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The International Fusion Material Irradiation Facility-DEMO Oriented NEutron Source (IFMIF-DONES) is composed of numerous complex systems and components that need on-site maintenance. Such need requires Remote Handling (RH) operations with advanced technology that is capable of preventing exposure to radiation and complying with stringent plant requirements in hostile environments. Moreover, specific design and integration of the RH systems have to be carried out in order to properly comply with constraints and procedures for remote operations, which in most cases become an engineering challenge. This paper presents a RH methodology that covers all the necessary aspects for the entire rigorous implementation and execution of remote operation in IFMIF-DONES. The methodology is made up of a set of different stages, which are based on the initial cooperation among different teams involved in the remote operation cycle. This approach leads to an iterative process that allows optimization and improvement of remote operations. It aims at accelerating the process with safer and robust concept of maintenance, simplified procedures, minimized breakdowns and reduced cost and time., This work has been partially supported by “Technofusión(II) CM (P2013/MAE-2745). Moreover, this work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium and has received funding from the Euratom research and training programme 2014–2018 under grant agreement No. 633053. The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission.

IFMIF-DONES aims at providing high-energy deuterons to produce a neutron flux to test materials. The accelerator stops the pulsed beam at a low duty cycle in the Beam Dump, which is a relevant component of the High Energy Beam Transport line. The cartridge of the Beam Dump absorbs a beam of charged particles during DONES accelerator commissioning and start-up phases after a shutdown. The cartridge is contained for security reasons in a shielding given its high activation, which remains for a long time. Deterioration of this component is due to heating cycles, radiation and corrosion caused by the cartridge cooling water. Thereby, Beam Dump has been classified as 3rd class Remote Handling component. It means that there is no scheduled maintenance for this component, but Remote Handling operations are required in case of failure. Remote equipment is mandatory when the Beam Dump shielding is open due to the high radiation levels. This work presents the maintenance operations to replace the Beam Dump cartridge. It includes the sequence and description of the procedures, equipment and tools necessary to meet the project requirements.

The integration of rehabilitation systems in an ambient assisted living environment can provide a powerful and versatile tool for long-term stroke rehabilitation goals. This paper introduces a novel concept of a personalized cognitive rehabilitation system in a naturalistic setting. The proposed platform was developed within the CogWatch project, with the intent of fostering independence in activities of daily living in patients with apraxia and action disorganization syndrome. Technical usability was evaluated in a series of pilot experiments, which illustrate how this approach may help to retrain patients in activities of daily living. The first system prototype has been tested with 36 participants divided into three groups, providing an exploratory evaluation of the usability of this solution and its acceptability. The technical solutions used within the CogWatch project are targeted to meet both the end users' needs from the interaction and usability point of views and the clinical requirements associated with the use of such systems. The challenges behind the development of ambient assisted living systems for cognitive rehabilitation are discussed. © 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland., This work is funded by the European Commission under the “Cognitive Rehabilitation of Apraxia and Action Disorganisation Syndrome (CogWatch)” project (7th Framework Programme), grant agreement: 288912. The authors thank the CogWatch consortium for their valuable contribution to this work. Special thanks to Manish Parekh (UoB), for the research and development of the sensorized tools and AR algorithm; to Emilie Jean-Baptiste (UoB) for the development of the TM; to Martin Russel (UoB) for the design of the AR-TM system; to Johannes Pflgler (TUM) and Andrea Schlegel (TUM) for their suport during the evaluation phase.

Apraxia and Action disorganization Syndrome are common late effect of cerebrovascular disease. Both disorders affect the cognitive abilities of stroke survivors, causing dependence in the execution of daily living activities. Occupational and physical therapy are the most effective treatment for the rehabilitation, while nowadays there are not available technological solutions. CogWatch system has been designed in order to provide a customizable and continuous web based Personal Healthcare System for cognitive rehabilitation at home. On the other hand, ICT systems are able to assist clinicians in the follow-up of the patient rehabilitation. CogWatch system is expected to improve the common rehabilitation techniques, leading to increase independence of the patient and reduce hospital visits.

Technological progress in the area of health informatics provides new prospects for the neurorehablitation of neurological patients. The CogWatch project (www.cogwatch.eu) is dedicated to development of automatized assistance system to improve motor planning and task execution for stroke survivors, who suffer from Apraxia and Action Disorganization Syndrome (AADS). The system is targeted at promoting user independence from the therapist or care-provider during performance of Activities of Daily Living (ADL). In this study, we present insights from the evaluation of the first prototype interface, designed to aid users with hot drink preparation in the kitchen environment (i.e. tea-making). Ten out of the eleven tested participants (8 patients; 3 controls) were able to prepare the selected cup of tea using the Cogwatch System. A case studies summary is presented to illustrate a successful example of patient-computer interactions and a proof of concept.

Stroke frequently causes apraxia, particularly if it affects the left-hemisphere. A major symptom of apraxia is the presence of deficits during the execution and organization of activities of daily living (ADL). These deficits may substantially limit the capacity of stroke patients to live independently in their home environment. Traditional rehabilitative techniques to improve ADL function revolve around physical and occupational therapy. This approach is labor intensive and constraints therapy to clinical environments. The CogWatch system provides an supplementary means of rehabilitation that is based on instrumented objects and ambient devices that are part of patients' everyday environment and can be used to monitor behavior and progress as well as re-train them to carry out ADL through persistent multimodal feedback.

This article presents research focused on tracking manual tasks that are applied in cognitive rehabilitation so as to analyze the movements of patients who suffer from Apraxia and Action Disorganization Syndrome (AADS). This kind of patients find executing Activities of Daily Living (ADL) too difficult due to the loss of memory and capacity to carry out sequential tasks or the impossibility of associating different objects with their functions. This contribution is developed from the work of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Technical University of Munich in collaboration with The University of Birmingham. The KinectTM for Windows© device is used for this purpose. The data collected is compared to an ultrasonic motion capture system. The results indicate a moderate to strong correlation between signals. They also verify that KinectTM is very suitable and inexpensive. Moreover, it turns out to be a motion-capture system quite easy to implement for kinematics analysis in ADL.

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a new platform created in order to improve the learning experience of bilateral control algorithms in teleoperation. This experimental platform, developed at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, is used by the students of the Master on Automation and Robotics in the practices of the subject called “Telerobotics and Teleoperation”. The main objective is to easily implement different control architectures in the developed platform and evaluate them under different conditions to better understand the main advantages and drawbacks of each control scheme. So, the student's tasks are focused on adjusting the control parameters of the predefined controllers and designing new ones to analyze the changes in the behavior of the whole system. A description of the subject, main topics and the platform constructed are detailed in the paper. Furthermore, the methodology followed in the practices and the bilateral control algorithms are presented. Finally, the results obtained in the experiments with students are also shown.