Walter Franco

Purpose: Balance control can be evaluated by studying the displacement of the center of pressure (CoP) during dynamic posturographic trials. However, differences in anthropometric characteristics may affect the measurement and increase intersubject variability, possibly leading to misinterpretation. This study evaluates how sex, age, and anthropometric characteristics (weight, height, and foot length) influence the CoP displacement to postural perturbations. Methods: Seventy-two healthy subjects, 31 women and 41 men, were subjected to five small impulsive perturbations applied to their back. Balance performance was quantified by three CoP parameters: the ratio between the maximum CoP displacement and the impulse of the perturbation (Δ CoP _n ), the latency ( Lat ), and the duration ( Dur ) of the CoP response. Results: A linear regression analysis evidenced that body weight and height exhibited a negative and positive relation with Δ CoP _n , respectively, which explained 48% of the Δ CoP _n variability. These relations were confirmed by simulations with a single-link biomechanical model. On the other hand, the latency and the duration of the CoP response were affected neither by the anthropometric characteristics nor by sex. Conclusion: Findings from the present study have an impact on test protocols, especially when comparing data collected from heterogeneous populations, in which case normalization with respect to the subjects’ height and weight may be necessary to use the Δ CoP _n as a postural performance index.

Since the Middle Ages, human-powered tools and machines have played an important role in societies. Prominent among these are pedal-powered machines, which harness the overall power from the strongest muscles in the human body. The article identifies a historical taxonomy of pedal-powered machines to provide designers with an orientation map for devising new solutions, suggesting some contexts in which today’s pedal-powered machines can re-purpose ancient mechanisms to perform an innovative function. The reduction in energy consumption, the low environmental impact, and the autonomy of the process, in fact, can represent not only a technical rediscovery of engineering, but also a new way of supporting human subsistence.

With increasing attention to physical human-machine interaction (pHMI), new control methods involving contact force regulation in collaborative and coexistence scenarios have spread in recent years. Thanks to its internal robustness, high dynamic performance, and capabilities to avoid constraint violations, a Model Predictive Control (MPC) action can pose a viable solution to manage the uncertainties involved in those applications. This paper uses an MPC-driven control method that aims to apply a well-defined and tunable force impulse on a human subject. After describing a general control design suitable to achieve this goal, a practical implementation of such a logic, based on an MPC controller, is shown. In particular, the physical interaction considered is the one occurring between the body of a patient and an external perturbation device in a dynamic posturography trial. The device prototype is presented in both its hardware architecture and software design. The MPC-based main control parameters are thus tuned inside hardware-in-the-loop and human-in-the-loop environments to get optimal behaviors. Finally, the device performance is analyzed to assess the MPC algorithm’s accuracy, repeatability, flexibility, and robustness concerning the several uncertainties due to the specific pHMI environment considered.

For hundreds of years, water mills have supported the local economies of Piedmont by contributing to the production of flour, textile fibres, timber, and metal agricultural tools. Since the beginning of the last century, and in particular after the 1950s, many artefacts have been abandoned. Nonetheless, hundreds of mills are still present in southern Piedmont, both in the plains and in the mountains, sometimes in an excellent state of conservation. This work presents a hammer forge, the La Pianca mill in Busca, Cuneo, Italy, as a significant, detailed case study. The socio-economic context in which exists is analysed, its history is reconstructed, and the functioning of the machinery, including the water wheels, the motion transmission systems, and the various utilities consisting of tilt hammers, grinding wheels, and drills, is analysed in detail. Beyond the historical interest, concerning both the territory and the architecture, as well as the machines and mechanisms, this work aims to make a contribution to the prefiguration of effective scenarios for the reconversion of similar productive artefacts.