New Robust Obstacle Detection System Using Color Stereo Vision

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) are divided into intelligent infrastructure systems and intelligent vehicle systems. Intelligent vehicle systems are typically classified in three categories, namely 1) Collision Avoidance Systems; 2) Driver Assistance Systems and 3) Collision Notification Systems. Obstacle detection is one of crucial tasks for Collision Avoidance Systems and Driver Assistance Systems. Obstacle detection systems use vehiclemounted sensors to detect obstuctions, such as other vehicles, bicyclists, pedestrians, road debris, or animals, in a vehicleâs path and alert the driver. Obstacle detection systems are proposed to help drivers see farther and therefore have more time to react to road hazards. These systems also help drivers to get a large visibility area when the visibility conditions is reduced such as night, fog, snow, rain, ... Obstacle detection systems process data acquired from one or several sensors: radar Kruse et al. (2004), lidar Gao & Coifman (2006), monocular vision Lombardi & Zavidovique (2004), stereo vision Franke (2000) Bensrhair et al. (2002) Cabani et al. (2006b) Kogler et al. (2006) Woodfill et al. (2007), vision fused with active sensors Gern et al. (2000) Steux et al. (2002) Mobus & Kolbe (2004)Zhu et al. (2006) Alessandretti et al. (2007)Cheng et al. (2007). It is clear now that most obstacle detection systems cannot work without vision. Typically, vision-based systems consist of cameras that provide gray level images. When visibility conditions are reduced (night, fog, twilight, tunnel, snow, rain), vision systems are almost blind. Obstacle detection systems are less robust and reliable. To deal with the problem of reduced visibility conditions, infrared or color cameras can be used. Thermal imaging cameras are initially used by militaries. Over the last few years, these systems became accessible to the commercial market, and can be found in select 2006 BMW cars. For example, vehicle headlight systems provide between 75 to 140 meters of moderate illumination; at 90 K meters per hour this means less than 4 seconds to react to hazards. When with PathFindIR PathFindIR (n.d.) (a commercial system), a driver can have more than 15 seconds. Other systems still in the research stage assist drivers to detect pedestrians Xu & Fujimura (2002) Broggi et al. (2004) Bertozzi et al. (2007). Color is appropriate to various visibility conditions and various environments. In Betke et al. (2000) and Betke & Nguyen (1998), Betke et al. have demonstrated that the tracking o

Dalla civil conversazione all'omelia: la parabola di Francesco Berni

Il saggio si occupa del Rifacimento berbiano dell'Orlando Innamorato di Matteo Maria Boiardo

Innovating ski resorts' business model through a human centered approach

Ski resorts from countries with a long ski tradition, mainly in Europe and North America, are experiencing signs of participation stagnancy during the past decades. Wondering how to tackle this issue, the researcher merged two paths of his career (business models and the ski resorts management) to come up with the following research question: How might ski resorts innovate their business models by putting special emphasis in customer empathy? This main question counted with three more specific questions, which at the same time, are the three parts that compose the thesis: Part 1: Foundations. How might the current business model literature help ski resorts to understand their current business model? The starting point consisted of a theoretical review of business models (definition, representation, and innovation) and ski resort industry (general overview of the industry and the existing business models). Part 2: Identifying opportunities. How might empathizing with customers help ski resorts identify opportunities for business model innovation? By deep understanding how people’s lives interact with ski resorts, one can identify their unmet needs or problems. In other words, through this approach, one could learn how ski resorts could be from the point of view of its users. Part 3: Seizing opportunities. How might ski resorts seize these identified opportunities by reconfiguring the existing business model? In orderThis part consisted of leveraging the identified needs into opportunities to innovate ski resorts’ business model. To do so, the researcher came up with solutions, built and test mock-ups out of them and implemented them into the business model. Problems Some problems emerged along the research, which made it even more challenging. Dealing with them tested the researcher’s rigor in the method as well as the capacity to adapt to unexpected situations. Among them, there is the underlying complexity of business models, limitations of time and resources and a high degree of ambiguity. Conclusions Reflecting upon the outcomes of the research, an industry found in a mature and stagnant state as the ski industry, has much more to win than to lose if they innovate their business model. What is more, they have a lot to lose if they do not challenge the status quo. Quoting the words of Frank Lloyd Wright: “Business is like riding a bicycle. Either you keep moving or you fall down.

Immagine e immaginazione nelle "Rime" del Tasso

Il saggio mette in evidenza la forte componente erotica presente nelle rime tassiane mettendola in parallelo con quella del poema

Riflessioni sparse su un poema molto commentato

L’intervento si sofferma sul commento di Emilio Bigi all’Orlando furioso (1982), recentemente riproposto da Cristina Zampese (2012), partendo da una breve storia della tradizione esegetica cinquecentesca del poema ariostesco. Mette poi in luce alcuni caratteri fondamentali del commento bigiano: ampiezza delle singole note, ricchezza di livelli di analisi (lessicale, stilistica, retorica, intra e intertestuale, variantistica, storico-biografica), conformità delle note a un’interpretazione globale del poema, che potremmo sintetizzare nella formula dell’“armonia conquistata”. Cabani si interroga infine su quale potrebbe essere la forma di un nuovo commento che, senza perdere la ricchezza di quello bigiano, pervenga a una maggior distinzione e a nuova distribuzione delle fasce esegetiche. In particolare, Cabani si chiede se e in quale parte dell’apparato critico intertestualità e variantistica debbano essere collocate a integrazione delle semplici note interpretative.This paper deals with Emilio Bigi’s commentary to the Orlando furioso (1982), recently reprinted by Cristina Zampese (2012). Starting with a short history of the sixteenth-century exegetical tradition, it dwells on some of the main features of Bigi’s commentary: the amplitude of the annotations, the richness of their analytical levels (lexical, stylistic, rhetorical, intra- and intertextual, historico-biographical, and its constant attention to variants), their compliance with a comprehensive interpretation of the poem, which might be defined as a “conquered harmony”. Lastly Cabani discusses what form and shape might take a future commentary to Ariosto’s poem, so that, without losing the richness of Bigi’s work, it might introduce a new arrangement in the explanatory apparatus, to be split into two or more distinct bands. In particular, she considers whether, and within which band of the apparatus, should be put the intertextual and variant reference, in order best to compliment the mere explanatory notes

SuperpixelGridCut, SuperpixelGridMean and SuperpixelGridMix Data Augmentation

A novel approach of data augmentation based on irregular superpixel decomposition is proposed. This approach called SuperpixelGridMasks permits to extend original image datasets that are required by training stages of machine learning-related analysis architectures towards increasing their performances. Three variants named SuperpixelGridCut, SuperpixelGridMean and SuperpixelGridMix are presented. These grid-based methods produce a new style of image transformations using the dropping and fusing of information. Extensive experiments using various image classification models and datasets show that baseline performances can be significantly outperformed using our methods. The comparative study also shows that our methods can overpass the performances of other data augmentations. Experimental results obtained over image recognition datasets of varied natures show the efficiency of these new methods. SuperpixelGridCut, SuperpixelGridMean and SuperpixelGridMix codes are publicly available at https://github.com/hammoudiproject/SuperpixelGridMasksComment: The project is available at https://github.com/hammoudiproject/SuperpixelGridMask

Mise en correspondance couleur par programmation dynamique pour les véhicules intelligents

Dans cette communication, nous proposons un opérateur de détection de contours couleur rapide et auto-adaptatif ainsi q'un algorithme de mise en correspondance couleur par programmation dynamique pour les véhicules intélligents. Le but étant d'intégrer ce processus dans notre système de stéréo vision couleur en cours de conception afin d'extraire les contours 3D des obstacles. Dans une première étape, les points de contours sont extraits de façon auto-adaptative en utilisant l'opérateur déclivité couleur. Dans une deuxième étape, ces points de contours sont mis en correspondance par une méthode de programmation dynamique, en tenant compte des contraintes géométriques, colorimétriques, d'ordre et d'unicité. Les résultats de mise en correspondance sont des points de contours 3D

Inhomogeneous Diastereomeric Composition of Mongersen Antisense Phosphorothioate Oligonucleotide Preparations and Related Pharmacological Activity Impairment

Mongersen is a 21-mer antisense oligonucleotide designed to downregulate Mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 7 (SMAD7) expression to treat Crohn's disease. Mongersen was manufactured in numerous batches at different scales during several years of clinical development, which all appeared identical, using common physicochemical analytical techniques, while only phosphorous-31 nuclear magnetic resonance (P-31-NMR) in solution showed marked differences. Close-up analysis of 27 mongersen batches revealed marked differences in SMAD7 downregulation in a cell-based assay. Principal component analysis of P-31-NMR profiles showed strong correlation with SMAD7 downregulation and, therefore, with pharmacological efficacy in vitro. Mongersen contains 20 phosphorothioate (PS) linkages, whose chirality (Rp/Sp) was not controlled during manufacturing. A different diastereomeric composition throughout batches would lead to superimposable analytical data, but to distinct P-31-NMR profiles, as indeed we found. We tentatively suggest that this may be the origin of different biological activity. As similar manifolds are expected for other PS-based oligonucleotides, the protocol described here provides a general method to identify PS chirality issues and a chemometric tool to score each preparation for this elusive feature

Diseño de propuesta de valor para una cervecería artesanal en Lima norte bajo el modelo "Value Proposition Design"

El mercado peruano de cervezas presenta en la actualidad un panorama interesante para ser abordado desde el área de la gestión y para establecer nuevas propuestas de emprendimiento. Dominado por una gran empresa a lo largo del tiempo, viene mostrando cambios importantes en los últimos años como resultado del impacto que ha tenido el crecimiento económico en el consumo de los peruanos, quienes ahora siguen tendencias internacionales que los inclinan a comprar productos diferenciados. Estos cambios se expresan principalmente en el auge y surgimiento de nuevos emprendimientos de cervecerías artesanales, que han logrado atraer a un nicho de mercado a través de los beneficios particulares que ofrece la cerveza artesanal, rompiendo con las barreras de entrada que habían impedido anteriormente a otras empresas ser sostenibles en el mercado. Frente a este escenario, el presente proyecto profesional encuentra en la elaboración de un bar especializado en cervezas artesanales una oportunidad atractiva para el diseño de un modelo de negocio, basando la elección en las tendencias del consumidor, que estimulan la demanda por cervezas artesanales; el contexto económico positivo, que impulsa estas tendencias; y la aún baja penetración de la cerveza artesanal en el mercado limeño, que genera un gran espacio y potencial para la expansión del segmento en zonas aún no atendidas. Es en la zona de Lima Norte donde se decide enfocar el diseño del modelo de negocio debido a que el interés por la cerveza artesanal empieza a manifestarse a través de la incipiente oferta y la consolidación de una clase media con cada vez mayor poder adquisitivo que busca nuevos servicios de calidad. Estudiada la oportunidad, se desarrolla la propuesta de valor a través del uso del Value Proposition Design, una herramienta innovadora que finaliza en la consecución de un modelo de negocio enfocado en el cliente y en responder a sus necesidades a través de una comprensión de este cliente. Esto con el objetivo de generar una propuesta diferenciada y acorde al perfil del público objetivo. En ese sentido, surge el concepto de un bar con temática de museo cervecero, que promueva y expanda el conocimiento de la cultura cervecera artesanal a través de un proceso de compra ágil, dentro de un ambiente dinámico, acogedor y al aire libre. Una vez diseñada la propuesta, se procede a validarla a través de recursos cualitativos y cuantitativos, obteniéndose una estimación de una demanda de 58,878 visitas anuales.Trabajo de suficiencia profesiona

Metropolis simulations of Met-Enkephalin with solvent-accessible area parameterizations

We investigate the solvent-accessible area method by means of Metropolis simulations of the brain peptide Met-Enkephalin at 300$K$. For the energy function ECEPP/2 nine atomic solvation parameter (ASP) sets are studied. The simulations are compared with one another, with simulations with a distance dependent electrostatic permittivity $\epsilon (r)$, and with vacuum simulations ($\epsilon =2$). Parallel tempering and the biased Metropolis techniques RM$_1$ are employed and their performance is evaluated. The measured observables include energy and dihedral probability densities (pds), integrated autocorrelation times, and acceptance rates. Two of the ASP sets turn out to be unsuitable for these simulations. For all other systems selected configurations are minimized in search of the global energy minima, which are found for the vacuum and the $\epsilon(r)$ system, but for none of the ASP models. Other observables show a remarkable dependence on the ASPs. In particular, we find three ASP sets for which the autocorrelations at 300$$K are considerably smaller than for vacuum simulations.Comment: 10 pages and 8 figure