Fabio Ruini

Barilla G. & R. Fratelli S.p.A. · Department of Information Technology

Cognitive biases are unconscious deviations in judgement - rooted in the very nature of the human mind – that represent a common source of failure in intelligence analysis. This article investigates the relationship between cognitive biases and big data analytics in the intelligence domain. Big data analytics tools can assist analysts with the disc...

Among the various initiatives directed at helping the intelligence community tackling today's security challenges, the EU FP7 research project LEILA (Law Enforcement and Intelligence Learning Applications) focuses on 'serious games' for improving the quality of intelligence analysts' training. LEILA investigates innovative methodologies for the dev...

The development of mobile devices as well as social media platforms recently lead to the necessity of monitoring the latter during crisis and emergency situations. Paradoxically, the huge amount of information available through these new sources may lead to information gaps, within the Public Safety Organization operators’ awareness. We describe so...

The research undertaken by the Countering WEEE Illegal Trade (CWIT) project found that in Europe, only 35% (3.3 million tons) of all the e-waste discarded in 2012, ended up in the officially reported amounts of collection and recycling systems. The other 65% (6.15 million tons) was either: • exported (1.5 million tons), • recycled under non-complia...

Short-Term Memory (STM) is a crucial weapon in humans’ cognitive arsenal as it allows them to avoid a purely sensory-motor existence. Many theoretical models have been proposed over the years attempting to capture the essential mechanisms of STM. Amongst these, one of the most prominent is the “Multi-Store Model” proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin [...

The success of swarm behaviors often depends on the range at which robots can communicate and the speed at which they change their behavior. Challenges arise when the communication range is too small with respect to the dynamics of the robot, preventing interactions from lasting long enough to achieve coherent swarming. To alleviate this dependency...

This project has focused on the design of distributed autonomous controllers for collective behavior of Micro-unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). Two alternative approaches to this topic are introduced: one based upon the Evolutionary Robotics (ER) paradigm, the other one upon flocking principles. Three computer simulators have been developed in order...

The work presented herein focuses on the design of distributed autonomous controllers for collective behaviour of Micro-unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). Two alternative approaches to this topic are introduced: one based upon the Evolutionary Robotics (ER) paradigm, the other one upon flocking principles. Three computer simulators have been develop...

The work presented herein describes an application of Evolutionary Robotics controller design methodologies to the domain of Micro-unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). The aim of this paper is to extend and validate preliminary results obtained through a simplified 2D simulator, to a more realistic 3D model. After a technical introduction of the newly...

We introduce the distinction between a strategic (or motivational) level of behaviour, where different motivations compete with each other for the control of the behaviour of the organism, and a tactical (or cognitive) level, where the organism executes the activities aimed at reaching the goal decided at the strategic level. To illustrate and oper...

The work presented herein aims to provide a quantitative measure of the impact deriving from the adoption of an incremental approach to evolution within the context of Evolutionary Robotics. Notwithstanding the large amount of published researches relying on incremental evolution, little quantitative analysis have been performed so far to provide t...

The work presented in this article focuses on the use of embodied neural networks--developed through Evolutionary Robotics and Multi-Agent Systems methodologies--as autonomous distributed controllers for Micro-unmanned Aerial Vehicle (MAV) teams. The main aim of the research is to extend the range of domains that could be successfully tackled by th...

The work presented here focuses on the use of embodied neural network controllers for MAV (micro-unmanned aerial vehicles) teams. The computer model we have built aims to demonstrate how autonomous controllers for groups of flying robots can be successfully developed through simulations based on multi-agent systems and evolutionary robotics methodo...

Il presente lavoro descrive alcuni risultati preliminari ottenuti dagli autori nell'estensione di un modello simulativo da loro precedentemente sviluppato (Ruini, Cangelosi & Zetule, 2009) (Ruini & Cangelosi, 2009). Il modello in questione e' mirato all'evoluzione di controller autonomi, basati su reti neurali, per squadre di MAVs (Micro-unmanned A...

Behaviour has two levels, which we will call strategic and tactical. At the strategic level the organism has to choose which particular activity to pursue at any given time (e.g., looking for food, finding a sexual partner, escaping from dangers, sleeping). At the tactical level it must implement the particular sequence of actions that makes it pos...

This article focuses on the use of multi-agent systems for modelling of micro-unmanned aerial vehicles (MAVs) in a distributed control task. The task regards a search and destroy scenario in the context of security and urban counter-terrorism. In the simulations developed, a swarm composed of four autonomous flying robots, driven by an embodied neu...

This report focuses on the use of Multi-Agent Systems for modelling of Micro-unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) in a distributed control task. The task regards a search scenario in the context of security and urban counter-terrorism. In the simulation developed, a swarm composed by four autonomous MAVs, driven by a neural network controller, has to ap...