BrainMap

Mr. Mihai Duguleană

Prof.

Prof. - UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV

Web of Science ResearcherID: AAA-5482-2019

Curriculum Vitae (20/02/2024)

Expertise & keywords

Driver-In-the-Loop SIMulation for safety-critical testing scenarios of Electric Vehicles Call name: P 2 - SP 2.1 - Proiect experimental - demonstrativ
PN-III-P2-2.1-PED-2019-4366 2020 - 2022

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV (RO); SIEMENS INDUSTRY SOFTWARE SRL (RO)

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV (RO)

Project website: http://www.dilsimev.ro

Abstract:

The project is proposing to develop an advanced simulation tool for enhancing the driving experience and for increasing the safety of the vehicles in the new age of semi and full autonomous electric cars. The outcome of the project will be a new human-machine interaction paradigm introduced through a real-time decision making systems in which the actions and personal needs of the drivers are introduced into the learning process of semi and fully autonomous driving. The proposed method will facilitate the transitions of control between drivers and (semi)automated vehicles while introducing the acquired and automated competencies of the driver into the learning process of the vehicles. The drivers are usually possessing useful cognitive abilities (processing the available information and making fast decision), but have also physiological and cognitive limitations (limited visual field or disturbing elements, like phones). The novelty of this method is to incorporate the human decision logic into a machine learning algorithm using driver-in-the-loop simulations in a safe environment as an alternative to actual on-road tests. The objectives are to obtain a driver model with driver-in-the-loop simulations of electric vehicles, to propose a fusion algorithm for decision making in safety-critical scenarios and to find the perfect driving strategy for personal needs. The practical (laboratory) demonstration of testing of the proposed safety-critical method with driver-in-the-loop for electric vehicles will be shown in three scenarios.

Expanding the Research and Innovation Capacity in Cultural Heritage Virtual Reality Applications Call name:
692103 2015 - 2018

Role in this project: Project coordinator

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV (); Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna from Pisa (); Jožef Stefan Institute ()

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV ()

Project website: http://www.eheritage.org/

Abstract:

eHERITAGE is a Coordination and Support project which addresses the “twinning” challenges described in the topic H2020-TWINN-2015 of the Work programme.

eHERITAGE’s coordinating institution University Transilvania of Brasov (UTBv) will achieve excellence in the field of virtual heritage by twinning with other 2 research centers, Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna from Pisa, Italy.

Given the high touristic potential of Brasov, UTBv’s initiative fits perfectly in the regional innovation strategy for economic growth and prosperity. eHERITAGE participants will collaborate with local authorities for exploiting and disseminating virtual applications in cultural heritage conservation. The measures foreseen in eHERITAGE project will influence the social, economic and cultural environment at regional level, in a multiplicative way, making room for strategic partnerships with other research institutes or with commercial agents.

The general objective of eHERITAGE project is to increase the capacity, quality and extent of the research staff of Transilvania University of Brasov, by establishing strong and sustainable research cooperation schemes with the partners, based on close scientific and social interaction.

By creating applications for cultural heritage sites, eHERITAGE contributes to the spread of knowledge in the fields of history and arts, and having a department specialized in these techniques which is based in Romania if the first step in consolidating this research field in the eastern Europe.

Expanding the Research and Innovation Capacity in Cultural Heritage Virtual Reality Applications Call name: P 3 - SP 3.6 - Premierea participării în Orizont 2020
PN-III-P3-3.6-H2020-2016-0008 2016 - 2018

Role in this project: Project coordinator

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV (RO)

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV (RO)

Project website: http://www.eheritage.org

Abstract:

Cultural heritage has always been an effervescent subject among historians, sociologists, naturalists, scientists and researchers alike. The physical and intangible legacy of previous generations is passed via this channel to future members of the society. It is a deliberate act, as conserving the results of past work, culture and even biodiversity is in the very nature of the human beings.

With the recent advancements in the field of virtual reality, intelligent systems and based on the emergence of the information society, we can now ascend to modern cultural heritage preservation techniques. eHERITAGE has as main objective the development of a center of excellence in virtual heritage.

The coordinator of this project is not new to the research field which he wishes to expand. The Virtual Reality and Robotics Department (VRRD) of the UTBv has an affinity for designing and developing applications of virtual reality for cultural heritage, as it has had involvements in past national research projects on this theme.

The partners of eHERITAGE are internationally leading entities in the focused research field. SSSA is a public university located in Pisa, Italy. Its mission is not only didactic, as SSSA excels in several research areas, including robotics, virtual reality and user interfaces. The historic background of SSSA’s location eased the development of the virtual reality applications in cultural heritage. Several international research projects and well as a wide publication profile come to sustain this statement. On the other hand, JSI is the most important research institute in Slovenia, ranked among the first 50 research centers in Europe. In particular, JSI has strong competences in building models for ambient intelligence applications, data farming and detailing human behavior in virtual reality systems, competences which will prove invaluable for eHERITAGE.

The national prize-giving project for Horizon 2020 is perfectly suited to our initiative, as there are some adjacent activities that can be funded by it, thus supporting the team and ensuring the success of eHERITAGE.

Intelligent car navigation assistant for mobile devices based on eye gaze tracking and head pose Call name: Joint Applied Research Projects - PCCA 2013 - call
PN-II-PT-PCCA-2013-4-2023 2014 - 2017

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV (RO); GENERAL MAGIC TECHNOLOGY SRL (RO)

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV (RO)

Project website: http://navieyes.unitbv.ro/

Abstract:

Over the last years, automotive industry has shown a tremendous interest in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADASs), especially the ones based on driver’s bio-features. As most car producers strive to meet the increasing needs of high-end and even average consumers, more and more complex systems are being developed. The current trend is to maximize the synergy between humans and machines by designing better user interfaces (UIs) which can anticipate the behaviour of the driver. Great research efforts are put into inferring car position, traffic environment, driver's condition (e.g. degree of drowsiness, driving skill, emotional state) and intentions (e.g. changing lanes, overtaking other cars).

Since the 60's, many studies treated eyes states and movements as features that can provide crucial insights for improving car control. Based on Gibson’s theory on visual attention, many researchers believe that they can predict how the subject will react just by analysing the information provided by his/hers visual system: gaze direction, level of drowsiness and scan paths.

Mobile devices industry experienced an important boom in the last 3-4 years, last generation of smartphones being equipped with powerful sensors, among which one can count the front and rear video cameras, the accelerometer, the gyro sensor, the proximity sensor and others. Over 800000 mobile applications are already developed for both Android and IOS platforms, and over 70 billion have already been downloaded by users worldwide.

Our project team plans to use the latest hardware and software advances in mobile phones and navigation systems for creating a standalone application which will run on any dual-camera mobile device and which will enrich a personal navigation assistant (PNA) with additional functions that perform eye and head tracking and provide, based on intelligent computation, a set of notifications useful to prevent possible hazardous situations. The application will basically detect whether the driver is not attentive to road obstacles or certain types of traffic signs such as danger warning, priority, restrictive or mandatory. Moreover, the application will calculate the percentage of eye closure (PERCLOS) and alert the driver when its drowsiness level is high. The core of the application will be based on established computer vision algorithms (e.g. colour segmentation, SVM, Adaboost, optical flow, CAMSHIFT and others) and will contain 3 main modules: the eye gaze and head orientation estimator, the road obstacles and traffic signs detector and the application programming interface (API) necessary to integrate these modules within the PNA. The application will be tested on a modified vehicle on which a pre-collision system will be implemented.

The concept behind NAVIEYES is that both cameras of a mobile device docked in a car kit will act as "eyes" that will perceive the car interior and the outside traffic environment. We address the need of improved ADASs for average consumers who own a smartphone with 2 cameras. Thus, one of the real advantages of this approach is the reduced cost of the complete solution. To the best of our knowledge, no other company has managed to integrate the functionalities described in this project into a standalone solution, and no other research on PNAs based on eye tracking analysis for standard dual-camera mobile devices has been reported at the moment.

Our consortium is made of 2 partners which complement each other and which are perfectly suitable to complete all the objectives: the coordinating organization is represented by an institution with long tradition of research activities – Transilvania University of Brasov (Department of Automotive and Transportation); the partner organization is represented by ROUTE 66, a company founded in 1992 which has a leading position in the manufacture of consumer and professional products in the area of vehicle navigation.

SYSTEM FOR DIAGNOSIS AND THERAPY OF SPINE DISEASES Call name: Joint Applied Research Projects - PCCA 2013 - call
PN-II-PT-PCCA-2013-4-1596 2014 - 2017

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV (RO); UNIVERSITATEA TEHNICA DIN CLUJ - NAPOCA (RO); UNIV.DE MEDICINA SI FARMACIE - CAROL DAVILA (RO); ELECTRONIC APRIL APARATURA ELECTRONICA SPECIALA S.R.L. (RO)

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV (RO)

Project website: http://spine.unitbv.ro/

Abstract:

This project aims at designing, developing and testing an innovative system for the diagnosis and treatment of spine disorders. The product is based on a patent pending idea of the project team and consists in a mechatronic device able to measure in real time the instantaneous position of the human spine facilitating a precise diagnosis as well as continuous monitoring for prevention and/or treatment of spine disorders.

Most of the spine disorders are due to abnormal postures during the daily routine that are characteristic to some activities or bad habits related to spine postures when seated or standing. Once installed, for most of the spine disorders medication is available just for pain relief, while for curing corrective postures and posture education are the only remedies. In more serious cases surgical interventions can be possible but then other secondary risks appear. In the acute phases the treatment consists in following specific physical exercises and respecting corrective postures that are under strict surveillance in hospital until the symptoms improve. After leaving the hospital, a strict posture discipline is needed for long time. Nevertheless, most of the patients reintegrate rapidly into the old daily routine - the same that caused the disease and very often the disease relapses.

The main idea of the proposed system is to create an intelligent clothing item (vest) able to identify in real time the deviation from the prescribed postures and warn the patient about it. The sensorial vest is equipped with positional sensors, small actuators, controllers and a portable computer system (smartphone, tablet), which can identify in real time geometric positions of the vertebrae. The gathered information is then processed by a dedicated application that can serve for two important medical purposes:

a) Diagnose – consisting in the accurate measurement of spinal instantaneous posture, interpretation of data and comparison with reference data about spine diseases that are stored in a knowledge base. For the diagnosis purpose the system is driven by a desktop application including an accurate 3D user interface that is convenient to use by the medical team for both interpreting the results and simulation of the possible postural treatments.

b) Therapy – the system is driven by a smartphone application and it is able to perform a permanent monitoring of the spine postures and compare them with prescribed references. If the prescribed posture is violated, the patient receives a delicate warning stimulus on the deviated spot to remind him/her to correct the posture. In addition, the application installed onto the smartphone will be able adapt the reference postures, according to the progress of the therapy.

The project is addressing the priority area 7.3.8.Organic prosthetic equipment and medical equipment for examination, diagnosis and monitoring based on computer and includes all ingredients of a classical mechatronic approach: mobile kinematic structure, sensor and actuator system and the controller connected with a computer program application. The project consortium includes two academic research teams with expertise in mechatronics (Transilvania University of Brasov and Technical University Cluj-Napoca), one academic team with expertise in medicine (University of Medicine Carol Davila of Bucharest) and one enterprise team from a company operating on the biomedical mechatronic products market -April SRL.

The movements of the vertebrae are detected by using various types of transducers and thus the actual posture can be identified by means of a 3D model that represents the vertebrae linked together by appropriate joints. In the context of the European priorities related to healthy ageing, the product has a high market potential, given that 60-90% of the population is affected by lumbar problems until they reach an age of 90. To the best knowledge of the project consortium, no similar product or system exists on the market

Robotic assisted prostate biopsy, a high accuracy innovative method Call name: Joint Applied Research Projects - PCCA 2013 - call
PN-II-PT-PCCA-2013-4-0647 2014 - 2017

Role in this project:

Coordinating institution: UNIVERSITATEA TEHNICA DIN CLUJ - NAPOCA

Project partners: UNIVERSITATEA TEHNICA DIN CLUJ - NAPOCA (RO); UNIVERSITATEA DE MEDICINA SI FARMACIE (U.M.F) Cluj-Napoca (RO); UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV (RO); ELECTRONIC APRIL APARATURA ELECTRONICA SPECIALA S.R.L. (RO); INSTITUTUL NATIONAL DE CERCETARE DEZVOLTARE PENTRU OPTOELECTRONICA INOE 2000 INCD FILIALA INSTITUTUL DE CERCETARI PENTRU INSTRUMENTATIE ANALITICA CLUJ NAPOCA (RO)

Affiliation: UNIVERSITATEA TRANSILVANIA BRASOV (RO)

Project website: http://www.cester.utcluj.ro/robocore/index.html

Abstract:

Prostate cancer is the most widely spread form of cancer, generally affecting men of age over 45. Several studies showed that 80% of the men over 70 had different forms of prostate cancer, most of them not being aware of that.

As in any disease, early diagnosis allows simpler curative actions, less patient trauma, better life expectancy and quality for the patient. Nevertheless, the diagnosis for prostate cancer is carried in the same way as it was performed 50 years ago. It involves a 12-core, transrectal ultrasound guided biopsy (TRUS). This technique is performed without knowing the exact 3D tumours location and it was proven that in 30% of the cases, it provides false-negative results. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) enables a better view of the prostate with clear tumour definition, but MRI guided biopsy can be achieved only with MRI compatible materials which make the procedure prohibitive. The current worldwide diagnosis technique for prostate cancer has some major drawbacks: low real-time image quality, blind biopsy and impossibility of registering the 3D location of the biopsy cores.

Early and correct diagnosis represents a critical priority and due to the current limitations it becomes the starting point of the ROBOCORE project. The consortium proposes the development of a system to achieve high accuracy ultrasound guided prostate biopsies through: ► the biopsy accuracy increase by the development of a robot capable to position the biopsy gun using the visual feedback from the TRUS probe, and ► the achievement of a software solution which performs the simulation, in virtual reality, of the prostate biopsy using MRI data.

The project aim is to develop a robotic system which combines the MRI capacity to identify malignant tissue and precisely define the biopsy targets with the accessibility and real-time capability of an ultrasound guided system. Using the virtual reality software the coordinates of the biopsy targets are identified, and using the robot the biopsy is performed with high accuracy. The system has two major components: ► a robot capable to perform the TRUS guided biopsy based on specific points of interest identified before, and ► an advanced software capable to perform the simulation in a virtual environment for the robotic assisted prostate biopsy.

Based on the defined aim and estimated results (Experimental Model of the robot capable of performing prostate biopsies + simulation software in virtual reality environment for the prostate biopsy + trained young scientists, 6 PhD students +patent +10 papers + 5 communications) ROBOCORE addresses the Domain 7–Innovative Materials, Processes and Products, and responds to the demands formulated in the research theme 7.3.2 Applied mechatronics; intelligent mechatronic products and systems.

The consortium is coordinated by the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca with renowned specialists in the field of parallel robots, and four institutional partners: University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca with a team of urology doctors specialised in prostate cancer, University Transilvania of Brasov, which provides the software and virtual reality specialists, the Research Institute for Analytical Instrumentation with know-how in the development of medical devices and a private company, Electronic April Cluj-Napoca, specialised in medical apparatus development and commercialization. It must be stated that all the consortium members have previous experience and successful achievements in the field of medical robotics.

The end-product of ROBOCORE is an innovative complex system, which aims to provide accurate diagnosis in early cancer stages, enabling the proper therapy identification and an active surveillance of the tumours evolution which reduces the patient discomfort, provides him the right treatment at the right time and also enables proper follow-up after each evaluation or therapy stage.

FILE DESCRIPTION	DOCUMENT
List of research grants as project coordinator or partner team leader
Significant R&D projects for enterprises, as project manager
R&D activities in enterprises
Peer-review activity for international programs/projects