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Distracted driving is a growing concern around the world and has been the focus of many naturalistic and simulator-based studies. Driving simulators provide excellent practical and theoretical help in studying the driving process, and considerable efforts have been made to prove their validity. This research aimed to review relevant simulator-based studies focused on investigating the effects of the talking-on-the-phone-while-driving distraction on drivers’ behavior. This work is a scoping review which followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. The search was performed on five databases, covering twenty years of research results. It was focused on finding answers to three research questions that could offer an overview of the main sources of distraction, the research infrastructure, and the measures that were used to analyze and predict the effects of distractions. A number of 4332 studies were identified in the database search, from which 83 were included in the review. The main findings revealed that TPWD distraction negatively affects driving performance, exposing drivers to dangerous traffic situations. Moreover, there is a general understanding that the driver’s cognitive, manual, visual, and auditory resources are all involved, to a certain degree, when executing a secondary task while driving.

Augmented reality (AR) is a rapidly developing technology with the potential to revolutionize various sectors of industry by integrating digital information with the real world. This paper presents an overview of the emergent trends in industrial augmented reality (IAR) over the past five years. The study utilizes a comprehensive literature review analysis of industrial studies (searched on two scientific databases: Scopus and Clarivate Web of Science) to map the evolution of IAR trends from 2018 to 2022. The results revealed ten trending topics of AR application: Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence, smart manufacturing, industrial robots, digital twin, assembly, Internet of Things, visualization, maintenance, and training. Each topic is discussed in detail, providing insight into existing applications and research trends for each application field.

"Education needs to adapt to the constant changes of society and integrate modern technologies to enhance the process of teaching and learning. The recent Covid 19 pandemic has generated a shift towards digital education, as most educational institutions were forced to temporarily suspend all physical activities. The transfer and absorption of knowledge suffered greatly from this, especially in the underdeveloped countries where the infrastructure is limited. Nevertheless, the current crisis has paved the way for digital campuses, online classrooms and digital teaching platforms. In this article we briefly present several free tools that educators can adapt and use to create a virtual classroom based on mixed reality (XR) technologies, along with the main XR hardware (such as Oculus Quest, Hololens 2). We also share insights on how a virtual classroom can increase student participation and engagement, and how we envision the future of digital classrooms and their potential in the Metaverse."

Road safety is increasingly threatened by distracted driving. Studies have shown that there is a significantly increased risk for a driver of being involved in a car crash due to visual distractions (not watching the road), manual distractions (hands are off the wheel for other non-driving activities), and cognitive and acoustic distractions (the driver is not focused on the driving task). Driving simulators (DSs) are powerful tools for identifying drivers’ responses to different distracting factors in a safe manner. This paper aims to systematically review simulator-based studies to investigate what types of distractions are introduced when using the phone for texting while driving (TWD), what hardware and measures are used to analyze distraction, and what the impact of using mobile devices to read and write messages while driving is on driving performance. The review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines. A total of 7151 studies were identified in the database search, of which 67 were included in the review, and they were analyzed in order to respond to four research questions. The main findings revealed that TWD distraction has negative effects on driving performance, affecting drivers’ divided attention and concentration, which can lead to potentially life-threatening traffic events. We also provide several recommendations for driving simulators that can ensure high reliability and validity for experiments. This review can serve as a basis for regulators and interested parties to propose restrictions related to using mobile phones in a vehicle and improve road safety.

The winding process of carbon fiber is not a new concept, but until now only a few studies have been made in carbon fiber tensioning and winding on complex shapes. The main purpose of the article is to analyze the possibility to conduct the carbon fiber winding using two industrial robots connected as master slave, one to realize the winding and the other to hold and rotate the mandrel, using an own design of an automatic fiber tensioning tool. To have control of the system a force transducer was implemented. The measured force was used to make trajectory adjustments for the robots, having a predefined trajectory. The results obtained from the experimental tests showed that the winding process with two robots and a tensioning system can realize fiber windings with variable tension in molds with complex configurations (3D) of the winding paths. In this way, compact structures of the constantly tensioned fiber bundle can be obtained, according to product requirements.

Research in the process of internal combustion engines shows that their efficiency can be increased through several technical and functional solutions. One of these is turbocharging. For certain engine operating modes, the available energy of the turbine can also be used to drive an electricity generator. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the possibilities and limitations of this solution. For this purpose, several investigations were carried out in the virtual environment with the AMESim program, as well as experimental research on a diesel engine for automobiles and on a stand for testing turbochargers (Turbo Test Pro produced by CIMAT). The article also includes a comparative study between the power and torque of the naturally aspirated internal combustion engine and equipped with a hybrid turbocharger. The results showed that the turbocharger has a very high operating potential and can be coupled with a generator without decreasing the efficiency of the turbocharger or the internal combustion engine. The main result was the generation of electrical power of 115 W at a turbocharger shaft speed of 140,000–160,000 rpm with an electric generator shaft speed of 14,000–16,000 rpm. There are many constructive solutions for electrical turbochargers with the generator positioned between the compressor and the turbine wheel. This paper is presenting a solution of a hybrid turbocharger with the generator positioned and coupled with the compressor wheel on the exterior side.

The technological advances made in the recent years in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have led to a revolution in many adjacent areas. One of these is Cultural Heritage (CH), as the new array of XR technologies (a concept integrating Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality) is offering new interaction possibilities. The purpose of this paper is to compare several such technologies at application level, and to classify them based on common features such as Interaction, Manipulability, Ease of Use and others. The study presented in this paper was carried out during the H2020 project eHERITAGE (‘Expanding the Research and Innovation Capacity in Cultural Heritage Virtual Reality Applications’). The action had as output multiple XR systems/applications. We compare 4 of them: a smartphone-based AR application, a digital book with 3D elements deployed on a large touchscreen, a large holographic display and a bow simulator built using a VR headset and a mechatronic system. We evaluate these innovative systems in the context of the 2 educational events, when over 4000 participants interacted with our team. Results show that systems with greater interaction and immersion features were preferred over the others. Furthermore, Mixed Reality was preferred over Virtual and Augmented Reality.

The concept “smart city” nowadays designates a plethora of things. The multiple meanings associated with the smart city, and its imperfect synonym the “robotic city”, continue to provide a topic of debate. In this paper we aim to present an epistemologically grounded review of articles focused on the concept of “smart city” and its correlatives. The goal of this article is to ascertain whether the scientific character of the theories employed in such articles is discussed and/or ascertained. For this purpose, we used Popper’s method of falsification: a theory’s scientific character is determined by its falsifiability and eventual falsification. Papers from the literature were extracted using the PRISMA method, and 15 studies were assessed as eligible for analysis. Most conclusions and results expounded in the articles reviewed that claim to be scientific are arguably based on the unsound logic of verification and confirmation rather than falsification. This has the detrimental effect of reducing to the category of logically false universal instantiations the majority of conclusions about (a) smart city services and infrastructures, (b) intelligent transportation systems and (c) blockchain/Internet of Things.

Augmented reality (AR) is a fairly new technology enabling human machine interaction by superimposing virtual information on a real environment. Potential applications can be found in many areas of research from recent years. This study presents a systematic review of existing AR systems in the automotive field, synthesizing 55 studies from 2002 to 2019. The main research questions are: where AR technology has been applied within the automotive industry, what is the purpose of its application, what are the general characteristics of these systems, and what are the emphasized benefits and challenges of using AR in this field? The aim of this paper is to provide an insight into the AR applications and technologies in the automotive field.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are gaining considerable interest in transportation engineering in order to monitor and analyze traffic. This systematic review surveys the scientific contributions in the application of UAVs for civil engineering, especially those related to traffic monitoring. Following the PRISMA framework, 34 papers were identified in five scientific databases. First, this paper introduces previous works in this field. In addition, the selected papers were analyzed, and some conclusions were drawn to complement the findings. It can be stated that this is still a field in its infancy and that progress in advanced image processing techniques and technologies used in the construction of UAVs will lead to an explosion in the number of applications, which will result in increased benefits for society, reducing unpleasant situations, such as congestion and collisions in major urban centers of the world.

Nowadays smartphone distractions are frequently encountered while driving and are causing an increasing number of crashes. A method to prevent them is related to the use of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) which ensures that the driver's attention will return to the road when he/she is tempted to use a smartphone. An experimental study based on a driving simulator was conducted in order to investigate the influence of an in-vehicle smartphone based ADAS on the drivers' behavior when they are distracted by social networking applications. A number of 17 participants performed three scenarios consisting in driving with and without distraction factors related to various Facebook tasks with and without ADAS notifications. The statistical analysis shows that the use of the ADAS application help in reducing driving infractions on average by 43.43% compared to the situation in which the driver does not use it.

There are many examples of cultural events that distinguish people nationally. Celebrating this can bring people closer, as inhabitants of different countries share similar cultural values. This study investigates a sustainable way to enhance these types of events. On the occasion of the 2000-year anniversary of the death of the Roman poet Ovid, we propose a mobile augmented reality (MAR) application that contains historical information related to his life. As Ovid often stated in his last poems, he feared his work would be forgotten after his exile from Rome. This paper focuses on assessing whether this is the case, while also disseminating factual, historic data to people who tested the application. Experiments were conducted in Italy and Romania, in three different cities: Sulmona, Rome, and Constanta. Based on the results collected, four constructs were investigated: comprehensibility, manipulability, enjoyment, and usefulness. The results revealed that the usability of the MAR application, and the interaction metaphor, are appropriate for the general public. The MAR application provided a positive experience, and thus, increased the extent of the occasion.

A hybrid brain-computer interface (BCI) is a system that combines multiple biopotentials or different types of devices with a typical BCI system to enhance the interaction paradigms and various functional parameters. In this paper we present the initial development of a hybrid BCI system based on steady state evoked potentials (SSVEP), eye tracking and hand gestures, used to command a robotic arm for manipulation tasks. The research aims to develop a robust system that will allow users to manipulate objects by means of natural gestures and biopotentials. Two flickering boxes with different frequencies (7.5 Hz and 10 Hz) were used to induce the SSVEP for the selection of target objects, while eight channels were used to record the electroencephalographic (EEG) signals from user’s scalp. Following the selection, the users were able to manipulate the objects from the workspace by using the Leap Motion controller to send commands to a Jaco robotic arm.

Mechanics, along with electronics, is a basic field for the development of high technologies. However, learning mechanics is not an easy task. To meet and adapt to the requirements of students in the digital age, teachers must provide them significant ways to incorporate the latest technologies and applications for their studies. In this study, we explored the application of augmented reality (AR) to improve the learning of the science of Mechanisms. An AR application was implemented and developed for Android-based devices, followed by a qualitative experiment conducted with a sample of 116 students. The study was based on the technology acceptance model and the students&rsquo, attitudes towards learning in AR environments were assessed using the structural equation modeling. The results showed that the didactic potential of this application is promising, which is highlighted by the positive attitude about using the application, as well as by the high values obtained for intention to use.

This paper aims to analyze the resource management of a Network of Unmanned Systems (NUMS - sensor network system), using a BDI (belief–desire–intention) agent algorithm in junction with Power Transitions Theory and Endogenous Economic Growth - AK model. The research covers sections of only advanced national economies, with a high-technology physical capital, depending on the cyber-economic planning, and focuses on future possible wars between the great world powers.

This work aims to examine the reliability of smartphones that incorporate 3D depth sensors for 3D reconstruction of cultural heritage objects. The main focus is to compare the models generated with two image-based methods: photogrammetry and Tango Constructor application. The result are promising, showings that Tango-based method is an efficient way for 3D reconstruction of historical artifacts and is able to provide morphometric data comparable with photogrammetry-based data. The method can provide restorers a quick way to record vast amount of data, combined with sufficient accuracy and ease-of-use and this make it a potential alternative to conventional methods, like photogrammetry or laser scanning.

This paper addresses the concept of “natural interaction”, defined as a way to interact in a simple, human-like and intuitive manner with personal assistive robots. A human-robot interaction system was developed for this purpose in order to provide means for expert and non-expert users to cooperate and interact with an assistant humanoid robot (Nao) operating in a domestic environment, allowing them to express their instructions as combinations of gestures and speech inputs.

In this paper is presented a Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) application which makes possible the reviving of a demolished Reformed church from Brasov city by co-locating visual information in the location of the user. The advantage of the presented AR application is the possibility to enhance the visitors experience by providing them the possibility to get familiar with cultural heritage entities that have disappeared due to reorganization of the city. The user points a mobile device in the direction of a Point of Interest and the system displays the building which was there a few decades ago. A user study was conducted in order to evaluate the usefulness, ease of use, and perceived enjoyment of the application.

The present research aims to present the general framework of an affective teaching system (affective tutoring system - ATS) oriented to engineering education. ATS system is equipped with an emotional agent inspired by the psycho-pedagogical researches of control-value theory that try to estimate the student's emotion during a reusable learning object (RLO), having as a stimulus the ability evaluated by means of item response theory. To present a lesson the RLO model was improved, being organized in a matrix form with five columns and three rows. Each objective of teaching is assigned to a RLO array. The five columns cover a theoretical concept, its properties, relationships between concepts, the involvement of the human factor in these relationships and conclusions. The three lines cover the following aspects of teaching: theoretical teaching of the five concepts from the columns, teaching practical examples or typical experiment for each column, and on the last line specific exercises that must be solved for each column separately. The RLO matrix object with three rows and five columns has also, besides teaching objective, verification tests associated to each element in the array. Evaluation of matrix tests is performed by item response theory, which links estimated student emotion with the type of teaching objective by Extended-Value Emotional Control Agent.

In this research we intend to use a robot as a tool to offer a tour guide to the Industrial Informatics and Robotics Laboratory from Research & Development Institute of Brasov. In this laboratory there are a lot of devices used for research and every time when new visitors or students come to see them, an operator must explain what each device is used for. Therefore, we decided to use one of the robots (namely Nao robot from Aldebaran Robotics) to welcome new visitors and make them a tour of the lab, giving explanations about the research that take place in this laboratory. Nao is very versatile and therefore is suitable for this purpose, being able to walk, to make gestures with its arms and hands, to speak and also to interact with peoples. We have used Choregraphe, a graphical interface where are used drag and drop boxes that can be interconnected one with other to create simple behaviours. The robot will stay in a fixed position, at the entrance in laboratory and whenever a visitor will come, it will be ready to make a tour.

Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are increasingly used in many areas. There is a vast research activity within the field of AR in medical applications. In this paper, an AR system using RGB-D camera is proposed to facilitate trajectory planning for a prostate biopsy robot. The advantage of the developed AR environment consists in the possibility to generate needle trajectories using a 3D virtual model of a specific patient directly in the robot workspace. It was shown from a test case that the generated biopsy needle trajectory reaches successfully the target area.

Today's humanoid robots are used in many successful research topics. According to users needs these robots must be able to perform new tasks, and to adapt in a workspace. They have a similar appearance with human body. Thus the meaningful features of an humanoid robots are: the capability to imitate the user behavior, and the ability to learn new skills. In this paper, we propose to develop a robot system based on an humanoid robot that has abilities to learn new user skills by imitating human beings. To achieve this goal, we needed to design and to implement a new framework, which is able to teach an humanoid robot via user demonstration and to imitate movements of the human body. Therefore, the movements of the human body are automatically tracked using the Kinect sensor, and they teleoperate a whole body of a Nao robot. The results of experiments suggest that the feasibility of the proposed system is verified.

This article describes the architecture of a system that assigns operation tasks to a team of mobile robots. The purpose of the system is the execution of a complex set of operations by a cooperative team of robots. The framework includes a simple and friendly interface that uses a WWW navigator. The robot team is equipped with a different set of capacities. Each individual robot is developed having its own elementary set of tasks that can be executed. Even so, the robots are not able to execute a complex operation independently, this being the reason for witch this assign manager system was implemented, using a database as support. The database contains all the necessary information in order to perform complex operations.

The goal of our research was the implementation of a new emotional agent based on the control-value theory in psycho-pedagogy. This new type of emotional agent is included in the design of an affective tutoring system (ATS). The aim of the ATS platform is the adaption of an individualized teaching strategy considering the emotional state of the student user. One of the main problems in any kind of classroom refers to the inactive emotions. The inactive negative emotions categories are boredom, frustration and hopelessness. The majority of ATS platforms of the last two decades are based on the “OCC” (Ortony, Clore and Collins) emotional computational model. The paradigm of this generic theory brings some limitations if applied in the teaching field. In this paradigm, all the three inactive negative emotions have no approach. This is the rationale of our paper — to take into consideration a new approach of emotional agents that could be a good alternative not only in ATS but also in some other fields of human-machine interaction. Thus, we called our emotional agent “ECVEA” Extended Control-Value Emotional Agent based on psychological control-value theory.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of a new method for controlling the motors of a treadmill — based locomotion interface for navigation in Virtual Environments (VEs). Locomotion interfaces help users to travel in virtual worlds in a natural manner, providing a better sense of immersion than traditional interfaces. A Fuzzy Logic (FL) control was used in order to control the interface and the simulation are made in Matlab. Two types of control were designed, for the two motors of the device. The user's feet are tracked with an optical system in order to get their positions, which will be inputs for the control module.

Virtual Reality (VR) is one of the newest technological domains with revolutionary applicability for the tomorrow’s Future Internet, including visions of the Internet of Things. The sensation of total immersion in Virtual Environment (VE) is still unresolved. Therefore, our work proposes a new omnidirectional locomotion interface for navigation in VEs. The novel interface was built from an ordinary unidirectional treadmill, a new mechanical device, a motion capturing system to track the human walking and a control method using artificial intelligence techniques. A neural network is used to predict the motion of the new interface based on user’s body motion and information about VE. The feasibility of the proposed system is verified through experiments and the preliminary results suggest that the new interface performs very well in a simplest VE based on our control method.

In this paper a new method for face expression recognition is presented. Haar functions are used for face, eyes and mouth detection; edge detection for extracting the eyes correctly, and finally, Bezier curves to approximate the extracted regions. Then, a set of consecrated distances for each face type is extracted, set that will serve as training input for a multilayer neural network. We analyze the input data using a feed-forward neural network, trained and used for determining the class (Angry, Disgust, Fear, Happy, Neutral or Sad) of an arbitrary facial expression.

This paper presents a multi-modal interface for the interaction between a human user and an assistive humanoid robot. The interaction is performed through gestural commands and a dialogue mechanism to provide a ‘natural’ means for the user to command an assistive robot to perform several given tasks. A “Point-and-Command” interaction concept was proposed with the aim of providing the user with an easy-to-use and intuitive interface and to improve the efficiency of human-robot collaboration. Likewise, a decision support system (DSS) was implemented based on fuzzy logic, in order to warn the user when an active robot is about to become unusable and should be replaced. Thus, the interaction time, which depends on the robot's battery life, can be increased by replacing the assistant with another more fully charged one, making the interaction seem more natural.