Safety can be listed as one of the most important aspects of every working environment, from the low risky to the most dangerous one. Construction sites can be clearly identified among the riskiest working fields, mainly because several complex and fast maneuvers are executed in a very crowded, dynamic and uncertain scenario. Specifically referring to construction machines, typical operations such as digging, earthmoving, heavy weights loading/unloading, etc. become incredibly risky if the machine stability is not guaranteed by the operator. To this purpose, this paper proposes a practical implementation of a dynamic fall prediction system for excavators based on the concept of the Zero Moment Point (ZMP). A commercially available excavator has been dynamically modelled and equipped with a set of sensors to reconstruct the state of the machine. When the proposed system is running, an alarm rings if a critical condition is reached, thus allowing the operator to avoid risky and potentially harmful situations.

In this paper, the process of modelling and identification of a hydraulic actuator is discussed. In this framework a simple model based on the classical theory has been derived and a first experimental campaign has been performed on a test bench. These tests highlighted the presence of unmodeled phenomena (e.g. dead-zone, hysteresis, etc.), therefore a second and more extensive experimental campaign has been done. With the acquired knowledge an improved model has been developed and its parameters identified. Finally several experimental tests have been performed in order to validate the model.

This paper presents a novel master-slave teleoperated robotic platform designed for Single Port Laparoscopy. The SPRINT (Single-Port lapaRoscopy bimaNual roboT) is composed of two high-dexterity 6 Degrees of Freedom (DOFs) robotic arms, a stereoscopic camera and a dedicated console for the robot control by the surgeon. Along with a short summary of the hardware features of the system, this paper describes the real-time control architecture of the SPRINT. Particular attention was given to the kinematic coupling between the master and the slave manipulators, as well as to the inverse kinematics algorithm. Tests performed to validate the performance of the robot in terms of accuracy are satisfactory, thus positioning the SPRINT as a candidate for the next generation of robots for Single Port Laparoscopy.

The article describes a novel approach for deployment of a swarm of heterogeneous autonomous vehicles. Each vehicle is treated as the agent of a network, which cooperates in order to cover a given area according to its own capabilities. A general framework is introduced, which aims at providing tools for solving a large class of coordination problems. The capabilities of each agent are modeled with Descriptor Functions; the sum of these functions constitutes the swarm's descriptor. The goal of the swarm is to match a desired descriptor, by minimizing an appropriate cost functional. A control law is proposed, which is capable of driving the agents towards the achievement of the goal. The existence of local minima and of a global minimum is discussed. Theoretical results on the existence of the global minimum are given. The Area Coverage problem is selected as a preliminary test for the algorithm. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.