Abstract
Acquired brain injury (ABI) is one of the main causes of death and disability in Portugal and other Western countries. ABI typically results in physical, cognitive and psychosocial deficits, leading to life-long dramatic changes in the quality of life (QOL) of patients and their families, with well-documented negative implications for their community integration. Independent mobility using means of transportation is considered a nuclear area of community integration for people with disabilities [3]. However, direct contact with reality is limited for this population. Virtual reality (VR) constitutes a promising alternative of approximation to real life that may help increase the level of generalization of skills developed in programs that use this kind of technology. However, research on VR effects is necessary. The main goal of our project is to study the use of VR technology in the rehabilitation of executive dysfunction and memory. A VR program, CARP-VR, is in development, consisting of environments that simulate reality, with which patients will interact, performing various tasks. It is expected that CARP-VR intervention will lead to cognitive gains and generalization of acquired capacities to real-life activities, reflecting an amelioration of patients' functional independence and QOL that will contribute for the integration of these patients.

Abstract
The introduction of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) could be very helpful for making the longitudinal driving task more comfortable for the drivers and, as a consequence, it could have a global beneficial effect on road safety. However, before or during the usage of the device, due to several reasons, drivers might generate in their mind incomplete or flawed mental representations about the fundamental operation principles of ACC; hence, the resulting usage of the device might be improper, negatively affecting the human-machine interaction and cooperation and, in some cases, leading to negative behavioural adaptations to the system that might neutralise the desirable positive effects on road safety. Within this context, this paper will introduce the methodology which has been developed in order to analyse in detail the topic and foresee, in the future, adequate actions for the recovery of inaccurate mental representations of the system.

Abstract
Lately, with the goal of improving road safety, car makers developed and commercialised some Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) which, through the detection of blind spot areas on the vehicle's sides, could help the drivers during the overtaking and the change lane task. Despite the possible benefits to reduce lateral crashes, the overall impact on road safety of such systems have not been deeply studied yet; notably, despite some researches have been carried out, there is a lack of studies regarding the long-term usage and drivers' acceptance of those systems. In order to fill the research gap, a methodology, based on the combination of focus groups interviews, questionnaires and a small-scale field operational test (FOT), has been designed in this study; such a methodology aims at evaluating drivers' acceptance of Blind Spot Information System (R) and at proposing some ideas to improve the usability and user-friendliness of this (or similar) device in their future development.

Abstract

Abstract

Abstract
This paper presents some of the developments we made with the goal of allowing a friendly control and simulation of a large number of autonomous agents based in behavior in interactive real-time systems. Our work has been specially oriented to the simulation and control of autonomous vehicles and pedestrians in the preparation of scenarios to driving simulation experiments in the DriS simulator. Because every element is intrinsically autonomous, only a few of them are usually addressed to implement the desired study event. Also, because our model is autonomous and controllable, we can use the same model in the implementation of both environment traffic and controlled vehicles. Our scripting language is based in Grafcet, a well known graphical language used in the specification and programming of industrial controllers. Our technique allows the imposition of both short time orders and long time goals to each autonomous element. Orders can be triggered reactively using sensors that monitor the state of virtual traffic and configurable timers that generate all the necessary Fixed and variable time events.