What is the use of 3D digitalization of infraestructures? Inspecting coatings, detecting cracks, inventorying and sensorization of tunnels and other structures. In the following video, we explain you what we do in CARTIF:
David Olmedo and José Llamas, researchers of CARTIF.
In the European Commission, there is a clear interest in improving the energy and environmental conditions of the building sector, and to reduce the impact of this sector in terms of energy consumption and CO2 emissions. That interest is materialized in funding several research and demonstration projects that go in this direction. One of these projects is iNSPiRe.
Last month it was held in Brussels the final meeting of iNSPiRe, bittersweet moment, because on one hand we were assuming the farewell of many colleagues of the 24 partners involved in the project and on the other hand meant a great satisfaction because finally, after 4 years of hard work, we were collecting the results coming from many conferences, many meetings and countless reports.
The iNSPiRe project is aligned with the ambitious European directive on energy performance in buildings which aims to achieve the reduction of energy consumption in buildings both in the residential sector and the tertiary sector. In this demonstrative project in addition to defining a process of renovation of buildings to reduce their energy consumption, they have been also developed highly efficient and innovative technological kits, with the aim of putting them on the market as future upgrades to the systems currently used in buildings renovation projects of the construction industry. In this way the building demo-sites have acted as the best testing bench for these kits. Different kits have been developed as a solution for multiple systems as kits for energy distribution or kits for envelopes and facades with innovative solutions for energy storage and energy generation systems.
As mentioned, all technological solutions developed within the iNSPiRe project have been installed on two demonstrators. One of them is located in Madrid, Spain, and the other in the German city of Ludwigsburg and both buildings belong to the residential sector. Both the data obtained from monitored buildings and the simulation data will be used for the creation of a common database that will serve professionals in engineering and architecture, as well as local authorities to inform them of the most efficient and cost-effective resources in a deep renovation of buildings.
Within CARTIF in this project we have been responsible for the tasks of monitoring, follow-up and analysis of the indicators that allow the verification of the optimum performance of the installed solutions and verify that the tenants reach comfort conditions. The first objective covered was the definition and design of a monitoring system that would allow the assessment of energy savings and to know the performance of the buildings before and after the renovation and rehabilitation process. In addition, CARTIF developed a surveillance software that show us when one of the solutions is not working properly, a situation the software interprets through the information collected from multiple sensors installed in the demo-sites. CARTIF’s work has always been closely linked to the business partners developers of technology kits one, as our role has also been to inform them of the correct performance and efficiency of their developments.
To carry out the evaluation of energy savings, both demo-sites have been monitored for two years in two periods, one year before refurbishment and one year afterwards, with the aim of identifying their behavior before and after and obtain a base line for comparison. For this task four groups of indicators were defined: comfort, electrical consumption, heating demand and finally emissions. Apart from those, economic indicators have been also defined but due to the timings on the kits installation, this indicator has not been already studied.
Regarding the results, although we have not been able to make a savings analysis, we have made a comparative study of the performance of the buildings in the two monitoring periods. Once the data from all kits are available it will be possible to make more in-depth valuations.
In the Energy Area of CARTIF we are committed to help transforming our living environments into more sustainable and energy efficient ones, and our work and outcomes of the iNSPiRe project will impact in this direction.
Before introduce our vision of interoperability of social-health system, it is needed to understand that interoperability is the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged. As organizations incorporate applications / different computer systems, they generate what is known as “islands” of information, which end up generating gaps in services as well as inefficiency bags. Interoperability is the design and construction of bridges between the islands of information.
The Social-Health system in Spain, as well in Europe, consists on a large number of organizations, public and private entities: healthcare systems, social agencies, patient associations, services companies, nursing home, etc. Each of these organizations provides the services we need to develop our lives and those of our loved ones, in a comfortable way taking into account parameters of quality and efficiency.
One doubt that often arises in meetings with different partners is the real need to develop an interoperability framework for the social-health system. The intuitive answer to this approach is like building roads, tunnels and bridges, without prior planning. Does anyone find reasonable such approach?
However, in general, when organizations develop strategic plans for information technology (IT) tend to look inward, focusing mainly on achieving their own goals (an apparently optimal island). Further progress in this direction certainly hinders the 360º approach (continuity in health and social services). The challenge is to go beyond the internal problems and look outside. It needs to take advantage of the information generated by all organizations, so that, they can share and use the data, to generate new knowledge.
So we must begin to understand and to harmonize the needs of users and organizations from a scientific and technical systematic view. Once the doubt of working on a strategic framework of interoperability is clarified, the following question emerges: why is it necessary to base a local or regional strategy on international standards? Why is it not possible to make a local or an ad-hoc approach?
One possible approach to this question is associated with the sustainability of the work and to take advantage of an accumulation of knowledge (not reinventing the wheel). Therefore, in order to advance into a strategy of interoperability between of social and health information systems, it is critical to be based on international interoperability standards. These standards are promoted by Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) with the need to work actively through scientific and technical committees that contributes to the necessary evolution of standards forums.
Thanks to the experience of CARTIF, participating in different SDOs, as well as in the Cluster SIVI (Cluster of Innovative Solutions for Independent Living) and the EIP AHA (European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing), we conclude that a strategy to develop a framework of interoperability in social-health system, could open the door to cooperation between organizations in different fields, who want to be an active part of the social and health services. The beneficiaries of this cooperation are all users of the system (all of us!!), because it could be optimized and rationalized the use of resources, something that is extremely important to ensure the sustainability of the social-health system. On the other hand, this would increase the transparency and competitiveness of technology to develop new solutions that can be extended in a simpler way. Finally, we are convinced that the approach of advancing within a framework of interoperability in the social-health system will help develop new products in emerging technology SMEs. Solutions that succeeding locally, will be able to scale their solutions to a global market in a simpler way.
Recently, the Augmented Reality is becoming more and more common due to use of hand-held devices on our daily life such as smart phones, tablets and lately smart glasses. In this way, different applications, in many cases for leisure, like “Pokemon GO” or “Snapchat” image editor tool, have become popular this technology. But it is also includes for professional use on multitude of application areas.
However, AR is neither a new technology nor it is subject to the use of smart phones orsmart glasses. Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) augments real world objects and scenes without the use of special displays such as monitors or hand-held devices. The key difference in SAR is it makes use of fixed digital projectors to display graphical information onto physical object surface. The display is separated from the user of the system.
Perhaps the most popular application of SAR is also referred to as “projection mapping”, or “video mapping”. It is a video projection which turns complex industrial landscapes, such as buildings, into a display surface. This projection is commonly combined with audio to create an attractive audio-visual show. CARTIF has been involved in some projects that apply the projection mapping on cultural heritage field through virtual recovery of the primitive appearance paintings in a significant edifice.
Spatial Augmented Reality in industry
Because the displays are not associated with each user, SAR scales naturally up to groups of users, thus allowing for collocated collaboration between users. Furthermore, users avoid suffering eye strain due to use of smart glasses or be loaded with extra hand-held devices. For these reasons, aside from games and leisure applications, SAR has many potential applications in Industry.
In the automotive industry is used frequently during design stage projecting onto the car surface different options to choose the finish, or showing the employee how to perform the tasks of a specific reparation. Although, one of most implementations in this field is assistance in manual assembly tasks.
One or more optical devices (projectors) fixed provide immediate guidance for tasks step by step, projecting indications (text, images, animations) onto the work surface and in some cases directly on the parts on which a user is working. Spatial Augmented Reality can offer the following benefits:
• Reduces or eliminates the need for computer monitors and screens, as the instructions appear directly in the task space.
• Reduces users’ cognitive load when following work instructions, specially for training new workers.
• Reduces the need to interrupt workflows to consult information elsewhere because there is no is no need for “attention switching” between work instructions and the task at hand.
In addition of previously commented:
• Workers avoid suffering eye strain due to use of smart glasses or be loaded with extra hand-held devices.
• One SAR system allows groups of users and collaboration between them.
This technology combined with some validation system, such as tool localization system or hand tracker trough computer vision, to ensure and confirm correct execution of the tasks, provides feedback for process improvement, traceability and reduces errors. CARTIF is involved in some projects that apply the benefits of Spatial Augmented Reality and reduce as much as possible its most delicate features, such as ambient brightness, adaptation of projection to colour and shape of the pieces, or possible occlusions produced by workers.
With global positioning systems, a phenomenon similar to what happened with mobile phones has occurred: in a few years we have gone from non-existence to consider it essential. The truth is that, in fact, geolocation is one of those technologies that has led to the development of many applications and in many areas is not conceived to work without the use of commonly called GPS.
These types of positioning systems are based on receiving the signal from three or more satellites and using trilateration: position is obtained in absolute coordinates (usually WGS84) by determining the distance to each satellite.
Global positioning systems based on satellites have their origin in the US system TRANSIT in the 60s. With this system you could get fix the position once an hour (at best) with an accuracy of about 400 meters. This system was followed by the Timation system and in 1973 the Navstar project began (both from USA). The first satellite of this project was launched in February 1978 and full operational capability was declared in April 1995. This Navstar-GPS system is the origin of the GPS generic name we usually apply to all global navigation systems. In 1982 the former Soviet Union launched the first satellite of a similar system called GLONASS that became operational in 1996. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China in 2000 launched the first satellite of BeiDou navigation system, which is scheduled to be fully operational in 2020. Finally, in 2003, it began the development of the positioning system of the European Union called Galileo, with a first launch in 2011. Currently there are 12 satellites in active (and 2 in tests) and the simultaneous launching of four more is scheduled on 17 November 2016. This way, 18 satellites will be in orbit and initial service of Galileo positioning system could begin in late 2016. It is expected to be fully operational in 2020. It must be said that there are also other systems, complementary to those already mentioned, in India and Japan in a local range.
As you can see, the global positioning systems are fully extended and are widely used both military and commercial level (transport of people and goods, precision agriculture, surveying, environmental studies, rescue operations …) and on a personal level (almost everyone has a mobile phone with GPS available, although their battery always run out at the worst moment).
Regarding the precision obtained with current geolocation equipment, it is about a few meters (and even better with the Galileo system) and can reach centimetre accuracy using multifrequency devices and applying differential corrections.
One of the problems of these systems is that not work properly indoors since the satellite signal cannot be received well inside buildings (although there are highly sensitive equipment that reduce this problem and other devices called pseudolites, acting simulating the GPS signal indoors). And of course it’s not enough to know our exact position outdoors but now comes the need to also be located inside large buildings and infrastructure (airports, office buildings, shopping centres, …).
So indoor positioning systems (IPS) have appeared allowing location inside enclosed spaces. Unlike global positioning systems, in this case there are many different technologies that are usually not compatible with each other making it difficult to dissemination and adoption by the general public. There are already very reliable and accurate solutions in enterprise environments but these developments are specific and not easily transposable to a generic use of locating people indoors. In this type of professional context, CARTIF has done several projects indoor positioning for autonomous movement of goods and service robotics. There is not a standard indoor positioning system but there are many technologies competing for a prominent place.
The technologies used can be differentiated on the need or not of a communications infrastructure. Those who no need existing infrastructure are often based on the use of commonly available sensors in a smartphone: variations in the magnetic field inside the building that are detected by the magnetometer, measuring the movements by using accelerometers or identifying certain feature elements (such as QR codes) using the camera. In all these cases the accuracy achieved is not very high but may be useful in certain applications as simple guidance in a large building.
Indoor positioning systems using communications infrastructure exploit almost all available technologies of this kind for the location: WiFi, Bluetooth, RFID, infrared, NFC, ZigBee, Ultra Wideband, visible light, phone masts (2G / 3G / 4G), ultrasound, …
With these systems, the position is usually determined by triangulation, calculating the distance to the fixed reference devices (using the intensity of the received signal, coded signals or by direct measurement of this distance). Thus you can reach greater precision than in the three previous cases. There are also new developments that combine several of the above technologies in order to improve the accuracy and availability of positioning.
Although, as has been said there is no standard, the use of systems based on Bluetooth low energy are spreading (BLE nodes). Examples of such systems are the Eddystone (from Google) and iBeacons (Apple).
Logically, as in the case of outdoor positioning the corresponding environment map is required to allow navigation. There are other systems, called SLAM, which generate environment maps (which may be known or not) as they move, widely used in robots and autonomous vehicles. A recent example is the Tango project (from Google once again) that generates 3D models of the environment just using mobile devices (smartphones or tablets).
As we have seen, we are closer to be located anywhere, which can be very useful but also can make us overly dependent on these systems while the usual privacy issues concerning positioning systems are increased. So although thanks to these advances the sense of orientation is less necessary, we must always keep common sense.
August 8, 2016. 07:00h a.m. Radio turned on driving to work. Headlines begin. “Today is Earth Overshoot Day”, I hear. Oh. Bad news. The Earth Overshoot day in 2016 has been brought forward again.
I’m sure you are wondering about some things right now:
1) If I am able to understand the radio at that time in the morning,
2) Earth Overshoot day? What does it mean?
The answer to the first question is yes. I can understand if radio plays the summer song or the speech is about an environmental issue, in both cases my attention is activated immediately. And the answer to the second question is broader and deeper. I need to enlarge on this problem. Let’s see.
Earth Overshoot concept was originally developed by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Earth Overshoot Day is defined as a mark that indicates when humanity has maxed up all the Earth’s resources for the calendar year. Although it is only an estimation, this day is considered the best scientific approach to measure the gap between natural resources generated and destroyed annually, so that, once passed, Earth is operating in overshoot and everything consumed until the end year is supported by resources that planet cannot produce and contaminants that Earth is not able to absorb (www.footprintnetwork.org)..
The simplest example to understand the concept is thinking about Earth´s resources being money in a bank. Overshoot occurs when we withdraw money from the bank faster than to wait for the interest this money generates.
Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures, Global Footprint Network is the organization that analyzes thousands of data points and measures humanity’s demand for supply of natural resources and ecological services every year, that is, it compares income of the Earth (which are achieved by increasing the use of renewable energy, for example) against expenses (which are produced, among others, by massive use of private cars overconsuming fuel) and the result of the equation provides the date when humanity exhausts the nature budget for that year so for the rest months, it will maintain by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating CO2 in the atmosphere, making climatic change worse.
Therefore it’s not a holiday definitively. Earth Overshoot day has moved from the end of October in 1993 to August 13th last year, which means that the deadline was shortened almost a week in 2016. Therefore each year the problem grows worse, if consumption patterns continue apace, it is hard to imagine that the day when we will have spent all the “credit” that exists in this Earth account could come. If we continue to destroy its natural capital and its ability to renew its environmental services, it will be very difficult to avoid it.
In CARTIF, our year already started with environmental purposes and to encourage companies for “funding” to Earth seems to us to be vital because we are in overcapacity nowadays. One of the most interesting ads to do this is the call Spanish CLIMA projects. The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment (MAGRAMA) launches this call every year and encourages companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions with the development of new low carbon activities. It is one of the best funding for those companies that need to receive the last effort to transform their activities towards low carbon technologies, since the MAGRAMA “buys” the CO2 equivalent emissions avoided (expense to Earth eluded), raising the fixed price per tonne each year.
Thus, if you choose to carry out a more environmental process, it will be attractive from the economic point of view and besides, you will contribute to add to the “money box” of the Earth, therefore activities like changing your fossil fuel boilers by other fueled by biomass, transforming your fleet to electric vehicles or using the residual heat of your process, could make an important difference for the future.
Do you dare to bring out the environmental banker in you?