Real-time computation of distance to dynamic obstacles with multiple depth sensors

We present an efficient method to evaluate distances between dynamic obstacles and a number of points of interests (e.g., placed on the links of a robot) when using multiple depth cameras. A depth-space oriented discretization of the Cartesian space is introduced that represents at best the workspace monitored by a depth camera, including occluded points. A depth grid map can be initialized off line from the arrangement of the multiple depth cameras, and its peculiar search characteristics allows fusing on line the information given by the multiple sensors in a very simple and fast way. The real-time performance of the proposed approach is shown by means of collision avoidance experiments where two Kinect sensors monitor a human-robot coexistence task

Innovations and Labour Market Institutions: An Empirical Analysis of the Italian Case in the middle 90’s.

In this paper a dynamic panel data specification is used to assess the relationship between labour market flexibility and innovation activities by distinguishing different technological regimes of activities and geographical areas of the Italian economy. In order to estimate the previous relationship, regional patents are included as a proxy of the innovation, while job turnover and wages represent labour market indicators. The results show that higher job turnover has a significant and negative impact on patent activities only in regional sectors of Northern Italy, while a positive and significant impact of blue and white collar wages has been generally found.Labour market flexibility, Innovation, Dynamic panel data, Endogeneous relationship.

New approach to analyze relationships between agritouristic supply and territory

This paper defines the phenomenon of agritourism in Friuli Venezia Giulia (NE Italy) at the end of 2009, in the light of the multifunctionality of agritouristic farms and taking into account the land use. The proposed statistical approach to outline the situation includes (a) the classification of the variables linked to agritouristic supply to find the main supply types, (b) the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) in order to classify the regional agritourisms according to their supply and (c) the Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA) to investigate the relationships between agritouristic supply, agricultural land use and territory. Since the CCA is widely used only in social and environmental sciences, this work represents its first application in agribusiness field. The method becomes important during the agricultural policy planning processes because it provides decision makers with a means of rapid assessment of the relationships between rural supply and land uses on the territory.Rural Tourism, Agritourism, Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA), Agricultural Policy., Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q13, Q18.,

Evaluating Innovation and Labour Market Relationships: The Case of Italy

In this paper the link between labour market flexibility and innovation is analysed, paying particular attention to the different technological regimes of economic activities and the different geographical areas of the Italian economy. A dynamic panel data specification is used to assess the endogenous relationship between patents, included as a proxy of the innovation, and job turnover and wages which represent labour market indicators. The results show that higher job turnover only has a significant and negative impact on patent activities in regional sectors of Northern Italy, while a positive and significant impact of blue and white collar wages has been generally found.Labour market flexibility, Innovation, Dynamic panel data, Endogeneous relationship

Quasiparticle conductivities in disordered d-wave superconductors

We study the quasiparticle transport coefficients in disordered d-wave superconductors. We find that spin and charge excitations are generally localized unless magnetic impurities are present. If the system is close to a nesting point in the impurity-scattering unitary limit, the tendency towards localization is reduced while the quasiparticle density of states gets enhanced by disorder. We also show that the residual repulsive interaction among quasiparticles has a delocalizing effect and increases the density of states.Comment: 13 pages, no figure