Innovations for Industry and Society

Future Innovations

CONTROL AND ROBOTICS

One million industrial robots are currently operating globally, and 100,000 robots are installed every year. Even though the auto industry is leading the robotization, at this time robots are used in different environments: meal production, energy plants, hospitals and post offices. In fact, half of the robots in the world are used in industries different from auto industry and this number is expected to increase considerably in the following years.

With the increasing use of robots, the automation and process control systems have changed drastically. Machines are currently managed electronically and the control systems have improved considerably through Programmed Logic (PLCs), the distributed control systems and the control systems based on PCs.

As aforementioned, it is evident that the automation will represent a more important component in our lives and the industry. The benefits that can be reaped from these technological advancements for society and industry will be significant in the extent in which technology is used to solve social and/or economic problems worldwide.

In this context, the challenge in this area is to find a way to improve some production system or solve any problem that has been perceived in the environment or in the industry through the use of the control systems or robot development. The project needs to have a positive social or economic impact.

Besides participating in the Competition, the students that present projects in this area can compete for a special prize from Sun Microsystems which will reward an Ultra Workstation to the best project developed with open technologies from Sun. To compete for this special prize consult the guidelines presented below.

Guide for the Control and Robotics, with Java and Netbeans

To be a Prize candidate (Ultra Workstation) in the Control and Robotics category from Sun Open Source, the interested people must:

1. Check general conditions and deadlines from the II Student Iberoamerican Contest.

2. Enter java.sun.com to download the latest version of Java and related technologies.

3. The prize will be given to the best project in the Competition, independently from the chapter where it comes and the position in the Qualifying Round.

4. The project must be entirely developed in Java, with Netbeans IDE.

Netbeans is an open source IDE, free and up-to-date, which integrates a complete platform to develop all types of Java projects (J2ME,J2EE and J2SE) www.netbeans.org

In the Netbeans community page, you will find several tutorials, guides and a large community with which you can consult and interiorize with the IDE, as well as get ideas for your project.

The Java user groups, are another great place to find solutions, and get new ideas: java.net (Global Java Community link); community.java.net/jugs/ ( the main link in the User Groups)

It is recommended to search for the closest geographical User Group and start participating in it to get help and receive knowledge from other members of the community.

In particular, there is a Java community dedicated to the robotics theme: community.java.net/robotics/; a recommended site to get ideas of new technologies is www.sunspotworld.com.

Finally, there is an academic initiative from SUN, where universities can have free Access to classes and web materials: ar.sun.com/training/sai/

It is recommended to inquire your local professors from their respective universities if they are already members of SAI, this will allow easier access to the benefits. They may also consult with the list of ambassadors-latinamerica@sun.com. Where students from the main universities in Latin-America can work jointly with the academic initiative at SUN and may be guided.

Control and Robotics	Software and Hardware Development

DEVELOPMENT OF SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE

The challenge in this area is the development of software and hardware Project which presents a solution to a problem that has been identified in the surroundings or in the industry, in such a way that it generates social and economic benefits.

Given that the Open Source model or open access offers freedom to the users and developers to work in new discoveries reducing the barriers of access and encouraging the collaboration and innovation, we invite people to present their projects on the development of open source technologies, although this is not a requirement to participate in the Contest.

The student who presents projects in these areas will also be able to compete for special prize of Sun Microsystems who will offer an Ultra Workstation to the best project developed with open technologies belonging to Sun. To compete for this special prize, consult the guidelines below.

Guidelines for the category Development of Software and Hardware with Open Source tools from SUN

In order to be a candidate for the prize (Ultra Workstation) in the category Development of Software and Hardware of Sun Open Source, the interested people must:

Review the general conditions and the limit dates of the 3^rd Ibero-American Student Contest.

Use open tools and technologies of Sun (Open Source) to develop your project.

Obtain a copy of Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE).

The DVD can be downloaded from the following Website:

opensolaris.org/os/downloads/sol_ex_dvd/

You may receive a DVD kit without fees to your home from:

get.opensolaris.org

Install SXDE in your computers.

Instructions for the download are available at:
docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/820-0462

Enter opensolaris.org, register and create a personal user account.

The prize will be given to the best project of the Contest, independently of the chapter from which it comes and to their position in the elimination of the chapter.

The challenge for participating for this special prize is to propose the design and development of a system (which involves software and/or hardware), where the base platform of the solution belongs to Open Solaris. It is important to acknowledge that the project's evaluation will have a central topic, the performance on the platform Open Solaris Developer Edition.

Open Solaris is an operative open source system (open access) and all the documentation, tutorials and guides can be found in the community Open Solaris. Particularly, it is highly recommended to register and participate in the Hispanic community: es.opensolaris.org

In the Hispanic community you will find guidelines step by step in Spanish on how to install and configure Solaris. It also contains a very active forum where you can find instant help, AND IN YOUR LANGUAGE.

Solaris may be installed in a x86/x64 system, either as a unique system or multiboot (through a grub loader), or you can also boot it from a DVD/USB.

There are many versions of Open Solaris available:

www.opensolaris.org/os/about/distributions

All of them are appropriate for the project, but it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to use the Express Developer Edition: developers.sun.com/sxde/

Some reasons are because this version already contains, installed and configured, the stack AMP (Apache, Mysql and PHP), also the two excellent IDE like Netbeans and Sun Studio.

It's highly recommend to look for help with the local users group, the people from the Hispanic community may help in that sense, or you may consult directly here: opensolaris.org/os/community/advocacy/usergroups/ug-leaders/

The development can be implemented with the open source tools that you choose, we simply suggest the following IDE here according to the technology to use: Netbeans, (Projects J2ME, J2EE, J2se, Ruby, C/C++, PHP, integration with MySql, Glassfish, tomcat, etc.). Visit www.netbeans.org for more information, tutorials and consulting forums.

Sun Studio 12 (Projects of High performance Computing, clustering, Clustering, OpenMP y MPI, C/C++, Fortran, etc.). Visit developers.sun.com/sunstudio/ for more information, tutorials and consulting forums.

Finally, there is the Sun academic initiative in which universities may access freely to web courses and materials: ar.sun.com/training/sai/

It's recommendable to consult among the authorities and professors of your universities if you are already members of the SAI in order to count with these benefits. You may also consult the list of mails ambassador-latinamerica@sun.com. Students from the main universities of Latin-America work with the Sun academic initiative and may be able to guide you.