iTETRIS: An Integrated Wireless and Traffic Platform for Real-Time Road Traffic Management Solutions

Wireless vehicular cooperative systems have been identified as an attractive solution to improve road traffic management, thereby contributing to the European goal of safer, cleaner, and more efficient and sustainable traffic solutions. V2V-V2I communication technologies can improve traffic management through real-time exchange of data among vehicles and with road infrastructure. It is also of great importance to investigate the adequate combination of V2V and V2I technologies to ensure the continuous and costefficient operation of traffic management solutions based on wireless vehicular cooperative solutions. However, to adequately design and optimize these communication protocols and analyze the potential of wireless vehicular cooperative systems to improve road traffic management, adequate testbeds and field operational tests need to be conducted. Despite the potential of Field Operational Tests to get the first insights into the benefits and problems faced in the development of wireless vehicular cooperative systems, there is yet the need to evaluate in the long term and large dimension the true potential benefits of wireless vehicular cooperative systems to improve traffic efficiency. To this aim, iTETRIS is devoted to the development of advanced tools coupling traffic and wireless communication simulators

Visual Brain and Visual Perception: How Does the Cortex Do Perceptual Grouping?

How the brain generates visual percepts is a central problem in neuroscience. We propose a detailed neural model of how LGN and the interblob cortical stream through V1 and V2 generate context-sensitive perceptual groupings from visual inputs. The model suggests a functional role for cortical layers, columns, maps, and networks and proposes homologous circuits for V1 and V2 with larger scale processing in V2. An integrated treatment of interlaminar, horizontal, orientational, and endstopping cortical interactions and a role for corticogeniculate feedback in grouping are proposed. Modeled circuits simulate parametric psychophysical data about boundary grouping and illusory contour formation.Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0657, N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-94-1-0597, N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-95-1-0409

Functional adaptivity for digital library services in e-infrastructures: the gCube approach

We consider the problem of e-Infrastructures that wish to reconcile the generality of their services with the bespoke requirements of diverse user communities. We motivate the requirement of functional adaptivity in the context of gCube, a service-based system that integrates Grid and Digital Library technologies to deploy, operate, and monitor Virtual Research Environments defined over infrastructural resources. We argue that adaptivity requires mapping service interfaces onto multiple implementations, truly alternative interpretations of the same functionality. We then analyse two design solutions in which the alternative implementations are, respectively, full-fledged services and local components of a single service. We associate the latter with lower development costs and increased binding flexibility, and outline a strategy to deploy them dynamically as the payload of service plugins. The result is an infrastructure in which services exhibit multiple behaviours, know how to select the most appropriate behaviour, and can seamlessly learn new behaviours

Closed-loop motor control using high-speed fiber optics

A closed-loop control system for controlling the operation of one or more servo motors or other controllable devices is described. The system employs a fiber optics link immune to electromagnetic interference, for transmission of control signals from a controller or controllers at a remote station to the power electronics located in proximity to the motors or other devices at the local station. At the remote station the electrical control signals are time-multiplexed, converted to a formatted serial bit stream, and converted to light signals for transmission over a single fiber of the fiber optics link. At the local station, the received optical signals are reconstructed as electrical control signals for the controlled motors or other devices. At the local station, an encoder sensor linked to the driven device generates encoded feedback signals which provide information as to a condition of the controlled device. The encoded signals are placed in a formatted serial bit stream, multiplexed, and transmitted as optical signals over a second fiber of the fiber optic link which closes the control loop of the closed-loop motor controller. The encoded optical signals received at the remote station are demultiplexed, reconstructed and coupled to the controller(s) as electrical feedback signals