Abstract
With the rising concern about the needs of people with physical disabilities and with the aging of the population there is a major concern of creating electronic devices that may improve the life of the physically handicapped and elderly person. One of these new solutions passes through the adaptation of electric wheelchairs in order to give them environmental perception, more intelligent capabilities and more adequate Human - Machine Interaction. This paper focuses in the development of a user-friendly multimodal interface, which is integrated in the Intellwheels project. This simple multimodal human-robot interface developed allows the connection of several input modules, enabling the wheelchair control through flexible input sequences of distinct types of inputs (voice, facial expressions, head movements, keyboard and, joystick). The system created is capable of storing user defined associations, of input's sequences and corresponding output commands. The tests performed have proved the system efficiency and the capabilities of this multimodal interface.

Abstract
Many people with severe disabilities find it difficult or even impossible to use traditional powered wheelchairs independently by manually controlling these electrical devices. Intelligent wheelchairs are a very good solution to assist severely handicapped people who are unable to operate classical electrical wheelchair by themselves in their daily activities. This paper describes a development platform for intelligent wheelchairs called IntellWheels. The intelligent system developed may be added to commercial powered wheelchairs with minimal modifications in a very straightforward manner. The paper describes the concept and design of the platform, including the hardware and software, multimodal input interface and the intelligent wheelchair prototype developed to validate the approach. Preliminary results concerning automatic movement of the IntellWheels prototype are also described showing the autonomous movement capabilities of the prototype. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Abstract
The control of fermentation is very important in order to ensure a sustained level of wine quality year after year. Usually wine fermentation is carried out at a constant temperature. This fact is due mainly to traditional reasons. Nevertheless the results year after year and from region to region may be very different due to large variations in must characteristics. A more complex control is needed to overcome this fluctuations. Recent works have introduced some innovation but still have some empirical characteristics and can not control the duration of fermentation. In order to predict the behaviour of the fermentation, a reasonably accurate mathematical model is required. Unfortunately mathematical models for wine fermentation are scarce, particularly for wine batch fermentation. In this work we develop a mathematical fermentation model and an industrial tank thermal model. A new control strategy is proposed: Relative density control instead of temperature control. A reference model is developed and we try to tune a PID controller to the process. The need of more complex controllers such as predictive controllers is addressed.

Abstract
In this article we present two methods for the real time automatic measurement of the relative density. The first one relies on the heat generated during the fermentation which requires no additional sensors in the tanks. It is based on the thermal model of the tank and the only additional requirements are the measurement of the temperature of the surrounding air. The other method is based on two low-cost pressure sensors with an algorithm for autocalibration and compensation of temperature perturbation. The autocalibration is done during fermenter feeding and with only one manual measurement of the relative density.

Abstract

Abstract
This paper describes a joint trajectory optimized controller for a humanoid robot simulator following the real robot characteristics. As simulation is a powerful tool for speeding up the control software development, the proposed accurate simulator allows to fulfill this goal. The simulator, based on the Open Dynamics Engine and GLScene graphics library, provides instant visual feedback. The proposed simulator, with realistic dynamics, allows to design and test behaviours and control strategies without access to the real hardware in order to carry out research on robot control without damaging the real robot in the early stages of the development. The joints controller techniques, such as acceleration, speed and energy consumption minimization are discussed and experimental results are presented in order to validate the proposed simulator.