Massimo Magrini

Thesaurus project: design of new autonomous underwater vehicles for documentation and protection of underwater archaeological sites

The Thesaurus Project, funded by the Regione Toscana, combines humanistic and technological research aiming at developing a new generation of cooperating Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and at documenting ancient and modern Tuscany shipwrecks. Technological research will allow performing an archaeological exploration mission through the use of a swarm of autonomous, smart and self-organizing underwater vehicles. Using acoustic communications, these vehicles will be able to exchange each other data related to the state of the exploration and then to adapt their behavior to improve the survey. The archival research and archaeological survey aim at collecting all reports related to the underwater evidences and the events of sinking occurred in the sea of Tuscany. The collected data will be organized in a specific database suitably modeled.

Devices for interactive computer music and computer graphics performances

Some original gesture recognition devices for interactive computer music and computer graphics performances are here described. Sensors typically used in robotics are taken into consideration for developing original devices: infrared beams and real time analysis of CCD cameras video captured images. The basic idea consists of remote sensing (i.e. without mechanical and/or electrical links) moving objects handled by performers or remote sensing gesture of the human body. This paper may be considered to belong to the following general areas: Audio/Music signal processing and synthesis, joint Audio-Video processing, Human-Machine interface and perception.

Computer Vision on Embedded Sensors for Traffic Flow Monitoring

Capillary monitoring of traffic in urban environment is key to a more sustainable mobility in smart cities. In this context, the use of low cost technologies is mandatory to avoid scalability issues that would prevent the adoption of monitoring solutions at the full city scale. In this paper, we introduce a low power and low cost sensor equipped with embedded vision logics that can be used for building Smart Camera Networks (SCN) for applications in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), in particular, we describe an ad hoc computer vision algorithm for estimation of traffic flow and discuss the findings obtained through an actual field test.

N400-like responses to three-chord harmonic sequences with unexpected out of key endings: scalp topography, cortical sources, and perspectives for a clinical use.

A series of ERP components, each provided with both a precise timing with respect to stimulation and a specific cortical localization, reflects the temporal succession of processing stages of music information. This makes the musical stimulus potentially usable to probe residual brain functions in non-communicating patients with disorders of consciousness. In an attempt to find a simple stimulation protocol that was suitable for use in a clinical setting, the purpose of this study was to verify whether a minimum-length musical stimulus, provided with a definite music-syntactic connotation, was still able to elicit musical ERPs in a group of eight healthy subjects. The stimulus was composed of the minimum number of chords necessary and sufficient to enable the subject to predict a plausible closure of the sequence (priming) and, at the same time, to provide him/her with the closing chord of the sequence (target), either congruous (probable closing) or not (improbable closing) to the tonal context. The subjects task was to discriminate and recognize the irregular targets. The components that were expected to be elicited, in this experimental situation, were ERAN, N5, P600/LPC. Conversely, in addition to these former components, we unexpectedly observed a N400-like component. To determine whether this component was a real N400, we submitted our data to a sLORETA analysis in order to identify its cortical generators. Irregular chords showed higher current densities with respect to regular ones on the right-sided medial and superior temporal gyri, superior and inferior parietal lobules, fusiform and parahippocampal gyri, and on the bilateral posterior cingulate cortex. In particular, the N400-like wave seems to share with the word-primed music-elicited N400 certain generators that are located in cortical areas BA 21/37 and BA 22. This suggests that even chord-primed chord targets can convey extra-musical meanings and that, consequently, they might be useful in assessing residual higher-order information-processing capabilities in non-communicating patients with disorders of consciousness.

An Interactive Multimedia System for Treating Autism Spectrum Disorder

A system for real-time gesture tracking is presented, used in active well-being self-assessment activities and in particular applied to medical coaching and music-therapy. The system is composed of a gestural interface and a computer running own (custom) developed software. During the test sessions a person freely moves his body inside a specifically designed room. The algorithms detect and extrapolate features from the human figure, such us spatial position, arms and legs angles, etc. An operator can link these features to sounds synthesized in real time, following a predefined schema. The augmented interaction with the environment helps to improve the contact with reality in subjects having autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The system has been tested on a set of young subjects and a team of psychologists has analyzed the results of this experimentation. Moreover, we started to work on graphical feedback in order to realize a multichannel system.

An Infrastructure for Integrated Management of Urban Railway Crossing Areas

In this work, we present SIMPLE, an integrated platform that offers simultaneous and coordinated management of both railway level crossing and surrounding road traffic. The platform features a new radar sensor that provides superior safety in detecting lost loads or vehicles trapped in the level crossing barriers as well as a road monitoring system, based on novel paradigms for the IoT and including an ETSI M2M compliant Smart Camera Network (SCN) and Gateway. On the base of the data collected by the sensor deployed on the field, a suitable computational unit performs simulations and provides forecast both on railway circulation (and thus level crossing closing times) and on road circulation. Results collected during a field test are reported and discussed.

Towards a Robust System Helping Underwater Archaeologists Through the Acquisition of Geo-referenced Optical and Acoustic Data

In the framework of the ARROWS project September 2012 - August 2015, a venture funded by the European Commission, several modular Autonomous Underwater Vehicles AUV have been developed to the main purposes of mapping, diagnosing, cleaning, and securing underwater and coastal archaeological sites. These AUVs consist of modular mobile robots, designed and manufactured according to specific suggestions formulated by a pool of archaeologists featuring long-standing experience in the field of Underwater Cultural Heritage preservation. The vehicles are typically equipped with acoustic modems to communicate during the dive and with different payload devices to sense the environment. The selected sensors represent appealing choices to the oceanographic engineer since they provide complementary information about the surrounding environment. The maini¾?topics discussed in this paper concern i performing a systematic mapping of the marine seafloors, ii processing the output maps to detect and classify potential archaeological targets and finally iii developing dissemination systems with the purpose of creating virtual scenes as a photorealistic and informative representation of the surveyed underwater sites.

An Auditory Feedback based system for treating Autism Spectrum Disorder

A system for real-time gesture tracking is presented, used in active well-being self-assessment activities and in particular applied to medical coaching and music-therapy. The system is composed of a video camera, a FireWire digitalization board, and a computer running own (custom) developed software. During the test sessions, a person freely moves his body inside a specifically designed room. The algorithms detect and extrapolate features from the human figure, such us spatial position, arms and legs angles, etc. An operator can link these features to sounds synthesized in real time, following a predefined schema. The augmented interaction with the environment helps to improve the contact with reality in subjects having some disability. The system has been tested on a set of young subjects affected by autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and a team of psychologists has analyzed the results of this experimentation.

An interactive musical exhibit based on infrared sensors

This paper deals with the description of the design of an exhibit for controlling real-time audio synthesis with a wireless, IR-based interface. Researching new way for playing and real-time controlling electronic music is todays hot topic in the computer music field. The goal of this specific project consists of an enjoyable, robust and reliable exhibit that gives the possibility to constantly operate with young users (especially children) and, more in general, non-expert people. Our effort has been focused to carefully design the hardware/software project, in a way that the final user will interact only with non-critical parts of the system.

A seamless pipeline for the acquisition of the body shape: the Virtuoso case study

In this paper, we describe the design and the implementation of the demonstrator for the Virtuoso project, which aims at creating seamless support for fitness and wellness activities in touristic resort. We define the objectives of the user interface, the hardware and software setup, showing how we combined and exploited consumer-level devices for supporting 3D body scan, contact-less acquisition of physical parameters, exercise guidance and operator support.