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To present an open architecture for real‐time sensory feedback control of a dual‐arm industrial robotic cell. The setup is composed of two industrial robot manipulators equipped with force/torque sensors and pneumatic grippers, a vision system and a belt conveyor.

The original industrial robot controllers have been replaced by a single PC with software running under a real‐time variant of the Linux operative system.

The new control architecture allows advanced control schemes to be developed and tested for the single robots and for the dual‐arm robotic cell, including force control and visual servoing tasks.

An advanced user interface and a simulation environment have been developed, which permit fast, safe and reliable prototyping of planning and control algorithms.

The first problem is to assemble the works of Pucci; for there is no complete edition. His writings, some still unpublished, are scattered in a large number of manuscripts and these contain many variants, resulting from the popular nature of his verse, for much of it was meant to be recited in the streets and squares of his native town and in the oral tradition it has been considerably changed and modified. The Pucci manuscripts, with the exception of four (one in the Bibliothèque Nationale and three in the Bodleian), are to be found in various libraries in Italy, and editors and compilers of anthologies have taken material from them—a bit here and a bit there—in a haphazard way, printing what suited their purpose and often consulting only one of many manuscripts. Consequently there are different versions of some poems and few are edited critically, though the publication last year of Professor Sapegno's anthology Poeti minori del trecento with its 117 pages devoted to Pucci has remedied this state of affairs for some of the most important. The only collection of Pucci's verse—if we discount a group of sonnets and a sonnet sequence, both published by A. D'Ancona—is that of F. Ferri in La poesia popolare in A. Pucci (1909), and this is a very incomplete and uncritical work; but as it includes many poems not found elsewhere, it is essential for reference. Pucci's work in print must therefore be sought in many places: in F. Ferri (op. cit.), in anthologies, in periodicals, in editions of single or of two or three poems, and in many rare publications—often per nozze and therefore particularly difficult to come by, because of the few copies printed.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the Americanization of European advertising in the post‐war years as a phenomenon of cultural transfer and it aims to explore the interaction between the USA and Italian advertising traditions during the 1950s and the 1960s.

The analysis is in two parts. First, the role of those cross‐cultural mediators who contributed to changing marketing communication strategies of many Italian companies during the 1950s and the 1960s is studied. Second, the ways in which US advertising rules and patterns are combined with the local tradition in order to fit the Italian context of the post‐war years are looked at. The research is based on a study of the main USA and Italian marketing and advertising literature of the post‐war years, and on an analysis of press campaigns and TV commercials.

This research shows that during the 1950s and the 1960s, the conflict between the American approach and the Italian approach to advertising did not prevent interaction and negotiation. In the post‐war years, the USA know‐how and practices, are re‐interpreted through the process of transfer to Italy, creating original, and unexpected solutions.

Although some research has been conducted on the Italian advertising scene during the post‐World War II years, the few existing contributions did not focus on the interaction between the imported American model and the local traditions. This paper provides a good overview of the ways in which notions, methodologies, and strategies coming from the USA are implemented.

This paper aims to present a study on a commercial conductive polylactic acid (PLA) filament and its potential application in a three-dimensional (3D) printed smart cap embedding a resistive temperature sensor made of this material. The final aim of this study is to add a fundamental block to the electrical characterization of printed conductive polymers, which are promising to mimic the electrical performance of metals and semiconductors. The studied PLA filament demonstrates not only to be suitable for a simple 3D printed concept but also to show peculiar characteristics that can be exploited to fabricate freeform low-cost temperature sensors.

The first part is focused on the conductive properties of the PLA filament and its temperature dependency. After obtaining a resistance temperature characteristic of this material, the same was used to fabricate a part of a 3D printed smart cap.

An approach to the characterization of the 3D printed conductive polymer has been presented. The major results are related to the definition of resistance vs temperature characteristic of the material. This model was then exploited to design a temperature sensor embedded in a 3D printed smart cap.

This study demonstrates that commercial conductive PLA filaments can be suitable materials for 3D printed low-cost temperature sensors or constitutive parts of a 3D printed smart object.

The paper clearly demonstrates that a new generation of 3D printed smart objects can already be obtained using low-cost commercial materials.

The purpose of the paper is to present a complete design example of an interior permanent magnet integrated starter‐alternator (ISA).

After a preliminary design on the basis of an analytical model, finite element simulations are adopted to refine the design of the machine.

The designed ISA drive is able to satisfy all the requirements of modern cars, where the power of the electrical generators is increasing to deliver the on‐board power demand. The drive exhibits high torque, driving start, and a wide constant power speed range driving generation.

The entire system design is considered in the paper, both the electrical machine and the control strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the use of a virtual reality (VR)-based approach to improve teacher education and life-long professional development. Through constant training in real-life based situations but within a safe three-dimensional virtual school environment, teachers are given the opportunity to experience and learn how to react to different types of incidents that may take place in a school environment.

The current paper presents the design cycle that was followed for the implementation of the VR teacher training system. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with a case study that aimed to promote teachers’ understanding of student’s problematic situations related to substance use. As part of the experimental investigation, the impact of the VR system on participants’ emotions and mood states is evaluated through Electroencephalogram (EEG) measurements, heart rate (HR) recordings and self-reported data.

Results indicate significant changes to participant’s negative emotional and mood states, suggesting that the scenario and the VR experience had a strong impact on them. Moreover, participants’ HR was increased during the experiment, while the analysis of the EEG signal indicated that the participants experienced a stressful situation that could justify the change in their negative emotions and mood states.

The proposed VR-based approach aims to provide an innovative framework to teacher education and the related training methodology. In the long-term, the proposed VR system aims to form a new paradigm of teacher training, an alternative safe method that will allow user-teachers to learn through trial and error techniques that reflect real-life situations within a three-dimensional school space and without the risk of harming real students. To the best of our knowledge this is one of the first systematic attempts to use a VR-based methodology to address real teachers’ needs. The development of the VR application is linked to both strong theoretical foundations in education derived from the literature but also from real teachers’ problems and requirements derived from an extensive literature analysis, survey and interviews with experts including teachers, school counselors and psychologists. The VR tool addresses specific teachers’ competences as outcome, after an extensive documentation of existing Teachers’ Competence Models and significant guidance by experts who pointed specific competencies of primary importance to teachers.