Vision-Based Road Detection in Automotive Systems: A Real-Time Expectation-Driven Approach

The main aim of this work is the development of a vision-based road detection system fast enough to cope with the difficult real-time constraints imposed by moving vehicle applications. The hardware platform, a special-purpose massively parallel system, has been chosen to minimize system production and operational costs. This paper presents a novel approach to expectation-driven low-level image segmentation, which can be mapped naturally onto mesh-connected massively parallel SIMD architectures capable of handling hierarchical data structures. The input image is assumed to contain a distorted version of a given template; a multiresolution stretching process is used to reshape the original template in accordance with the acquired image content, minimizing a potential function. The distorted template is the process output.Comment: See http://www.jair.org/ for any accompanying file

Beam dynamics studies for the FCC-ee collimation system design

The electron-positron Future Circular Collider (FCC-ee) is being designed for stored beam energies up to 20.7 MJ, a value almost two orders of magnitude higher than any previous lepton collider. Considering the risk of any beam losses causing experimental backgrounds, magnet quenches, or even damage, a halo collimation system is under study to protect the most sensitive equipment from unavoidable losses. Beam dynamics and tracking studies are key aspects to evaluate the cleaning performance of the collimation system, and are essential in an iterative process to converge on an optimum performance. The first results of such studies, exploring various configurations of materials and collimator lengths, are presented, including also estimated beam loss distributions around the ring. In addition, an impact parameter scan on the primary collimators is performed to identify the most critical case for the protection of sensitive equipment

Pedestrian detection in far-infrared daytime images using a hierarchical codebook of SURF

One of the main challenges in intelligent vehicles concerns pedestrian detection for driving assistance. Recent experiments have showed that state-of-the-art descriptors provide better performances on the far-infrared (FIR) spectrum than on the visible one, even in daytime conditions, for pedestrian classification. In this paper, we propose a pedestrian detector with on-board FIR camera. Our main contribution is the exploitation of the specific characteristics of FIR images to design a fast, scale-invariant and robust pedestrian detector. Our system consists of three modules, each based on speeded-up robust feature (SURF) matching. The first module allows generating regions-of-interest (ROI), since in FIR images of the pedestrian shapes may vary in large scales, but heads appear usually as light regions. ROI are detected with a high recall rate with the hierarchical codebook of SURF features located in head regions. The second module consists of pedestrian full-body classification by using SVM. This module allows one to enhance the precision with low computational cost. In the third module, we combine the mean shift algorithm with inter-frame scale-invariant SURF feature tracking to enhance the robustness of our system. The experimental evaluation shows that our system outperforms, in the FIR domain, the state-of-the-art Haar-like Adaboost-cascade, histogram of oriented gradients (HOG)/linear SVM (linSVM) and MultiFtrpedestrian detectors, trained on the FIR images

Energy Deposition Patterns in the LHC Inner Triplet and Their Impact on the Phase II Luminosity Upgrade

Recent studies show that the energy deposition for the LHC Phase I luminosity upgrade, aiming at a peak luminosity 2.5×10**34 cm**-2s**-1, can be handled by appropriate shielding. The Phase II upgrade aims at a further increase of peak luminosity by a factor 4, possibly using Nb$_{3}$Sn quadrupoles. This paper describes how the main features of the triplet layout, such as quadrupole lengths, gaps between magnets, and aperture, affect the energy deposition in the insertion. We demonstrate how the energy deposition patterns depend on the triplet lay-out. An additional variable which is taken into account is the choice of conductor, i.e. solutions with Nb-Ti and Nb$_{3}$Sn are compared. Nb$_{3}$Sn technology gives possibilities for increasing the magnet apertures and space for new shielding solutions. Our studies give an indication on the possibility of managing energy deposition for the Phase II upgrade

Història dels 25 anys del Comitè de Bioètica de Catalunya

Comité de Bioética de Cataluña; HistoriaBioethics Committee of Catalonia; HistoryComitè de Bioètica de Catalunya; HistòriaEn tota història sempre hi ha algun punt que marqui un abans i un després en el seu inici. En la de la Bioètica a Catalunya aquest punt podria ser el Simposi de l’ abril de 1991 que s’organitzà sota els auspicis del Departament de Sanitat

Efficient slope reliability analysis under soil spatial variability using maximum entropy distribution with fractional moments

Spatial variability of soil properties imposes a challenge for practical analysis and design in geotechnical engineering. The latter is particularly true for slope stability assessment, where the effects of uncertainty are synthesized in the so-called probability of failure. This probability quantifies the reliability of a slope and its numerical calculation is usually quite involved from a numerical viewpoint. In view of this issue, this paper proposes an approach for failure probability assessment based on Latinized partially stratified sampling and maximum entropy distribution with fractional moments. The spatial variability of geotechnical properties is represented by means of random fields and the Karhunen-Loève expansion. Then, failure probabilities are estimated employing maximum entropy distribution with fractional moments. The application of the proposed approach is examined with two examples: a case study of an undrained slope and a case study of a slope with cross-correlated random fields of strength parameters under a drained slope. The results show that the proposed approach has excellent accuracy and high efficiency, and it can be applied straightforwardly to similar geotechnical engineering problems

Nonlinear resonant tunneling in systems coupled to quantum reservoirs

An adiabatic approximation in terms of instantaneous resonances is developed to study the steady-state and time-dependent transport of interacting electrons in biased resonant tunneling heterostructures. The resulting model consists of quantum reservoirs coupled to regions where the system is described by nonlinear ordinary differential equations and has a general conceptual interest.Comment: 4 pages, 3 postscript figure