Visual motion processing and human tracking behavior

The accurate visual tracking of a moving object is a human fundamental skill that allows to reduce the relative slip and instability of the object's image on the retina, thus granting a stable, high-quality vision. In order to optimize tracking performance across time, a quick estimate of the object's global motion properties needs to be fed to the oculomotor system and dynamically updated. Concurrently, performance can be greatly improved in terms of latency and accuracy by taking into account predictive cues, especially under variable conditions of visibility and in presence of ambiguous retinal information. Here, we review several recent studies focusing on the integration of retinal and extra-retinal information for the control of human smooth pursuit.By dynamically probing the tracking performance with well established paradigms in the visual perception and oculomotor literature we provide the basis to test theoretical hypotheses within the framework of dynamic probabilistic inference. We will in particular present the applications of these results in light of state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms

General scores for accessibility and inequality measures in urban areas

In the last decades, the acceleration of urban growth has led to an unprecedented level of urban interactions and interdependence. This situation calls for a significant effort among the scientific community to come up with engaging and meaningful visualizations and accessible scenario simulation engines. The present paper gives a contribution in this direction by providing general methods to evaluate accessibility in cities based on public transportation data. Through the notion of isochrones, the accessibility quantities proposed measure the performance of transport systems at connecting places and people in urban systems. Then we introduce scores rank cities according to their overall accessibility. We highlight significant inequalities in the distribution of these measures across the population, which are found to be strikingly similar across various urban environments. Our results are released through the interactive platform: www.citychrone.org, aimed at providing the community at large with a useful tool for awareness and decision-making

Kajian terhadap ketahanan hentaman ke atas konkrit berbusa yang diperkuat dengan serat kelapa sawit

Konkrit berbusa merupakan sejenis konkrit ringan yang mempunyai kebolehkerjaan yang baik dan tidak memerlukan pengetaran untuk proses pemadatan. Umum mengenali konkrit berbusa sebagai bahan binaan yang mempunyai sifat kekuatan yang rendah dan lemah terutama apabila bahan binaan ini dikenakan tenaga hentaman yang tinggi. Namun begitu, konkrit berbusa merupakan bahan yang berpotensi untuk dijadikan sebagai bahan binaan yang berkonsepkan futuristik. Binaan futuristik adalah binaan yang bercirikan ringan, ekonomi, mudah dari segi kerja pembinaan dan yang paling penting adalah mesra alam. Dalam kajian ini, konkrit berbusa ditambah serat buangan pokok kelapa sawit untuk untuk meningkatkan sifat kekuatan atau rapuh. Serat kelapa sawit juga berfungsi mempertingkatkan ketahanan hentaman terutamanya aspek nilai penyerapan tenaga hentaman dan nilai tenaga hentaman. Kandungan peratusan serat kelapa sawit yang digunakan adalah 10%, 20% dan 30% dengan dua ketumpatan konkrit berbusa iaitu 1000kg/m3 dan 1400kg/m3 . Untuk menentukan nilai penyerapan tenaga hentaman dan nilai tenaga hentaman, ujikaji Indentasi dan ujikaji hentaman dilakukan ke atas sampel�sampel yang telah diawet selama 28 hari. Luas bawah graf tegasan-terikan yang diperolehi daripada ujikaji Indentasi merupakan nilai penyerapan tenaga hentaman bagi sampel konkrit berbusa. Untuk ujikaji hentaman, keputusan ujikaji dinilai berdasarkan nilai tenaga hentaman untuk meretakkan sampel yang diperolehi daripada mesin ujikaji dynatup. Secara keseluruhannya, hasil dapatan utama bagi kedua-dua ujikaji menunjukkan sampel yang mengandungi peratusan serat kelapa sawit sebanyak 20% mempunyai nilai penyerapan tenaga hentaman dan nilai tenaga hentaman yang tinggi. Serapan tenaga maksimum adalah sebanyak 4.517MJ/m3 untuk ketumpatan 1400kg/m3 . Ini menunjukkan ketumpatan 1400kg/m3 berupaya menyerap tenaga lebih baik berbanding ketumpatan 1000kg/m3 . Manakala untuk nilai tenaga hentaman maksimum adalah sebanyak 27.229J untuk ketumpatan 1400kg/m3 . Hasil dapatan tersebut menunjukkan ketumpatan 1400kg/m3 dengan peratusan serat sebanyak 20% berupaya mengalas tenaga hentaman yang lebih banyak sebelum sampel retak. Kesimpulannya, peningkatan ketumpatan konkrit berbusa dan pertambahan serat buangan kelapa sawit ke dalam konkrit berbusa dapat meningkatkan ciri ketahanan hentaman konkrit berbusa khususnya aspek nilai penyerapan tenaga hentaman dan nilai tenaga hentaman

Empowering and assisting natural human mobility: The simbiosis walker

This paper presents the complete development of the Simbiosis Smart Walker. The device is equipped with a set of sensor subsystems to acquire user-machine interaction forces and the temporal evolution of user's feet during gait. The authors present an adaptive filtering technique used for the identification and separation of different components found on the human-machine interaction forces. This technique allowed isolating the components related with the navigational commands and developing a Fuzzy logic controller to guide the device. The Smart Walker was clinically validated at the Spinal Cord Injury Hospital of Toledo - Spain, presenting great acceptability by spinal chord injury patients and clinical staf

Feedback Control of an Exoskeleton for Paraplegics: Toward Robustly Stable Hands-free Dynamic Walking

This manuscript presents control of a high-DOF fully actuated lower-limb exoskeleton for paraplegic individuals. The key novelty is the ability for the user to walk without the use of crutches or other external means of stabilization. We harness the power of modern optimization techniques and supervised machine learning to develop a smooth feedback control policy that provides robust velocity regulation and perturbation rejection. Preliminary evaluation of the stability and robustness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through the Gazebo simulation environment. In addition, preliminary experimental results with (complete) paraplegic individuals are included for the previous version of the controller.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Control System Magazine. This version addresses reviewers' concerns about the robustness of the algorithm and the motivation for using such exoskeleton