycemia episodes. Early detection of hypoglycemia is a very important element for preventing multi-organ failure. The incorporation of other...

Smart environments, enabled by the Internet of Thing (IoT) paradigm, advocate for more intelligent and interconnected systems, electronic devices, tools, and appliances. While most efforts are nowadays addressed to provide connectivity or smartness to IoT devices, unfortunately, few have realised the importance of supporting automatic service compo...

Safety on public transport is a major concern for the relevant authorities. We address this issue by proposing an automated surveillance platform which combines data from video, infrared and pressure sensors. Data homogenisation and integration is achieved by a distributed architecture based on communication middleware that resolves interconnection...

Partial Reconfiguration is one of the most attractive features of FPGAs. This feature provides new computing possibilities such as the reduction of the total area required in a FPGA, by means of functioning overlapping, or the modification of the design after its deployment, without the need of configuring completely the system and, therefore, stop...

This paper presents a method for rational behaviour recognition that combines vision-based pose estimation with knowledge modeling and reasoning. The proposed method consists of two stages. First, RGB-D images are used in the estimation of the body postures. Then, estimated actions are evaluated to verify that they make sense. This method requires...

Monitoring smart cities is a key challenge due the variety of data streams generated from different process (traffic, human dynamics, pollution, energy supply, water supply, etc.). All these streams show us what is happening and as to where and when in the city. The purpose of this paper was to apply different types of glyphs for showing real-time...

In this paper a SystemC-based framework for run-time partial reconfiguration modeling and simulation is introduced which allows to perform early design space exploration for dynamically reconfigurable systems. Besides, a middleware to extend the capability of TLM introducing a semantic to interconnect components described at different abstraction l...

FPGAs have shown several characteristics that make them very attractive for high performance computing (HPC). The impressive speed-up factors that they are able to achieve, the reduced power consumption, and the easiness and flexibility of the design process with fast iterations between consecutive versions are examples of benefits obtained with th...

An indirect proxy is the name of a special kind of component wrapper that is defined within the framework of a hybrid (hardware and software) object-oriented middleware for Systems-on-Chips (SoCs). Which makes indirect proxies so attractive for networked embedded designs is that they do not need to know the physical address of the destination in ad...

Semantic trees are a particular type of trees widely used in the representation of the concepts and their relations. Therefore, a computational model of the reality can be built and processed by Artificial Intelligence algorithms to infer knowledge, make decisions, etc. In this work, the design of a hardware component to accelerate reasoning operat...

Cognitive and understanding capabilities are the mechanisms that enable humans to succeed in identifying and recognizing the actions being carried in a certain context. In particular, the role of the language has been identified as crucial in the development of human reasoning. Given its importance, many have been the attempts to replicate these ca...

Earth observation hyperspectral imaging instruments capture and collect hundreds of different wavelength data corresponding to the same surface. As a result, tons of information must be stored, processed, and transmitted to ground by means of a combination of time-consuming processes. However, one of the requirements of paramount importance when de...

Extending the services offered by the city requires, most of the times, reimplementation efforts. This paper presents our on-going efforts to develop a platform for the Smart City that focuses in providing the appropriate solutions for an easy integration of new services and devices. This endeavor is accomplished by abstracting communication issues...

This paper introduces a proposal for an indoor localisation and orientation distributed service built on a dynamically reconfigurable platform. The integration of cameras in consumer electronic devices such as mobile phones, tablets, etc. allows the adoption of new methods based on video streaming analysis by a mobile device video camera that can e...

This paper describes the application of language translation technologies for generating bus information in Spanish Sign Language (LSE: Lengua de Signos Española). In this work, two main systems have been developed: the first for translating text messages from information panels and the second for translating spoken Spanish into natural conversatio...

Abstract: Time derivative estimation of signals plays a very important role in several fields, such as signal processing and control engineering, just to name a few of them. For that purpose, a non-asymptotic algebraic procedure for the approximate estimation of the system states is used in this work. The method is based on results from differentia...

In FPGA-based control system design, partial reconfiguration is especially well suited to implement preemptive systems. In real-time systems, the deadline for critical task can compel the preemption of noncritical one. Besides, an asynchronous event can demand immediate attention and, then, force launching a reconfiguration process for high-priorit...

A methodology for developing an advanced communications system for the Deaf in a new domain is presented in this paper. This methodology is a user-centred design approach consisting of four main steps: requirement analysis, parallel corpus generation, technology adaptation to the new domain, and finally, system evaluation. During the requirement an...

Sensor networks are becoming an essential part of ubiquitous systems and applications. However, there are no well-defined protocols or mechanisms to access the sensor network from the enterprise information system. We consider this issue as a heterogeneous network interconnection problem, and as a result, the same concepts may be applied. Specifica...

The city is destined to become an environment in which the role of technology and innovation will take on ever more importance to improve quality of life, the efficient management of resources and, subsequently, sustainability. The new cities will improve their more common activities while allowing the appearance of new services increasingly focuse...

This paper describes a support platform for integrating services and technologies, most of them specifically devoted to wildfire fighting. The platform presented summarizes a three years work project, funded by the Prometeo research project, involving a consortium of fifteen companies and several research centers and universities. Sensors, control...

Several factors affect the productivity and efficiency of an industrial facility. We made a revision of some of these factors, and we noticed that not all of them happen close to the workplace. There are also some of them that take place outside the industrial facilities having an impact in productivity and efficiency, and therefore they should als...

In FPGA-based control system design, partial reconfiguration is especially well-suited to implement preemptive systems. In real-time systems the deadline for critical task can compel the preemption of non-critical one. Besides, an asynchronous event can demand immediate attention and, then, force launching a reconfiguration process for high-priorit...

The design of multimedia systems is becoming more and more challenging due to their growing complexity and strict performance requirements. New implementations fulfilling new market requirements must be included in increasingly complex multimedia systems. In this context, the OpenMAX standard provides abstraction facilities needed in order to desig...

FPGA-based embedded systems are gaining relevance for implementing a wide range of applications. Part of their success is due to their balanced compromise between performance and flexibility, but also because of their capability for exploiting the dynamic reconfiguration. However, the costly reconfiguration process and the lack of management suppor...

Partial Reconfiguration is one of the most attractive features of FPGAs. This feature provides new computing possibilities, for instance we can change a part of the initial functionality after its deployment, where a complete configuration is not needed, and the total area required is reduced. However, the design of partially reconfigurable systems...

Software development for smart cities bring into light new concerns, such as how to deal with scalability, heterogeneity (sensors, actuators, high performance computing devices, etc.), geolocation information or privacy issues, among some. Traditional approaches to distributed systems fail to address these challenges, because they were mainly devot...

One of the limiting factors that have prevented a widely dissemination of the reconfigurable technology is the absence of an appropriate model for certain target applications capable of offering a reliable control. Moreover, the lack of flexible and easy-to-use scheduling and management systems are also relevant drawbacks to be considered. Under st...

Multimedia embedded systems usually expose a chain-based architecture where each functional stage of the media algorithm is encapsulated in a media core in charge of processing the stream of data. Therefore, in this kind of systems, the interconnection mechanisms are key to cope with the enormous bandwidth demands. In this paper, we present a decen...

This paper describes a new version of a speech into sign language translation system with new tools and characteristics for increasing its adaptability to a new task or a new semantic domain. This system is made up of a speech recognizer (for decoding the spoken utterance into a word sequence), a natural language translator (for converting a word s...

When we talk about smart cities, one of the key pillars is a smart management of traffic and transport infrastructure. In this paper, we propose an architecture to support highway monitoring in smart cities. Starting from a project to reduce cost of maintenance tasks in highways, we develop a comprehensive architecture for effectively monitor and m...

In last decade, indoor GPS-like navigation has devoted attention from research community since is a key point for advanced services. Assistance, direct marketing, localization, etc. are examples of services that an appropiate navigation infrastructure could enable. With the evolution of cameras integrated in consumer electronics devices (mobile pho...

This paper presents a methodology for adapting an advanced communication system for deaf people in a new domain. This methodology is a user-centered design approach consisting of four main steps: requirement analysis, parallel corpus generation, technology adaptation to the new domain, and finally, system evaluation. In this paper, the new consider...

This work presents a recognition system for epileptiform abnormalities based on electroencephalogram (EEG) analysis. The proposed system combines a Support Vector Machine classifier automatically trained by an implementation of machine learning approach known as Bag of Words.

Sensor networks are becoming an essential part of smart environments. However, most previous systems rely on ad-hoc mechanisms to access the sensor network from the enterprise information system. We propose the use of object oriented middlewares to provide a Virtual Private Network in which all involved elements (sensor nodes or computer applicatio...

A solid and versatile communications platform is very important in modern Ambient Intelligence (AmI) applications, which usually require the transmission of large amounts of multimedia information over a highly heterogeneous network. This article focuses on the concept of Process-in-Network (PIN), which is defined as the possibility that the networ...

Enabling Ambient Intelligence systems to understand the activities that are taking place in a supervised context is a rather complicated task. Moreover, this task cannot be successfully addressed while overlooking the mechanisms (common-sense knowledge and reasoning) that entitle us, as humans beings, to successfully undertake it. This work is base...

In multimedia embedded systems, the performance of the interconnection system is key to meet the system requirements due to the hard timing constraints and large amount of data they handle. Since buses are a widely used communication infrastructure in SoCs, this paper describes a Hw/Sw multimedia platform that offers efficient, optimized and dyna...

Partial reconfiguration capabilities must be exploited to obtain the maximum benefits from dynamically reconfigurable FPGAs. Partial reconfiguration process management still faces a set of open problems that have thus far made it impossible to take full advantage of partial and dynamic reconfiguration. The work presented in this article proposes a...

En los sistemas multimedia empotrados,el rendimiento del sistema de interconexión es clave para alcanzar los requisitos del sistema, ya que éste debe cumplir unas fuertes restricciones temporales y manejar una gran cantidad de datos.Dado que los buses son una infraestructura de comunicación ampliamente utilizada en SoCs, este trabajo describe una p...

A System-on-a-Chip (SoC) is the most successful example of how the evolution of the chip integration technology allows the manufacture of complex embedded systems. However, the bulk of the design effort, to efficiently combine the HW and SW components in a SoC, still resides in the HW/SW interfacing architecture. A good HW/SW integration strategy h...