A first inversion of the backscatter profile and extinction-to-backscatter ratio from pulsed elastic-backscatter lidar returns is treated by means of an extended Kalman filter (EKF). The EKF approach enables one to overcome the intrinsic limitations of standard straightforward nonmemory procedures such as the slope method, exponential curve fitting, and the backward inversion algorithm. Whereas...

Electrical impedance tomography is a non-invasive method for imaging the electrical conductivity of an object from voltage measurements on its surface. This inverse problem suffers in three respects: It is highly nonlinear, severely ill-posed and highly under-determined. To obtain yet reasonable reconstructions, maximal information needs to be gathered from the model and extracted from the data...

Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) by suitable portable sensors plays a central role in the treatment of diabetes, a disease currently affecting more than 350 million people worldwide. Noninvasive CGM (NI-CGM), in particular, is appealing for reasons related to patient comfort (no needles are used) but challenging. NI-CGM prototypes exploiting multisensor approaches have been recently proposed...

To approach robustness and optimal performance, biological musculoskeletal systems can adapt their impedance while interacting with their environment. This property has motivated modern robotic designs including variable-impedance actuators and control methods, based on the capability to vary visco-elastic properties actively or passively. Even though variable-impedance actuation and impedance ...

Feedback delays are a major challenge for any controlled process, and yet we are able to easily control limb movements with speed and grace. A popular hypothesis suggests that the brain largely mitigates the impact of feedback delays (∼50 ms) by regulating the limb intrinsic visco-elastic properties (or impedance) with muscle co-contraction, which generates forces proportional to changes in joi...