Thèses sur le sujet « Industria elettrica »

At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Sardinian industrial production was still strictly related to steam machines and only a few enlightened industries exploited electric power. The development of electrical industry in Sardinia has been an essential moment on a political, social and economic level; the design of artificial lakes has deeply changed the morphology and the hydrology of the Isle, and the modern electrical plants built along the coasts enlarged the industrial heritage which marks the Sardinian landscape. The studied time frame goes from 1911 and 1961, fifty years during which the Società Elettrica Sarda (S.E.S.) has been in charge of the design and construction of the hydroelectrical and thermic plants and power lines. The research focuses on the architectures related to Sardinian electrization: the S.E.S., along with its scientific committee led by Angelo Omodeo e Giulio Dolcetta, has built high quality architectures and high level factories. The dykes and the plants not only reached high technical performances, but are also the result of a fertile architectural research that has no equals in the hystory of Sardinia. Few of the plants have been demolished and some of them now are only ruins that still demand for a solution; two of the hydroelectrical plants are still productive and still provide for electrical power. The aim of the research is to create an archive that puts together all documents that are now stored in various archives in the whole country and also to deeply investigate the buildings to discover the constructive and design ideas; all architectures are studied trough drawing, that helps the understanding process throughrout all components of the architecture, its materials and its building techniques. The research will become an organic record that contains an accurate study of the buildings designed by S.E.S. during the most active years of electrical revolution in Sardinia; it also wants to become a solid means for a future design action.

L'elaborato descrive la progettazione, la gestione e il collaudo di una cabina elettrica per impianti industriali. Vengono descritti all'interno di essa l'impianto meccanico, gli azionamenti elettrici, i sensori e il quadro elettrico che ha il compito di alimentare e gestire tutti i componenti in campo. L'analisi e la progettazione descrivono tutto il processo partendo dalle specifiche ricevute fino al collaudo in cantiere

The aim of this research is to investigate the adaption of advanced coolants and phase change materials for electric machines in electric/hybrid vehicle applications. The study uses Al2O3 nanoparticles to enhance the heat transfer ability of liquid cooling systems employing the commonly used cooling jacket approach. Employing advanced coolants to improve the heat transfer performance of cooling systems with minimal changes in their structure can be considered as a cost-effective and practical approach to meet the requirements of vehicle applications. In line with this goal, in this research, both heat transfer and fluid flow behaviors of cooling systems employing nanofluids are investigated. In this way, the feasibility and effectiveness of the cooling system can be justified by taking practical criteria into account. Results of the study are used to find the trade-off between the heat transfer and fluid flow behaviors of the under-study nanofluid coolant to achieve the best possible overall performance. 3D CFD analyses are used to evaluate the cooling systems proposed in this research. Since the applications considered in this research are electric machines used in electric vehicles, the losses of the electric machine were calculated under standard driving cycles. From the results, it was found that there are frequent peak power demands resulting in several peak losses. Also, it was observed that the values of peak losses are several times the mean value of electric machine losses. Considering this property of heat production in electric machines used in electric vehicle applications and the prominent property of phase change materials that have a high latent heat capacity, in this research a hybrid cooling system consisting of a passive cooling part based on phase change materials and an active cooling part based on liquid cooling method was designed. The results of the analyses showed that the phase change material is able to properly store excess thermal energy and the active cooling part assists the passive cooling part by rejecting the stored thermal energy to prepare the phase change material for the next peak heating cycle.

La riduzione delle emissioni climalteranti è considerata un obiettivo strategico, sia a livello europeo che globale. Una maggiore diffusione delle fonti energetiche rinnovabili (FER) è considerata essenziale per una transizione verso un sistema energetico più sostenibile. Questa transizione verso un’energia a basse emissioni di carbonio richiede lo sviluppo e l'uso di tecnologie innovative, in particolare nei settori di utilizzo finale (edifici, industria e trasporti), e nuovi approcci economici, di gestione e di mercato. Lo studio presentato in questa tesi esplora le opportunità sostenibili offerte dall'approccio di simbiosi industriale e urbano-industriale basati sull'energia. La simbiosi industriale energetica (SIE) propone la condivisione di risorse, strutture e infrastrutture legate all'energia come un modello efficace per promuovere misure di risparmio energetico e l'adozione di fonti energetiche rinnovabili a livello industriale. Inoltre, è possibile perseguire una strategia energetica a basse emissioni di carbonio creando sinergie energetiche tra i distretti industriali e le aree urbane adiacenti. Stabilire la simbiosi energetica urbana-industriale (SUIE) consente di ottimizzare la produzione e il consumo di energia e di sfruttare il know-how locale e le risorse umane. Il nuovo sistema integrato necessita infatti di un cambio di prospettiva, considerando un'azione multi-stakeholder: aziende di servizi energetici, comunità locali, settore industriale, consumatori, policy maker, ricercatori devono impegnarsi attivamente nei processi di pianificazione partecipativa per guidare la trasformazione del sistema energetico e del processo di ricerca e innovazione, e rispondere adeguatamente alle esigenze del territorio. Nella tesi viene presentata un'analisi approfondita dei molteplici driver e barriere tecnici, economici, organizzativi, normativi, ambientali e sociali dell'approccio di simbiosi energetica, con l'obiettivo di modellare le configurazioni ottimali delle sinergie energetiche tra le imprese che comprendano l’uso di FER. Viene inoltre sviluppata una metodologia per supportare energy manager, singole imprese, gruppi di imprese all'interno di parchi industriali e decisori per valutare le sinergie e i progetti energetici che coinvolgono FER, tenendo conto degli impatti economici, ambientali e sociali dei progetti. Inoltre, viene sviluppato un framework orientato alla sostenibilità con l'obiettivo di modellare le sinergie energetiche urbano-industriali comprendenti le FER da un punto di vista multi-stakeholder per supportare il processo decisionale sulla sostenibilità economica, ambientale e sociale delle sinergie energetiche. L’applicazione degli strumenti decisionali sviluppati a specifici casi studio consente di sottolineare come le strategie collettive (SIE o SUIE) consentano una migliore gestione della fornitura di energia da fonti rinnovabili.
Reducing emissions responsible for the climate change is recognized as a strategic goal at European and global level. A higher deployment of renewable energy sources (RES) is considered as essential for a transition towards a more sustainable energy system. This low-carbon energy transition requires both the development and use of innovative technologies, particularly at end-use sectors (buildings, industry and transport), and new management approaches as well as new market design and business models. This study explores the sustainability driven opportunities offered by the energy based Industrial and Urban-Industrial Symbiosis approach. The Industrial Energy Symbiosis (IES) considers the sharing of energy-related resources, facilities and infrastructures as an effective model to promote energy conservation measures and the renewable energy sources uptake at the industrial level. In addition, an improved low-carbon strategy can be achieved creating energy synergies between industrial districts and the adjacent urban areas. Establishing Urban-Industrial Energy Symbiosis (UIES) allows optimizing the energy production and consumption and exploiting the local knowhow and human resources. These new integrated system needs a change of perspective, considering a multi-stakeholder action: energy service companies, local communities, industry sector, consumers, policy makers, researchers must get actively involved in participatory planning processes to guide the transformation of the energy system and the research and innovation process, and respond adequately to the needs of the territory. Thus, an in-depth analysis of the manifold technical, economic, organizational, regulatory, environmental and social drivers and barriers of the energy symbiosis approach are presented, with the aim of modelling the optimal energy synergies configurations among firms including RES. A methodology is developed to support energy managers, single firms, groups of firms within industrial parks, and decision-makers to evaluate energy synergies and projects involving RES, taking into account the economic, environmental and social impacts of the projects. Lastly, a sustainability-driven framework is developed, with the aim of modeling Urban–Industrial Energy Symbiosis networks integrating RES from a multi-stakeholder point of view and supporting decision-making on the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of the energy synergies. The application of the developed decision-making tools to specific case studies emphasizes how collective strategies (IES or UIES) allow better management of the energy supplied by renewable sources.

In the modern industry, data processing systems must be able to receive, aggregate, and process information from different sources to achieve complex tasks of production control and coordination. Examples are the real-time monitoring of the quality and quantity of products, biometric data acquisition in the rehabilitation procedures. Energy efficiency in the data communication system is essential in wireless networks. Reduce power consumption in the data exchange can prolong the operating life of battery-powered devices and save energy on a global scale. In this direction, a fundamental step is to accurately model the energy consumption for data communication over a wireless link for the system of interest. The first part concerns the application scenario of the Body Sensor Network for motion reconstruction applications. Wireless systems that use wearable sensors have developed rapidly in recent years, and the requirements in terms of throughput and timing accuracy are challenging. This thesis presents a new general-purpose Inertial Measure Unit that exploits a dual-core architecture. A core offers processing capability, and the other one is a radio interface IEEE 802.15.4. I propose the whole system and a protocol to maximize the throughput, reduce the packet loss, and improve the robustness of wireless sensor nodes communication. In the second part of the thesis, I move the attention to the Low Power Wide Area Network in the IoT scenario. Today, the most promising long-range communication technologies are LoRaWAN and Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT), which are driving a vast IoT ecosystem. A dedicated chapter evaluates the performance of LoRaWAN and NB-IoT with accurate in-field measurements using the same monitoring application for a comparison in terms of energy efficiency, lifetime, quality of service (QoS), and coverage. Finally, the last part provides configuration guidelines for future industrial applications with harsh requirements of long-range and low power wireless connectivity.

Geiger-Mode avalanche photodiodes (GM-APDs) are diodes designed to operate at a reverse voltage that exceeds the breakdown voltage. Their ability to detect single photons combined with their excellent timing resolution make them ideal for applications in which low amplitude signals need to be detected with sub-ns timing resolution. In the research activity reported in this dissertation two different applications of Geiger-Mode Avalanche Photo Diode arrays have been analysed: a two-tier GM-APD array with in-pixel coincidence for particle tracking and a direct Time-of-Flight range meter with a SiPM-based receiver. The increasing complexity of particle tracking systems at collider experiments demands for high performance detectors with high granularity and position accuracy, low material budget and power consumption. Both Hybrid and monolithic detectors have been proposed as particle trackers. Hybrid detectors have the advantage of allowing an independent customization of sensors and readout electronics, but they exhibit a higher input capacitance that increases readout noise, thus limiting their minimum thickness (100 µm). Monolithic detectors have lower input capacitance, thus a better minimum detectable charge, with a charge time collection of few tens of ns. Thanks to their high gain, particle detectors based on GM-APDs have the potential for combining low material budget, low power consumption and an excellent timing resolution in the range of 100 ps. However, their use as particle tracking detectors has been prevented by their Dark Count Rate, since it is not possible to discriminate a particle-generated event from a dark event. To overcome this issue, the use of GM-APDs in coincidence has been proposed. The activity reported in this dissertation has been conducted in the framework of APiX2 and ASAP projects funded by Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN). A two-tier sensor based on avalanche detectors in coincidence has been designed and fabricated in standard 150 nm CMOS technology. A charged particle crossing both GM-APDs integrated in a pixel triggers an avalanche in both devices. The output signal from each detector reaches the coincidence electronics, that allows the device to discriminate the particle detection from dark events. The performance of the proposed detector has been evaluated in a complete electrical and functional characterization campaign. The feasibility to reduce the substrate thickness has been studied in some devices thinned down to 50 µm and 25 µm. The electronics for coincidence detection was also used to directly measure optical crosstalk, a phenomenon that is getting greater importance as stacked optical and image sensors are becoming common. The functional characterization of the APiX prototype was performed with a beta-source and an evaluation of the radiation hardness of the devices was carried out in an irradiation campaign with neutrons at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro (LNL). SiPMs take advantage of the characteristics of GM-APDs such as high sensitivity, high efficiency and very low time jitter, and overcome the problem related to the dead time connecting several sensitive elements in parallel, making them suitable for the simultaneous detection of more than one photon. The evaluation of a SiPM-based direct Time-of-Flight range meter has been performed at two different wavelengths: 405 nm and 810 nm. The set of measurement at 405 nm has been performed using a TCSPC module as acquisition system, while in the 810 nm measurements a low-cost FPGA-based TDC was used. The replacement of the TCSPC module with an FPGA-based TDC represents an important step towards the integration of a low-cost prototype thanks also to the low power consumption of the device. In order to evaluate the feasibility of a SiPM-based range meter in the NIR region, a collaboration with the Circuits and Systems Research Unit of the ITEE Faculty of the University of Oulu was established to set up a system with a GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum well laser diode with a spectral emission of 0.808 µm as transmitter and a NIR-HD SiPM with an enhanced efficiency for NIR photons recently developed at FBK as receiver. The evaluation was performed at high repetition rate (MHz range), for the perspective purpose to upgrade the system including a 2-axis scanning mirror to perform real-time 3D imaging.

The modern industrial world calls for efficient, reliable and safe systems. A contribution to the solution to all these problems is the predictive maintenance. According to this trend and tailoring the analysis to the electric drives field, this thesis performs a step forward for the realization of more reliable drives through their condition monitoring. Different AC motors have been considered in the dissertation: Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors, Induction Motors and Synchronous Reluctance Motors, covering the actual and also the next future industrial drives scenario. Some of the more relevant faults that can occur on these machines have been taken into account: interturn short circuits, demagnetization and damage at the rotor bars. The development of adequate observation indexes for the recognition of these failures has been researched deeply in the past. Nowadays, the prompt recognition of the incoming failure condition is the issue that modern research in this field has to face. In the following chapters, some innovative Artificial Intelligence-based tools will be applied for the condition monitoring of electric motors. Artificial Neural Networks and Convolutional Neural Networks are used here in different ways: for an effective modelling of the machine behaviour and for the knowledge-based recognition of the motor state of health. The main bottleneck in developing Neural Networks is the availability of a proper training dataset for the efficient tuning of their weights. In case of electric motors, the problem is even more relevant. A huge amount of healthy and damaged motors are needed, an unaffordable condition for this industry-oriented context. As an innovative and never-used-before approach, very precise models of the motors have been used in the thesis to generate artificially the training dataset. When these models were not available, the Data Augmentation theory was used instead as a keen and innovative approach for the artificial enhancing of the available training datasets. Very relevant results have been obtained and the principal and more significant ones are reported in this dissertation. Three different Convolutional Neural Network designs are reported. The first, trained only on a simulative accurate model of the motor, was able to efficiently recognize demagnetization and the interturn fault on Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors. The second one, oriented to Induction Motors, the model was not available and so Data Augmentation was used to train the network that recognizes broken bars in the rotor. The third network was used again for Induction Motors but it made use of a model which definition was still based on a built-in Neural Network. Finally, this same Artificial Intelligence-based modelling methodology was used for the effective implementation of the Extended Kalman Filter for the sensorless control of Synchronous Reluctance Motors, thus further enhancing the reliability of the drive, since the position sensor is avoided. The motor non linearities have been managed through a custom Artificial Neural Network and new approaches to the original Extended Kalman Filter implementations have been studied. As common root of all the treated topics, Neural Networks applicability on the electric drives field has been investigated. In the development of these tools, a special and careful eye was taken to maintain the solution feasible and attractive from an industrial point of view. Therefore, each of the arguments was fully validated through an intensive simulation and experimental stages, as reported in the thesis.
The modern industrial world calls for efficient, reliable and safe systems. A contribution to the solution to all these problems is the predictive maintenance. According to this trend and tailoring the analysis to the electric drives field, this thesis performs a step forward for the realization of more reliable drives through their condition monitoring. Different AC motors have been considered in the dissertation: Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors, Induction Motors and Synchronous Reluctance Motors, covering the actual and also the next future industrial drives scenario. Some of the more relevant faults that can occur on these machines have been taken into account: interturn short circuits, demagnetization and damage at the rotor bars. The development of adequate observation indexes for the recognition of these failures has been researched deeply in the past. Nowadays, the prompt recognition of the incoming failure condition is the issue that modern research in this field has to face. In the following chapters, some innovative Artificial Intelligence-based tools will be applied for the condition monitoring of electric motors. Artificial Neural Networks and Convolutional Neural Networks are used here in different ways: for an effective modelling of the machine behaviour and for the knowledge-based recognition of the motor state of health. The main bottleneck in developing Neural Networks is the availability of a proper training dataset for the efficient tuning of their weights. In case of electric motors, the problem is even more relevant. A huge amount of healthy and damaged motors are needed, an unaffordable condition for this industry-oriented context. As an innovative and never-used-before approach, very precise models of the motors have been used in the thesis to generate artificially the training dataset. When these models were not available, the Data Augmentation theory was used instead as a keen and innovative approach for the artificial enhancing of the available training datasets. Very relevant results have been obtained and the principal and more significant ones are reported in this dissertation. Three different Convolutional Neural Network designs are reported. The first, trained only on a simulative accurate model of the motor, was able to efficiently recognize demagnetization and the interturn fault on Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors. The second one, oriented to Induction Motors, the model was not available and so Data Augmentation was used to train the network that recognizes broken bars in the rotor. The third network was used again for Induction Motors but it made use of a model which definition was still based on a built-in Neural Network. Finally, this same Artificial Intelligence-based modelling methodology was used for the effective implementation of the Extended Kalman Filter for the sensorless control of Synchronous Reluctance Motors, thus further enhancing the reliability of the drive, since the position sensor is avoided. The motor non linearities have been managed through a custom Artificial Neural Network and new approaches to the original Extended Kalman Filter implementations have been studied. As common root of all the treated topics, Neural Networks applicability on the electric drives field has been investigated. In the development of these tools, a special and careful eye was taken to maintain the solution feasible and attractive from an industrial point of view. Therefore, each of the arguments was fully validated through an intensive simulation and experimental stages, as reported in the thesis.

L’elaborato presenta un nuovo sistema di movimentazione, in ambiente farmaceutico, basato sull’impiego di attuatori lineari. La macchina oggetto dello studio si chiama Xtrema. Il ciclo di lavoro prevede una serie di operazioni necessarie a dosare il prodotto, liquido o polvere, all’interno di flaconi realizzati in vetro. Dopo aver analizzato l’Xtrema in tutti i suoi punti, si è individuato nel sistema di trasporto principale, costituito da una cinghia dentata, l’elemento più debole. L’obbiettivo dell’elaborato consiste nel riuscire a risolvere i problemi trovati attraverso l’impiego di futuristici motori lineari, chiamati Planar Motor. Inoltre, vista la presenza di brevetti rivendicanti l’impiego di questa tecnologia, si dovranno elaborare delle soluzioni in grado di superare questo vincolo. Innanzi tutto, si sono studiati questi motori attraverso la lettura di testi scientifici e brevetti. Successivamente si è compiuta un'analisi dei tempi ciclo per capire quale stazione rappresenti il collo di bottiglia dell’attuale macchina. In seguito, si è svolta la progettazione concettuale, partendo dalla SWOT analysis, seguita dall’individuazione dei bisogni e delle corrispettive specifiche tecniche. Dopo di che, si sono ricercate tutte le architetture possibili associate al dosaggio e alla pesatura. Al fine di selezionare le diverse soluzioni, si è compiuta un’analisi al valore. Ulteriore oggetto di studio sono stati il porta flacone, l’operazione di tappatura e il recovery dello stadio mobile: anche in questo caso, per i primi due, si è sfruttata un’analisi al valore con lo scopo di determinare le migliori casistiche. In conclusione, l’elaborato fornisce le migliori soluzioni attuabili per sostituire e realizzare una nuova macchina automatica basata sull’impiego di motori lineari.

Nowadays, Ethernet is the most popular technology in digital communication thanks to its flexibility and worldwide spread. This is the reason why the main industrial communication protocols today are based on Ethernet. Everybody says that Ethernet supports a large amount of different protocols, but only accurate laboratory tests can make this assumption true. Tests are performed on a hybrid network using three protocols: Profinet, IEC 61850 and TCP/IP. The combination of these three protocols represents an ideal industrial application where process automation, substation automation and general purpose data sharing interact. However, a shared network can be the cause of a drop in terms of safety and security in the industrial plant network. Safety has always played an important role in the life of human beings and the environment. The safety of process control systems is standardized in IEC 61508 and IEC 61784-3, but this is not the same in the area of substation automation system. Several tests are performed to prove if IEC 61850 (the standard protocol for substation automation) meets the requirements stated in IEC 61508 and if it can be used for safety-related functions. Security issues for industrial plants have become increasingly relevant during the past decade as the industry relied more and more on communication protocols. This work examines the security issues for IEC 61850 addressed by IEC 62351-6 providing a deepening for a secure GOOSE communication. The major issue implementing such a standard remains the computational power requested by the SHA algorithm in low-powered devices. As no manufacturer has made available a device implementing secure GOOSE communication yet, this solution is discussed only from a theoretical point of view. After that, it is presented a security test on the GOOSE communication during which the security issues of such a communication are exploited. This test aims to show what consequences may occur when a packet artfully created is injected within the IEC 61850 network. In the last part of this section, some countermeasures to mitigate such an issue are provided.

Negli ultimi anni sono stati sintetizzati numerosi oligomeri e polimeri del tiofene che, grazie alle loro proprietà di semiconduttori, hanno trovano largo impiego in molti campi di interesse tecnologico come, ad esempio, transistor ad effetto di campo, diodi elettroluminescenti, dispositivi ottici non lineari e celle fotovoltaiche. Più recentemente, oligomeri tiofenici ossidati allo zolfo hanno trovato applicazione sia in campo elettronico, come materiali accettori in blenda con il poli(3-esiltiofene) (P3HT) usato come materiale donatore, in celle solari di tipo Bulk Hetero Junction (BHJ), ma anche in campo biologico come marcatori fluorescenti di proteine e oligonucleotidi. Tuttavia la sintesi di queste specie richiede condizioni di reazione spinte e al contempo rischiose dovute all’utilizzo in largo eccesso di agenti ossidanti molto forti. Uno degli obiettivi di questa tesi è stato lo sviluppo di metodi più versatili per la mono e di-ossidazione selettiva allo zolfo del tiofene di building-blocks dibromurati di diversa natura. Successivamente i building-blocks S-monossido e S,S-diossido derivati sono stati impiegati per la sintesi di oligomeri e polimeri tramite reazioni di cross-coupling Palladio catalizzate. I composti finali sono stati caratterizzati sia dal punto di vista spettroscopico UV-Vis che elettrochimico, mettendo in evidenza le relazioni che esistono fra gli andamenti dei dati sperimentali ottenuti con il diverso stato di ossidazione dei composti tiofenici diversamente sostituiti. Infine i composti finali sono stati testati sia in campo fotovoltaico che biologico.

The content of my thesis describes the work done during my internship at Datalogic in Pasadena. This project improves the performance of the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) solution with use of Deep Learning (DL) techniques. It enhances the character detection process that had been previously developed and relies on template matching done on the Histogram of Gradients (HOG) features. This approach had been already validated with good performance, but detects only those characters which do not vary in the dataset. First, this document gives a introduction to OCR and DL topics, then describes the pipeline of the Datalogic OCR product. After that, it is explained the technique that was usedto raise the accuracy of the previous solution. It consists in applying DL to improve the robustness and keep good detection rate even though the character variations (scale and rotation) are considerable. The first phase was focused on speeding up the process and so the function used for gauging the matching with the templates, the Zero-mean Normalized Cross-Correlation, was replaced while a modified version, called Squared Normalization has been introduced. Secondly, the original system was cast as a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) by turning the HOG templates into convolutional kernels. It was necessary to rethink its training process as it was noticed that, using standard target values, there was no gain. A novel way of computing the targets, named Graceful Improvement, has been developed. Then, the analysis on the results of this new solution showed that, even ifit detects characters that present variations with original templates, the false positive rate around the image was also higher. To decrease this negative side effect, a fast ROI (Region Of Interest) filter acting on the detections has been realized. Finally, during the above development steps, performances in terms of accuracy and time have been evaluated on some real Datalogic's customer datasets.

This research aims to contribute to the understanding of local socio-economic phenomena, particularly those related to labor, developed in relation to some of the main dynamics of today’s globalization. The analysis focuses on social relationships of production and reproduction that characterize the assembly industry for export in the border area between Mexico and the United States. Specifically, we examine the socio-economic model through which Foxconn operates in Ciudad Juarez (Chihuahua, Mexico). This multinational company – which, despite its Taiwanese origins has grown together with the economy of mainland China – holds roughly 50% of the electronics production market worldwide and has become the paradigm of a new phenomenon of economic expansion – not only from a quantitative, but also from a qualitative point of view. The research draws data from a six-month period of fieldwork. Five months were spent in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez and its suburbs (a few kilometers from the border with the United States), where the vast majority of ethnographic observations and interviews were conducted, and a month was spent in El Paso, the United States city adjacent to Ciudad Juarez. 49 key informants were interviewed, including 22 women and 27 men; 35 interviews were conducted with Foxconn’s workers and 2 with ex-workers, among which 18 were women and 19 men. Additionally, 12 key informants (business executives, government officials, representatives of the local association of employers and of social and community organizations), were interviewed, of which 8 were men and 4 were women. The research analyzes the socio-economic dynamics that, in a short period, have converted the Mexico-United States border into a central location of global economic development, characterized by a remarkable industrial and demographic concentration, which have transformed the metropolitan area of El Paso - Ciudad Juarez into one of the most populous and industrialized cross-border areas in the world. In addition to the socio-economic features of the territory, the research analyzes the globalized processes that, beginning in the Sixties, have contributed crucially to the massive growth of the so-called maquiladora industry. Central to the research is the analysis of the numerous and profound changes which occurred in the local structure of social relations. The main research interest is the analysis of “labor informalization”, a category which is not related to the growth of the so-called “informal economy”, but to the development of mechanisms of informalization within the regulatory framework of the so-called “legal” or “registered” economy, in which the role played by local actors is critical. Finally, considering the sociological immanence of labor (which, under capitalism, is set up as a primary role, determining the social positioning of individuals in various relational networks and hierarchies), the research explores the transformations and the phenomena that characterize the sphere of reproduction, trying to explain the ways in which this sphere interpenetrates and influences the dynamics of globalized production, and vice versa. The profound changes in gender roles, the militarization of the whole border area, local territorial conflicts, the spread of poverty and urban precariousness, the emergence of a powerful “necroeconomy” and “necropolitics” – primarily, but not exclusively, indicated by feminicidios and juvenicidios –, the exponentially increased power of organized crime and the loss of the Mexican State’s ‘monopoly on violence’ in vast areas of the country emerge as fundamental dynamics in the constitution of the sphere of reproduction, where workers of today's globalized electronics industry carry out their the daily life.
La presente ricerca aspira a contribuire alla comprensione dei fenomeni socio-economici locali (in particolare quelli lavorativi) sviluppati in relazione ad alcune dinamiche della globalizzazione odierna. L’analisi si focalizza nei rapporti produttivi e riproduttivi che contraddistinguono l’industria dell’assemblaggio per l’esportazione radicata nella zona di confine tra il Messico e gli Stati Uniti. A tale scopo, si esamina il modello socio-economico avviato dalla Foxconn a Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua, Messico). L’azienda – di origini taiwanesi ma cresciuta parallelamente all’economia della Cina continentale – detiene il 50% circa della produzione nel settore elettronico a livello globale ed è diventata paradigmatica di un nuovo fenomeno di espansione economico, dal punto di vista sia quantitativo sia qualitativo. La ricerca ha previsto sei mesi di lavoro di campo, cinque dei quali trascorsi in Messico, a pochi chilometri dal confine con gli Stati Uniti (a Ciudad Juárez e nelle sue periferie, dove è stata svolta la grande maggioranza delle osservazioni etnografiche e delle interviste) e un mese a El Paso, città statunitense contigua a Ciudad Juárez. Sono state realizzate 49 interviste, di cui 22 a donne e 27 a uomini. Ho realizzato 35 interviste a operai e 2 a ex-operai della Foxconn, tra questi 18 erano donne e 19 uomini. Inoltre, ho intervistato 12 testimoni privilegiati (dirigenti aziendali, rappresentanti governativi, dell’associazione di datori di lavoro e di organizzazioni sociali e comunitarie) di cui 8 uomini e 4 donne. La ricerca analizza le dinamiche socio-economiche che, in un breve periodo, hanno trasformato questa frontiera in un nodo centrale dello sviluppo economico globale, caratterizzato da una notevole concentrazione industriale e demografica, rendendo la zona metropolitana El Paso - Ciudad Juárez una delle aree transfrontaliere più popolate al mondo. Oltre alle peculiarità socio-economiche del territorio, vengono analizzati i processi globalizzati che, fin dagli anni Sessanta, hanno contribuito in modo cruciale all’ingente crescita dell’industria maquiladora per l’esportazione. Centrale per la ricerca è l’analisi dei molteplici e profondi cambiamenti avvenuti nella struttura dei rapporti sociali locali. L’interesse principale della ricerca è rappresentato dall’analisi della categoria di “lavoratore informalizzato” che assume particolare rilevanza non in conseguenza all’incremento della cosiddetta ‘economia informale’, bensì in relazione allo sviluppo di meccanismi d’informalizzazione del lavoro all’interno del quadro normativo dell’economia registrata, tra i quali emerge con forza il ruolo svolto dagli attori locali. Infine, considerando l’immanenza sociologica del lavoro (istituito sotto il capitalismo come un ruolo primario, determinante del posizionamento sociale degli individui nelle reti relazionali e nelle gerarchie), la ricerca approfondisce le trasformazioni e i fenomeni che caratterizzano la sfera della riproduzione, tentando di spiegare il modo in cui questa compenetra e influenza le dinamiche della produzione e viceversa. I profondi mutamenti nei ruoli di genere, la militarizzazione dell’intera zona di confine, i conflitti territoriali locali, la diffusione della povertà e della precarietà urbana, l’emergenza di una potente necroeconomia e una necropolitica primariamente indicate dai feminicidios e i juvenicidios, l’accresciuto potere della criminalità organizzata e la perdita del ‘monopolio della forza’ dello stato messicano in vaste aree del territorio nazionale emergono come dinamiche fondamentali nella costituzione della sfera della riproduzione, dove viene svolta la vita quotidiana dei lavoratori dell’odierna industria elettronica globalizzata.

This research work presents a novel Cognitive Task Planning framework for Smart Industrial Robots. The framework makes an industrial mobile manipulator robot Cognitive by applying Semantic Web Technologies. It also introduces a novel Navigation Among Movable Obstacles algorithm for robots navigating and manipulating inside a firm. The objective of Industrie 4.0 is the creation of Smart Factories: modular firms provided with cyber-physical systems able to strong customize products under the condition of highly flexible mass-production. Such systems should real-time communicate and cooperate with each other and with humans via the Internet of Things. They should intelligently adapt to the changing surroundings and autonomously navigate inside a firm while moving obstacles that occlude free paths, even if seen for the first time. At the end, in order to accomplish all these tasks while being efficient, they should learn from their actions and from that of other agents. Most of existing industrial mobile robots navigate along pre-generated trajectories. They follow ectrified wires embedded in the ground or lines painted on th efloor. When there is no expectation of environment changes and cycle times are critical, this planning is functional. When workspaces and tasks change frequently, it is better to plan dynamically: robots should autonomously navigate without relying on modifications of their environments. Consider the human behavior: humans reason about the environment and consider the possibility of moving obstacles if a certain goal cannot be reached or if moving objects may significantly shorten the path to it. This problem is named Navigation Among Movable Obstacles and is mostly known in rescue robotics. This work transposes the problem on an industrial scenario and tries to deal with its two challenges: the high dimensionality of the state space and the treatment of uncertainty. The proposed NAMO algorithm aims to focus exploration on less explored areas. For this reason it extends the Kinodynamic Motion Planning by Interior-Exterior Cell Exploration algorithm. The extension does not impose obstacles avoidance: it assigns an importance to each cell by combining the efforts necessary to reach it and that needed to free it from obstacles. The obtained algorithm is scalable because of its independence from the size of the map and from the number, shape, and pose of obstacles. It does not impose restrictions on actions to be performed: the robot can both push and grasp every object. Currently, the algorithm assumes full world knowledge but the environment is reconfigurable and the algorithm can be easily extended in order to solve NAMO problems in unknown environments. The algorithm handles sensor feedbacks and corrects uncertainties. Usually Robotics separates Motion Planning and Manipulation problems. NAMO forces their combined processing by introducing the need of manipulating multiple objects, often unknown, while navigating. Adopting standard precomputed grasps is not sufficient to deal with the big amount of existing different objects. A Semantic Knowledge Framework is proposed in support of the proposed algorithm by giving robots the ability to learn to manipulate objects and disseminate the information gained during the fulfillment of tasks. The Framework is composed by an Ontology and an Engine. The Ontology extends the IEEE Standard Ontologies for Robotics and Automation and contains descriptions of learned manipulation tasks and detected objects. It is accessible from any robot connected to the Cloud. It can be considered a data store for the efficient and reliable execution of repetitive tasks; and a Web-based repository for the exchange of information between robots and for the speed up of the learning phase. No other manipulation ontology exists respecting the IEEE Standard and, regardless the standard, the proposed ontology differs from the existing ones because of the type of features saved and the efficient way in which they can be accessed: through a super fast Cascade Hashing algorithm. The Engine lets compute and store the manipulation actions when not present in the Ontology. It is based on Reinforcement Learning techniques that avoid massive trainings on large-scale databases and favors human-robot interactions. The overall system is flexible and easily adaptable to different robots operating in different industrial environments. It is characterized by a modular structure where each software block is completely reusable. Every block is based on the open-source Robot Operating System. Not all industrial robot controllers are designed to be ROS-compliant. This thesis presents the method adopted during this research in order to Open Industrial Robot Controllers and create a ROS-Industrial interface for them.
Questa ricerca presenta una nuova struttura di Pianificazione Cognitiva delle Attività ideata per Robot Industriali Intelligenti. La struttura rende Cognitivo un manipolatore industriale mobile applicando le tecnologie offerte dal Web Semantico. Viene inoltre introdotto un nuovo algoritmo di Navigazione tra Oggetti Removibili per robot che navigano e manipolano all’interno di una fabbrica. L’obiettivo di Industria 4.0 è quello di creare Fabbriche Intelligenti: fabbriche modulari dotate di sistemi cyber-fisici in grado di customizzare i prodotti pur mantenendo una produzione di massa altamente flessibile. Tali sistemi devono essere in grado di comunicare e cooperare tra loro e con gli agenti umani in tempo reale, attraverso l’Internet delle Cose. Devono sapersi autonomamente ed intelligentemente adattare ai costanti cambiamenti dell’ambiente che li circonda. Devono saper navigare autonomamente all’interno della fabbrica, anche spostando ostacoli che occludono percorsi liberi, ed essere in grado di manipolare questi oggetti anche se visti per la prima volta. Devono essere in grado di imparare dalle loro azioni e da quelle eseguite da altri agenti. La maggior parte dei robot industriali mobili naviga secondo traiettorie generate a priori. Seguono filielettrificatiincorporatinelterrenoolineedipintesulpavimento. Pianificareapriorièfunzionale se l’ambiente è immutevole e i cicli produttivi sono caratterizzati da criticità temporali. E’ preferibile adottare una pianificazione dinamica se, invece, l’area di lavoro ed i compiti assegnati cambiano frequentemente: i robot devono saper navigare autonomamente senza tener conto dei cambiamenti circostanti. Si consideri il comportamento umano: l’uomo ragiona sulla possibilità di spostare ostacolise unaposizione obiettivo nonè raggiungibileose talespostamento puòaccorciare la traiettoria da percorrere. Questo problema viene detto Navigazione tra Oggetti Removibili ed è noto alla robotica di soccorso. Questo lavoro traspone il problema in uno scenario industriale e prova ad affrontare i suoi due obiettivi principali: l’elevata dimensione dello spazio di ricerca ed il trattamento dell’incertezza. L’algoritmo proposto vuole dare priorità di esplorazione alle aree meno esplorate, per questo estende l’algoritmo noto come Kinodynamic Motion Planning by Interior-Exterior Cell Exploration. L’estensione non impone l’elusione degli ostacoli. Assegna ad ogni cella un’importanza che combina lo sforzo necessario per raggiungerla con quello necessario per liberarla da eventuali ostacoli. L’algoritmo risultante è scalabile grazie alla sua indipendenza dalla dimensione della mappa e dal numero, forma e posizione degli ostacoli. Non impone restrizioni sulle azioni da eseguire: ogni oggetto può venir spinto o afferrato. Allo stato attuale, l’algoritmo assume una completa conoscenza del mondo circonstante. L’ambiente è però riconfigurabile di modo che l’algoritmo possa venir facilmente esteso alla risoluzione di problemi di Navigazione tra Oggetti Removibili in ambienti ignoti. L’algoritmo gestisce i feedback dati dai sensori per correggere le incertezze. Solitamente la Robotica separa la risoluzione dei problemi di pianificazione del movimento da quelli di manipolazione. La Navigazione tra Ostacoli Removibili forza il loro trattamento combinato introducendo la necessità di manipolare oggetti diversi, spesso ignoti, durante la navigazione. Adottare prese pre calcolate non fa fronte alla grande quantità e diversità di oggetti esistenti. Questa tesi propone un Framework di Conoscenza Semantica a supporto dell’algoritmo sopra esposto. Essodàairobotlacapacitàdiimparareamanipolareoggettiedisseminareleinformazioni acquisite durante il compimento dei compiti assegnati. Il Framework si compone di un’Ontologia e di un Engine. L’Ontologia estende lo Standard IEEE formulato per Ontologie per la Robotica e l’Automazione andando a definire le manipolazioni apprese e gli oggetti rilevati. È accessibile a qualsiasi robot connesso al Cloud. Può venir considerato I) una raccolta di dati per l’esecuzione efficiente ed affidabile di azioni ripetute; II) un archivio Web per lo scambio di informazioni tra robot e la velocizzazione della fase di apprendimento. Ad ora, non esistono altre ontologie sulla manipolazione che rispettino lo Standard IEEE. Indipendentemente dallo standard, l’Ontologia propostadifferiscedaquelleesistentiperiltipodiinformazionisalvateeperilmodoefficienteincui un agente può accedere a queste informazioni: attraverso un algoritmo di Cascade Hashing molto veloce. L’Engine consente il calcolo e il salvataggio delle manipolazioni non ancora in Ontologia. Si basa su tecniche di Reinforcement Learning che evitano il training massivo su basi di dati a larga scala, favorendo l’interazione uomo-robot. Infatti, viene data ai robot la possibilità di imparare dagli umani attraverso un framework di Apprendimento Robotico da Dimostrazioni. Il sistema finale è flessibile ed adattabile a robot diversi operanti in diversi ambienti industriali. È caratterizzato da una struttura modulare in cui ogni blocco è completamente riutilizzabile. Ogni blocco si basa sul sistema open-source denominato Robot Operating System. Non tutti i controllori industriali sono disegnati per essere compatibili con questa piattaforma. Viene quindi presentato il metodo che è stato adottato per aprire i controllori dei robot industriali e crearne un’interfaccia ROS.

Lo scopo è quello di migliorare l'assorbimento di rete di un alimentatore industriale, migliorandone fattore di potenza e distorsione armonica della corrente di rete. La tesi si concentra sull'analisi e la simulazione in Plecs di alcune tipologie di power factor corrector, in particolare: inverter trifase usato come raddrizzatore, filtro attivo e raddrizzatore Vienna. Per ogni soluzione sono state svolte simulazioni elettriche e termiche. Infine, vengono stimati i costi e i volumi di ogni PFC per fare un'analisi costi/benefici.

Il crescente interesse per le tecniche di intelligenza artificiale è notevolmente accresciuto nell’ultimo decennio tra tutti i settori industriali. Tali metodologie supportano lo sviluppo di nuove funzionalità attraverso l’integrazione di sistemi cyber-fisici e unità di monitoraggio integrate in macchine e impianti, come ricorda il prefisso smart. Il lavoro di tesi si concentra sul Condition Monitoring e la manutenzione predittiva, i cui compiti più diffusi riguardano l’Anomaly Detection, la Fault Classification e la stima della Remaining Useful Life. Molte applicazioni “industry-class” si affidano a metodi di Supervised Machine Learning, in quanto possiedono metriche di valutazione più mature dei metodi unsupervised. Nonostante ciò, limiti addizionali aggiungono complessità allo sviluppo di una soluzione commerciabile. Il flusso di lavoro perciò necessita di gestire restrizioni provenienti dalla piattaforma di monitoraggio, come il carico CPU sopportabile, o diverse condizioni operative. Tali limitazioni spesso sfociano in trade-off di progetto, ma tale informazione nota a priori può portare effetti benefici al flusso stesso. Il lavoro di tesi analizza le limitazioni più diffuse e il loro rapporto con il flusso di lavoro, fornendo alcuni metodi per integrare in modo benefico tale informazione a priori a seconda del compito di monitoraggio e del passo di elaborazione dati. Per validare i metodi proposti sono analizzati due casi di studio riguardanti l’impiego di umidificatori industriali. In Feature Engineering la selezione delle feature è uno dei fattori maggiormente impattanti in quanto la maggioranza delle risorse computazionali e di memoria è impiegata per la loro estrazione. Una Feature Selection sostenibile deve perciò considerarne i costi di estrazione e l’utilità in campo. A tale scopo è proposto un algoritmo chiamato Feature Voting per operare una selezione multi-obiettivo considerando dataset appartenenti a condizioni operative differenti e attributi delle feature, come i costi di estrazione. È inoltre introdotta un’ottimizzazione del Feature Voting basata sul Design Of Experiments. Il Feature Voting incrementa la portabilità di un’applicazione sviluppata in molti contesti operativi diversi, come auspicato dalla pratica industriale. È inoltre proposta una ridefinizione della funzione target, basata su classi di manutenzione condivise, allo scopo di efficientare la Fault Classification riducendo la complessità di classificazione. L’approccio è esteso considerando i costi di manutenzione e sviluppando adattamenti cost-sensitive dei classificatori attraverso l’Ensemble Learning e il paradigma client-server. La procedura riduce i costi di errata classificazione senza riallenare i classificatori sviluppati. Un successivo compito di post-elaborazione riguarda l’utilizzo di predizioni instabili fornite da un classificatore black-box sull’azione di manutenzione da eseguire. È perciò proposta una tecnica di stabilizzazione delle predizioni basata sulla teoria dei Fuzzy Set, incorporando inoltre un meccanismo di isteresi dinamica. Il sistema proposto ha stabilizzato le predizioni e anticipato la richiesta di manutenzione, anche in condizioni di elevata incertezza. Un secondo tema è inerente all’utilizzo della stima della Remaining Useful Life e dell’incertezza associata per attività di post-prognostica. Il metodo proposto utilizza il Functional Profile Modelling per modellare lo stress del sistema, è poi applicato un opportuno adattamento di scala per la correzione a posteriori della stima. Il metodo proposto rappresenta un approccio alternativo guidato dalle richieste industriali legate all’apprendimento sul campo e all'integrazione di informazioni a posteriori. L’intera dissertazione offre inoltre una metodologia di analisi per correlare un flusso di progetto basato sul Machine Learning con i temi di interesse industriale nel campo della manutenzione smart.
The increasing interest in Artificial Intelligence techniques has risen in the last decade among all the industrial knowledge domains. Such methods support new advanced functionalities assisted by the integration of cyber-physical systems and monitoring units inside machines and plants, as recalled with the smart appellative. The thesis focuses on Condition Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance in which Anomaly Detection, Fault Classification, and Remaining Useful Life estimation are the most common tasks to solve. Most industry-class applications rely on Supervised Machine Learning techniques, as the evaluation metrics are more consolidated than unsupervised methods. However, additional restrictions add complexity to the development of a marketable solution. During the development of such algorithms, a regular Machine Learning workflow needs to manage additional constraints coming from the monitoring platform, like the available CPU, memory, or different field conditions. Such restrictions often lead to design trade-offs, but such information is prior known, and the design process can benefit from it. This thesis aims to analyze some of the most diffused constraints, along with the Machine Learning workflow, to provide some techniques that enable beneficially embedding such prior information according to the monitoring task and the processing step. To validate the methods, two industrial case studies are analyzed regarding the employment of industrial humidifiers. In Feature Engineering, the selection of features is one of the most impacting factors because many computational and memory resources, when using a deployed model, are due to the extraction of features. A sustainable Feature Selection thus needs to consider their extraction costs and their validity for a given field condition. Feature Selection is addressed by proposing an algorithm called Feature Voting to perform a multi-objective selection that considers datasets belonging to different field conditions and feature attributes, like the computational and memory extraction costs. Feature Voting tuning is also performed based on the Design Of Experiments. Feature Voting boosts the usage performance of a deployed machine in plenty of working environments, as found in the industrial practice. A maintenance-based target redefinition has been proposed to efficiently improve Fault Classification, i.e. grouping fault types according to shared maintenance interventions to lower the classification complexity. The approach is extended by considering the maintenance costs, leading to cost-sensitive adaptations of classifiers exploiting Ensemble Learning and the client-server paradigm. The procedure lowers the misclassification cost without retraining the deployed classifiers. In postprocessing, an additional task focuses on the practical use of the predictions given by a black-box unstable classifier on whether maintenance action to perform on the system. A prediction stabilization technique is proposed by exploiting the Fuzzy Set theory. A dynamical hysteresis mechanism is also introduced to increase the scheduling margin. The proposed system provided more stable predictions over time and anticipated the intervention alarm, even in highly uncertain conditions. A second postprocessing task deals with the post-prognostic usage of the Remaining Useful Life estimate and the management of its uncertainty. A method for the posterior correction of such an estimate is proposed. The technique exploits Functional Profile Modeling to describe the stress experienced by the monitored system on the field; then, a proper scaling is applied. The method represents an alternative approach, driven by the industrial requirement of learning from the field and integrating the extracted posterior information. All the thesis corpus offers an analysis methodology that relates a regular Machine Learning workflow with open issues of industrial interest in the smart maintenance field.

This thesis describes a project developed throughout a six months internship in the Machine Vision Laboratory of Datalogic based in Pasadena, California. The project aims to develop a deep learning system as a possible solution for industrial optical character recognition applications. In particular, the focus falls on a specific algorithm called You Only Look Once (YOLO), which is a general-purpose object detector based on convolutional neural networks that currently offers state-of-the-art performances in terms of trade-off between speed and accuracy. This algorithm is indeed well known for reaching impressive processing speeds, but its intrinsic structure makes it struggle in detecting small objects clustered together, which unfortunately matches our scenario: we are trying to read alphanumerical codes by detecting each single character and then reconstructing the final string. The final goal of this thesis is to overcome this drawback and push the accuracy performances of a general object detector convolutional neural network to its limits, in order to meet the demanding requirements of industrial OCR applications. To accomplish this, first YOLO's unique detecting approach was mastered in its original framework called Darknet, written in C and CUDA, then all the code was translated into Python programming language for a better flexibility, which also allowed the deployment of a custom architecture. Four different datasets with increasing complexity were used as case-studies and the final performances reached were surprising: the accuracy varies between 99.75\% and 99.97\% with a processing time of 15 ms for images $1000\times1000$ big, largely outperforming in speed the current deep learning solution deployed by Datalogic. On the downsides, the training phase usually requires a very large amount of data and time and YOLO also showed some memorization behaviours if not enough variability is given at training time.

Recently the research community is considering with a growing interest the adoption of IWSNs in application contexts such as real-time (industrial) communications and distributed measurement systems. These types of applications typically impose very tight equirements to the underlying communication systems and, moreover, they might have to cope with the intrinsic unreliability of wireless networks. It is hence needed an accurate characterization of these networks' behavior, from a metrological point of view. Suitable measurement systems have to be realized, and experiments performed aimed at evaluating some of the most appropriate performance indicators. Unfortunately, despite the appealing opportunities provided by IWSNs, their adoption is just at its beginning. It is clear that a comprehensive experimental analysis of their behavior would improve theoretical analysis, simulations and design of the network, since the consequent increased accuracy of models could reduce the source of difference between real and expected behaviors. With the work presented in this thesis the author would provide some original contribution in the field of measurements on real-time wireless networks adopted for industrial communications and distributed measurement systems. In this context, one of the most relevant aspect to be considered is represented, as described in the literature, by interference that possibly arises from "intentional" communications taking place in external systems. In order to address such an issue, some simulation techniques have been considered. As a result, they lead to the development of a network simulator software tool that enabled a cross-layer analysis of interference. This activity stimulated an in-depth study of the IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11 communication protocols. Particularly, medium access techniques have been analyzed in the perspective of IWSN applications. On this basis new and effective methods for increasing the network reliability have been proposed, along with fair packet retransmission scheduling methods. Moreover, new rate adaptation algorithms for wireless networks specifically designed for real-time communication purposes, exploiting the high robustness of low transmission rates have been proposed. Finally, since the reliability of a network strongly depends on the real behavior of the employed devices, an experimental approach for the measurement of the devices characteristics is presented, with the aim of providing suitable models and methods for designers.
La comunità scientifica, recentemente, sta considerando con sempre maggiore interesse l'adozione di reti di sensori wireless in contesti come le comunicazioni real-time (industriali) e i sistemi di misura distribuiti. Queste applicazioni richiedono tipicamente, al sistema di comunicazione, di soddisfare requisiti molto stringenti, considerando anche l'intrinseca inaffidabilità del canale radio. Risulta quindi necessaria un'accurata caratterizzazione, in termini metrologici, del comportamento di questa tipologia di reti, tramite sistemi di misura adatti alla valutazione dei più appropriati indici di prestazioni. Sfortunatemente, infatti, l'impiego di questi sistemi è ancora agli inizi, nonostante le interessanti prospettive applicative fornite dalle reti wireless real-time. Appare quindi chiaro come un'accurata caratterizzazione sperimentale del loro comportamento reale migliorerebbe sensibilmente l'efficacia delle analisi teoriche, delle simulazioni e di conseguenza del progetto della rete, risultando incrementata l'accuratezza dei modelli teorici e limitate le sorgenti di deviazione tra i risultati attesi e quelli sperimentali. Con il lavoro presentato in questa tesi, l'autore intende fornire contributi originali nel campo delle misure sulle reti wireless real-time adottate per comunicazioni industriali e sistemi di misura distribuiti. In questo contesto, uno dei principali aspetti da considerare, come si evince dalla letteratura, è dato dall'interferenza dovuta a comunicazioni "intenzionali" da parte di sistemi esterni. Per affrontare quest'analisi si sono inizialmente valutate alcune tecniche di simulazione. Questo ha portato allo sviluppo di un software di simulazione per reti di comunicazione specificamente progettato per l'analisi cross-layer dei fenomeni d'interferenza. Quest'attività ha stimolato uno studio approfondito dei protocolli di comunicazione IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.11. Nell'ottica del loro impiego per reti wireless real-time, particolare enfasi è stata rivolta alle tecniche di accesso al mezzo specificate nei citati standard. Sulla base di quest'analisi, sono stati proposti alcuni metodi originali per incrementare l'affidabilità di questi sistemi, considerando ad esempio nuove politiche di ritrasmissione per reti basate su polling ciclico. Inoltre sono stati proposti nuovi algoritmi per l'adattamento automatico del rate di trasmissione per reti IEEE 802.11, progettati per l'impiego specifico in un contesto di reti real-time. Infine, considerando che l'affidabilità di una rete in questo contesto dipende strettamente dal comportamento fisico dei componenti impiegati, viene proposto un approccio sperimentale per la misura e caratterizzazione dei ritardi introdotti dai dispositivi di rete, allo scopo di fornire metodi e modelli adeguati in un contesto di progettazione di rete.

In questo elaborato viene descritto il metodo utilizzato per determinare una nuova tecnica di modulazione che garantisca l'equilibratura della tensione dei condensatori del Bus-DC. L'inverter in studio appartiene alla categoria NPC a tre livelli in configurazione T-type. Nell'elaborato si è analizzato, sia il caso di inverter NPC T-type in configurazione trifase, che in configurazione pentafase. Si riportano i risultati delle simulazioni e delle prove sperimentali, effettuate al fine di validare la tecnica di modulazione proposta.

La presente tesi tratta dello sviluppo e progettazione di sistemi di automazione applicati a Macchine Industriali. Il documento è strutturato come segue: - Capitolo 1: Nel primo capitolo viene illustrata la parte embrionale del progetto, ovvero vengono descritte le prime fasi di natura tecnica nelle quali tramite interazioni con il Cliente vengono acquisite le specifiche,i dati e le informazioni su cui basare il Progetto; - Capitolo 2: Nel secondo capitolo viene mostrato come procedere, una volta recepite le informazioni di carattere generale del progetto desiderato, con lo studio e ricerca della soluzione ingegneristica più idonea in accordo con le Normative vigenti; - Capitolo 3: Nel terzo capitolo viene chiarito lo sviluppo vero e proprio del progetto e la ricerca dei componenti e degli apparati da prevedere; - Capitolo 4: Nel quarto capitolo viene illustrata una delle parti più delicate e importanti del progetto, la direzione lavori, insieme allo svolgimento dei test finali e alla redazione della documentazione finale da consegnare al Cliente; - Conclusioni. Dove ogni capitolo è diviso in due parti, la prima è introduttiva, dove vengono forniti gli strumenti teorici per la trattazione del problema, mentre la seconda è sperimentale e fa riferimento a un progetto da me sviluppato riguardante un Revamping di un sistema di riempimento sacchi.

Il progetto oggetto della presente tesi è stato svolto in collaborazione con l'azienda Bonfiglioli per l'esigenza della stessa di espandere la propria produzione di riduttori e motoriduttori verso il mercato dell'elettromobilità. In particolare, nel corso del 2018, per migliorare ripetibilità, controllo di processo e produttività, anche in virtù degli sgravi fiscali offerti dal piano Industria 4.0, si è deciso di investire risorse economiche in una nuova stazione di assemblaggio. Sono descritte e analizzate la situazione attuale dell’impianto di montaggio, i problemi attuali e le proposte di ottimizzazioni, e la gara di fornitura indetta da Bonfiglioli per la messa in produzione del macchinario, le proposte pervenute, la scelta definitiva del fornitore. Sono effettuati studi su layout e approvvigionamento dei materiali alla stazione, e sono analizzate le caratteristiche prestazionali della macchina, con un focus sul sistema elettromeccanico di pressatura e sul sistema di visione. E' descritta infine la parte sicuramente più lunga e complessa del lavoro di tesi e tirocinio in azienda, ossia le modifiche effettuate in corso d’opera alla macchina sotto la scrupolosa attenzione del team di Bonfiglioli, i collaudi e la messa in servizio finale. Sono, infine, riportati i risultati del progetto, gli obiettivi attesi centrati e quelli su cui, invece, vi è ancora margine di miglioramento e che potranno essere completati con il futuro ampliamento del sito produttivo.

This Thesis work focuses on the description of the curricular internship activity carried out in the R&D Division of Measuring Systems at MARPOSS S.p.A. company in Bentivoglio, BO, Italy. Part of this work has been performed in the context of the 5G-SMART European project, whose goal is to demonstrate, evaluate and validate the potential of the usage of 5G networks in real manufacturing environments. The Thesis provides a description of the project, focusing on the objectives, the organizational structure and work-packages, as well as future developments. An overview of the design steps for the realization of a Multi-Sensor Platform for Monitoring of Workpieces and Machines is given. The goal is to design a device equipped with different sensors, both internal and external, able to acquire multiple data from workpieces and machines of a shop floor. Sensors must be able to communicate wirelessly via the 5G network. The analysis of the architecture options proposed as a model for the device is then provided, with the description of the final modular layout. The design schematics are examined from a circuit viewpoint, focusing on the hardware design of the various electronic components, and on their interaction with the microprocessor. In order to verify the correct functioning of the board, a basic library of the individual peripherals is developed, which is going to be used as a basis for the final Firmware.

Nello studio della tesi sono stati applicati i passaggi del processo di diagnosi energetica previsti dal Decreto Legislativo 102/14. È stato individuato come e dove l’energia entra nell’impianto, stabilimento, sistema o parte di attrezzatura. Sono stati costruiti dei modelli energetici per stimare il consumo di energia elettrica, gas naturale e gasolio dell’azienda. Sono stati elaborati degli indicatori energetici, fondamentali per una valutazione e un’interpretazione dei dati di consumo. È stato presentato uno studio di fattibilità di un impianto solare termico al fine di autoconsumo di acqua calda sanitaria da fonte rinnovabile. Sono state analizzate delle possibili soluzioni in modo che l’energia possa essere utilizzata in modo più consapevole ed efficace. È stata effettuata anche un’analisi economica per valutare la convenienza degli interventi proposti.

El.En. S.p.A. is one of the world’s leader in the production of lasers, with products that cover a wide variety of application fields, such as medical, industrial, art restoration and many others, all completely realized inside the company. For products in the industrial field, beam deflection management is extremely important, since it affects their operating speed, precision and dimensions. This system consists of one focusing lens and two mirrors, each controlled by an electronic board and subsequently actuated by a brushless motor known as galvanometer. The aim of this thesis work was to understand the controlling board behaviour, study its class AB power output stage and develop an alternative power output stage centered around the use of a class D amplifier, with subsequent analysis of pros and cons between the two solutions. The main advantage carried by this research is the difference in theoretical efficiency between amplifiers of these two classes; while the former has a maximum efficiency below 78.5%, the latter has a 100% maximum efficiency if ideal switching MOSFETs are considered, and around 90% for the best realistic cases. The second purpose of this work was to start the process of unbinding the production of the controlling board from the AB amplifier currently in use, which the manufacturing company, Texas Instruments, has recently deemed obsolete, stopping its fabrication.

Hybridization and electrification of mobile working machinery are becoming promising areas of research and development for the off-highway industry. In this context, numerical modeling plays a fundamental role in predicting the performance of the vehicle transmission system and in optimizing its operation. A good design of the mechanical and electrical components of a hybrid transmission can be achieved only through an integrated approach. Regarding the hybrid electric traction, by means of the Ph.D. with high level training apprenticeship contract, I proceeded to the identification and analysis of some schemes in order to develop innovative solutions for the off-highway industry. I dealt with innovative solutions focusing on the modeling of industrial hybrid electric transmissions and agricultural electric powersplit transmissions. I chose to use AMESim as 1D multi-domain dynamic simulation tool. The results showed that an industrial vehicle equipped with an electric-hydrodynamic hybrid transmission, demonstrates 8% lower fuel consumption than a conventional vehicle. A representative working cycle defined by the author on the basis of the company experience and the data collected in literature was proposed as basis for comparison. Within the agricultural transmissions the electric variator has proved to be more competitive even better than conventional hydrostatic variator for power-split applications. I went into detail about the design of electrical machines and their related power and control technologies adopted for off-highway hybrid transmission considering also their integration into the mechanical system. This activity, aimed at the design of an electric drive for an industrial application, has allowed me to develop a model of electric motor, taking into account iron and copper losses, to be integrated in the simulation model of the complete vehicle. In this way, the electromagnetic and thermal design aspects were examined, identifying the parameters of optimization and the trade-offs that play a role in the design of a permanent magnet synchronous electric machine and in the development of the control algorithms. Having identified and quantified the benefits of hybrid solutions compared to conventional designs, thanks to the skills that I have acquired during the training period inside the company, my research has focused on the development of a preliminary design for a hybrid transmission, addressing also constructive aspects: from mechanical design to manufacturing and assembly. This concept will be tested in the research and development department of the company upon completion of the detailed design.
L'elettrificazione e l'ibridizzazione delle macchine agricole e industriali sono e saranno negli anni a venire le principali aree di ricerca e sviluppo per il settore off-highway. In questo contesto la modellazione numerica gioca un ruolo fondamentale nel predire le prestazioni del sistema di trasmissione del veicolo ed ottimizzare il suo funzionamento. Una buona progettazione della componente meccanica ed elettrica di una trasmissione ibrida può essere raggiunta solo tramite un approccio sistemico. Attraverso il percorso di Apprendistato in Alta Formazione ho proceduto all'individuazione di alcuni architetture realizzabili nell'ambito della trazione ibrido elettrica, ed alla loro analisi finalizzata allo sviluppo di soluzioni innovative per il settore. Ho affrontato soluzioni all'avanguardia concentrandomi sulla modellazione di trasmissioni industriali ibride elettro-idrodinamiche e trasmissioni agricole a ripartizione di potenza elettrica. Ho scelto di utilizzare AMESim come strumento di simulazione dinamica 1D multidominio. I risultati hanno dimostrato come un veicolo industriale equipaggiato con una trasmissione ibrida elettro-idrodinamica dimostri consumi di carburante inferiori dell'8% rispetto al veicolo convenzionale in un ciclo rappresentativo di utilizzo definito dall'Autore in base all'esperienza aziendale e a dati reperiti in letteratura. Nell'ambito delle trasmissioni agricole la ripartizione di potenza elettrica si è dimostrata concorrenziale se non vantaggiosa rispetto all'odierna ripartizione di potenza idrostatica. Sulla base dei modelli sviluppati, ho approfondito gli aspetti di progettazione delle macchine elettriche e le relative tecnologie di alimentazione e di controllo, anche in relazione con il loro impiego nei sistemi ibridi di trasmissione per applicazioni nel settore off-highway e alla loro integrazione con le componenti meccaniche. Questa attività, finalizzata alla progettazione di un azionamento elettrico per una applicazione industriale, mi ha consentito di definire un modello di macchina elettrica, completo di perdite, da poter integrare nel modello di simulazione del veicolo. In questo percorso, gli aspetti di progettazione elettromagnetica e termica sono stati approfonditi, permettendo di identificare i parametri di ottimizzazione ed i trade-offs che giocano un ruolo primario nella progettazione di una macchina elettrica sincrona a magneti permanenti e nello sviluppo degli algoritmi di controllo. Dopo aver identificato e quantificato i vantaggi delle soluzioni ibride rispetto alle trasmissioni tradizionali, grazie alla competenze che ho acquisito nel percorso di alta formazione in azienda, la mia attività di ricerca si è concentrata sullo sviluppo di un design preliminare per una trasmissione ibrida industriale, affrontando gli aspetti costruttivi, dal dimensionamento meccanico alla produzione ed assemblaggio. Una volta completata la progettazione di dettaglio, questo concept, verrà testato nell'ambito della ricerca e sviluppo di nuovi prodotti dell'azienda.

Progetto IoT di telerilevamento degli impianti industriali. Nella seguente tesi si propone un prototipo basato su una scheda a microcontrollore Arduino, affidabile, versatile, altamente riusabile e aperto a numerose implementazioni nel campo del monitoraggio industriale per la risoluzione di svariati problemi pratici. Nella tesi verrà trattato nel dettaglio un esempio di analisi dei consumi energetici. Il nodo sensore è composto da un modulo di comunicazione seriale industriale Modbus RTU basato sul protocollo di linea RS485, un datalogger ed un sensore di temperatura. Il sistema consente, tramite l'apposito modulo wireless integrato, di inviare i dati raccolti su piattaforma cloud per l'elaborazione ed il monitoraggio real time.

Il presente elaborato di tesi ha come scopo finale lo studio e l’approfondimento dei metodi realizzativi di sensori BGS basati su array di fotodiodi. L’obiettivo è la rilevazione della presenza di un oggetto in una determinata posizione, attraverso la stima della sua distanza, ottenuta con il miglior compromesso tra accuratezza e velocità di acquisizione ed elaborazione.

Questa tesi presenta una panoramica del nuovo scenario industriale con l'avvento delle smart factory e delle tecnologie ad esse legate. Vengono prese in considerazione anche strumenti, quali i droni e i sistemi Ultra-Wide-Band, che sono soggetti tutt'ora a studi sperimentali per il loro notevole potenziale applicativo. Di tali strumenti si cerca di studiare l'efficienza in un ambiente industriale. L'elaborato propone inoltre risultati e analisi di misurazioni effettuate in uno scenario reale, una smart factory, al fine di caratterizzate il canale radio e offrire dati per possibili studi futuri nelle interferenze, nei collegamenti e nell'utilizzo dei droni in ambito industriale.

Lo scopo di questa tesi è creare un sistema organico di gestione che, prendendo come vademecum questo elaborato in quanto a linee guida e approccio a cui si è aderito in riferimento al carrello X540R, permetta di stimare verosimilmente l'impatto ambientale dei restanti carrelli attualmente in produzione e di quelli in stato di progettazione. In una prima parte si toccherà direttamente il tema della sostenibilità ambientale, delle azioni politiche atte all’ammortamento dei soprusi sulle risorse naturali. Seguirà l’introduzione al caso specifico di analisi, si parlerà della politica del Gruppo Toyota in merito alle tematiche ambientali, della suddivisione settoriale interna all’azienda, si passerà in rassegna per ciascun settore l’attuale impatto ambientale e, dove possibile alcune soluzioni per il suo abbattimento. Nei capitoli terzo e quarto, si presterà infatti attenzione al contenuto di sostanze chimiche pericolose nelle materie prime, ma anche al contenuto di materiali disassemblabili e riciclabili oppure riutilizzabili in accordo con l’iniziativa europea di economia circolare. Nel capitolo quinto si analizzeranno i consumi della linea produttiva con un focus sulla quantificazione della attività energivore occorrenti alla produzione del carrello X540R; si racconteranno le soluzioni adottate da TMHMI per la riduzione del fabbisogno energetico e delle emissioni di gas a effetto serra per singole unità di prodotto. Infine, si descriveranno gli standard europei che regolano il controllo dei consumi e l'impatto ambientale dei carrelli elevatori, con applicazione sperimentale ad un carrello elevatore prototipale alimentato da due alternative in alimentazione al motore elettrico; dopo un'attenta analisi dei test effettuati su macchina, si passa a considerazioni che potrebbero migliorare l’impronta di un veicolo durante il durante un ciclo di lavoro in magazzino , e quindi che potrebbero ridurne l'impatto ambientale.

Recentemente l’elettronica organica sta attraendo grande interesse, a causa della possibilità di produrre dispositivi a basso costo, flessibili, di grandi dimensioni e leggeri. In più sono sempre più numerosi gli studi che riportano l’utilizzo di uno o più materiali biologici nella fabbricazione di questi dispositivi, dal momento che crescono le richieste, soprattutto in ambito medico e ambientale, di strumenti capaci di interagire con il corpo umano e l’ambiente esterno. Per cercare quindi di potenziare l’efficienza di dispositivi organici e bio-organici è utile ottimizzare le proprietà elettroniche e morfologiche dei materiali costituenti il dispositivo. Per fare ciò risultano molto utili studi computazionali che permettono di comprendere la correlazione tra proprietà morfologiche ed elettroniche. In questo lavoro di tesi sono stati studiati due materiali: la fibroina, proteina maggioritaria estratta dalla seta del baco Bombyx mori, come materiale dielettrico e il PTCDI-C13, un composto organico derivato dalla perilene diimmide, come materiale semiconduttore. Questi due materiali formano gli strati attivi di un bio-OFET. Al fine di investigare le proprietà morfologiche strutturali di questi materiali sono state utilizzate le tecniche di simulazione di dinamica molecolare. Sono stati effettuati studi morfologici sulle rugosità superficiali e strutturali, analizzando le proprietà morfologiche e strutturali dei materiali e delle relative interfacce, anche in relazione ai vari trattamenti termici simulati al fine di poter correlare il processing al miglioramento delle performance globali. In più, dal momento che il PTCDI-C13 è un materiale cristallino, si è cercato anche di stabilire l’ordine locale degli aggregati di PTCDI-C13 depositati su fibroina. Le simulazioni hanno inoltre evidenziato un miglioramento della morfologia della superficie esposta rispetto alla fibroina isolata, marcando il ruolo fondamentale che ha questo strato nell’architettura OFET.

The treatment of the Cerebral Palsy (CP) is considered as the “core problem” for the whole field of the pediatric rehabilitation. The reason why this pathology has such a primary role, can be ascribed to two main aspects. First of all CP is the form of disability most frequent in childhood (one new case per 500 birth alive, (1)), secondarily the functional recovery of the “spastic” child is, historically, the clinical field in which the majority of the therapeutic methods and techniques (physiotherapy, orthotic, pharmacologic, orthopedic-surgical, neurosurgical) were first applied and tested. The currently accepted definition of CP – Group of disorders of the development of movement and posture causing activity limitation (2) – is the result of a recent update by the World Health Organization to the language of the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health, from the original proposal of Ingram – A persistent but not unchangeable disorder of posture and movement – dated 1955 (3). This definition considers CP as a permanent ailment, i.e. a “fixed” condition, that however can be modified both functionally and structurally by means of child spontaneous evolution and treatments carried out during childhood. The lesion that causes the palsy, happens in a structurally immature brain in the pre-, peri- or post-birth period (but only during the firsts months of life). The most frequent causes of CP are: prematurity, insufficient cerebral perfusion, arterial haemorrhage, venous infarction, hypoxia caused by various origin (for example from the ingestion of amniotic liquid), malnutrition, infection and maternal or fetal poisoning. In addition to these causes, traumas and malformations have to be included. The lesion, whether focused or spread over the nervous system, impairs the whole functioning of the Central Nervous System (CNS). As a consequence, they affect the construction of the adaptive functions (4), first of all posture control, locomotion and manipulation. The palsy itself does not vary over time, however it assumes an unavoidable “evolutionary” feature when during growth the child is requested to meet new and different needs through the construction of new and different functions. It is essential to consider that clinically CP is not only a direct expression of structural impairment, that is of etiology, pathogenesis and lesion timing, but it is mainly the manifestation of the path followed by the CNS to “re”-construct the adaptive functions “despite” the presence of the damage. “Palsy” is “the form of the function that is implemented by an individual whose CNS has been damaged in order to satisfy the demands coming from the environment” (4). Therefore it is only possible to establish general relations between lesion site, nature and size, and palsy and recovery processes. It is quite common to observe that children with very similar neuroimaging can have very different clinical manifestations of CP and, on the other hand, children with very similar motor behaviors can have completely different lesion histories. A very clear example of this is represented by hemiplegic forms, which show bilateral hemispheric lesions in a high percentage of cases. The first section of this thesis is aimed at guiding the interpretation of CP. First of all the issue of the detection of the palsy is treated from historical viewpoint. Consequently, an extended analysis of the current definition of CP, as internationally accepted, is provided. The definition is then outlined in terms of a space dimension and then of a time dimension, hence it is highlighted where this definition is unacceptably lacking. The last part of the first section further stresses the importance of shifting from the traditional concept of CP as a palsy of development (defect analysis) towards the notion of development of palsy, i.e., as the product of the relationship that the individual however tries to dynamically build with the surrounding environment (resource semeiotics) starting and growing from a different availability of resources, needs, dreams, rights and duties (4). In the scientific and clinic community no common classification system of CP has so far been universally accepted. Besides, no standard operative method or technique have been acknowledged to effectively assess the different disabilities and impairments exhibited by children with CP. CP is still “an artificial concept, comprising several causes and clinical syndromes that have been grouped together for a convenience of management” (5). The lack of standard and common protocols able to effectively diagnose the palsy, and as a consequence to establish specific treatments and prognosis, is mainly because of the difficulty to elevate this field to a level based on scientific evidence. A solution aimed at overcoming the current incomplete treatment of CP children is represented by the clinical systematic adoption of objective tools able to measure motor defects and movement impairments. A widespread application of reliable instruments and techniques able to objectively evaluate both the form of the palsy (diagnosis) and the efficacy of the treatments provided (prognosis), constitutes a valuable method able to validate care protocols, establish the efficacy of classification systems and assess the validity of definitions. Since the ‘80s, instruments specifically oriented to the analysis of the human movement have been advantageously designed and applied in the context of CP with the aim of measuring motor deficits and, especially, gait deviations. The gait analysis (GA) technique has been increasingly used over the years to assess, analyze, classify, and support the process of clinical decisions making, allowing for a complete investigation of gait with an increased temporal and spatial resolution. GA has provided a basis for improving the outcome of surgical and nonsurgical treatments and for introducing a new modus operandi in the identification of defects and functional adaptations to the musculoskeletal disorders. Historically, the first laboratories set up for gait analysis developed their own protocol (set of procedures for data collection and for data reduction) independently, according to performances of the technologies available at that time. In particular, the stereophotogrammetric systems mainly based on optoelectronic technology, soon became a gold-standard for motion analysis. They have been successfully applied especially for scientific purposes. Nowadays the optoelectronic systems have significantly improved their performances in term of spatial and temporal resolution, however many laboratories continue to use the protocols designed on the technology available in the ‘70s and now out-of-date. Furthermore, these protocols are not coherent both for the biomechanical models and for the adopted collection procedures. In spite of these differences, GA data are shared, exchanged and interpreted irrespectively to the adopted protocol without a full awareness to what extent these protocols are compatible and comparable with each other. Following the extraordinary advances in computer science and electronics, new systems for GA no longer based on optoelectronic technology, are now becoming available. They are the Inertial and Magnetic Measurement Systems (IMMSs), based on miniature MEMS (Microelectromechanical systems) inertial sensor technology. These systems are cost effective, wearable and fully portable motion analysis systems, these features gives IMMSs the potential to be used both outside specialized laboratories and to consecutive collect series of tens of gait cycles. The recognition and selection of the most representative gait cycle is then easier and more reliable especially in CP children, considering their relevant gait cycle variability. The second section of this thesis is focused on GA. In particular, it is firstly aimed at examining the differences among five most representative GA protocols in order to assess the state of the art with respect to the inter-protocol variability. The design of a new protocol is then proposed and presented with the aim of achieving gait analysis on CP children by means of IMMS. The protocol, named ‘Outwalk’, contains original and innovative solutions oriented at obtaining joint kinematic with calibration procedures extremely comfortable for the patients. The results of a first in-vivo validation of Outwalk on healthy subjects are then provided. In particular, this study was carried out by comparing Outwalk used in combination with an IMMS with respect to a reference protocol and an optoelectronic system. In order to set a more accurate and precise comparison of the systems and the protocols, ad hoc methods were designed and an original formulation of the statistical parameter coefficient of multiple correlation was developed and effectively applied. On the basis of the experimental design proposed for the validation on healthy subjects, a first assessment of Outwalk, together with an IMMS, was also carried out on CP children. The third section of this thesis is dedicated to the treatment of walking in CP children. Commonly prescribed treatments in addressing gait abnormalities in CP children include physical therapy, surgery (orthopedic and rhizotomy), and orthoses. The orthotic approach is conservative, being reversible, and widespread in many therapeutic regimes. Orthoses are used to improve the gait of children with CP, by preventing deformities, controlling joint position, and offering an effective lever for the ankle joint. Orthoses are prescribed for the additional aims of increasing walking speed, improving stability, preventing stumbling, and decreasing muscular fatigue. The ankle-foot orthosis (AFO), with a rigid ankle, are primarily designed to prevent equinus and other foot deformities with a positive effect also on more proximal joints. However, AFOs prevent the natural excursion of the tibio-tarsic joint during the second rocker, hence hampering the natural leaning progression of the whole body under the effect of the inertia (6). A new modular (submalleolar) astragalus-calcanear orthosis, named OMAC, has recently been proposed with the intention of substituting the prescription of AFOs in those CP children exhibiting a flat and valgus-pronated foot. The aim of this section is thus to present the mechanical and technical features of the OMAC by means of an accurate description of the device. In particular, the integral document of the deposited Italian patent, is provided. A preliminary validation of OMAC with respect to AFO is also reported as resulted from an experimental campaign on diplegic CP children, during a three month period, aimed at quantitatively assessing the benefit provided by the two orthoses on walking and at qualitatively evaluating the changes in the quality of life and motor abilities. As already stated, CP is universally considered as a persistent but not unchangeable disorder of posture and movement. Conversely to this definition, some clinicians (4) have recently pointed out that movement disorders may be primarily caused by the presence of perceptive disorders, where perception is not merely the acquisition of sensory information, but an active process aimed at guiding the execution of movements through the integration of sensory information properly representing the state of one’s body and of the environment. Children with perceptive impairments show an overall fear of moving and the onset of strongly unnatural walking schemes directly caused by the presence of perceptive system disorders. The fourth section of the thesis thus deals with accurately defining the perceptive impairment exhibited by diplegic CP children. A detailed description of the clinical signs revealing the presence of the perceptive impairment, and a classification scheme of the clinical aspects of perceptual disorders is provided. In the end, a functional reaching test is proposed as an instrumental test able to disclosure the perceptive impairment. References 1. Prevalence and characteristics of children with cerebral palsy in Europe. Dev Med Child Neurol. 2002 Set;44(9):633-640. 2. Bax M, Goldstein M, Rosenbaum P, Leviton A, Paneth N, Dan B, et al. Proposed definition and classification of cerebral palsy, April 2005. Dev Med Child Neurol. 2005 Ago;47(8):571-576. 3. Ingram TT. A study of cerebral palsy in the childhood population of Edinburgh. Arch. Dis. Child. 1955 Apr;30(150):85-98. 4. Ferrari A, Cioni G. The spastic forms of cerebral palsy : a guide to the assessment of adaptive functions. Milan: Springer; 2009. 5. Olney SJ, Wright MJ. Cerebral Palsy. Campbell S et al. Physical Therapy for Children. 2nd Ed. Philadelphia: Saunders. 2000;:533-570. 6. Desloovere K, Molenaers G, Van Gestel L, Huenaerts C, Van Campenhout A, Callewaert B, et al. How can push-off be preserved during use of an ankle foot orthosis in children with hemiplegia? A prospective controlled study. Gait Posture. 2006 Ott;24(2):142-151.

The treatment of the Cerebral Palsy (CP) is considered as the “core problem” for the whole field of the pediatric rehabilitation. The reason why this pathology has such a primary role, can be ascribed to two main aspects. First of all CP is the form of disability most frequent in childhood (one new case per 500 birth alive, (1)), secondarily the functional recovery of the “spastic” child is, historically, the clinical field in which the majority of the therapeutic methods and techniques (physiotherapy, orthotic, pharmacologic, orthopedic-surgical, neurosurgical) were first applied and tested. The currently accepted definition of CP – Group of disorders of the development of movement and posture causing activity limitation (2) – is the result of a recent update by the World Health Organization to the language of the International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health, from the original proposal of Ingram – A persistent but not unchangeable disorder of posture and movement – dated 1955 (3). This definition considers CP as a permanent ailment, i.e. a “fixed” condition, that however can be modified both functionally and structurally by means of child spontaneous evolution and treatments carried out during childhood. The lesion that causes the palsy, happens in a structurally immature brain in the pre-, peri- or post-birth period (but only during the firsts months of life). The most frequent causes of CP are: prematurity, insufficient cerebral perfusion, arterial haemorrhage, venous infarction, hypoxia caused by various origin (for example from the ingestion of amniotic liquid), malnutrition, infection and maternal or fetal poisoning. In addition to these causes, traumas and malformations have to be included. The lesion, whether focused or spread over the nervous system, impairs the whole functioning of the Central Nervous System (CNS). As a consequence, they affect the construction of the adaptive functions (4), first of all posture control, locomotion and manipulation. The palsy itself does not vary over time, however it assumes an unavoidable “evolutionary” feature when during growth the child is requested to meet new and different needs through the construction of new and different functions. It is essential to consider that clinically CP is not only a direct expression of structural impairment, that is of etiology, pathogenesis and lesion timing, but it is mainly the manifestation of the path followed by the CNS to “re”-construct the adaptive functions “despite” the presence of the damage. “Palsy” is “the form of the function that is implemented by an individual whose CNS has been damaged in order to satisfy the demands coming from the environment” (4). Therefore it is only possible to establish general relations between lesion site, nature and size, and palsy and recovery processes. It is quite common to observe that children with very similar neuroimaging can have very different clinical manifestations of CP and, on the other hand, children with very similar motor behaviors can have completely different lesion histories. A very clear example of this is represented by hemiplegic forms, which show bilateral hemispheric lesions in a high percentage of cases. The first section of this thesis is aimed at guiding the interpretation of CP. First of all the issue of the detection of the palsy is treated from historical viewpoint. Consequently, an extended analysis of the current definition of CP, as internationally accepted, is provided. The definition is then outlined in terms of a space dimension and then of a time dimension, hence it is highlighted where this definition is unacceptably lacking. The last part of the first section further stresses the importance of shifting from the traditional concept of CP as a palsy of development (defect analysis) towards the notion of development of palsy, i.e., as the product of the relationship that the individual however tries to dynamically build with the surrounding environment (resource semeiotics) starting and growing from a different availability of resources, needs, dreams, rights and duties (4). In the scientific and clinic community no common classification system of CP has so far been universally accepted. Besides, no standard operative method or technique have been acknowledged to effectively assess the different disabilities and impairments exhibited by children with CP. CP is still “an artificial concept, comprising several causes and clinical syndromes that have been grouped together for a convenience of management” (5). The lack of standard and common protocols able to effectively diagnose the palsy, and as a consequence to establish specific treatments and prognosis, is mainly because of the difficulty to elevate this field to a level based on scientific evidence. A solution aimed at overcoming the current incomplete treatment of CP children is represented by the clinical systematic adoption of objective tools able to measure motor defects and movement impairments. A widespread application of reliable instruments and techniques able to objectively evaluate both the form of the palsy (diagnosis) and the efficacy of the treatments provided (prognosis), constitutes a valuable method able to validate care protocols, establish the efficacy of classification systems and assess the validity of definitions. Since the ‘80s, instruments specifically oriented to the analysis of the human movement have been advantageously designed and applied in the context of CP with the aim of measuring motor deficits and, especially, gait deviations. The gait analysis (GA) technique has been increasingly used over the years to assess, analyze, classify, and support the process of clinical decisions making, allowing for a complete investigation of gait with an increased temporal and spatial resolution. GA has provided a basis for improving the outcome of surgical and nonsurgical treatments and for introducing a new modus operandi in the identification of defects and functional adaptations to the musculoskeletal disorders. Historically, the first laboratories set up for gait analysis developed their own protocol (set of procedures for data collection and for data reduction) independently, according to performances of the technologies available at that time. In particular, the stereophotogrammetric systems mainly based on optoelectronic technology, soon became a gold-standard for motion analysis. They have been successfully applied especially for scientific purposes. Nowadays the optoelectronic systems have significantly improved their performances in term of spatial and temporal resolution, however many laboratories continue to use the protocols designed on the technology available in the ‘70s and now out-of-date. Furthermore, these protocols are not coherent both for the biomechanical models and for the adopted collection procedures. In spite of these differences, GA data are shared, exchanged and interpreted irrespectively to the adopted protocol without a full awareness to what extent these protocols are compatible and comparable with each other. Following the extraordinary advances in computer science and electronics, new systems for GA no longer based on optoelectronic technology, are now becoming available. They are the Inertial and Magnetic Measurement Systems (IMMSs), based on miniature MEMS (Microelectromechanical systems) inertial sensor technology. These systems are cost effective, wearable and fully portable motion analysis systems, these features gives IMMSs the potential to be used both outside specialized laboratories and to consecutive collect series of tens of gait cycles. The recognition and selection of the most representative gait cycle is then easier and more reliable especially in CP children, considering their relevant gait cycle variability. The second section of this thesis is focused on GA. In particular, it is firstly aimed at examining the differences among five most representative GA protocols in order to assess the state of the art with respect to the inter-protocol variability. The design of a new protocol is then proposed and presented with the aim of achieving gait analysis on CP children by means of IMMS. The protocol, named ‘Outwalk’, contains original and innovative solutions oriented at obtaining joint kinematic with calibration procedures extremely comfortable for the patients. The results of a first in-vivo validation of Outwalk on healthy subjects are then provided. In particular, this study was carried out by comparing Outwalk used in combination with an IMMS with respect to a reference protocol and an optoelectronic system. In order to set a more accurate and precise comparison of the systems and the protocols, ad hoc methods were designed and an original formulation of the statistical parameter coefficient of multiple correlation was developed and effectively applied. On the basis of the experimental design proposed for the validation on healthy subjects, a first assessment of Outwalk, together with an IMMS, was also carried out on CP children. The third section of this thesis is dedicated to the treatment of walking in CP children. Commonly prescribed treatments in addressing gait abnormalities in CP children include physical therapy, surgery (orthopedic and rhizotomy), and orthoses. The orthotic approach is conservative, being reversible, and widespread in many therapeutic regimes. Orthoses are used to improve the gait of children with CP, by preventing deformities, controlling joint position, and offering an effective lever for the ankle joint. Orthoses are prescribed for the additional aims of increasing walking speed, improving stability, preventing stumbling, and decreasing muscular fatigue. The ankle-foot orthosis (AFO), with a rigid ankle, are primarily designed to prevent equinus and other foot deformities with a positive effect also on more proximal joints. However, AFOs prevent the natural excursion of the tibio-tarsic joint during the second rocker, hence hampering the natural leaning progression of the whole body under the effect of the inertia (6). A new modular (submalleolar) astragalus-calcanear orthosis, named OMAC, has recently been proposed with the intention of substituting the prescription of AFOs in those CP children exhibiting a flat and valgus-pronated foot. The aim of this section is thus to present the mechanical and technical features of the OMAC by means of an accurate description of the device. In particular, the integral document of the deposited Italian patent, is provided. A preliminary validation of OMAC with respect to AFO is also reported as resulted from an experimental campaign on diplegic CP children, during a three month period, aimed at quantitatively assessing the benefit provided by the two orthoses on walking and at qualitatively evaluating the changes in the quality of life and motor abilities. As already stated, CP is universally considered as a persistent but not unchangeable disorder of posture and movement. Conversely to this definition, some clinicians (4) have recently pointed out that movement disorders may be primarily caused by the presence of perceptive disorders, where perception is not merely the acquisition of sensory information, but an active process aimed at guiding the execution of movements through the integration of sensory information properly representing the state of one’s body and of the environment. Children with perceptive impairments show an overall fear of moving and the onset of strongly unnatural walking schemes directly caused by the presence of perceptive system disorders. The fourth section of the thesis thus deals with accurately defining the perceptive impairment exhibited by diplegic CP children. A detailed description of the clinical signs revealing the presence of the perceptive impairment, and a classification scheme of the clinical aspects of perceptual disorders is provided. In the end, a functional reaching test is proposed as an instrumental test able to disclosure the perceptive impairment. References 1. Prevalence and characteristics of children with cerebral palsy in Europe. Dev Med Child Neurol. 2002 Set;44(9):633-640. 2. Bax M, Goldstein M, Rosenbaum P, Leviton A, Paneth N, Dan B, et al. Proposed definition and classification of cerebral palsy, April 2005. Dev Med Child Neurol. 2005 Ago;47(8):571-576. 3. Ingram TT. A study of cerebral palsy in the childhood population of Edinburgh. Arch. Dis. Child. 1955 Apr;30(150):85-98. 4. Ferrari A, Cioni G. The spastic forms of cerebral palsy : a guide to the assessment of adaptive functions. Milan: Springer; 2009. 5. Olney SJ, Wright MJ. Cerebral Palsy. Campbell S et al. Physical Therapy for Children. 2nd Ed. Philadelphia: Saunders. 2000;:533-570. 6. Desloovere K, Molenaers G, Van Gestel L, Huenaerts C, Van Campenhout A, Callewaert B, et al. How can push-off be preserved during use of an ankle foot orthosis in children with hemiplegia? A prospective controlled study. Gait Posture. 2006 Ott;24(2):142-151.

This work reconstructs the history of electronic appliances’ production in post-war Italy. This sector particularly prosperous during the 50s and 60s, can be considered as one of the most representative of the Italian industry in the “miracolo economico”. Civil electronics is characterized by scarce industrial concentration, with several enterprises active in the country. For two decades this industry symbolises the push towards innovation in production and the growing private consumes in Italy and Europe. Electronics factories employ thousands of youngsters who are trained in a professional-oriented educational establishments. Throughout the 70s, with the spreading of transistor technology, tv-color and IT, the need for investments and human capital in the production system becomes more urgent, although the scarce industrial concentration and the absence of a public research plan cannot sustain it. Big multinational corporations from America, Japan and Northern Europe dominate the market of electronic appliances thanks to public demand, national innovation and specialised organization systems. The international competition gradually marginalises Italian brands in global markets. The Roman firm Voxson, the case-study presented in this research, lives a two-decade expansion, being acquired in 1972 by United Kingdom corporation Emi Ltd. After a brief period, Emi Ltd. sells Voxson to a financial company, which radically reorganizes the enterprise, separating specific divisions. However, this reorganization happens at a critical moment for the whole industry in Italy. Because of relevant losses, the new ownership in 1980 proposes a temporary receivership, that carries the enterprise to definitive closure and bankruptcy, which is nowadays still ongoing. Voxson is active inside a rich industrial network, although it is weakened by the complex urban fabric of Rome. It is one of the biggest and prosperous factories of the Capital city. It employs between 1.500 and 2.000 people, as technicians, employees and workers, mainly women. This research focuses unions activities, inside and outside the factory gates, with particular attention to political cultures, the relationship between unions and new social entities and to the claims that emerge from these controversial dynamics.
Il lavoro ripercorre la storia della produzione di apparecchi radio-televisivi in Italia nel secondo dopoguerra. Questo settore, particolarmente florido negli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta del XX secolo, può essere considerato uno dei più rappresentativi dell’industria italiana durante il “miracolo economico”. Caratterizzato da una scarsa concentrazione industriale, con decine di imprese attive su quasi tutto il territorio nazionale, l’elettronica civile riassume per oltre due decenni le spinte all’innovazione nel mondo della produzione e la crescita dei consumi privati, in Italia e in Europa. All’interno delle fabbriche elettroniche trovano impiego migliaia di giovani formati all’interno di un sistema scolastico che tende a valorizzare competenze immediatamente spendibili nel tessuto industriale nazionale. Negli anni Settanta, con l’avvento del transistor, del colore televisivo e dell’informatica, si fa più pressante l’esigenza di investimenti rilevanti nel ciclo produttivo e nel capitale umano, una condizione che non può essere garantita dalla scarsa concentrazione industriale e dall’assenza di un piano nazionale di investimento nella ricerca applicata. Il mercato internazionale degli apparecchi elettronici vede imporsi le grandi compagnie multinazionali americane, giapponesi e nordeuropee, sostenute dalla domanda pubblica e da sistemi nazionali di investimento e organizzazione settoriale. I marchi italiani vengono progressivamente emarginati dalla concorrenza internazionale. Anche la Voxson di Roma, caso studio presentato in questa ricerca, vive un ventennio di espansione e nel 1972 viene acquisita da una multinazionale del Regno Unito, la Emi Ltd. Questa, dopo pochi anni, la cede a una società finanziaria, che ne ristruttura radicalmente l’impianto organizzativo, scorporando singole lavorazioni e comparti. Il tentativo di ristrutturazione arriva tuttavia in un momento critico per l’intero settore in Italia. Le ingenti perdite costringono quindi la nuova proprietà a richiedere nel 1980 l’amministrazione controllata, che accompagna l’azienda alla chiusura definitiva e ad un procedimento fallimentare tutt’ora in corso. Attiva all’interno di un tessuto industriale ricco, ma indebolito dalla complessa struttura urbanistica della città di Roma, la Voxson è una delle più grandi e floride industrie della Capitale. Al suo interno lavorano tra le 1.500 e le 2.000 persone, tra tecnici, impiegati e operaie, per lo più donne. Questa ricerca dedica grande attenzione all’attività sindacale, sia dentro che fuori i cancelli della fabbrica, concentrandosi sulle culture politiche, sulle relazioni tra sindacato e nuovi soggetti sociali e sulle rivendicazioni che, a partire da questo controverso rapporto, prendono corpo nel corso dei tre decenni di attività della fabbrica.

The advent of biodegradable polymers constituted an important development tool for the realization of modern systems that can be used in biomedicine. Biodegradable polymers are essential when it is necessary to have easily workable materials with suitable properties to obtain an excellent biological response, for this reason they found applications in a wide range of tissue engineering and drug delivery systems. The main limitation of biopolymers is however in the properties of the materials themselves, sometimes too poor compared to the application field in which they need to be used to provide efficient support or therapy. The fabricated systems exposed in this thesis work, aim to provide useful tools not only for the improvement of previously developed polymeric systems but also for the achievement of new objectives in the field of neuronal cultures and controlled drug release. Specifically, Chitosan (CHI) has been used as a bulk material to produce engineered neuronal networks both at the two-dimensional level and, in the currently essential passage towards biologically more relevant models, at the 3D one. Gold nanorods (GNRs) have been used thanks to their good interaction with chitosan to provide thermo-plasmonic properties to a composite ink developed to be able to be printed using a commercial ink-jet printer, with the aim of creating a platform for simple and scalable neuronal networks stimulation for potential studies to better understand brain diseases (such as epilepsy). Moreover, chitosan was used to manufacture porous microparticles by means of air-assisted jetting technique and phase inversion gelation. These systems can be used in various fields such as tissue engineering, as a bottom-up 3D scaffolds, or in drug delivery for local drug release. Precisely in these two directions I worked during my PhD research activity to develop systems that, by using Chitosan as a base, exploited the interactions with other materials to improve the properties of the biopolymer. Interactions between CHI and graphitic materials have been exploited to provide to scaffolds, formed by assemblies of neurons and chitosan microspheres, electrical conductivity, mechanical strength, and degradative resistance in physiological and/or injury conditions. With this in mind, graphite oxide and graphite nanoplatelets were used both as filler and by electrostatic surface interaction, evaluating the different impact on the bulk properties of CHI and on the material-cell interface.Afterwards, with a conservative approach, I used CHI microparticles as a potential carrier for drug release in the gastrointestinal tract. The poor degradative resistance of CHI in harsh conditions made it necessary to apply a surface coating. The biocompatible synthetic polymer already widely used in drug delivery Poly-(styrene-co-maleic anhydride) (PSMA), thanks to the strong grafting reaction with CHI, made it possible to obtain a system with a limited burst effect in the release of molecules in the first hour of administration. The overall findings of this thesis support the efforts in making novel bio-fabricated systems as greatly promising tools for tissue engineering and controlled drug delivery. Specifically, the interaction between biopolymers and synthetic polymers can introduce interesting innovations in the fields of drug delivery, while interactions between biopolymers and carbon-based materials could be a key point for the next years perspective in neuro-engineering.

Nell’era della quarta rivoluzione industriale, un processo sempre più aggressivo sta conducendo ad una produzione industriale automatizzata ed interconnessa. L’industria 4.0 punta allo sfruttamento via via più efficace di Big Data e Internet of Things, che mettono a disposizione di aziende e utenti una gran mole di dati, anche sul cloud. Il modo migliore per valorizzare questa immensa risorsa è di analizzare i dati con l’ottica dell’analisi predittiva o, nel campo dell’industria manifatturiera, della manutenzione predittiva, attraverso il potente strumento del machine learning. In questo panorama di innovazione si posiziona questo lavoro di tesi, che parte da un case study aziendale proprio in ambito manifatturiero. L’obiettivo principale dello studio è stato quello di porre solide basi allo sviluppo di algoritmi di Machine Learning per la manutenzione predittiva, partendo da una situazione ancora vergine da questo punto di vista. Con l’ottica di voler includere in futuro anche un servizio di cloud server e con la volontà di voler inaugurare un database storico riguardo alle condizioni del sistema, si è cercato in primis di rispondere alle domande: quali sono i dati sensibili e indispensabili allo scopo? Con che frequenza occorre campionarli? Data la disponibilità di componenti guasti, si sono dapprima registrati i dati relativi al funzionamento del sistema con componenti nominalmente nuovi, per poi procedere alla sostituzione con quelli guasti. Questo ha permesso una successiva implementazione in ambiente MATLAB di algoritmi di classificazione delle condizioni operative. Si propone il training di tre diversi algoritmi e l’applicazione di diverse tecniche di estrazione e riduzione delle variabili con l’obiettivo di trovare la configurazione ottimale, sulla base del tasso di errore e del tempo di esecuzione.

During the last years the distribution of renewable energy sources is continuously increasing and their influence on the distribution grid is becoming every year more relevant. As the increasing integration of renewable resources is radically changing the grid scenario, grid code technical requirements as are needed to ensure the grid correct behavior. To be standard compliant wind turbines need to be submitted to certification tests which usually must be performed on the field. One of the most difficult tests to be performed on the field is the low voltage ride through (LVRT) certitication due to the following resons: • The standards specify it must be performed ad different power levels. For this reasons it is necessary to wait for the right atmospheric conditions. • It requires a voltage sag generator which is usually expensive and bulky. • The voltage sag generator needs to be cabled between the grid and the wind turbine. • The voltage sag generator causes disturbances and perturbation on the power grid, for this reasons agreements with the distributor operator are needed. For all these reasons a laboratory test bench to perform the LVRT certification tests on wind turbines would be a more controlled and inexpensive alternative to the classic testing methodology. The research presented in this thesis is focused on the design and the realization of a test bench to perform certification tests on energy converters for wind turbines in laboratory. More specifically, the possibility of performing LVRT certification tests directly in laboratory over controlled conditions would allow faster testing procedures and less certification overall costs. The solution presented in this thesis is based on a power hardware in the loop implementing a digitally-controlled, power electronics-based emulation of a wind turbine. This emulator is used to drive the electronic wind energy converter (WEC) under test. A grid emulator is used to apply voltage sags to the wind turbine converter and perform LVRT certification tests. In this solution AC power supplies are used to emulate both the wind turbine and the grid emulator. For this reason the test bench power rating is limited to the AC supplies one. Two working versions of the test bench has been realized and successfully tested. The work here presented has evolved through the following phases: • Study of the grid code requirements and the state of the art. • Modeling of the parts of a wind turbine and complete system simulations.
During the last years the distribution of renewable energy sources is continuously increasing and their influence on the distribution grid is becoming every year more relevant. As the increasing integration of renewable resources is radically changing the grid scenario, grid code technical requirements as are needed to ensure the grid correct behavior. To be standard compliant wind turbines need to be submitted to certification tests which usually must be performed on the field. One of the most difficult tests to be performed on the field is the low voltage ride through (LVRT) certitication due to the following resons: • The standards specify it must be performed ad different power levels. For this reasons it is necessary to wait for the right atmospheric conditions. • It requires a voltage sag generator which is usually expensive and bulky. • The voltage sag generator needs to be cabled between the grid and the wind turbine. • The voltage sag generator causes disturbances and perturbation on the power grid, for this reasons agreements with the distributor operator are needed. For all these reasons a laboratory test bench to perform the LVRT certification tests on wind turbines would be a more controlled and inexpensive alternative to the classic testing methodology. The research presented in this thesis is focused on the design and the realization of a test bench to perform certification tests on energy converters for wind turbines in laboratory. More specifically, the possibility of performing LVRT certification tests directly in laboratory over controlled conditions would allow faster testing procedures and less certification overall costs. The solution presented in this thesis is based on a power hardware in the loop implementing a digitally-controlled, power electronics-based emulation of a wind turbine. This emulator is used to drive the electronic wind energy converter (WEC) under test. A grid emulator is used to apply voltage sags to the wind turbine converter and perform LVRT certification tests. In this solution AC power supplies are used to emulate both the wind turbine and the grid emulator. For this reason the test bench power rating is limited to the AC supplies one. Two working versions of the test bench has been realized and successfully tested. The work here presented has evolved through the following phases: • Study of the grid code requirements and the state of the art. • Modeling of the parts of a wind turbine and complete system simulations.

The evolution of diode laser sources for optical communications during the last years led to commercial availability of devices which are suitable for gas absorption spectroscopy in the near and mid infrared. In this work it is shown how the traditional limits of Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy are addressed with digital signal processing techniques and careful optical design towards the realization of gas sensing instruments with the stability, robustness and reliability that are required in an industrial environment. Being one of the most challenging gases to be sensed with this technique, oxygen was considered under many measurement aspects such as: • Non invasive monitoring; • Gas in scattering media sensing; • Sensing with back-scattering targets; • Pressure measurement techniques for weak absorption signals; • Time resolved, dynamic sensing; • Temperature measurement through absorption spectroscopy. Many of these aspects were considered together, leading to the developement of instruments tailored for real life industrial applications such as: • Oxygen sensing in partially transparent containers such as wine or soft drink bottles; • Monitoring of double glazing insulating glass gas filling machines; • Oxygen sensing in containers with backscattering targets such as food packagings. Other applications for the technique and experiments involving Gas in Scattering Media Absorption Spectroscopy were explored during a 6 months period at the Lunds Universitet - Lunds Tekniska Högskola - Atomfysik (Sweden) under the supervision of Prof. S. Svanberg: • Gas probing into porous fruit samples; • Gas sensing inside the human body as a medical diagnosis technique; • Oxygen measurement in fully scattering food containers; • Multi-line absorption spectroscopy as a temperature measurement.
L’evoluzione delle sorgenti laser a diodo per le comunicazioni ottiche negli ultimi anni ha portato ad una disponibilità commerciale di dispositivi che si prestano alla spettroscopia di assorbimento di gas nel vicino e medio infrarosso. In questo lavoro si mostra come i limiti tradizionali della spettroscopia di assorbimento a diodi laser sintonizzabili vengano affrontati con tecniche di elaborazione numerica di segnali ed una attenta progettazione ottica rivolta alla realizzazione di strumenti per il rilevamento di gas caratterizzati dalla stabilità, robustezza ed affidabilità necessari per un ambiente industriale. Trattandosi di uno dei gas più critici per il rilevamento con questa tecnica, l’ossigeno è stato affrontato sotto molteplici aspetti di misura come: • Monitoraggio non invasivo; • Rilevazione di gas in mezzi diffondenti; • Rilevazione tramite bersagli retrodiffondenti; • Tecniche di misura di pressione per deboli segnali di assorbimento; • Rilevazione dinamica con risoluzione temporale; • Misure di temperatura attraverso spettroscopia di assorbimento. Molti di questi aspetti sono stati considerati simultaneamente portando allo sviluppo di strumenti appropriati ad un uso nel mondo reale in applicazioni industriali quali: • Rilevazione di ossigeno in contenitori parzialmente trasparenti come bottiglie di vino e bibite; • Controllo di macchine per il riempimento di pannelli isolanti in vetrocamera; • Rilevazione di ossigeno in contenitori con bersagli retrodiffondenti, quali confezioni alimentari. Altre applicazioni della tecnica ed esperimenti sulla spettroscopia di assorbimento di gas in mezzi porosi sono stati esplorati durante un periodo di 6 mesi presso Lunds Universitet - Lunds Tekniska Högskola - Atomfysik (Svezia) sotto la supervisione del Prof. S. Svanberg: • Analisi di gas in campioni porosi di frutta; • Rilevazione di gas all’interno del corpo umano come tecnica per la diagnostica medica; • Misura di ossigeno in contenitori completamente diffondenti per alimenti; • Spettroscopia di assorbimento multi-riga come misura di temperatura.

The objective of this dissertation is to develop and test a predictive model for the passive kinematics of human joints based on the energy minimization principle. To pursue this goal, the tibio-talar joint is chosen as a reference joint, for the reduced number of bones involved and its simplicity, if compared with other sinovial joints such as the knee or the wrist. Starting from the knowledge of the articular surface shapes, the spatial trajectory of passive motion is obtained as the envelop of joint configurations that maximize the surfaces congruence. An increase in joint congruence corresponds to an improved capability of distributing an applied load, allowing the joint to attain a better strength with less material. Thus, joint congruence maximization is a simple geometric way to capture the idea of joint energy minimization. The results obtained are validated against in vitro measured trajectories. Preliminary comparison provide strong support for the predictions of the theoretical model.

The objective of this dissertation is to develop and test a predictive model for the passive kinematics of human joints based on the energy minimization principle. To pursue this goal, the tibio-talar joint is chosen as a reference joint, for the reduced number of bones involved and its simplicity, if compared with other sinovial joints such as the knee or the wrist. Starting from the knowledge of the articular surface shapes, the spatial trajectory of passive motion is obtained as the envelop of joint configurations that maximize the surfaces congruence. An increase in joint congruence corresponds to an improved capability of distributing an applied load, allowing the joint to attain a better strength with less material. Thus, joint congruence maximization is a simple geometric way to capture the idea of joint energy minimization. The results obtained are validated against in vitro measured trajectories. Preliminary comparison provide strong support for the predictions of the theoretical model.

Il presente lavoro di tesi riguarda la progettazione e realizzazione di un Gateway Edge programmabile per la Smart Factory che consenta il monitoraggio di macchine industriali, con lo scopo di integrarle con i sistemi informativi aziendali. Il sistema sviluppato presenta come nucleo il Raspberry-Pi model 3 B+ al quale vengono integrate una serie di interfacce di comunicazione wireless e cablate ed interfacce I/O sia di tipo analogico che digitale. Il lavoro ha avuto inizio con lo studio del mondo IoT e del mondo Smart Factory il quale ha portato alla progettazione hardware del Gateway Edge. Si è quindi sviluppato un circuito stampato da integrare al Raspberry-Pi e si sono conseguentemente sviluppate librerie in Python per l’interfacciamento con le periferiche.

Il seguente progetto di tesi tratta l’implementazione e la verifica delle performance di una CNN, rete neurale convolutiva profonda, composta di 7 layer formali (di cui un layer convolutivo CONV e due fully-connected FC), che ha come scopo l’elaborazione di immagini in tempo reale. Dopo una prima introduzione alle neural network, alle sue applicazioni (in particolar modo nel image-processing e nell’Industry 4.0) e alla tecnica di progettazione FPGA, si descrivono dapprima nel dettaglio tutti i diversi blocchi costitutivi della CNN (programmati in VHDL) e successivamente si riportano i risultati della sua sintesi con commenti relativi alle performance ottenute. In particolar modo, nella trattazione della struttura di ChainOfComponents (nome della CNN implementata), vengono descritti i costituenti dei seguenti layer: (1) CONV, composto dai componenti Kernel e Filter; (2) Non linearità, settata su una funzione ReLU; (3) Maxpooling, basata sulla ricerca del massimo (componente Max); (4) 1° FC, che si appoggia su una interconnessione di elementi di calcolo elementari detti neuroni (NetworkOfNeurons); (5) ReLU del 1° FC; (6) 2° FC; (7) ReLU del 2° FC. Per quanto riguarda invece la trattazione delle performance ottenute, questa si basa su una duplice verifica sull’implementato: un controllo della correttezza funzionale basato sugli applicativi ModelSim e Matlab e una compilazione e sintesi eseguita da Quartus Prime 17.1. Si approfondiscono infine possibili miglioramenti e sviluppi di ChainOfComponents e le sue possibili prospettive future.

Il Regolamento europeo N. 305/2011 (CPR, Construction Product Regulation) fissa le condizioni per l'immissione o la messa a disposizione sul mercato dell’Unione Europea (UE) dei prodotti da costruzione. Uno fra i sette requisiti di base richiesti dal CPR è la sicurezza in caso di incendio, per garantire la quale i prodotti da costruzione devono soddisfare certi requisiti specifici in termini di reazione al fuoco. Test, requisiti, marcatura, controlli ecc. sui prodotti da costruzione devono essere uguali in tutti i paesi della UE, a partire dalla classificazione in termini di reazione al fuoco. Fra i prodotti da costruzione rientrano anche i cavi in posa fissa all’interno degli edifici. La norma di prodotto EN 50575 definisce le modalità con cui i cavi sono gestiti, dalla produzione alla immissione sul mercato in accordo al CPR. Nel lavoro di ricerca alla base della presente tesi sono state confrontate due norme tecniche: EN 60754-1 e EN 60754-2. EN 60754-2 è la norma da utilizzare per la determinazione della classe addizionale di acidità dei fumi per i cavi in accordo al CPR. EN 60754-1 invece è la norma usata specificamente per i cavi in PVC al di fuori del regolamento CPR. Le due norme tecniche utilizzano la stessa tipologia di forno tubolare ma con diverse velocità di riscaldamento e temperature finali. Considerando il meccanismo attraverso il quale gli acid scavengers presenti nei compound in PVC per cavo intrappolano l'HCl e valutando i dati sperimentali, l’aspettativa è ottenere una chiara evidenza su come le diverse condizioni di riscaldamento e le temperature adottate dai due standard impattino sulla quantità di HCl liberato in fase di combustione. La norma tecnica IEC 60754-3, basata sulla cromatografia ionica, è stata utilizzata per verificare quali sono le sostanze che hanno un impatto sull'acidità del fumo. È stata valutata infine l'influenza degli scavengers di acidi sul ritardo di fiamma e sulla emissione di fumo.

This thesis proposes three different data-driven solutions to be combined to state-of-the-art solvers and tools in order to primarily enhance their computational performances. The problem of efficiently designing the open sea floating platforms on which wind turbines can be mount on will be tackled, as well as the tuning of a data-driven engine's monitoring tool for maritime transportation. Finally, the activities of SAT and ASP solvers will be thoroughly studied and a deep learning architecture will be proposed to enhance the heuristics-based solving approach adopted by such software. The covered domains are different and the same is true for their respective targets. Nonetheless, the proposed Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms are shared as well as the overall picture: promote Industrial AI and meet the constraints imposed by Industry 4.0 vision. The lesser presence of human-in-the-loop, a data-driven approach to discover causalities otherwise ignored, a special attention to the environmental impact of industries' emissions, a real and efficient exploitation of the Big Data available today are just a subset of the latter. Hence, from a broader perspective, the experiments carried out within this thesis are driven towards the aforementioned targets and the resulting outcomes are satisfactory enough to potentially convince the research community and industrialists that they are not just "visions" but they can be actually put into practice. However, it is still an introduction to the topic and the developed models are at what can be defined a "pilot" stage. Nonetheless, the results are promising and they pave the way towards further improvements and the consolidation of the dictates of Industry 4.0.

The study of the central nervous system represents a great challenge in the field of neuroscience. For years, various techniques have been developed to study neuronal cells in-vitro as it is difficult to conduct in-vivo experiments due to ethical problems deriving from its anatomical location. Consequently, both in-vivo and in-vitro animal models have been used extensively to gain new insights into basic functioning principles of neuronal tissue and therapeutic approaches for brain diseases. Over time, we have seen that there is a poor correlation between the clinical diagnosis and the underlying pathological mechanisms. In fact, some symptoms that may occur in the patient are not replicated in the animal, making many promising approaches in animal studies not translatable in the clinic. With the advent of human-induced pluripotent stem cells (h-iPSC) several protocols for the generation of human-neuronal cells are becoming available for all laboratories. The importance of this technique lies in the opportunity to develop a human model derived directly from the patient: the patient's in-vitro cells will exhibit the same genetic and epigenetic modifications as the in-vivo cells. This has raised hopes for the generation of engineered brain models that can be coupled to sensors / actuators in order to better investigate their functional properties in-vitro (i.e. brain-on-a-chip). A reliable method for evaluating the functionality of neuronal cultures is the study of the spontaneous electrophysiological activity using microelectrode arrays (MEA). There are numerous studies in the literature that used h-iPSC on MEAs, showing the characterization of neuronal patterns of patient-derived cultures, demonstrating how this platform is valid for disease phenotyping, drug discovery and translational medicine. Although these models helped to shed light on fundamental biological mechanisms, the majority is based on two-dimensional neuronal cultures, which lack some key features to mimic in-vivo behavior. Three-dimensional h-iPSC-derived models possess a microenvironment, tissue architecture and potential to model network activity with greater complexity than two-dimensional models. Depending on the purpose of the study, we can choose different approaches to recreate 3D in-vitro brain, from those that aim to reproduce the trajectories of neurodevelopment (i.e. brain-organoids) to the use of synthetic materials that reproduce the functionalities of the extracellular matrix (ECM) (i.e. scaffold-based) (Chiaradia and Lancaster, 2020, Tang et al., 2006). Although h-iPSC-derived brain models summarize many aspects of network function in the human brain, they are subject to variability and still do not perfectly mimic behavior in-vivo. Therefore, to reach the full potential of this model we need improvements in differentiation methods and bioengineering, making these models engineered and reproducible. The aim of this PhD thesis was to implement different 3D neuronal culture generation methodologies that can be integrated on MEA devices to offer robust engineered platforms for functional studies.

Redox Flow Batteries are chemical based energy storage systems that accumulate energy in liquid electrolytes. Dissolved redox active substances undergo redox reactions in an electrochemical cell and so charge and discharge a battery. Recently, the introduction of organic materials as electrolytes raised research interest. Electrolytes that operate with the bromine/bromide redox couple are interesting due to their high energy density and fast reversible kinetics. They are used in combination with several anodic chemistries (e.g. Zinc, Hydrogen, Quinone), including organic materials.Due to the corrosive and volatile nature of bromine, practical electrolytes use Bromine Complexing Agents (BCAs) in order to bind bromine in a less volatile form and deal with safety issues. These additives have a strong influence on the battery’s operation by influencing the concentration of redox active species, the cell voltage and the electrolyte conductivity. Nevertheless, very little is known about the real properties of aqueous acidic bromine electrolytes, both in pure dilution and in presence of BCAs, which influence on the electrolyte is not predictable so far. The aim of this PhD project is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the behavior of an electrolyte based on bromine and bromide, with particular reference to the one used in semi-organic flow batteries. Along this work an analysis on the performance of a AQDS-Bromine flow battery cell was executed and an extensive study on the physico-chemical behavior of the positive electrolyte was developed. A review of the flow battery technology and of the metrics and methods available for diagnostics was firstly performed as a basis to define macro characteristics,such as State of Charge (SoC) and State of Health (SoH). The cycling behavior of an AQDS-Bromine flow battery was investigated by cell tests and possible degradation mechanisms have been highlighted and explained by interpretation of electrochemical measurements. Following, a broad characterization of the bromine-based electrolyte was performed, producing extended experimental data on physico-chemical properties and a modeling framework for the prediction of the electrolyte behavior.

Industry 4.0 has transformed the manufacturing industry into a new paradigm causing numerous changes in the models of business and process automation. The profound change in the context of production has brought the issue of efficiency. Some of the key technologies that emerged to tackle this issue are Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT), Digital Twins, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Augmented Reality and Additive Manufacturing. This revolution has not remained within the borders of the manufacturing field but it pushes changes in a lot of fields; in particular, it has introduced health care delivery to the dawn of a foundational change into the new era of smart and connected health care, referred to as Healthcare 4.0. Although automation and assistance technologies are becoming more prevalent in production and logistics, there is consensus that humans remain an essential part of operations systems bringing to the definition of Human-centered Industry 4.0. Nevertheless, human factors are still underrepresented in the research stream resulting in an important research and application gap. This Ph.D. thesis proposes a set of innovative work-flows for real systems based on enabling technologies of Industry 4.0 and Healthcare 4.0 that can enhance and complement the human in manufacturing and healthcare. The work is trying to fill a portion of the gap between research and application concerning the Human factor in Industry 4.0 and propose new solutions that increase efficacy, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of healthcare services focusing especially on movement disorders rehabilitation. This thesis is composed of four chapters. The first Chapter provides an introduction to the reference context. Chapter 2 describes the state of the art of Industry 4.0, its challenges and technologies with a focus on the Human factor and reports the contribution of the usage of Industry 4.0 enabling technologies to provide new solutions for maintenance training, process quality assessment and bio-mechanical risk detection. Chapter 3 introduces the Healthcare 4.0 going into detail about new rehabilitation protocols for movement disorders; it shows work for signal processing, focusing on the application of undercomplete autoencoders for surface electromyography analysis and evaluation of cueing technique efficacy for Parkinson's Disease rehabilitation. The study cases and the contributions reported in this thesis were always compared with standard techniques. Finally, the conclusions about the research works and future research propose.

È possibile esaltare le prestazioni di un operatore stimando il suo carico di lavoro mentale dalla propria attività cerebrale, ed usare questa informazione per adattare le funzionalità dell’interfaccia che sta utilizzando? Questa è la domanda sperimentale a cui la mia attività di ricerca del Dottorato ha provato a dare una risposta. Anche se in maniera non quantificata, è ampiamente accettata l’idea che le risorse cognitive del cervello umano siano limitate. In funzione della quantità di risorse cognitive, in altre parole del carico di lavoro mentale, dedicate al compito principale, la capacità umana di affrontare ulteriori eventi inaspettati potrebbe diminuire drasticamente. È stato dimostrato che gli uomini possono raggiungere le proprie migliori prestazioni solo mantenendo il proprio carico di lavoro mentale all’interno di un intervallo ottimale, altrimenti aumenta la probabilità che commettano errori. Sfortunatamente, l’errore umano è una delle principali cause di incidenti e catastrofi non naturali. Per tale motivo, la ricerca neuroscientifica sta dando un importante contributo allo sviluppo di Interfacce Cervello-Computer in grado di riconoscere lo stato mentale dell’utente e di aiutarlo se necessario. In tale contesto, la mia attività di ricercar aveva lo scopo di sviluppare un metodo in grado di valutare online il carico di lavoro mentale dell’utente, sulla base della sua attività cerebrale misurata attraverso Elettroencefalografia, in ambienti operativi, affrontando tutti quei problemi relativi all’eseguire misure neurofisiologiche affidabili al di fuori dei contesti controllati propri dei laboratori. Il metodo sviluppato (brevettato) è stato con successo validato in tre differenti ambienti operative, ossia il controllo di traffico aereo, la guida di auto e la chirurgia assistita da robot. Inoltre, esso è stato applicato online in una reale applicazione di Interfaccia Cervello Computer, dove la piattaforma operative variava il suo livello di automazione sulla base del carico di lavoro mentale, misurato attraverso tecnica EEG, dell’operatore.
Is it possible to enhance the performance of an operator by inferring his/her mental workload online from his brain activity? Also, would be possible to use such information to adapt the functionalities of the operative interface he/she is interacting with? This is the experimental question that my PhD research activity tried to answer. Even if not quantified, it is widely accepted the assumption that the human brain cognitive resources are limited. Depending on the amount of cognitive resources, i.e. the mental workload, committed to the main task, the human capacity to face additional unexpected events could dramatically decrease. It was demonstrated that humans could achieve their best performance only if maintaining their mental workload within an optimum range, otherwise they will be more prone to commit errors. Unfortunately, the human error is one of the main causes of accidents and no-natural catastrophes. Therefore, neuroscientific research is giving an important contribute in the development of Brain-Computer Interfaces able to recognize the user’s mental state covertly (i.e. without interfering with his/her main activity) and to help him if needed. In this context, my research activity aimed to develop a method able to evaluate, even online, the user’s mental workload, on the basis of his/her brain activity measured by Electroencephalography, in operational environments, facing all those issues related to perform reliable neurophysiological measures outside the laboratory controlled conditions. The developed method (patented) has been successfully validated in three different operational environments, i.e. the Air Traffic Management, the car driving and the robot-assisted surgery. Also, it has been applied online in a real application of Brain Computer Interface, where the operative platform changed its behaviour according on the EEG-based measure of the actual operator’s mental workload level.