Marco. Sacco

Italian National Research Council | CNR · Institute of System and Industrial Intelligent Technologies for Advanced Manufacturing STIIMA

Driving a car is pivotal to supporting Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) independence and quality of life. The problem of reconfiguring a vehicle to meet both the PwD’s needs and the (local or supranational) regulations is far from trivial since it requires the identification of the appropriate modifications and adaptations to be installed on the dr...

Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic condition among the main causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, representing a burden on health care systems. Scientific literature highlights that nutrition is pivotal in respiratory inflammatory processes connected to COPD, including exacerbations. Patients with COPD have...

The deployment of AAL solutions in real environments is hindered by physical spaces' characteristics, devices requirements, and users' necessities. There is a gap in the availability of a BIM-based tool to support architects and designers in comprehensively reconfiguring domestic environments for the specific needs of the elderly while considering...

Accidents at work may force workers to face abrupt changes in their daily life: one of the most impactful accident cases consists of the worker remaining in a wheelchair. Return To Work (RTW) of wheelchair users in their working age is still challenging, encompassing the expertise of clinical and rehabilitation personnel and social workers to match...

Editorial on the Research Topic: Enhancing the rehabilitation process with digital technologies - solutions for public health In an era where digital technologies are revolutionizing healthcare, the “Enhancing the rehabilitation process with digital technologies - solutions for public health” Research Topic provides an essential compendium for expl...

In the past decade, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have become more and more pervasive, allowing the development of Ambient Intelligence and Context Awareness applications. While the smart home is the chosen scenario for such technologies, a variety of environments could potentially benefit from the synergies between IoT and digital applicat...

The implementation of VR games opens up a wide range of opportunities for the development of dexterity, speed and precision of movements among various professional groups. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a commercial immersive VR music game on hand–eye coordination and reaction time speed in students. This study enrolled 32...

Purpose Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are increasingly recognized among technologies potentially driving the digital innovation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Nevertheless, the implications of AR/VR adoption in innovation processes have yet to receive much attention to date, with the need to explore the issues facil...

Preventing and reducing physical and cognitive decay in older adults is among the challenges of Healthcare 5.0. The research project ActivE3 aims at promoting older adults’ health and social inclusion through regular physical activity, leveraging an ICT-enabled network composed of elderlies, young people, and clinical personnel. Using a virtual rea...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the leading causes of comorbidities and death worldwide. Pulmonary Rehabilitation (PR) is a comprehensive intervention proven effective in improving COPD patients’ quality of life. However, its benefits often decrease with time because of low motivation, lack of direct surveillance, and low sel...

Virtual reality (VR) is a technology that allows users to experience multisensory and interactive environments that simulate real or imaginary scenarios. The effect of different VR immersive technology on mental workload (MWL), i.e., the amount of resources required to perform a task, is still debated; however the potential role of EEG in this cont...

This work presents HoloHome, a Mixed Reality application that aims to provide a new means of interaction to control the Smart Home components while providing continuous support for the inhabitants, including older adults and people with limited mobility and cognitive skills. HoloHome integrates several technological paradigms such as Mixed Reality,...

BACKGROUND Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic condition among the main causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, representing a burden on health care systems. Scientific literature highlights that nutrition is pivotal in respiratory inflammatory processes connected to COPD, including exacerbations. Patients with COPD have...

This work presents a digital-twin-based framework focused on orchestrating human-centered processes toward Industry 5.0. By including workers and their digital replicas in the loop of the digital twin, the proposed framework extends the traditional model of the factory's digital twin, which instead does not adequately consider the human component....

Purpose: To investigate the acceptability and user experience of an in-hospital endurance training program based on the Virtual Park, a semi-immersive Virtual Reality (VR) system for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).Materials and methodsPatients performed 20 min of cycling two times/day for around ten days. The evaluation...

Alpine regions are characterized by exceptional natural resources, cultural heritage, healthy climate, and long tourism tradition. Tourism is a major component of economic growth, with several employment opportunities, and of great importance for the Alpine regions, with many positive effects on the local and regional population. Natural resources...

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is an early stage of cognitive abilities loss and puts older adults at higher risk of developing dementia. Virtual reality (VR) could represent a tool for the early assessment of this pathological condition and for administering cognitive training. This work presents a study evaluating the acceptance and the user exp...

Background: Employment is an essential component of life as it provides income, sense of engagement and opportunities for personal development. Unemployment due to disability following an accident may have dramatic social and psychological consequences on individuals; it is thus fundamental to foster return to work of these persons. Objective: T...

Over the last two decades an utmost interest has been shown to Ambient Intelligence (AmI), with most of the related applications focusing on home settings. However, considering the ever-increasing number of ageing people occupied in the workforce, the Ambient-Assisted Working (AAW) is arguably at the beginning of its development. For an effective d...

As workers are expected to stay longer in the labor force, the active workforce is ageing more and more every day. Ageing workforce is characterized by the necessity of specific solutions for elderly employees in the workspaces, minding their specific health conditions with a continuous attention, while regarding for other people sharing the same e...

Disabilities related to motor and/or cognitive impairment may impact driving abilities. The project Rip@rto aims at supporting INAIL personnel during the evaluation of the residual capabilities of people with disability who apply for a driving license. The newly designed simulator presents new features compared to the current state of art. It will...

The ability to drive a vehicle is fundamental to fostering people’s independence, especially people characterized by physical disability. European regulations foresee that these drivers’ cars need to undergo a process of adaptations that may involve modifying the vehicle’s mechanics and adding specific driving aids depending on the particular drive...

Today extended reality focuses on itself a big attention by industrial and research communities. Many investments will be devoted to these technologies in the next years. Therefore, this technology has to give new and performant answers. On the other hand, deep learning algorithms are having a notable impact in many fields with interesting results....

Immersive virtual reality (VR) represents a viable technology to support rehabilitation and promote the recovery of upper limb functions after stroke. Nonetheless, it has not been determined yet if VR can elicit movements that share the same kinematic characteristics of those occurring in the real world (RW), thus positively impacting arm use in da...

In the last decades, researches in the fields of Ambient Assisted Living and Smart Home have adopted technological paradigms to provide inhabitants with tailored solutions able to help them in their daily life, enable energy savings and monitor safety. Within this context, this paper introduces DOMUS, a Domestic Ontology Managed Ubiquitous System a...

A large number of people in the world need to use a wheelchair because of different disabilities. Driving a wheelchair requires complex physical and cognitive abilities which need to be trained. Virtual training helps users acquire driving skills in a safe environment. The aim of this paper is to describe and technically validate simulation models...

Children and young people with neurodevelopmental disorders seem to be more susceptible to developing obesity and eating disorders. To prevent this, therapeutic programs including nutritional education are, therefore, needed. Serious games (SGs) represent a promising solution to improve adherence to the treatment in different populations, including...

The post-COVID syndrome is emerging as a new chronic condition, characterized by symptoms of breathlessness, fatigue, and decline of neurocognitive functions. Rehabilitation programs that include physical training seem to be beneficial to reduce such symptoms and improve patients’ quality of life. Given this, and considering the limitations imposed...

Evidence-based Health Tourism (EHT) is a branch of general tourism foreseeing tourists to travel with the aim of receiving healing treatments or enhancing a specific mental, physical or spiritual health condition through medically-proven offers. EHT competitiveness is increasingly linked to the sustainability and exploitation of unique natural reso...

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is a standard framework organized as a top-down taxonomy composed of categories allowing to describe a person’s functioning within an environment (physical and social context). ICF aims at helping different clinical professionals and health stakeholders to adopt a common c...

Virtual reality (VR) has recently emerged as a promising technology to rehabilitate upper limb functions after stroke. To promote the recovery of functions, retraining physiological movement patterns is essential. However, it is still unclear whether VR can elicit functional movements that are similar to those performed in the real world (RW). This...

In recent years, telehealthcare systems (TSs) have become more and more widespread, as they can contribute to promoting the continuity of care and managing chronic conditions efficiently. Most TSs and nutrition recommendation systems require much information to return appropriate suggestions. This work proposes an ontology-based TS, namely HeNuALs,...

Technologies for the effective and efficient handling of RDF data are one of the main success factors for a larger scale take-up of Semantic Web Technologies in real scenarios. In this regard, several software components (RDF Stores) devoted to the semantic data persistence and retrieval are available in literature. However, each of them may be app...

Natural resources are recognized among the key determinants for the improvement of wellness, and thus the development and sustainability of health tourism destinations. This study applied a systematic review to investigate the contributions mapping and analyzing under different perspectives the value of the natural resources of a destination and re...

In recent years, several studies have investigated upper-limb motion in a variety of scenarios including motor control, physiology, rehabilitation and industry. Such applications assess people’s kinematics and muscular performances, focusing on typical movements that simulate daily-life tasks. However, often only a limited interpretation of the EMG...

Background: Virtual reality (VR) has recently emerged as a promising means for the administration of cognitive training of seniors at risk of dementia. Immersive VR could result in increased engagement and performances; however, its acceptance in older adults with cognitive deficits still has to be assessed. Objective: To assess acceptance and u...

The rise of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies provided the means to enable the smart home (SH), a residence aimed at anticipating and responding to its dwellers’ needs and one of the most promising Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions. However, the massive adoption of monitoring techniques and some shortcomings in the field of security can h...

Virtual Reality (VR) is a promising technology for implementing personalized, motivating and controlled rehabilitation scenarios. Although its clear potential benefits, VR has been poorly investigated in pulmonary rehabilitation. This review analyses the state of the art, by searching the scientific and grey literature, regarding the use of VR for...

CasAware is an Ambient Assisted Living platform, developed within an Italian research project, with the aim to improve the level of comfort and well-being of inhabitants of a house, while optimizing the energy consumption. A key feature, for successful realization of such a platform, is its capability to interoperate with other IoT platforms, which...

The aim of this paper is to present an innovative tablet-based application with 360° videos for the motor rehabilitation of frail elderly, Bal-App. This app was developed for iPad and exploits the potentiality of 360° videos to improve bal-ance in frail patients throught several exercises with an increasing level of difficulty. The app includes 10...

Nutrition-related diseases can considerably contribute to many different health-related problems and can impact on several segments of the population. Promoting balanced diet plans is therefore pivotal; however, this is not a trivial task as it requires different stakeholders (nutrition experts, agro-industrial businesses and consumers) to cooperat...

The paper describes the design, development and preliminary evaluation of a mobile diary app for elderly with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The application, called My Daily Activity (MyDA), allows patients to follow personalized rehabilitation, based on physical training, cognitive stimulation and an educational program. MyDA is bas...

This paper presents a Virtual Reality (VR) exergame, Virtual Fitness Trail (VFT), designed to encourage the elderly to regularly exercise in an engaging and safe way staying at home. VFT provides a highly immersive physical activity experiences in first-person perspective and it has been developed to run on Oculus Quest head mounted display. The ex...

The design and implementation of a serious game (SG) concerning inhibition skills in children are presented. The SG consists of a set of activities, each eliciting the tendency to respond in an immediate and inappropriate (wrong) way. The SG is based on the Dual Pathway model of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) proposed by Sonuga-Bar...

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is challenging the healthcare systems all over the world. Among others, Italy is one of the most damaged countries: hospitals and clinics, overwhelmed by the emergency situation, have limited or even temporarily suspended all non-emergency services, including rehabilitation. With the emergency slowing down, it is now c...

L’attuale pandemia di COVID-19 sta mettendo a dura prova i sistemi sanitari di tutto il mondo. Tra gli altri, l’Italia è uno dei Paesi più colpiti: gran parte degli ospedali e delle cliniche hanno dovuto limitare o sospendere tutti i servizi non urgenti, inclusa la riabilitazione. Ora che l’emergenza sembra rientrare, diventa cruciale identificare...

In the field of motion analysis, the gold standard devices are marker-based tracking systems. Despite being very accurate, their cost, stringent working environments, and long preparation time make them unsuitable for small clinics as well as for other scenarios such as industrial application. Since human-centered approaches have been promoted even...

The design of a computer-supported serious game concerning inhibition skills in children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is reported. The game consists of a series of activities, each eliciting the tendency to respond in an immediate, inadequate way. The game is based on the Dual Pathway Model of ADHD proposed by Sonuga-Barke....

This paper contributes to the open innovation literature by presenting a successful application of the open innovation approach in the maritime sector between Fincantieri (FC), one of the world’s largest shipbuilding groups, and the National Research Council of Italy (CNR, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), the largest research entity in Italy. B...

Purpose This paper aims to study the extent of the transformation of European manufacturing companies towards the factory of the future (FoF) and related concepts, e.g. Industry 4.0 and digitalisation. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative survey design was used to investigate the areas, patterns and elements for implementing FoF. A total of 9...

This paper introduces Smart Cabin, a semantic-based framework for indoor comfort metrics customization inside a cruise cabin. Smart Cabin merges Ambient Intelligence, Ambient Assisted Living and Context Awareness perspectives to provide customized comfort experience to the cruise’s passengers. Considering that passengers may be afflicted by some im...

This work presents a multiple case study analysis aimed at depicting a managerial perspective for the implementation of a transformation path towards Industry 4.0 (I4.0) in manufacturing value chain. Starting from the analysis of the literature on values and impacts of digitalization and I4.0 in operations and supply chain management, the research...

This work introduces ComfOnt, a semantic framework developed within the context of ambient assisted living, context awareness, and ambient intelligence Italian research projects. ComfOnt leverages knowledge regarding Smart Home inhabitants and their particular needs, the devices deployed inside the domestic environment (appliances, sensors, and act...

Frailty is a pre-clinical condition that worsens physical health and quality of life. One of the most frequent symptoms of frailty is an increased risk of falling. In order to reduce this risk, we propose an innovative virtual reality motor rehabilitation program based on an immersive tool. All exercises will take place in the CAVE, a four-screen r...

Physical exercise is one of the main components of rehabilitation programs designed for patients with chronic respiratory diseases. Endurance exercise training, in the form of cycling or walking, allows to improve leg muscles strength and cardiorespiratory fitness. Positive effects have been demonstrated even if there is still need for improving pa...

Digital twin (DT) is the virtual clone of a factory representing its static and dynamic aspects (e.g., processes, systems, products, etc.) in detail. Among the significant challenges that manufacturing company has to face to implement the DT, one of the most demanding is applying an appropriate software infrastructure, which would enable synchroniz...

This paper introduces the Future Home for Future Communities’ Smart Home, a semantic-based framework for indoor comfort metrics customization inside a living environment. The Smart Home merges Ambient Intelligence, Ambient Assisted Living and Context Awareness perspectives to provide customized comfort experience to the dwellers, also leveraging on...

This work presents a Decision Support System (DSS) to foster return to work (RTW) of novice wheelchair users (NWU). The DSS is developed within an ongoing research project financed by the Italian National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work (INAIL).

The critical success factor of the supply chain management process in a modern manufacturing company consists in the company’s capability to exploit the data produced by a growing number of different sources. The latter include a network of collaborative sensors, digital tools, and services, made available to suppliers and other involved supply cha...

This paper introduces the HoloHome, an Augmented Reality framework which aims to provide new means of interaction with the Smart Home and its components. HoloHome integrates multiple technological paradigms encompassing Internet of Things, Ambient Assisted Living, and Augmented Reality to offer the ultimate tailored comfort experience for the Smart...

Technological improvements have contributed to the development of new innovative approaches to rehabilitation. The use of virtual reality (VR) in physical and cognitive rehabilitation brings several advantages, such as greater motivation and patient enjoyment, allowing for the performance of everyday life tasks in a safe and controlled environment....

This paper introduces the Future Home for Future Communities’ Smart Home, a semantic-based framework for indoor comfort metrics customization inside a living environment. The Smart Home merges Ambient Intelligence, Ambient Assisted Living and Context Awareness perspectives to provide customized comfort experience to the dwellers, also leveraging on...

This paper introduces the HoloHome, an Augmented Reality framework which aims to provide new means of interaction with the Smart Home and its components. HoloHome integrates multiple technological paradigms encompassing Internet of Things, Ambient Assisted Living, and Augmented Reality to offer the ultimate tailored comfort experience for the Smart...