Abstract
Over the last decade, impelled by the industry demand to achieve a technology capable of sending low amount of data payloads, but at the same time with a very low latency and ultra-low power consumption, several efforts in wireless network transmission standardization emerged, supporting new applications in health, sports and fitness, medical, sensor networking, and even the automotive industry field. Despite the competition from ANT+, ZigBee, Nike+, NFC and RF4CE, in 2010 the Bluetooth SIG (special interest groups) adopted a new wireless technology named Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). BLE coexist with Bluetooth in the same chip (called dual mode) therefore assuring this technology a rapid growth among smartphones, iOS, tablets, laptops and PCs. In fact, Bluetooth SIG also announced that it shall be hard to find a smartphone or tablet-PC that does not integrate BLE in the near future. Despite this accelerated growth, BLE shares the same band with Wi-Fi and all other low power technologies, so in order to achieve QoS, a mandatory requirement in many systems, tests for interference and coexistence must be performed. This study analysis the impact of a BLE sensor network on a crowded 2.4GHz room, with multiple Wi-Fi routers, ZigBee sensors and Bluetooth technology. We also compare the results with the ones obtained inside an anechoic chamber on similar experiences.

Abstract
In this paper it will be presented a proposal of a supervisory approach to be applied to the global localization algorithms in mobile robots. One of the objectives of this work is the increase of the robustness in the estimation of the robot's pose, favoring the anticipated detection of the loss of spatial reference and avoiding faults like tracking derail. The proposed supervisory system is also intended to increase accuracy in localization and is based on two of the most commonly used global feature based localization algorithms for pose tracking in robotics: Augmented Monte Carlo Localization (AMCL) and Perfect Match (PM). The experimental platform was a robotic wheelchair and the navigation used the sensory data from encoders and laser rangers. The software was developed using the ROS framework. The results showed the validity of the proposal, since the supervisor was able to coordinate the action of the AMCL and PM algorithms, benefiting the robot's localization system with the advantages of each one of the methods.

Abstract
This paper presents a tracking system developed to study the behavior of an oil tanker moored at the Berth ‘‘A’’ of the Leixões Oil Terminal, Porto, Portugal. A brief description of the local environmental conditions and the existing operational conditions at that oil terminal are presented. Due to extreme outdoor working conditions a Kalman filter was implemented to ensure the robustness and reliability of the obtained measurements. Tests were performed in laboratory on a physical model of a moored oil tanker at a scale 1/100. The results were compared with a commercial motion capture system installed in laboratory. The presented measurement system was developed as part of the DOLPHIN project that aims to study the behavior of moored ships in harbors. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.

Abstract
This paper proposes a new, fast and computationally light weight methodology to pinpoint a robot in a structured scenario. The localisation algorithm performs a tracking routine to pinpoint the robot's pose as it moves in a known map, without the need for preparing the environment, with artificial landmarks or beacons. To perform such tracking routine, it is necessary to know the initial position of the vehicle. This paper describes the tracking routine and presents a solution to pinpoint that initial position in an autonomous way, using a multi-hypotheses strategy. This paper presents experimental results on the performance of the proposed method applied in two different scenarios: (1) in the Middle Size Soccer Robotic League (MSL), using artificial vision data from an omnidirectional robot and (2) in indoor environments using 3D data from a tilting Laser Range Finder of a differential drive robot (called RobVigil). This paper presents results comparing the proposed methodology and an Industrial Positioning System (the Sick NAV350), commonly used to locate Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) with a high degree of accuracy in industrial environments.

Abstract
Crop monitoring and harvesting by ground robots on mountain vineyards is an intrinsically complex challenge, due to two main reasons: harsh conditions of the terrain and reduced time availability and unstable localization accuracy of the GPS system. In this paper is presented a cost effective robot that can be used on these mountain vineyards for crop monitoring tasks. Also it is explored a natural vineyard feature as the input of a standard 2D simultaneous localization and mapping approach (SLAM) for feature-based map extraction. In order to be possible to evaluate these natural features for mapping and localization purposes, a virtual scenario under ROS/Gazebo has been built and described. A low cost artificial landmark and an hybrid SLAM is proposed to increase the localization accuracy, robustness and redundancy on these mountain vineyards. The obtained results, on the simulation framework, validates the use of a localization system based on natural mountain vineyard features.

Abstract
Recent advances in visual motion detection and interpretation have made possible the rising of new robotic systems for autonomous and active surveillance. In this line of research, the current work discusses motion perception by proposing a novel technique that analyzes dense flow fields and distinguishes several regions with distinct motion models. The method is called Wise Optical Flow Clustering (WOFC) and extracts the moving objects by performing two consecutive operations: evaluating and resetting. Motion properties of the flow field are retrieved and described in the evaluation phase, which provides high level information about the spatial segmentation of the flow field. During the resetting operation, these properties are combined and used to feed a guided segmentation approach. The WOFC requires information about the number of motion models and, therefore, this paper introduces a model selection method based on a Bayesian approach that balances the model's fitness and complexity. It combines the correlation of a histogram-based analysis with the decay ratio of the normalized entropy criterion. This approach interprets the flow field and gives an estimative about the number of moving objects. The experiments conducted in a realistic environment have proved that the WOFC presents several advantages that meet the requirements of common robotic and surveillance applications: is computationally efficient and provides a pixel-wise segmentation, comparatively to other state-of-the-art methods.