14 March 21, 2013 | year 55
Biweekly magazine of the Eindhoven University of Technology For news: www.cursor.tue.nl and follow tuecursor on andmm
4 | Hora Est! 3 Stories from space
6 No more blind robots
10 University news
2 | For Starters
March 21, 2013
Don’t hold back
Colophon Editor in chief Han Konings
Executive editor Brigit Span
Editorial staff Judith van Gaal Tom Jeltes | Science Frits van Otterdijk Norbine Schalij Monique van de Ven Berry Zwets (trainee)
Clmn
At Cursor, we advise you to read… Cursor! Obviously. But to be fair, we’d love to hear what you think needs improvement and how we can maximize your reading pleasure. So, dear students and faculty, this is your chance to discuss Cursor! You’re free to say anything concerning our magazine, our news website, and our social media. Are you one of the students or staff members who’d love to spill their criticism or praise for an hour and a half? Please let us know via cursor@tue.nl. We’re ever so grateful!
They found it. Now what?
Judith van
Gaal
Photography Bart van Overbeeke
Rewwwind www.cursor.tue.nl
Cover TU/e’s mace. Photo | Bart van Overbeeke
Our Rewwwind feature provides you with snippets of last week’s news. What happened online after the previous Cursor magazine was published?
Translation Annemarie van Limpt (pages 2,3,6) Benjamin Ruijsenaars (page 4,5)
Layout Natasha Franc
Editorial board prof.dr. Cees Midden prof.dr. Hans Niemantsverdriet Angela Stevens- van Gennip Thomas Reijnaerts Arold Roestenburg Anneliese Vermeulen-Adolfs
Address editorial office TU/e, Laplace 0.35 5600 MB Eindhoven tel. 040 - 2474020 e-mail: cursor@tue.nl
Cursor online
Bussemaker encourages TU/e to stay in touch
Former W-hal could become national heritage site
18 March - Towards the end of her working visit to TU/e on March 18, Minister of Education Jet Bussemaker appealed to businesses. “It’s them who tend to complain about the quality of education, but I’d like to ask businesses to invest more in better education themselves”, said the member of government. The Executive board of TU/e received an open invitation to definitely feel free to stay in touch with her ministry.
18 March - Part of MetaForum has been nominated for a national heritage status. Minister Jet Bussemaker of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) think the parts of the former W-hal that are still standing are so special they should be preserved. Apart from W-hal, there are 88 other buildings and places from the period 1959-1965, the second phase of the post-war reconstruction, that are in the running towards becoming a national heritage site. The definite list will be published in the fall.
www.cursor.tue.nl
Print Janssen/Pers, Gennep
Advertisement Bureau Van Vliet BV tel. 023 - 5714745
Student recruitment London successful 15 March - London proves to be a vast source of potential TU/e students. The number of students that may move from England to Eindhoven for their bachelor’s degree seems
unprecedented. Marjan van Ganzenwinkel is not afraid to conclude as much. She was in the English capital last week to promote TU/e.
A Higgs boson walks into a church. The priest stops the particle and says, “We don’t allow your kind in here.” The boson then asks, “But Father, how can you have mass without me?” Ba Dum Tsss!
Now, why is this significant? Think of the discovery of the electron. Discovering it paved the way for electricity which radically changed the course of humanity. And, as in 1897 when the electron was discovered, no one could fathom the applications or the consequences these would have. That very same thing is bound to happen all over again.
Last July scientists at CERN announced they had discovered a particle with all the characteristics of a Higgs boson. At that time they were not certain of their discovery and mentioned they found a boson with properties like those of the Higgs variant. But this past Thursday it was confirmed: they found it. And as usual, answers lead to questions. In this case, which type of Higgs boson did they find? This discovery represents a step closer to validating a 48-year-old theory, the Standard Model. From the Wikipedia entry, ‘the Standard Model of particle physics is a theory concerning the electromagnetic, weak, and strong nuclear interactions, which mediate the dynamics of the known subatomic particles’. The supersymmetry theory is also affected by this discovery in a similar way. This theory suggests that every known particle has a ‘mirror’ particle with slightly different characteristics.
Gerardo O ch Embedded oa, second year M .S Systems fr om Mexicoc.
Collection of plastic bottles started 15 March - TU/e recently placed fifteen special dumpsters around campus for staff and students to discard their plastic bottles. That way, the bottles can be processed separately. “We’re hoping to collect at least 100,000 plastic
bottles,” says Monique Kuyck, head of Services at Internal Affairs. The project starts at the Sports Center, Auditorium, Gemini and MetaForum and will run for half a year initially.
Brainmatters Psychology is becoming ever more important at TU/e. Technical systems and artifacts, be they games, cars, robots, lighting systems or buildings, are all meant for human end users eventually. It’s essential to know how these users perceive, think, feel, and act. The new human-oriented program Psychology & Technology examines every technical design from a psychological perspective. From now on, Cursor will be taking a closer psychological look at students, teachers, labs, technical artifacts, the workplace, the scientific business, campus, education, and websites.
You have to be seen in
green
Spring at last! Trees are popping, birds are singing, the world is turning green again. Deep down inside you must feel it too. Or does this sound old fashioned? Recent research has demonstrated that people consistently underestimate the beneficial effects that nature brings. So chances are you’re thinking I’m selling mere lay theories, lacking any empirical basis. Well you’d be wrong: a substantial body of research -from epidemiological to ethnographic, from lab-based to real world research- has demonstrated that exposure to nature promotes health, wellbeing and performance. Femke Beute, a PhD candidate at HTI, is doing research in exactly this domain of ‘mental restoration’. With a group of students we put theory to the test and visited unsuspecting TU/e employees in their offices. We recorded the view from their office window as well as the distance between their chair and the window, asked personnel to fill out a questionnaire and had them perform a short attention task. First result: those sitting closer to a window reported better physical health. Daylight is one of our most important drugs, but more about this in a later column. What we also learned: the greener the view, the higher your concentration.
Perhaps TU/e wants to project a ‘hightech’ image, but now would also be a good time to embrace the natural qualities of our campus. Do it now! No more steel and concrete, away with silvered windows and formal squares. I want to chew on a grass haulm, smell the flowers, find shelter beneath the branches of a leafy tree.
Yvonne de Kort, asso ciate profes at Human sor enviro Technology nmental ps Interaction, ychology departmen Photo | Bar t IE & IS t van O
Luckily TU/e does have its very own green treasure: the Dommel offers all its inhabitants a piece of paradise, a gentle blue stream, millions of rustling leaves. A handful of restoration within our reach. But the ‘Groene Loper’? Sharply cut paths, not a rabbit in sight. From the second floor up all we see are grey facades. Alas, in spite of budding bulbs, freshly planted ivy, and new proud trees, the walkway is not nearly green enough. Not even if we were to follow the ‘green campus’ flyer’s dress code: green skirts, green shirts, green hair even. We have to be seen in natural green: Dommel here we come!
verbeeke
For Starters | 3
See for more news www.cursor.tue.nl
Vox Academici Ir. Jeroen Ploeg, senior research scientist TNO Automotive and doctoral candidate Dynamics and Control at the Department of Mechanical Engineering
Can we reduce traffic jams without extra asphalt? Every day, Dutch freeways are subject to approximately two hundred kilometers of traffic jams. Despite extra lanes, congestion does not show a significant decline. But according to three doctoral candidates at TU Delft, there are other options that don’t involve extra asphalt, the Volkskrant reported last Monday. The candidates will receive their doctorates for their traffic model Fastlane, which should be able to reduce traffic jams by predicting them. What’s new about this model, will it work, and are there other options to reduce congestion without constructing extra lanes?
“Reducing congestion without adding extra lanes is definitely possible,” says Jeroen Ploeg, doctoral candidate in the Dynamics and Control group at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and senior research scientist at TNO Automotive Helmond. “But I’m not sure
whether or not the method presented here is very effective. Going from a mere model to actually increasing road capacity is quite a big step. I also have my doubts when it comes to this way of traffic congestion prediction. If it’s effective the prediction is incorrect, and if the prediction is correct there’s no effect. In other words, if route A is empty, route B is congested. That could make for an instable system.” “One of the major problems in simulating traffic is the fact you have to make a great number of assumptions. How people change lanes, for example, is something that greatly influences the flow of traffic. It’s quite challenging to model that properly. The added value of the Fastlane model is that it takes into account different vehicles, such as trucks and passenger cars. In current traffic models there’s only a limited distinction between vehicle types. It came as a surprise to me they want to have separate lanes for trucks and passenger cars, because they assume trucks tend to cause traffic jams. I beg to differ. In fact, trucks stabilize traffic; they drive more steadily and try not to brake too much, since that costs fuel. It’s obvious on freeways as well: the right lane is merrily moving along, while
the left lane is jerking along. What I do think will be effective is a dynamic maximum speed. That will harmonize traffic.” “Going for extra asphalt is easy. It works, but it’s neither cheap nor environmentally-friendly. Smart technology can go a long way as well. Road capacity can be increased quite a bit still. We’re currently working on the dynamic maximum speed as well - not on a traffic-management level, but based on individual vehicles. People overreact, accelerate too briskly or slam the brakes on, creating ‘phantom jams’. By synchronizing speeds and then having vehicles drive closer together, traffic remains safe and the flow improves. However, in order to realize this, communicating vehicles are needed and we’re not there yet. The process could go faster for trucks, since they already communicate a lot and are used to drive close together. Automating these vehicles is only a relatively small step, then. So we’re back at the trucks again. But where the Delft folk see them as the main instigators of congestion, we consider them our ‘first prey’ - a means to improve the traffic flow.” (NT)
Jeroen Ploeg. Photo | Bart van Overbeeke
Stories from space On Sunday, March 17, astronaut André Kuipers delivered a lecture at TU/e for kids aged and up. The lecture was part of the technology event ‘Hot or Not: The Next Generation’ organized by the company Sioux Embedded Systems.
10
Kuipers talked about his last days in space in 2011 especially. He took part in the mission to the ISS international space station, circling earth at kilo meters. ISS crew saw the sun rise and set times a day.
193 30th
400 16
55
The Dutchman worked on experiments, worked out hours a day, could receive e-mails times every day, and enjoyed two-way video contact with his family time a week.
2
4
1
0
There were questions at the end of the lecture, since Kuipers’ talk lasted much longer than planned. To compensate,
170 kids were allowed to have their picture taken with both Kuipers and TU/e professor Maarten Steinbuch. (MvdV)
Photo | Freddy Hurkmans
4 | Zoom in
March 21, 2013
Defense ceremony | Norbine Schalij Photos | Bart van Overbeeke After a period of four and a half years of research on average, doctoral candidates can get ready for their last act towards obtaining the doctor’s degree: they defend their dissertation in the presence of a carefully selected Doctorate Committee. From the moment when the chairman opens the ceremony with a hammer-blow of the crystal ball, the beadle keeps track of time so as to call out ‘Hora Est’ precisely one hour later. The Committee retires for deliberation and upon the reopening and closing of the continuation, the ball is ‘struck’ again.
Care for the doctoral candidates | Except for the arrangements, the Office of Doctoral Presentations and Academic Ceremonies also takes care of the precautionary measures and aftercare on the ceremony date itself. Beforehand, the doctoral candidate can offer tea and coffee to 15 guests and enjoy a moment of rest with them. Afterwards the Office of Doctoral Presentations and Academic Ceremonies presents the new PhD with a photo album containing ten photos of the ceremony.
Not at TU/e | To enhance the visibility of TU/e in the city, it has been possible since 2007 to hold the defense ceremony elsewhere. Ten times it took place at the Van Abbemuseum. That location proved to be unfit; the podium is wide enough, but too short for the whole Committee. Kasteel Helmond -a possible location when the subject is to do with automotive- is not ideal either; it has no fixed hall arrangement, for one. The Auditorium of De Zwarte Doos is used four times a year on average for a defense ceremony; halls 4 and 5 of the Auditorium more than two hundred times a year.
Hora Est
Number of defense ceremonies at TU/e
245 defense ceremonies in 2012 |
Year Number 2001 128 2002 128 2003 126 2004 143 2005 163 2006 148 2007 176 2008 191 2009 192 2010 189 2011 199 2012 245
In 2012, 245 doctoral degrees were awarded by TU/e. Before that, 237 dissertations were defended and 8 times a technological design occupied center stage. They were from Industrial Design, Mathematics & Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Physics and Chemical Engineering and Chemistry. The printing costs of a dissertation are borne by the relevant department. The full text is published digitally on the website of the Information Expertise Center of TU/e.
Zoom in | 5
See for more news www.cursor.tue.nl
Two Committee tables on either side of the doctoral candidate | The Committee consists of eight persons at most. There are one or two supervisors, and none, one or two co-supervisors, of whom at least half must be TU/e members. In addition, it is obligatory to have at least two external members and there must be five persons with a right to vote. Right to vote accrues to professors, associate professors and external experts approved by the Rector.
The doctoral candidate | He/she is waiting in the first row until invited by the chairman to take place behind the lectern. More than six months before that, the candidate has obtained an information folder from the Office of Doctoral Presentations and Academic Ceremonies. This folder contains the request form, the Regulations Governing the Conferral of Doctor’s Degrees and an action program. This photo was taken on February 27, 2013, during the defense ceremony of biomedical engineer Sascha Fuchs. He defended his dissertation ‘Chemical Biology Approaches for Nuclear Receptors -Molecular and Structural Insights’.
Seconds behind the doctoral candidate’s lectern | Seconds assist the doctoral candidate, much like a master of ceremonies assists a bridal couple. The doctoral candidate can decide to have no or two seconds. They cannot provide any intrinsic assistance, so the candidate himself/herself will have to give the answers. They can provide practical assistance, though; fetch pens, read out a thesis or hand over a tissue.
Committee members from various countries | You get French and Japanese Committee members, Russian, German and Belgian ones and more. They do not need to bring their own robes. The Germans could not bring one even if they wanted to, for that matter; they do not have any. That is why the Office of Doctoral Presentations and Academic Ceremonies thinks they are among the most passionate wearers of robes. Short wearers are the Chinese, for example. Before long the lending wardrobe will have two extra short robes, size 162.
Chairman’s hammer | The chairman’s set consists of a hammer in the form of a crystal ball and a wooden board that bears the TU/e’s motto: Mens Agitat Molem.
Beadles | TU/e has a team of eight beadles, who act as hosts. They can use one of the three replicas of the original beadle’s mace. The original mace is inside the display case. Once every year all the beadles from across the Netherlands and from the universities of Louvain and Brussels come together on the International beadle’s day. The next one is scheduled in Wageningen for April 5.
Number of defense ceremonies at TU/e per decade 1950-60: 1 1960-70: 117 1970-80: 289 1980-90: 448 1990-00: 1,023 2000-10: 1,494
The first, the oldest, the one canceled | After the first defense
Hora est | After precisely one hour, if necessary
ceremony on December 15, 1959, by M.T. Vlaardingerbroek (EE) there followed another 4,031 at TU/e (thru to February 2013). The oldest doctoral candidate was 78 years old: Gerrit van Dam at Applied Physics on March 30, 2009. Afterwards he said: “To be quite honest, I was a bit overwhelmed by everything it entailed. During the past six months I’ve been very busy taking care of lots of details that needed to be arranged.” The defense ceremony of Marcoen Cabbolet early in 2008 was canceled one week before the planned date. At the very last moment the dissertation was submitted to external expert and Nobel Prize winner Gerard ’t Hooft and rejected by him.
whilst interrupting the doctoral candidate, the beadle calls out: “Hora Est!” Now the Committee will deliberate in the Committee room. Preceded by the beadle the Committee leaves the room in a fixed order: first the beadle, then the chairman -wearing the chain of officeand the secretary, then one or two supervisors, next the co-supervisor(s), if any, and the other members make up the rear. The cortege of at most eight persons follows the beadle.
6 | Research
See for more news www.cursor.tue.nl
Watch it! When finding our way, we chiefly rely on our trusted eyes. For robots, on the other hand, basing their orientation on visual input is not that self-evident. Doctoral candidate ir. Roel Pieters does see a great future for vision-based robot control, however. He’ll be receiving his doctoral degree at Mechanical Engineering on March 25. Most robots are blind. That’s not an issue as long as they’re operating in a predictable environment. Assembly line robots that do nothing but pick up and tighten screws or weld metal plates together don’t need to visualize their environment. Since they repeat the exact same maneuver over and over, they can find the next screw with their eyes closed, so to speak. Using robots in a home environment, as care robots in nursing homes for example, is quite a different matter. After all, safety is top priority in these surroundings. A care robot can never crash into an elderly person in need of care, of course, which is why it must be able to respond quickly whenever something or someone crosses its path. We rely on sight mostly whenever we want to orientate ourselves, search for objects and avoid obstacles, so it may seem obvious to equip robots with the gift of eyesight as well. There are ample compact video cameras available these days. Still, visual perception in robots is still in its infancy. The main reason for that is the enormous computing power needed for the processing of visual data - video - says doctoral candidate Roel Pieters. “About forty percent of our brain’s capacity is used for image processing. Our brain is a kind of parallel processor that can compute millions of processes at the same time. A computer can’t top that.” Until recently, the visual control of robots was hindered greatly by the time it took to convert images to control signals. Over the past few years, however, computers have become sufficiently powerful to operate robots in real time, based on video input. As far as that’s concerned, we’ve come a long way since the very first visualcontrolled robot forty years ago. It took that specimen ten seconds to recognize a cardboard box. Today, even Pieters’ laptop can be used as the ‘brain’ of a robotic arm, making it recognize and grab objects.
A care robot must respond quickly when ever something or someone crosses its path The arm concerned measures approximately one meter and is normally part of ROSE, the Remotely Operated Service Robot that’s being developed at TU/e. Unlike the other Eindhoven care robot AMIGO, ROSE isn’t autonomous, says Pieters. “ROSE is operated from a kind of cockpit. An operator, a nursing home
employee for example, can see what the robot is looking at on a screen and can then decide on an action for the robot from a menu.” Obviously, it’s impossible for the person in the cockpit to manage the movements of ROSE to the tiniest detail. It’s up to the machine itself to determine the route and speed by which to approach its goal.
Based on the images, the robot decides which way the arm should move
a much higher image processing frequency of up to 1,600 frames per second. Considering your calculation capacity is limited, you’ll always have to weigh the pros and cons of image processing speed and accuracy.” The OLED project was a leg up to programming the robotic arm, Pieters explains. “In the production of OLEDs, a robot deposits a tiny drop of polymer on the position of each pixel. That action takes up only a fraction of a millisecond, because the displays are fixed objects that can be slid under the print head at high speed.” The main advantage of OLEDs is they can be made on flexible surfaces as well. However, those surfaces will transform due to fast movements or vibrations, resulting in irregularities in the pixel pattern because of the ‘blind’ robots. Manufacturers are therefore forced to adjust the production process. Pieters proved that with the help of a small camera and the right control
ue.nl rsor.t u c . w ww
software that issue may be solved at least in part. “The substrate (the base of the display, ed.) should have an even pattern, so you can see where the printing actions can be carried out exactly.” The mechanical engineer thinks
re Mo o: inf
a similar strategy may be used in the manufacturing of even smaller structures like computer chips. “There are very few industry robots that are being controlled by video right now, but I expect that to change in the near future.” (TJ)
For his dissertation, Pieters developed a trajectory planning for robots based on visual input. This trajectory does not only involve the route a robot takes to maneuver through a room, but also the arm’s movements to pick up items like a packet of instant soup. The remarkable thing about Pieters’ approach is that he programmed the robot to take into account its own physical limitations such as its acceleration power and top speed. Doing so allows for a better assessment in case of moving objects, including elderly people and their walkers, entering their line of vision. It’s essential for care robots to learn how to recognize items. Pieters invented an algorithm in which the robot compares images from its memory with the images its camera picks up. “The algorithm automatically defines a number of interesting aspects that are stored in the memory”, he explains. “In case those reference points match an object picked up by the camera, the robot will recognize the object in question.” Based on the difference in size between the live video images and the images in its memory, the robot determines the distance to the item. Experimenting with robotic arm ROSE, Pieters had his laptop (the robot brain) analyze the video images ten times per second. Based on the images, the robot decides which way the arm should move, and at what speed or acceleration, to reach its goal. It’s hard to analyze the footage more than ten times per second for now, Pieters says, partly because the control of the arm is calculated on the same laptop. “We’ve mounted a camera to the arm that records 640x480-pixel black-and-white images, which the processor of my laptop can process with a ten-Hertz frequency.” Faster is possible, though. For a previous project, Pieters worked on a simpler system meant to create OLEDs (plastic LEDs for displays). “160x100-pixel images were sufficient, then. That allowed Roel Pieters. Photo | Bart van Overbeeke