1,720,981 research outputs found
2013 Joint IMEKO TC1-TC7-TC13 Symposium: Measurement across physical and behavioural sciences
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Development of a wearable device for the early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases
No full textThe progressive evolution of information and sensing technologies is giving pulse to the development of wearable mobile devices in search of life quality improvement. A relevant field of application is healthcare, with the development of wireless unobtrusive wearable solutions for the continuous remote health monitoring of patients. These wearable devices are particularly important for neurodegenerative diseases due to the possibility of early stage diagnoses through continuous monitoring to collect earlier significant data. Discovering specific symptoms and early defining medical treatments can delay, if not stop, the pathology progress whereas, once major symptoms like restricted or impaired mobility has appeared, the patients already underwent relevant and irreversible brain damage. The aim of this work is to show the development of the Neuroglass, a wearable smart glasses device for early stage diagnosis and monitoring of Parkinsonian-type neurodegenerative diseases. The designed frame is compliant to the standards and in order to embed the sensors to collect data from head and eyes movements since one of the early symptoms of Parkinson's disease has proven to be eye tremors. Preliminary laboratory tests, e.g. head accelerations measurements for different body movements, were carried out in order to choose properly the characteristics and positioning of the sensors; afterwards the device’s frame was designed by means of a 3D parametric CAD and built by additive manufacturing. The design was validated by first experimental test on monitoring eye movements and blinks
Remote control and monitoring of an underground robotic drilling equipment for landfill remediation
No full textPollution control and landfill remediation are urgent incumbents, and robot technology is effective means to supply safe and worthy solutions, on condition to figure out reliable task-oriented architectures and to enable remote-steered duty cycles by implementing the appropriate software-hardware information aids. The paper presents a noteworthy example achievement, specially addressing the requirement analysis, as basic step to develop the instrumental architecture for the measurement and actuation equipment, and to develop the suited remote sensing and control environment, based on an innovative client-server lay-out. The approach introduces actual design demands by explanatory instances, to show how the approach is exploited for the case achievement
Remote controlled underground robot for landfill drainage
No full textThe environmental policy of EU, acknowledged by the Economics Ministers in June 2001 meeting, establishes a set of priorities. The present paper deals with urgent demands in these fields, with attention on pollution decreasing/removal. A survey of European Topic Centre on Waste, based on partial data only, points out the risk of sewage and leachate contamination of subsoil and waterbed for 13500 landfills. The European Council, in the Directive 97/C _ 76/01, requests the member states to take the necessary measures to ensure, to fullest practicable extent, that old-landfills and polluting-sites should be rehabilitated. This request is specifically addressed, with the Microdrainage project, EVK4-CT-2002-30012, successfully achieved building the robotic prototype, properly operative from mid 2005. The paper presents the innovative developments undertaken by the project. A new drilling equipment is built, suited for autonomous operation, with fully automatic effectors and rods feeding and with multi-function boring/drilling head, to comply with complex work-task schedules. The mechanical architecture needs proper sophistication, to deal with rods supplying along the micro-tunnel, local buffering to complete the lay-down of a draining line, and mast feeding by the purposely designed arm. The system implementation, thereafter, tackles with the severe technical specifications for the micro-tunnel surroundings, and exacting performance requirements in rig levelling, mast attitude accuracy and work-task sequencing. By this project, the successful deployment of these enabling technologies helped in developing the novel robotic device, capable to solve the de-pollution requirements of the EU environmental policy
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