Taking advantage of the Ecuadorian geography on earth that maximizes the amount of energy achieva... more Taking advantage of the Ecuadorian geography on earth that maximizes the amount of energy achievable from the sun, a renewable energy system for power generation on Urban Historical Heritage places located in Ecuador is presented. The index of electricity consumption expenditure of a typical housing sector was determined. Using this parameter and the electricity demand, a set of solar panels, battery bank, inverter and a charge regulator were sized. Subsequently, the efficiency of the system was determined by calculating the energy payback time, the carbon footprint generated and the energy returned on investment. The results of this study show the feasibility of installing an alternative power generation system that takes advantage of solar radiation levels in a heritage urban area.
The high performance of FPGA devices allows moving traditionally analog stages into the digital w... more The high performance of FPGA devices allows moving traditionally analog stages into the digital world. This article introduces the implementation of a Digital Up-Converter, which is part of a broadband system. This system uses polyphase decomposition to achieve 5GSPS sampling rates. The transmitter uses 7 data channels each divided into 16 phases of 312.5 MHz. The model implements a DDS suitable to the specific needs of the system, keeping the frequencies of carrier’s constant, which reducing resource utilization and simplifying the architecture of the DDS. The model is coded in Verilog and simulated at RTL and Gate level. In order to validate the output, it is compared to a finite precision model in Matlab. The maximum clock frequency is measured using time analysis, obtaining adequate results in the operation and utilization of hardware resources.
Additive Manufacturing, Modeling Systems and 3D Prototyping
The STEAM methodology is based on the integrated learning of science, technology, engineering, ar... more The STEAM methodology is based on the integrated learning of science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics disciplines in an interdisciplinary framework. Education seeks to promote the transversality of knowledge in children and young people to guarantee meaningful learning, which also involves the development of skills and types of thinking such as scientific, quantitative, visuospatial processing, among others. Its fundamental principle is experience-based learning, combined with project-based learning with an innovative approach to teaching. It involves the integration of learning with TICs, the appropriation of knowledge in scientific areas, it promotes creative capacity and imagination.In this sense, the learning spaces generated are collaborative spaces, which provide the conditions to develop mathematical thinking, computational thinking, emotional management skills in young people and enhance communication skills with their peers.Under this framework, 3D printing te...
Communication through web pages has created a change in the interaction with users. This change i... more Communication through web pages has created a change in the interaction with users. This change in the financial institutions of a region and those located on the border between Ecuador and Colombia, arouses the interest of this study, since it was hypothesized that the best-known institutions in the city of Tulcán do not have significant differences in their web pages. A survey was carried out with clients of the two institutions that have used the website, organizing the survey in four aspects: personalization flow, participation functionality, Prediction feedback and Peer to Peer loyalty. The results using the student's t test show that the two institutions analyzed do not present significant differences in their Web pages.
In this paper, the implementation of a programmable Axonal Delay Controller (ADyC) mapped on a ha... more In this paper, the implementation of a programmable Axonal Delay Controller (ADyC) mapped on a hardware Neural Processor (NP) FPGA-based is reported. It is possible to define axonal delays between 1 to 31 emulation cycles to global and local pre-synaptic spikes generated by NP, extending the temporal characteristics supported by this architecture. The prototype presented in this work contributes to the realism of the network, which mimics the temporal biological characteristics of spike propagation through the cortex. The contribution of temporal information is strongly related to the learning process. ADyC operation is transparent for the rest of the system and neither affects the remaining tasks executed by the NP nor the emulation time period. In addition, an example implemented on hardware of a neural oscillator with programmable delays configured for a set of neurons is presented in order to demonstrate full platform functionality and operability.
Nowadays, daily life involves the extensive use of computers, since human beings are immersed in ... more Nowadays, daily life involves the extensive use of computers, since human beings are immersed in a technological society. Therefore, it is mandatory to interact with computers, which represents a true disadvantage for people with upper limb disabilities. In this context, this work aims to develop an interface for emulating mouse and keyboard functions (EMKEY) by applying concepts of artificial vision and voice recognition to replace the use of hands. Pointer control is achieved by head movement, whereas voice recognition is used to perform interface functionalities, including speech-to-text transcription. To evaluate the interface’s usability and usefulness, two studies were carried out. The first study was performed with 30 participants without physical disabilities. Throughout this study, there were significant correlations found between the emulator’s usability and aspects such as adaptability, execution time, and the participant’s age. In the second study, the use of the emulato...
The present paper has the aim of analyze the effects of Coronavirus disease 2019 on students’ liv... more The present paper has the aim of analyze the effects of Coronavirus disease 2019 on students’ lives. With that objective we carry out a multiple correspondence analysis which seeks to account for the existing structures in the relationships between variables included in that study. It also allows us to look at the relationships from the sublevels of the categories of each variable. The key areas where negative effects on household income have affected students are related to the number of household members receiving income, the type of income the head of household receives, and the amount of money received by the household. The main results are related to a significant correlation in the purchases of food before COVID-19 and the purchase of clothing before and after COVID-19. This finding is important because it shows a close relationship between the purchases of goods and services (food and clothing) among the respondents. Additionally, the variables related to the type of income o...
Human Systems Engineering and Design (IHSED2021) Future Trends and Applications
Elderly people are a very vulnerable group to perform any work; as the years go by, the individua... more Elderly people are a very vulnerable group to perform any work; as the years go by, the individual progressively loses body functions and for this reason profes-sional diseases are increasingly recurrent when we are in advanced age. The study population consisted of fourteen artisans, ninety-six percent of whom were in the age range of 65 to 80 years who live in the Association of artisans in the parish of Calderón in Quito, Ecuador; the work sampling method was applied where 20 minutes were obtained as standard time for the Kneading operation, which is per-formed in a manually operated machine, processing 5 kg of marzipan in each pro-duction cycle, during which time the workers remain standing and performing re-petitive movements; the objective of the research is to design an appropriate tech-nology used in the Kneading operation. With the previous study of modern man-ual kneading equipment, information was obtained on concepts such as shear force, bending moment, and tensile stren...
Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2016, 2016
A spike decoding scheme for Address Event Representation (AER)-based transmission in Spiking Neur... more A spike decoding scheme for Address Event Representation (AER)-based transmission in Spiking Neural Network (SNN) emulators is introduced. The proposed scheme is a modified associative memory based on an efficient use of BRAM, supporting connectivity upgrade in real-time for hardware implementations of evolutionary networks. After analysing the different options and selecting the most efficient one, a prototype example based on FPGA is provided together with a novel hashing technique to demonstrate a compact on-chip solution for implementing inter-chip connectivity in SNN.
2018 NASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems (AHS), 2018
Hardware architectures for Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) emulation exhibit accelerated processin... more Hardware architectures for Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) emulation exhibit accelerated processing thanks to their massive parallelism. However, configuring multichip platforms and setting up a neural application can be an abstract and rigid procedure. In this paper, a simple and efficient centralized configuration solution for a scalable multichip platform based on FPGA and PSoC devices is presented. For this purpose, a dedicated Master Device (MD) node has been used to configure a scalable network of Neuromorphic Devices (NDs). The NDs are general purpose devices which can be programmed to execute any neural algorithm based on spikes with a customized synapse topology. In the proposed approach, the communication channel is re-utilized and the Address Representation Event (AER) protocol modified to configure the entire system. This approximation allows achieving area and power consumption optimization since it eliminates the need to implement a specific instance per chip. Simulations shown demonstrate the performance and temporal characterization of this proposal.
2018 International Conference on Information Systems and Computer Science (INCISCOS), 2018
Electricity is a fundamental need of the human being that is commonly used for domestic, industri... more Electricity is a fundamental need of the human being that is commonly used for domestic, industrial and agricultural purposes. In this sense, the waste of energy generates millionaire losses for the countries. Technological solutions such as the Internet of Things (IoT) allows connecting the physical with the digital world in order to optimize resources and in this particular case, manage and/or monitor the energy consumption. In addition, the advance of micro and nanoelectronics has allowed the development of communication modules such as the XBee that allows the implementation of a wireless sensor network quickly and efficiently with minimal energy consumption being widely used for monitoring and control tasks. The presented prototype takes advantage of the previously mentioned advantages by developing a hardware and software solution. It allows remote monitoring of electricity consumption in a home through a scalable and modular platform using XBee technology and a customized protocol for data communication between the four modules that make up the system. Results are presented that demonstrate the accuracy of the prototype compared to the readings obtained with a conventional electricity meter.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2019
The purpose of this paper is to design a control system to perform tensile and compression tests ... more The purpose of this paper is to design a control system to perform tensile and compression tests on textile fibers and sponges in a universal testing machine. In order to design the control system, a supervisory and front panel was implemented to enter the parameters used to develop the tensile and compression tests. Control and force circuits were designed to control the motor and acquire data from the position sensors and load cell. The communication with the computer was established by an Atmega 16 microcontroller through a data acquisition device. In addition, using the LabVIEW software, a human machine interface was designed to monitor and control the parameters that intervene in the process. Finally, in order to validate the results, comparison tests were developed in a different machine with similar characteristics in order to test the reliability of the presented prototype.
2018 IEEE Third Ecuador Technical Chapters Meeting (ETCM), 2018
Data acquisition for monitoring the spiky activity of large-scale SNN hardware architectures are ... more Data acquisition for monitoring the spiky activity of large-scale SNN hardware architectures are a challenge due to their time constraints, complexity, large logic size, and so on. This paper presents a versatile PSoC-Based Data Acquisition prototype, where a specialized Master Device is used for this purpose. It benefits from the heterogeneous nature of SoC platforms that allows it to host programmable logic together with a hard-core ARM processor integrating memory and a variety of peripherals in a single chip. The presented design enables monitoring the performance of a multi-chip neural network through a single Ethernet interface in a hardware and software co-design, which is combined with an application developed in Python that allows the visualization on the PC of a dynamic raster plot of neural activity. In addition, an example of full platform functionality is shown.
Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2016, 2016
The implementation of a synfire chain (SFC) application that performs synchronous alignment mappe... more The implementation of a synfire chain (SFC) application that performs synchronous alignment mapped on a hardware multi-processor architecture (SNAVA) is reported. This demonstrates a flexible SNN modeling capability of the architecture. The neural algorithm is executed by means of a digital Spiking Neural Network (SNN) emulator, using single instruction multiple data (SIMD) processing. The flexibility and capability of SNAVA to solve complex nonlinear algorithm was verified using time slot emulation on a customized neural topology. The SFC application has been implemented on an FPGA Kintex 7 using a network of 200 neurons with 7500 synaptic connections.
Taking advantage of the Ecuadorian geography on earth that maximizes the amount of energy achieva... more Taking advantage of the Ecuadorian geography on earth that maximizes the amount of energy achievable from the sun, a renewable energy system for power generation on Urban Historical Heritage places located in Ecuador is presented. The index of electricity consumption expenditure of a typical housing sector was determined. Using this parameter and the electricity demand, a set of solar panels, battery bank, inverter and a charge regulator were sized. Subsequently, the efficiency of the system was determined by calculating the energy payback time, the carbon footprint generated and the energy returned on investment. The results of this study show the feasibility of installing an alternative power generation system that takes advantage of solar radiation levels in a heritage urban area.
The high performance of FPGA devices allows moving traditionally analog stages into the digital w... more The high performance of FPGA devices allows moving traditionally analog stages into the digital world. This article introduces the implementation of a Digital Up-Converter, which is part of a broadband system. This system uses polyphase decomposition to achieve 5GSPS sampling rates. The transmitter uses 7 data channels each divided into 16 phases of 312.5 MHz. The model implements a DDS suitable to the specific needs of the system, keeping the frequencies of carrier’s constant, which reducing resource utilization and simplifying the architecture of the DDS. The model is coded in Verilog and simulated at RTL and Gate level. In order to validate the output, it is compared to a finite precision model in Matlab. The maximum clock frequency is measured using time analysis, obtaining adequate results in the operation and utilization of hardware resources.
Additive Manufacturing, Modeling Systems and 3D Prototyping
The STEAM methodology is based on the integrated learning of science, technology, engineering, ar... more The STEAM methodology is based on the integrated learning of science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics disciplines in an interdisciplinary framework. Education seeks to promote the transversality of knowledge in children and young people to guarantee meaningful learning, which also involves the development of skills and types of thinking such as scientific, quantitative, visuospatial processing, among others. Its fundamental principle is experience-based learning, combined with project-based learning with an innovative approach to teaching. It involves the integration of learning with TICs, the appropriation of knowledge in scientific areas, it promotes creative capacity and imagination.In this sense, the learning spaces generated are collaborative spaces, which provide the conditions to develop mathematical thinking, computational thinking, emotional management skills in young people and enhance communication skills with their peers.Under this framework, 3D printing te...
Communication through web pages has created a change in the interaction with users. This change i... more Communication through web pages has created a change in the interaction with users. This change in the financial institutions of a region and those located on the border between Ecuador and Colombia, arouses the interest of this study, since it was hypothesized that the best-known institutions in the city of Tulcán do not have significant differences in their web pages. A survey was carried out with clients of the two institutions that have used the website, organizing the survey in four aspects: personalization flow, participation functionality, Prediction feedback and Peer to Peer loyalty. The results using the student's t test show that the two institutions analyzed do not present significant differences in their Web pages.
In this paper, the implementation of a programmable Axonal Delay Controller (ADyC) mapped on a ha... more In this paper, the implementation of a programmable Axonal Delay Controller (ADyC) mapped on a hardware Neural Processor (NP) FPGA-based is reported. It is possible to define axonal delays between 1 to 31 emulation cycles to global and local pre-synaptic spikes generated by NP, extending the temporal characteristics supported by this architecture. The prototype presented in this work contributes to the realism of the network, which mimics the temporal biological characteristics of spike propagation through the cortex. The contribution of temporal information is strongly related to the learning process. ADyC operation is transparent for the rest of the system and neither affects the remaining tasks executed by the NP nor the emulation time period. In addition, an example implemented on hardware of a neural oscillator with programmable delays configured for a set of neurons is presented in order to demonstrate full platform functionality and operability.
Nowadays, daily life involves the extensive use of computers, since human beings are immersed in ... more Nowadays, daily life involves the extensive use of computers, since human beings are immersed in a technological society. Therefore, it is mandatory to interact with computers, which represents a true disadvantage for people with upper limb disabilities. In this context, this work aims to develop an interface for emulating mouse and keyboard functions (EMKEY) by applying concepts of artificial vision and voice recognition to replace the use of hands. Pointer control is achieved by head movement, whereas voice recognition is used to perform interface functionalities, including speech-to-text transcription. To evaluate the interface’s usability and usefulness, two studies were carried out. The first study was performed with 30 participants without physical disabilities. Throughout this study, there were significant correlations found between the emulator’s usability and aspects such as adaptability, execution time, and the participant’s age. In the second study, the use of the emulato...
The present paper has the aim of analyze the effects of Coronavirus disease 2019 on students’ liv... more The present paper has the aim of analyze the effects of Coronavirus disease 2019 on students’ lives. With that objective we carry out a multiple correspondence analysis which seeks to account for the existing structures in the relationships between variables included in that study. It also allows us to look at the relationships from the sublevels of the categories of each variable. The key areas where negative effects on household income have affected students are related to the number of household members receiving income, the type of income the head of household receives, and the amount of money received by the household. The main results are related to a significant correlation in the purchases of food before COVID-19 and the purchase of clothing before and after COVID-19. This finding is important because it shows a close relationship between the purchases of goods and services (food and clothing) among the respondents. Additionally, the variables related to the type of income o...
Human Systems Engineering and Design (IHSED2021) Future Trends and Applications
Elderly people are a very vulnerable group to perform any work; as the years go by, the individua... more Elderly people are a very vulnerable group to perform any work; as the years go by, the individual progressively loses body functions and for this reason profes-sional diseases are increasingly recurrent when we are in advanced age. The study population consisted of fourteen artisans, ninety-six percent of whom were in the age range of 65 to 80 years who live in the Association of artisans in the parish of Calderón in Quito, Ecuador; the work sampling method was applied where 20 minutes were obtained as standard time for the Kneading operation, which is per-formed in a manually operated machine, processing 5 kg of marzipan in each pro-duction cycle, during which time the workers remain standing and performing re-petitive movements; the objective of the research is to design an appropriate tech-nology used in the Kneading operation. With the previous study of modern man-ual kneading equipment, information was obtained on concepts such as shear force, bending moment, and tensile stren...
Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2016, 2016
A spike decoding scheme for Address Event Representation (AER)-based transmission in Spiking Neur... more A spike decoding scheme for Address Event Representation (AER)-based transmission in Spiking Neural Network (SNN) emulators is introduced. The proposed scheme is a modified associative memory based on an efficient use of BRAM, supporting connectivity upgrade in real-time for hardware implementations of evolutionary networks. After analysing the different options and selecting the most efficient one, a prototype example based on FPGA is provided together with a novel hashing technique to demonstrate a compact on-chip solution for implementing inter-chip connectivity in SNN.
2018 NASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems (AHS), 2018
Hardware architectures for Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) emulation exhibit accelerated processin... more Hardware architectures for Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) emulation exhibit accelerated processing thanks to their massive parallelism. However, configuring multichip platforms and setting up a neural application can be an abstract and rigid procedure. In this paper, a simple and efficient centralized configuration solution for a scalable multichip platform based on FPGA and PSoC devices is presented. For this purpose, a dedicated Master Device (MD) node has been used to configure a scalable network of Neuromorphic Devices (NDs). The NDs are general purpose devices which can be programmed to execute any neural algorithm based on spikes with a customized synapse topology. In the proposed approach, the communication channel is re-utilized and the Address Representation Event (AER) protocol modified to configure the entire system. This approximation allows achieving area and power consumption optimization since it eliminates the need to implement a specific instance per chip. Simulations shown demonstrate the performance and temporal characterization of this proposal.
2018 International Conference on Information Systems and Computer Science (INCISCOS), 2018
Electricity is a fundamental need of the human being that is commonly used for domestic, industri... more Electricity is a fundamental need of the human being that is commonly used for domestic, industrial and agricultural purposes. In this sense, the waste of energy generates millionaire losses for the countries. Technological solutions such as the Internet of Things (IoT) allows connecting the physical with the digital world in order to optimize resources and in this particular case, manage and/or monitor the energy consumption. In addition, the advance of micro and nanoelectronics has allowed the development of communication modules such as the XBee that allows the implementation of a wireless sensor network quickly and efficiently with minimal energy consumption being widely used for monitoring and control tasks. The presented prototype takes advantage of the previously mentioned advantages by developing a hardware and software solution. It allows remote monitoring of electricity consumption in a home through a scalable and modular platform using XBee technology and a customized protocol for data communication between the four modules that make up the system. Results are presented that demonstrate the accuracy of the prototype compared to the readings obtained with a conventional electricity meter.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2019
The purpose of this paper is to design a control system to perform tensile and compression tests ... more The purpose of this paper is to design a control system to perform tensile and compression tests on textile fibers and sponges in a universal testing machine. In order to design the control system, a supervisory and front panel was implemented to enter the parameters used to develop the tensile and compression tests. Control and force circuits were designed to control the motor and acquire data from the position sensors and load cell. The communication with the computer was established by an Atmega 16 microcontroller through a data acquisition device. In addition, using the LabVIEW software, a human machine interface was designed to monitor and control the parameters that intervene in the process. Finally, in order to validate the results, comparison tests were developed in a different machine with similar characteristics in order to test the reliability of the presented prototype.
2018 IEEE Third Ecuador Technical Chapters Meeting (ETCM), 2018
Data acquisition for monitoring the spiky activity of large-scale SNN hardware architectures are ... more Data acquisition for monitoring the spiky activity of large-scale SNN hardware architectures are a challenge due to their time constraints, complexity, large logic size, and so on. This paper presents a versatile PSoC-Based Data Acquisition prototype, where a specialized Master Device is used for this purpose. It benefits from the heterogeneous nature of SoC platforms that allows it to host programmable logic together with a hard-core ARM processor integrating memory and a variety of peripherals in a single chip. The presented design enables monitoring the performance of a multi-chip neural network through a single Ethernet interface in a hardware and software co-design, which is combined with an application developed in Python that allows the visualization on the PC of a dynamic raster plot of neural activity. In addition, an example of full platform functionality is shown.
Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2016, 2016
The implementation of a synfire chain (SFC) application that performs synchronous alignment mappe... more The implementation of a synfire chain (SFC) application that performs synchronous alignment mapped on a hardware multi-processor architecture (SNAVA) is reported. This demonstrates a flexible SNN modeling capability of the architecture. The neural algorithm is executed by means of a digital Spiking Neural Network (SNN) emulator, using single instruction multiple data (SIMD) processing. The flexibility and capability of SNAVA to solve complex nonlinear algorithm was verified using time slot emulation on a customized neural topology. The SFC application has been implemented on an FPGA Kintex 7 using a network of 200 neurons with 7500 synaptic connections.
Uploads
Papers by Mireya Zapata