ArchGenTool: a System-Independent Collaborative Tool for Robotic Architecture Design

Complex robotic architectures require a collaborative effort in design and adherence to the design in the implementation phse. ArchGentTool is a collaborative architecture generation tool which supports the design of the robotic architecture in a multi-level fashion. It comprises high-level conceptual analysis of the system to be designed, as well as low-level implementation breakdown of its functional components, acting complementary to the ROS framework. The tool facilitates reusability and expandability of the architecture to any robotic system, as it can be adapted to different specifications. A case study with the RAMCIP service robot is presente

Feature extraction based on bio-inspired model for robust emotion recognition

Emotional state identification is an important issue to achieve more natural speech interactive systems. Ideally, these systems should also be able to work in real environments in which generally exist some kind of noise. Several bio-inspired representations have been applied to artificial systems for speech processing under noise conditions. In this work, an auditory signal representation is used to obtain a novel bio-inspired set of features for emotional speech signals. These characteristics, together with other spectral and prosodic features, are used for emotion recognition under noise conditions. Neural models were trained as classifiers and results were compared to the well-known mel-frequency cepstral coefficients. Results show that using the proposed representations, it is possible to significantly improve the robustness of an emotion recognition system. The results were also validated in a speaker independent scheme and with two emotional speech corpora.Fil: Albornoz, Enrique Marcelo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Hídricas. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional; ArgentinaFil: Milone, Diego Humberto. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Hídricas. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional; ArgentinaFil: Rufiner, Hugo Leonardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Hídricas. Instituto de Investigación en Señales, Sistemas e Inteligencia Computacional; Argentin

Evaluation of Various Dynamic Issues During Transient Operation of Turbocharged Diesel Engine with Special Reference to Friction Development

Copyright © 2007 SAE International The modeling of transient turbocharged diesel engine operation appeared in the early seventies and continues to be in the focal point of research, due to the importance of transient response in the everyday operating conditions of engines. The majority of research has focused so far on issues concerning thermodynamic modeling, as these directly affect heat release predictions and consequently performance and pollutants emissions. On the other hand, issues concerning the dynamics of transient operation are often disregarded or over-simplified, possibly for the sake of speeding up program execution time. In the present work, an experimentally validated transient diesel engin

Exploring the influence of perceived extroversion in embodied virtual agents on trust and likability

Embodied virtual agents (EVAs) are beginning to be researched to improve human–computer interaction. As EVAs become increasingly integrated into various aspects of daily life, understanding how to optimize their design to foster trust and likability among users is paramount. Leveraging insights from social psychology, particularly the concept of homophily, this study investigates the impact of perceived personality traits on user perceptions of EVAs. Specifically, we explore whether aligning the personality traits of EVAs with those of users increases engagement and fosters positive interactions. Drawing on a sample of 382 participants recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, we assessed participants' personality traits using the Big Five Inventory—2S, while the perceived extroversion of the agent was manipulated through facial expressions and body posture. Our findings suggest that participants were able to accurately identify the perceived extroversion of the agent (p = .014), and significant results indicate a homophily effect on trust, with participants exhibiting greater trust in agents perceived as having a similar level of extroversion (p < .01). However, no significant effect on likability was detected, suggesting a more nuanced relationship between perceived personality traits and user preferences. These findings highlight the potential of leveraging homophily in designing more engaging EVAs and underscore the importance of considering user–agent compatibility in human–computer interaction

Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging R2* assessments and analysis of historical parameters in patients with transfusion-dependent thalassemia

Recent advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques allow the assessment of iron overload in tissues1 especially the heart,2 in transfusion- dependent thalassemia patients. The R2* value (1/T2*) recorded in the intraventricular septum of the heart indirectly measures the degree of cardiac iron load. Applying this new technology we looked at a number of historical and biochemical parameters in order to determine their relationship to cardiac iron overload and the effect of cardiac iron on functional and structural changes of the heart in transfusion-dependent thalassemics

Primary care professionals’ experiences during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Greece: a qualitative study

Background: The coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) tested health care systems worldwide. This qualitative study aimed to explore and understand the experiences, beliefs and concerns of Primary Care Professionals (PCPs) regarding the preparedness and response of primary care to the first wave of the pandemic in Greece, a country where a public structured primary care system has been developing. Methods: We conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with 33 PCPs (General Practitioners, community General Internal Medicine Specialists, community Paediatricians and nurses) recruited from all regions of Greece after the first wave of the pandemic (June 2020). Interviews were transcribed verbatim, data were anonymised and analysed. Thematic analysis was applied developing a conceptual framework. Results: Four main themes were identified: a) Primary care unit adaptation and issues faced during the pandemic; b) Management of suspected COVID-19 cases; c) Management of non-suspected cases; d) Consequences of the pandemic. In the first phase of the pandemic, remote management of suspected cases and their referral to the hospital were preferred as a result of a shortage of personal protective equipment and inaccessibility to coronavirus testing in primary care. Due to the discontinuation of regular medical services and the limited in-person contact between doctors and patients, chronic disease management and prevention programmes were left behind. Social and emotional consequences of the pandemic, such as workplace stigma, isolation and social seclusion, deriving from fear of viral transmission, as well as burnout symptoms and exhaustion were commonly experienced among PCPs. Positive consequences of the pandemic were considered to be the recognition of the importance of an empowered public healthcare system by citizens and the valuable insight, knowledge and experience professionals gained in times of crisis. Conclusions: Primary care has a key role to play during and after the pandemic by using its information infrastructure to identify at-risk groups, detect new cases of COVID-19, provide care according to needs, and carry out vaccination programmes. Central coordination and empowerment of primary care will increase its effectiveness, via public awareness, holistic patient management, and unburdening of hospitals

Robust Human Pose Tracking For Realistic Service Robot Applications

Robust human pose estimation and tracking plays an integral role in assistive service robot applications, as it provides information regarding the body pose and motion of the user in a scene. Even though current solutions provide high-accuracy results in controlled environments, they fail to successfully deal with problems encountered under real-life situations such as tracking initialization and failure, body part intersection, large object handling and partial-view body-part tracking. This paper presents a framework tailored for deployment under real-life situations addressing the above limitations. The framework is based on the articulated 3D-SDF data representation model, and has been extended with complementary mechanisms for addressing the above challenges. Extensive evaluation on public datasets demonstrates the framework's state-of-the-art performance, while experimental results on a challenging realistic human motion dataset exhibit its robustness in real life scenarios