The Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) is a public institution with a vocation to serve society. It offers a broad and higher education in a range of technical, artistic and humanistic fields. UPC has adopted a management model based on the transparency of objectives and results in the different units composing it. The aim is to foster the improvement of educational, research and management activities and greater transparency and accountability to society.
The range of courses at UPC grows and diversifies year by year, to adapt to society's demands. At present, more then 40 diploma and degree courses can be studied at UPC, and doctor's degrees can be also obtained. Moreover, 6 UPC courses and a wide variety of postgraduate courses are offered in addition to the official state ones.
Architecture and Civil Engineering, Social, Human and Life Sciences, Physics and Chemistry, Mathematics and Statistics, Environment, Energy and Natural Resources, Information and Communication Technologies, Production Technologies
UPC plays an active role in a range of international exchange and co-operation programmes involving universities from all around the world, both in teaching and research. The history of UPC and the results it has obtained have proven it to be a competitive university in the international environment. This is shown by the interest of many foreign lecturers, researchers and students in spending periods of training or research at our university. Our strongly pro-European stance has led to our forming part of the CLUSTER programme and to our being one of the universities with the highest number of exchange students. Our campus boasts two facilities classed as “large-scale facilities” in the European Union TMR programme. Our links with Latin America are reflected by our membership of CINDA and our active participation in postgraduate grant and scholarship programmes such as the ICI programme and MUTIS.
The Knowledge Engineering and Machine Learning Group (KEML) is a part of the Artificial Intelligence section and belongs to the Software Department of the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC). Currently, the group has 8 researchers (7 with tenure tracks), 8 Ph.D. students and more than 30 students doing their final projects under our direction. Our main areas of interest are Knowledge-Based Systems, Knowledge Engineering and Management, Case-Based Reasoning, Machine Learning and Integrated AI architectures. We have been making contributions mainly in Case-Based Reasoning, Causal Reasoning using Possibilistic approach, Knowledge-Based Systems and Non-supervised Learning. Our major area of expertise is in the development of Environmental Decision Support Systems (EDSS) using Artificial Intelligence Techniques. In particular, during the last 12 years we have been working in the area of Urban Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTP), and more specifically on those that have as a technological basis the activated sludge. From the point of view of Artificial Intelligence applied to the project needs and specification, we have an specific expertise in the areas of Expert Systems, Non-Supervised Learning and Case-Based Reasoning and Learning and its application to intelligent agents. The group has been active in the Artificial Intelligence field since 1988. The group has been part of following EU funded projects: Binding EU-Mexican IST Research innitiatives for enhancing future co-operation (EU-MEX.XXI.IST) (IST-201-32792); AgentCities (AgentCities.RTD) (IST-2000-28384) & AgentCities (AgentCities.NET) (IST-2000-28385); Remote Intelligent Management Support and Training (RIMSAT) (IST-2000-28655); Advanced Training System for Emergency Management A TEAM (IST-1999-10176); Telematics, Hypermedia and Artificial Intelligence ( THAIland ) and, The HCM Virtual Multicomputer Project (VIM) (ERBCHRXCT930401). Also the team has experience in several Spanish and Catalan research projects.
Ulises Cortés is a researcher at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) since 1982 (tenure 1988) working on several areas of Artificial Intelligence in the Software Department such as: knowledge acquisition for and concept formation in knowledge-based systems, as well as on machine learning and also in autonomous intelligent agents. Since 1989 he and his group have been applying their work in Artificial Intelligence to Environmental Sciences in special to Wastewater Treatment Plants with the financial support of CICyT and CIRIT. He has been awarded with the CLUSTER chair at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) for 1998-1999. He is the Coordinator of the Artificial Intelligence Ph.D. programme of the Technical University of Catalonia (since 1991) and appointed vice-dean for International Relations at Barcelona School of Informatics (since 1993 until 1998). Since 1991 he advised 14 PhD. Thesis and more than 20 Master Thesis in the field of Artificial Intelligence and has more than 30 papers in international journals and more than 75 papers in Conferences and Workshops in the same period. Since 1994 he coordinates the teaching of the Artificial Intelligence undergraduate courses at Software Department. These courses are included in the so called Grup Temàtic IV. He is a founder member of the Catalan Association for Artificial Intelligence (ACIA). Since 1998 he has been appointed as Vocal in ACIA Board of Directors. He currently sits on European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI). He is a founder member of the Centre for Internet Applications (CANET). He is member of the Board of Directors. http://www.lsi.upc.es/~ia
Steven Willmott is a Associate Researcher in Artificial Intelligence Section of the Software Department (LSI), at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and holds a fellowship from the Spanish Ministerio de Education, Cultura y Deporte. Steven obtained a BSc degree in Mathematics from the University of Warwick (UK, first class honours), an MSc degree in Knowledge Based Systems from the Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Edinburgh (UK, with distinction and the Howe prize for best Student) and completed his PhD entitled “Coordination Structures for the Intelligent Control of Dynamic Distributed Systems” at the Ècole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (Lausanne, Switzerland) in December 2001. His main research interests combine Distributed Artificial Intelligence (in particular: agent communication, open agent infrastructures, organisation and co-ordination) and distributed network environments. For the past 3 years he has served as the technical coordinator of the European Agentcities projects (Agentcities.NET IST2000-28384 and Agentcities.RTD IST2000-28385 with a total budget 7.3Million €) and is one of the primary coordinators in the global Agentcities initiative (http://www.agentcities.org/). http://www.lsi.upc.es/~steve.
Robotics team-UPC
The objective of the research line Robotics is the study and development of advanced robotic systems. In this environment, the main topics in which the ESAII Department is working are:
Within this context, the research going on is addressed to three very different application fields: medical robotics, underwater robotics and mobile robotics.
2. Medical Robotics
In this research line, as usually happens in most robotic systems in the services sector, human-robot interaction is a fundamental characteristic. Based on this cooperation the objective of the work is to achieve the adequate human- machine synergy, so as to obtain the maximum efficiency in the execution of a given task. Dealing with surgical applications, the goal of the research is to provide the surgeon with robotic aiding tools or precise sensory information, aids not available in conventional surgical procedures. The research, in the field of assistant technology and robotics, aims at providing disabled people with a higher autonomy level, either using robotic systems that act as an extension of the user’s own motion capabilities, or to substitute somehow the user’s loss of mobility.
2.1 Robotics in Surgery
The research of the group in this area, that started in 1994, aims at developing robotic systems, which constitute a support tool to the surgeon, of application in surgery. The research, that initially started by the interest to solve a concrete problem, has been evolving and oriented to the study of the global problematic that involves the whole surgical procedure, from the diagnostic to the real intervention. From this study the work is oriented to develop the most adequate robotic systems to provide the surgeons with more possibilities, both in precision and the obtaining of more precise and reliable data, and in efficiency and untireness.
Antonio B. Martinez received his degree in Electrical Engineering in 1984 from the School of Engineering of Barcelona (ETSEIB-UPC) followed by the Ph. D. in Computer Science in 1988 (FIB-UPC). She is now assistant professor in the Automatic Control and Computer Engineering Department at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Her research area is in the field of Robotics and Computer Vision, mainly oriented to robotics applications. He is currently leading projects on Mobile robots applied to intelligent transport system at factories and in the development of a new generations of smart wheelchairs.