Traditional industrial applications involve robots with limited mobility. Consequently, interaction (e.g. manipulation) was treated separately from whole-body posture (e.g. balancing), assuming the robot firmly connected to the ground. Foreseen applications involve robots with augmented autonomy and physical mobility. Within this novel context, physical interaction influences stability and bala...

Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is a leading cause of functional disability among American adults. Obesity is a strong independent risk factor for OA. While research emphasizes the role of obesity in the OA-physical function relationship, the extent to which weight status impacts salient physical, health, and pain measures in older, knee OA patients is not well delineated. The primary aim of this stud...

The introduction of adaptation features in the design of applications that operate in a mobile computing environment has been suggested as a viable solution to cope with the high heterogeneity and variability of this environment. Mobile code paradigms can be used to this purpose, since they allow to dynamically modify the load of the hosting nodes and the internode traffic, to adapt to the reso...

In this chapter we survey the most recent proposals for modelling user mobility in mobile pervasive networks, and specifically in opportunistic networks. We identify two main families of models that have been proposed. The first modelling approach is based on the observation that people tend to visit specific places in the physical space, which therefore exert special attraction on them. The me...

Simple spatial interaction models of human mobility based on physical laws have been used extensively in the social, biological, and physical sciences, and in the study of the human dynamics underlying the spread of disease. Recent analyses of commuting patterns and travel behavior in high-income countries have led to the suggestion that these models are highly generalizable, and as a result, g...

• There is considerable variation in the level of physical impairment between age groups. The prevalence of reported physical functional limitation is surprisingly high at the youngest end of the sample, with 43% of respondents in their 50s reporting difficulty with mobility and 13% reporting difficulty with a basic activity of daily life (self-care). At the same time, most (58%) of the respond...

Fluid interdependencies of mobility – physical and virtualare growing rapidly in subSaharan Africa: the remarkable expansion of mobile phone networks is bringing a tangible new dimension of connectivity into mobility, transport and access equations on the ground. This article draws on in-depth field research, including co-investigation with two groups often disadvantaged in their physical mobil...

As the mortality from critical illness has improved in recent years, there has been increasing focus on patient outcomes after hospital discharge. Neuromuscular weakness acquired in the intensive care unit (ICU) is common, persistent, and often severe. Immobility due to prolonged bed rest in the ICU may play an important role in the development of ICU-acquired weakness. Studies in other patient...

The aging of the population in developed and developing countries calls for special attention to improve the quality of life for older people. Meanwhile, one of the key factors influencing the quality of life of older people is their mobility. Most of the previous studies have considered the mobility of younger people while considering the aging of the population, the mobility of older people n...

It is predicted that in the near future the age of the population will increase, leading to a larger number of people with mobility disabilities [1] [2] [3]. Different types of mobility aids, such as canes or walkers, are widely used, but their functionalities are limited and cannot fully replace the support given by a human carer. On the other hand, there aren’t enough professionals to take ca...