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Nowadays, the active safety systems that control the dynamics of passenger cars usually rely on real-time monitoring of vehicle side-slip angle (VSA). The VSA can’t be measured directly on the production vehicles since it requires the employment of high-end and expensive instrumentation. To realiably overcome the VSA estimation problem, different model-based techniques can be adopted. The aim of this work is to compare the performance of different model-based state estimators, evaluating both the estimation accuracy and the computational cost, required by each algorithm. To this purpose Extended Kalman Filters, Unscented Kalman Filters and Particle Filters have been implemented for the vehicle system under analysis. The physical representation of the process is represented by a single-track vehicle model adopting a simplified Pacejka tyre model. The results numerical results are then compared to the experimental data acquired within a specifically designed testing campaign, able to explore the entire vehicle dynamic range. To this aim an electric go-kart has been employed as a vehicle, equipped with steering wheel encoder, wheels angular speed encoder and IMU, while an S-motion has been adopted for the measurement of the experimental VSA quantity., Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2090, ISSN:1742-6588, ISSN:1742-6596

Facchin P, Rosa-Rizzotto M, Turconi AC, Pagliano E, Fazzi E, Stortini M, Fedrizzi E, The Gipci Studi Group: Multisite trial on efficacy of constraint-induced movement therapy in children with hemiplegia: study design and methodology. Am J Phys Med Rehabil 2009;88:216-230. Objective: In the past decades, several treatment approaches have been used to improve upper limb function in hemiplegic cerebral palsy. Only recently has constraint-induced movement therapy emerged as a treatment approach for children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy with the aim of reversing the behavioral suppression of movement in the affected upper limb. To date, evidence on this treatment has been very poor and limited, because all currently available trials reveal methodological limitations and a need for additional research to support the application of this treatment technique. This article presents the methodological choices, design, and main characteristics of an ongoing controlled clinical trial on the effectiveness and safety of constraint-induced movement therapy combined with an intensive rehabilitation program and compared with two comparison groups: one treated with an intensive rehabilitation program and the other with standard treatment. Methods: Twenty-one rehabilitation sites are currently recruiting patients with hemiplegic cerebral palsy, aged between 2 and 8 yrs, who have never undergone constraint therapy. Primary outcome measures include two major domains: upper limb motor ability (Quality of Upper Extremity Skills Test) and hand function assessment evaluating both grip function and spontaneous use of the affected side (Besta scale). Secondary outcome measures concern overall function, behavior, compliance, and satisfaction with treatment program of both child and family. Patients' follow-up is of 1 2 mos after treatment. Results: Research in children has always been neglected in comparison with adults, because of ethical reasons regarding the use of children for experimental purposes. The consequence has been the utilization of treatment and assessment tools and techniques that have not always been tested in pediatric patients or evidence is very scarce. Conclusion: Discussing and working on pediatric research methods represents an urgent need in rehabilitation research.

In recent years there have been several successful examples of crowd-based systems, used for very different purposes and built on a variety of technological artefacts, some ad-hoc, some generic. We presume it is possible to give a precise characterisation of what we call crowd-based sociocognitive systems and postulate that it is possible to formulate a framework to model and implement actual crowd-based sociocognitive systemsin a principled way. In this paper we outline the research program, propose the main features of a metamodel for modelling crowd-based sociocognitive systemsand make a call to arms for future development and collaboration., This paper reflects ideas from conversations with Harko Verhagen and Julian Padget. Both of them and Mark d’Inverno received support from the European Network for Social Intelligence, SINTELNET (FET Open Coordinated Action FP7-ICT-2009-C Project No. 286370) for short term visits to the IIIA. Work supported by projects PRAISE, ACE, COR, AT and by Generalitat of Catalunya grant 2009-SGR-1434. Some of the work was undertaken as part of the FP7 project in the Technology-Enhanced Learning Program called Practice and Performance Analysis Inspiring Social Education (PRAISE). The Principal Investigator for the project at Goldsmiths is Mark d’Inverno and the partners also include IIIA-CSIC, Barcelona

We propose a framework for designing and deploying games where social behaviour is kept under control. This framework may also be used for designing other dynamic coordinated social spaces., We would like to thank the referees for their comments which helped improve this paper. This research was partly funded by SINTELNET FET Open Coordinated Action (FP7-ICT-2009-C Project No. 286370) and Consolider AT project CSD2007-0022 INGENIO 2010 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Cultural institutions such as museums have been placed under financial pressure by the current European economic crisis, making it more difficult to physically visit them. It is therefore interesting to see whether we can exploit mobile devices and social networks to enrich and encourage the experience of cultural artifacts online.\ud \ud In this paper we report on ongoing work on enabling community browsing. We describe an application for community browsing that uses intelligent agents to aggregate the preferences of the individual users into community decisions, and an electronic institution to enforce the norms of the community onto the agents.

This paper investigates a specific type of information that should have an important place in the epistemic state of individual agents, namely their experiences. Just as beliefs, desires, or intentions, experiences should be properly represented, and their specific role in reasoning and decision processes clearly identified. After formally defining what an experience is, the paper explains in what respect experiences differ from and complement beliefs, and are not just ordinary cases. The added value of experiences in agent reasoning and decision making is then discussed in detail.

Whilst there has been an explosion of interest in multi-agent systems, there are still many problems that may have a potentially deleterious impact on the progress of the area. These prob- lems have arisen primarily through the lack of a common structure and language for understanding multi-agent systems, and with which to organise and pursue research in this area. In response to this, previous work has been concerned with developing a computational formal framework for agency and autonomy which, we argue, provides an environment in which to develop, evaluate, and compare systems and theories of multi-agent systems. In this paper we go some way towards justifying these claims by reviewing the framework and showing what we can achieve within it by developing models of agent dimensions, categorising key inter-agent relationships and by ap- plying it to evaluate existing multi-agent systems in a coherent computational model. We outline the benefits of specifying each of the systems within the framework and consider how it allows us to unify different systems and approaches in general.

In hemiplegic children, the recognition of the activity limitation pattern and the possibility of grading its severity are relevant for clinicians while planning interventions, monitoring results, predicting outcomes.Aim of the study is to examine the reliability and validity of Besta Scale, an instrument used to measure in hemiplegic children from 18 months to 12 years of age both grasp on request (capacity) and spontaneous use of upper limb (performance) in bimanual play activities and in ADL.Psychometric analysis of reliability and of validity of the Besta scale was performed.Outpatient study sampleReliability study: A sample of 39 patients was enrolled. The administration of Besta scale was video-recorded in a standardized manner. All videos were scored by 20 independent raters on subsequent viewing. 3 raters randomly selected from the 20-raters group rescored the same video two years later for intra-rater reliability. Intra and inter-rater reliability were calculated using Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) and Kendall's coefficient (K), respectively. Internal consistency reliability was assessed using Alpha's Chronbach coefficient. Validity study: a sample of 105 children was assessed 5 times (at t0 and 2, 3, 6 and 12 months later) by 20 independent raters. Each patient underwent at the same time to QUEST and Besta scale administration and assessment. Criterion validity was calculated using rho-Pearson coefficient.Reliability study: The inter-rater reliability calculated with Kendall's coefficient resulted moderate K=0.47. The intra-rater (or test-retest) reliability for 3 raters was excellent (ICC=0.927). The Cronbach's alpha for internal consistency was 0.972. Validity study: Besta scale showed a good criterion validity compared to QUEST increasing by age and severity of impairment. Rho Pearson's correlation coefficient r was 0.81 (P0.0001). Limitations. Besta scales in infants finds hard to distinguish between mild to moderately impaired hand function.Besta scale scoring system is a valid and reliable tool, utilizable in a clinical setting to monitor evolution of unimanual and bimanual manipulation and to distinguish hand's capacity from performance.