An ontological and semantic foundation for safety and security science

When discussing the concepts of risk, safety, and security, people have an intuitive understanding of what these concepts mean, and, to a certain level, this understanding is universal. However, when delving into the real meaning of these concepts, one is likely to fall into semantic debates and ontological discussions. In industrial parks,...

Provable self-organizing pattern formation by a swarm of robots with limited knowledge

In this paper we present a procedure to automatically design and verify the local behavior of robots with highly limited cognition. All robots are: anonymous, homogeneous, non-communicating, memoryless, reactive, do not know their global position, do not have global state information, and operate by a local clock. They only know: (1) the...

Design of RYSEN: An intrinsically safe and low-power three-dimensional overground body weight support

Body weight support (BWS) systems are widely used in gait research and rehabilitation. This letter introduces a new three-dimensional overground BWS system, called the RYSEN. The RYSEN is designed to be intrinsically safe and low power consuming, while still performing at least as well as existing BWS systems regarding human-robot interaction....

Identification of risk factors in minimally invasive surgery: a prospective multicenter study

Background: Since the introduction of minimally invasive surgery (MIS), concerns for patient safety are more often brought to the attention. Knowledge about and awareness of patient safety risk factors are crucial in order to improve and enhance the surgical team, the environment, and finally surgical performance. The aim of this study was to...

Design of a software architecture supporting business-to-government information sharing to improve public safety and security: Combining business rules, Events and blockchain technology

Toensurepublicsafetyandsecurity,itisvitallyimportantforgovernmentstocol- lect information from businesses and analyse it. Such information can be used to determine whether transported goods might be suspicious and therefore require physical inspection. Although businesses are obliged to report some information, they are reluctant to share addi-...

Safe-by-Design: from Safety to Responsibility

Safe-by-design (SbD) aims at addressing safety issues already during the R&D and design phases of new technologies. SbD has increasingly become popular in the last few years for addressing the risks of emerging technologies like nanotechnology and synthetic biology. We ask to what extent SbD approaches can deal with uncertainty, in...

Safe nonlinear trajectory generation for parallel autonomy with a dynamic vehicle model

High-end vehicles are already equipped with safety systems, such as assistive braking and automatic lane following, enhancing vehicle safety. Yet, these current solutions can only help in low-complexity driving situations. In this paper, we introduce a parallel autonomy, or shared control, framework that computes safe trajectories for an...

Impact of distracting activities and drivers’ cognitive failures on driving performance

The rapid increase in the availability of smartphones and other infotainment devices, and their widespread use while driving, contributes significantly to car crash rates. Understanding of the impact of distracting activities on drivers’ behavior is essential in order to support the development of effective technology and policy solutions to...

Effect of passing zone length on operation and safety of two-lane rural highways in Uganda

This paper presents a methodology to assess the effect of the length of passing zone on the operation and safety of two-lane rural highways based on the probability and the rate of passing maneuvers ending in a no-passing zone. The methodology was applied using observed passing maneuver data collected with tripod-mounted camcorders at passing...