Speech emotion recognition (SER) is challenging, language dependent, and, as with any supervised learning task constrained by data availability. An important aspect in SER modeling is the selection of optimal features to have an unbiased approach towards recognizing emotions while retaining accuracy. Brazilian Portuguese (BP) is a dialect of the 6thmost spoken language in the world yet BP SER studies are scarce. This work aims to explore the solely available BP SER database, providing better features to increase the recognition rate for all emotions, and then proposing a simple but robust multi-corporal SER model. For all corpora analyzed in this work, an improvement of up to 9% in mean accuracy is achieved and the obtained recognition rate indicates that the proposed feature sets show comparatively less biased behavior towards all emotions. Also, we prescribe a combination of different metrics to be used with two cepstral features to obtain a higher recognition rate. Our proposed state of the art Latin multi-corporal model contains few features, and achieves outperforming results with a classical machine learning classifier, compared to previously exercised complex features, algorithms and architectures, by yielding the best recognition rate.

Robots are possible candidates for performing tasks as helpers in activities of daily living in the future: working as a receptionist is one possible employment. However, the way the receptionist robot should appear, sound and behave needs to be investigated carefully, in order to design a robot which is accepted and perceived in a positive way by common users. This paper describes a study on anthropomorphism of a receptionist robot made for Brazilian people depending on the appearance and on the voice of the receptionist. This experiment was preceded by a preliminary survey about expectation of people regarding receptionists. The main experiment consisted in having Brazilian people interacting with a conversational agent and with a humanoid robot through a video conference. The two receptionists are not only different in physical appearance, but in the sound of the voice, too, which can be either human-like or robotic sound. The two receptionists gave indications to the participants to reach rooms where they could evaluate the receptionists through questionnaires concerning anthropomorphism and uncanniness among other concepts. The results gathered from both experiments provide useful hints to design a receptionist robot.

Internet robotic systems have a different role in the use and development of aerial robots compared to that for ground robots. While for ground robotic vehicles, Internet is useful for remote operation or to make remote development, in aerial vehicles, in addition, the safety aspect must be considered very carefully. This paper addresses the requirements to the specific case of Internet aerial robots. It describes the conceptual and implementation aspects of an Internet-based software architecture for the AURORA unmanned autonomous airship project, showing its use in the different project phases.

Project AURORA aims at the development of an unmanned airship capable of autonomous flight over user-defined locations for aerial inspection and imagery acquisition. In this article the authors report a successful autonomous flight achieved through a set of pre-defined points, one of the first of its kind in the literature. The guidance control strategy is based on a path tracking error generation methodology that takes into account both the distance and the angular errors of the airship with respect to the desired trajectory. The control strategy uses a PI controller for the tail surfaces' deflection.

The development of an unmanned airship capable of autonomous flight over user-defined locations for aerial data and imagery acquisition is the objective of the AURORA project. One important mission problem is the flight path following of the vehicle through a set of pre-defined points at a given altitude and velocity. In this article, a path tracking error generation methodology is presented and two different strategies for the guidance problem, one based on a H/sub /spl infin// control technique and another based on a PI control, are proposed and compared through a simulated case study.

Development of reliable control systems for semi-autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles require the use of extensive simulation data provided by an accurate six-degrees-of-freedom dynamic model. In this article we describe a Simulink-based control system development environment for Project AURORA's unmanned robotic airship, as well as the control algorithms and supervisory level of AURORA's control system. A complete take-off to landing mission illustrates the utilization of this environment.

We present one of the first Internet-accessible airship simulators, based on a comprehensive airship dynamic model. The simulator is meant to be used as a tool for the development of control and navigation methods for autonomous and semi-autonomous robotic airships and as testbed for airship pilot training. Realistic views of both the airship in flight and that of a virtual pilot are provided, as are commands to apply thrust to the engines, swivel them up and down, and deflect the control surfaces. This work is significant for providing robotics researchers with means to safely experiment with airship control.

This paper discusses Project AURORA (autonomous unmanned remote monitoring robotic airship) which focuses on the development of the control, navigation, sensing, and inference technologies required for substantially autonomous robotic airships. Our target application areas include the use of robotic airships for environmental, biodiversity, and climate research and monitoring. Based on typical mission requirements, we present arguments that favour airships over airplanes and helicopters as the ideal platforms for such missions. We outline the overall system architecture of the AURORA robotic airship, discuss its main subsystems, and mention the research and development issues involved.

We present a comprehensive description of the physical principles of robotic airship operation, along with their dynamic model in a form suited for controller design and computer simulation. Based on the dynamic model, airship response modes are analyzed and control challenges are pointed out. The present work provides a starting point for robotics and control researchers interested in utilizing airships as robotic aerial vehicles.