Local Government Policy and Planning for Unmanned Aerial Systems

This research identifies key state and local government stakeholders in California for drone policy creation and implementation, and describes their perceptions and understanding of drone policy. The investigation assessed stakeholders’ positions, interests, and influence on issues, with the goal of providing potential policy input to achieve successful drone integration in urban environments and within the national airspace of the United States. The research examined regulatory priorities through the use of a two-tiered Stakeholder Analysis Process. The first tier consisted of a detailed survey sent out to over 450 local agencies and jurisdictions in California. The second tier consisted of an in-person focus group to discuss survey results as well as to gain deeper insights into local policymakers’ current concerns. Results from the two tiers of analysis, as well as recommendations, are provided here

Una terra di letteratura: il paesaggio veneto nei poemetti di Giuseppe Barbieri

Il contributo evidenzia l’attenzione riservata al paesaggio veneto nelle opere di Giuseppe Barbieri, discepolo di Melchiorre Cesarotti. La geografia dei colli Euganei o di Bassano equivale ad una carrellata di artisti e poeti, il paesaggio coincide con la rievocazione della grandezza e della fama di un letterato. Sulla scia del maestro, anche per Barbieri la presenza della poesia nel giardino è l’inveramento del giardino e del paesaggio, l’espressione della sua essenza profonda

Towards a Smart World: Hazard Levels for Monitoring of Autonomous Vehicles’ Swarms

This work explores the creation of quantifiable indices to monitor the safe operations and movement of families of autonomous vehicles (AV) in restricted highway-like environments. Specifically, this work will explore the creation of ad-hoc rules for monitoring lateral and longitudinal movement of multiple AVs based on behavior that mimics swarm and flock movement (or particle swarm motion). This exploratory work is sponsored by the Emerging Leader Seed grant program of the Mineta Transportation Institute and aims at investigating feasibility of adaptation of particle swarm motion to control families of autonomous vehicles. Specifically, it explores how particle swarm approaches can be augmented by setting safety thresholds and fail-safe mechanisms to avoid collisions in off-nominal situations. This concept leverages the integration of the notion of hazard and danger levels (i.e., measures of the “closeness” to a given accident scenario, typically used in robotics) with the concept of safety distance and separation/collision avoidance for ground vehicles. A draft of implementation of four hazard level functions indicates that safety thresholds can be set up to autonomously trigger lateral and longitudinal motion control based on three main rules respectively based on speed, heading, and braking distance to steer the vehicle and maintain separation/avoid collisions in families of autonomous vehicles. The concepts here presented can be used to set up a high-level framework for developing artificial intelligence algorithms that can serve as back-up to standard machine learning approaches for control and steering of autonomous vehicles. Although there are no constraints on the concept’s implementation, it is expected that this work would be most relevant for highly-automated Level 4 and Level 5 vehicles, capable of communicating with each other and in the presence of a monitoring ground control center for the operations of the swarm

Analysis of Disengagements in Semi-Autonomous Vehicles: Drivers’ Takeover Performance and Operational Implications

This report analyzes the reactions of human drivers placed in simulated Autonomous Technology disengagement scenarios. The study was executed in a human-in-the-loop setting, within a high-fidelity integrated car simulator capable of handling both manual and autonomous driving. A population of 40 individuals was tested, with metrics for control takeover quantification given by: i) response times (considering inputs of steering, throttle, and braking); ii) vehicle drift from the lane centerline after takeover as well as overall (integral) drift over an S-turn curve compared to a baseline obtained in manual driving; and iii) accuracy metrics to quantify human factors associated with the simulation experiment. Independent variables considered for the study were the age of the driver, the speed at the time of disengagement, and the time at which the disengagement occurred (i.e., how long automation was engaged for). The study shows that changes in the vehicle speed significantly affect all the variables investigated, pointing to the importance of setting up thresholds for maximum operational speed of vehicles driven in autonomous mode when the human driver serves as back-up. The results shows that the establishment of an operational threshold could reduce the maximum drift and lead to better control during takeover, perhaps warranting a lower speed limit than conventional vehicles. With regards to the age variable, neither the response times analysis nor the drift analysis provide support for any claim to limit the age of drivers of semi-autonomous vehicles

L’Archivio professionale disperso di Bernardo Antonio Vittone

The documental production that can be referred to Bernardo Antonio Vittone’s atelier consists of several hundreds of documents. These documents, texts and drawings, have been dispersed among several Italian, French and German public and private archives and collections under circumstances that, in most cases, have never been fully clarified. An exhaustive overview of all this material is not possible, as there is no clear perimeter circumscribing the amount of documents produced by the architect. In fact, a formally defined “professional archive” by Vittone has never actually existed. There are, however, several documental funds and groups of funds. Their actual location can be used both to map the places where Vittone has studied and worked, and to trace the history of the private and public collections, that since the 19th century have inherited or bought drawings from the architect’s atelier, usually acquiring them from Vittone’s former assistants. Our research has clarified that the dissemination of Vittone’s graphic material seems to be mostly due to the resale and dispersion of Mario Ludovico Quarini’s archive. The former assistant and architect, after acquiring a conspicuous portion of Vittone’s papers at his master’s death, had combined them with his own drawings and those of other architectural professionals. Any reconstruction attempt of Vittone’s archive, therefore, must pass through the analysis and identification of Quarini’s legacy.La produzione grafica e testuale riconducibile allo studio di Bernardo Antonio Vittone si compone di varie centinaia di documenti geograficamente distribuiti tra Italia, Francia e Germania, in seguito a vicissitudini in alcuni casi mai chiarite. Una rassegna esaustiva di tutto il materiale non è evidentemente possibile ed è finora rimasta intentata: non esiste, infatti, un perimetro che circoscriva il bacino di documenti prodotti dall’architetto, e non esiste neppure, di fatto, un vero e proprio archivio professionale vittoniano. Ci sono diversi nuclei documentali, la cui ubicazione in parte disegna una mappa dei luoghi in cui Vittone ha studiato e ha lavorato, e in parte traccia le rotte dei collezionisti, che dall’Ottocento hanno acquisito parte dei disegni provenienti dal suo atelier, specialmente per mezzo degli ex collaboratori. Veicolo principale della disseminazione di gran parte del materiale grafico vittoniano rimasto nello studio alla morte improvvisa dell’architetto, l’ex aiutante Mario Ludovico Quarini numera e riordina una porzione cospicua di un insieme di carte, prodotte da almeno quattro decenni di professione, affiancandola a disegni suoi o di altri architetti. La ricostruzione parziale di un archivio vittoniano, di fatto mai esistito, passa quindi attraverso la ricomposizione di quello quariniano, altrettanto disperso geograficamente, ma dotato di quei caratteri di sistematizzazione e di riconoscibilità non riscontrabili tra le carte del maestro