Designing Bioinspired Robots Editorial

This IJARS issue is dedicated to a new international conference series, which has been promoted by ENEA and IARP (International Advanced Robotics Programme). The first conference, entitled Bio-inspired Robotics, was held on 14th-15th May 2014 at the ENEA's Frascati Centre. The conference was dedicated to young researchers and scholars with promising ideas, methods and products for innovation and technology transfer in the field of service robots with bio-inspired design and operation

Large and Dense Swarms: Simulation of a Shortest Path Alarm Propagation

This paper deals with the transmission of alarm messages in large and dense underwater swarms of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and describes the verification process of the derived algorithm results by means of two simulation tools realized by the authors. A collision-free communication protocol has been developed, tailored to a case where a single AUV needs to send a message to a specific subset of swarm members regarding a perceived danger. The protocol includes a handshaking procedure that creates a silence region before the transmission of the message obtained through specific acoustic tones out of the normal transmission frequencies or through optical signals. This region will include all members of the swarm involved in the alarm message and their neighbours, preventing collisions between them. The AUV sending messages to a target area computes a delay function on appropriate arcs and runs a Dijkstra-like algorithm obtaining a multicast tree. After an explanation of the whole building of this collision-free multicast tree, a simulation has been carried out assuming different scenarios relevant to swarm density, signal power of the modem and the geometrical configuration of the nodes

A comparative evaluation of 3 different free-form deformable image registration and contour propagation methods for head and neck MRI : the case of parotid changes radiotherapy

Purpose: To validate and compare the deformable image registration and parotid contour propagation process for head and neck magnetic resonance imaging in patients treated with radiotherapy using 3 different approachesthe commercial MIM, the open-source Elastix software, and an optimized version of it. Materials and Methods: Twelve patients with head and neck cancer previously treated with radiotherapy were considered. Deformable image registration and parotid contour propagation were evaluated by considering the magnetic resonance images acquired before and after the end of the treatment. Deformable image registration, based on free-form deformation method, and contour propagation available on MIM were compared to Elastix. Two different contour propagation approaches were implemented for Elastix software, a conventional one (DIR_Trx) and an optimized homemade version, based on mesh deformation (DIR_Mesh). The accuracy of these 3 approaches was estimated by comparing propagated to manual contours in terms of average symmetric distance, maximum symmetric distance, Dice similarity coefficient, sensitivity, and inclusiveness. Results: A good agreement was generally found between the manual contours and the propagated ones, without differences among the 3 methods; in few critical cases with complex deformations, DIR_Mesh proved to be more accurate, having the lowest values of average symmetric distance and maximum symmetric distance and the highest value of Dice similarity coefficient, although nonsignificant. The average propagation errors with respect to the reference contours are lower than the voxel diagonal (2 mm), and Dice similarity coefficient is around 0.8 for all 3 methods. Conclusion: The 3 free-form deformation approaches were not significantly different in terms of deformable image registration accuracy and can be safely adopted for the registration and parotid contour propagation during radiotherapy on magnetic resonance imaging. More optimized approaches (as DIR_Mesh) could be preferable for critical deformations

Social Dependability: a proposed evolution for future Robotics”

International audienceThis paper deals with a possible scenario that could become common in a future robotics-assisted society. Robot applications are affected by dependability, reliability, safety concepts owing to the intelligence and the autonomous capability of advanced robots not only to carry out tasks without any man intervention, but also to establish whether a task must be carried out or not, depending on a high level evaluation of the environmental context. The interaction among different robots and among them and the human society is likely to increase in the future; transient Robot Societies, whose behavior cannot be foreseen with the tools we have today, are expected to generate and will pose management problems. This will demand the development of a methodology able to define the degree of dependability of a robot. The following discussion tries to address this problem by putting some ideas on the table for a possible technological, but also scientific challenge

Designing Bioinspired Robots Editorial

This IJARS issue is dedicated to a new international conference series, which has been promoted by ENEA and IARP (International Advanced Robotics Programme). The first conference, entitled Bio-inspired Robotics, was held on 14th-15th May 2014 at the ENEA's Frascati Centre. The conference was dedicated to young researchers and scholars with promising ideas, methods and products for innovation and technology transfer in the field of service robots with bio-inspired design and operation

Underwater security: Self organising systems

speciale 80 EAI Speciale I-2014 ENEA technologies for security CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURESInternational audienceThe study presented in this paper is the result of a project aimed at the development and realization of a novel marine technology, suitable for missions like search and rescue of people at sea, protection of civil and military ships against terroristic attacks, and search and identifi cation of dangerous explosive devices. The fusion of the concepts of swarm intelligence and multihop communication networks is the answer to the coordination in complex underwater tasks. Human in-the-loop supervision can be exploited increasing communication performances and redefi ning the teleoperation concept. The high effi ciency that communication can reach makes the system especially suitable in exploring large areas in short times, as in deep-water rescue operations, when the survival time of people lost at sea can be limited to very few minutes. A swarm prototype is currently under testing

Political Instability and Labor Market Institutions

This paper investigates the relationship between political instability and labor market institutions. We develop a theoretical model in which some features of the political process, by reducing the future yields of policy interventions, induce an incumbent government to choose labor market institutions that create wage rents and divert resources from public good provision and social insurance. We test these predictions empirically using panel data for 21 OECD countries for the period 1985-2006. We find strong evidence that political turnover and political polarization – our measures of political instability – are associated with a more regulated labor market, lower unemployment benefit replacement rates, and a smaller tax wedge on labor. We show also that there are strong complementarities between different dimensions of political instability, and evaluate their impact on labour market institutions across countries

Beyond the Labour Income Tax Wedge: The Unemployment-Reducing Effect of Tax Progressivity

This paper argues that, for a given overall level of labour income taxation, a more progressive tax schedule reduces the unemployment rate and increases the employment rate. From a theoretical point of view, higher progressivity induces a wage-moderation e ect and increases overall employment since employment of low-paid workers is more responsive. We test these theoretical predictions on a panel of 21 OECD countries over 1998-2008. Controlling for the burden of taxation at the average wage, we show that a more progressive taxation reduces the unemployment rate and increases the employment rate. These ndings are con rmed when we account for the potential endogeneity of both average taxation and progressivity. Overall our results suggest that policy-makers should not only focus on the detrimental e ects of tax progressivity on in-work e ort

Large and Dense Swarms: Simulation of a Shortest Path Alarm Propagation

This paper deals with the transmission of alarm messages in large and dense underwater swarms of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and describes the verification process of the derived algorithm results by means of two simulation tools realized by the authors. A collision-free communication protocol has been developed, tailored to a case where a single AUV needs to send a message to a specific subset of swarm members regarding a perceived danger. The protocol includes a handshaking procedure that creates a silence region before the transmission of the message obtained through specific acoustic tones out of the normal transmission frequencies or through optical signals. This region will include all members of the swarm involved in the alarm message and their neighbours, preventing collisions between them. The AUV sending messages to a target area computes a delay function on appropriate arcs and runs a Dijkstra-like algorithm obtaining a multicast tree. After an explanation of the whole building of this collision-free multicast tree, a simulation has been carried out assuming different scenarios relevant to swarm density, signal power of the modem and the geometrical configuration of the nodes