Assessment of a urban sustainability and life quality index for elderly

The research here presented originates from some of the ongoing challenges of our society: the demographic changes and the high share of population living in urban areas. The aim of the research is the definition of an index of sustainability and quality of life for elderly at suburban scale, not only able to outline aspects related to the local territorial context but also to represent the neighbourhood level. This would provide significant added value to existing indicators that represent the quality of life for much larger areas as cities, regions and nations. Indeed, it is universally recognised that the quality of life varies quite considerably depending on whether you live in different neighbourhoods or urban areas. The index proposed with the research is elaborated on the base of objective and subjective indicators integrated with the judgment of experts, in order to give an accurate and truthful weight to each indicator. Moreover, it has been elaborated for microscale analysis, dividing urban areas into cells, in order to highlight more in detail the real needs of each specific zone. As a result, the elaborated index would be an available tool to be provided to the local public administration to facilitate and optimise the urban planning and management, prioritizing interventions on the base of the sustainability principles and subjective needs of the population, in particular of elderly

CHARACTERIZATION OF A MOBILE MAPPING SYSTEM FOR SEAMLESS NAVIGATION

Abstract. Mobile Mapping Systems (MMS) are multi-sensor technologies based on SLAM procedure, which provides accurate 3D measurement and mapping of the environment as also trajectory estimation for autonomous navigation. The major limits of these algorithms are the navigation and mapping inconsistence over the time and the georeferencing of the products. These issues are particularly relevant for pose estimation regardless the environment like in seamless navigation. This paper is a preliminary analysis on a proposed multi-sensor platform integrated for indoor/outdoor seamless positioning system. In particular the work is devoted to analyze the performances of the MMS in term of positioning accuracy and to evaluate its improvement with the integration of GNSS and UWB technology. The results show that, if the GNSS and UWB signal are not degraded, using the correct weight to their observations in the Stencil estimation algorithm, is possible to obtain an improvement in the accuracy of the MMS navigation solution as also in the global consistency of the final point cloud. This improvement is measured in about 7 cm for planimetric coordinate and 34 cm along the elevation with respect to the use of the Stencil system alone

Development of an Adaptive Efficient Thermal/Electric Skipping Control Strategy Applied to a Parallel Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle

In recent years automobile manufacturers focused on an increasing degree of electrification of the powertrains with the aim to reduce pollutants and CO2 emissions. Despite more complex design processes and control strategies, these powertrains offer improved fuel exploitation compared to conventional vehicles thanks to intelligent energy management. A simulation study is here presented aiming at developing a new control strategy for a P3 parallel plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. The simulation model is implemented using vehicle modeling and simulation toolboxes in MATLAB/Simulink. The proposed control strategy is based on an alternative utilization of the electric motor and thermal engine to satisfy the vehicle power demand at the wheels (Efficient Thermal/Electric Skipping Strategy-ETESS). The choice between the two units is realized through a comparison between two equivalent fuel rates, one related to the thermal engine and the other related to the electric consumption. An adaptive function is introduced to develop a charge-blended control strategy. The novel adaptive control strategy (A-ETESS) is applied to estimate fuel consumption along different driving cycles. The control algorithm is implemented on a dedicated microcontroller unit performing a Processor-In-the-Loop (PIL) simulation. To demonstrate the reliability and effectiveness of the A-ETESS, the same adaptive function is built on the Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategy (ECMS). The PIL results showed that the proposed strategy ensures a fuel economy similar to ECMS (worse of about 2% on average) and a computational effort reduced by 99% on average. This last feature reveals the potential for real-time on-vehicle applications

Vulnerability assessment of concrete bridges using different methods of visual inspection

This paper shows the comparisons between different methods of visual inspection used in European Countries. These methodologies are applied to the deck bridge located near Cagliari, along the SS 195 road to Capoterra. From a strategic point of view, this structure plays a key role ensuring a direct connection to different structures related to industrial and local productions and to an important touristic district. This is a prestressed concrete bridge in an aggressive marine environment, which in October 2008 was hit by a flood that caused subsidence in the foundations. The aim of our inspection is to obtain a real measure of the vulnerability through different procedures and to determine which is the best method able to give objective results

Seamless Navigation using UWB-based Multisensor System

This work presents an Ultra-wideband-based (UWB) approach to seamless positioning and navigation applied in a real test-bed. It deploys two different solutions for positioning estimation in function of the operational environment. Outdoors, a classical hybridization between Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) is applied while indoors, an UWB/INS integration is performed relying on a low-cost commercial platform which integrates both UWB unit and IMU. The implementation of this procedure will be presented with more details in the paper. The aim of the work is to validate the performances in term of accuracy, precision and seamlessness behavior of the low-cost UWB technology available today. The results shown an overall accuracy of about 60 cm considering the entire path walked, both outdoor and indoors

Relationship between blood remifentanil concentration and stress hormone levels during pneumoperitoneum in patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectomy

The effect of remifentanil on stress response to surgery is unclear. However, there are not clinical studies investigating the relationship between blood remifentanil concentrations and stress hormones. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to assess the association between blood remifentanil concentrations measured after pneumoperitoneum and cortisol (CORT) or prolactin (PRL) ratio (intraoperative/preoperative value), in patients undergoing laparoscopic cholecystectom

GNSS positioning using mobile devices with the android operating system

The access and the use of the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) pseudo-range and carrier-phase measurements mobile devices as smartphones and tablets with an Android operating system has transformed the concept of accurate positioning with mobile devices. In this work, the comparison of positioning performances obtained with a smartphone and an external mass-market GNSS receiver both in real-time and post-processing is made. Particular attention is also paid to accuracy and precision of positioning results, also analyzing the possibility of estimating the phase ambiguities as integer values (fixed positioning) that it is still challenging for mass-market devices. The precisions and accuracies obtained with the mass-market receiver were about 5 cm and 1 cm both for real-time and post-processing solutions, respectively, while those obtained with a smartphone were slightly worse (few meters in some cases) due to the noise of its measurements

GNSS Positioning using Android Smartphone

The possibility to manage pseudorange and carrier-phase measurements from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) chipset installed on smartphones and tablets with an Android operating system has changed the concept of precise positioning with portable devices. The goal of this work is to compare the positioning performances obtained with a smartphone and an external mass-market GNSS receiver both in real-time and post-processing. The attention is also focused not only on the accuracy and precision, but also on the possibility to determine the phase ambiguity values as integer (fixed positioning) that it is still a challenging aspect for mass-market devices: if the mass-market receiver provides good results under all points of view both for real-time and post-processing solutions (with precisions and accuracies of about 5 cm and 1 cm, respectively), the smartphone has a bad behaviour (order of magnitude of some meters) due to the noise of its measurements

Monocular Visual Odometry with Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Using Low Cost Sensors

The positioning in underwater environments is today a strong necessity for many purposes, such as construction, communication, localization, and environmental monitoring. The use of underwater rover allows to perform visual inspections, maintenance and repair of many infrastructures, like dams, pipes, tunnels, structures as well as the analyses of the underwater environments in lakes, rivers and seas. This work deals with interesting results about monocular visual odometry for unmanned underwater navigation systems. Interesting results have been obtained considering low-cost sensors simulating the real-time, challenging operational conditions, applied for a dedicated archaeological situation. Particular algorithms for navigation procedures and outliers' rejections have been written and will presented in this paper: these aspects have a great importance especially for autonomous navigation solutions in underwater complex environments, such as for archaeological applications