G. Costante

Francesco Crocetti, G. Costante, M. L. Fravolini et al.

The accurate online estimation of the road-friction coefficient is an essential feature for any advanced brake control system. In this study, a data-driven scheme based on a MLP Neural Net is proposed to estimate the optimum friction coefficient as a function of windowed slip-friction measurements. A stochastic NN weights drop-out mechanism is used to online estimate the confidence interval of the estimated best friction coefficient thus providing a characterization of the epistemic uncertainty associated to the NN block. Open loop and closed loop simulations of the landing phase of an aircraft on an unknown surface are used to show the potentiality and efficacy of the proposed robust friction estimation approach.

F. Crocetti, G. Costante, M. L. Fravolini et al.

The performances of braking control systems for robotic platforms, e.g., assisted and autonomous vehicles, airplanes and drones, are deeply influenced by the road-tire friction experienced during the maneuver. Therefore, the availability of accurate estimation algorithms is of major importance in the development of advanced control schemes. The focus of this paper is on the estimation problem. In particular, a novel estimation algorithm is proposed, based on a multi-layer neural network. The training is based on a synthetic data set, derived from a widely used friction model. The open loop performances of the proposed algorithm are evaluated in a number of simulated scenarios. Moreover, different control schemes are used to test the closed loop scenario, where the estimated optimal slip is used as the set-point. The experimental results and the comparison with a model based baseline show that the proposed approach can provide an effective best slip estimation.

A. Fronzetti Colladon, F. Grippa, B. Guardabascio et al.

This research studies the impact of online news on social and economic consumer perceptions through semantic network analysis. Using over 1.8 million online articles on Italian media covering four years, we calculate the semantic importance of specific economic-related keywords to see if words appearing in the articles could anticipate consumers' judgments about the economic situation and the Consumer Confidence Index. We use an innovative approach to analyze big textual data, combining methods and tools of text mining and social network analysis. Results show a strong predictive power for the judgments about the current households and national situation. Our indicator offers a complementary approach to estimating consumer confidence, lessening the limitations of traditional survey-based methods.