Publications de Andrea Maesani

Disentangling constraints using viability evolution principles in integrative modeling of macromolecular assemblies

Dario Floreano, Matteo Thomas Degiacomi, Matteo Dal Peraro, Sylvain Träger, Andrea Maesani, Giorgio Elikem Tamo

Predicting the structure of large molecular assemblies remains a challenging task in structural biology when using integrative modeling approaches. One of the main issues stems from the treatment of heterogeneous experimental data used to predict the archi ...

Nature Research2017

Electrically Assisted Movement Therapy in Chronic Stroke Patients With Severe Upper Limb Paresis: A Pilot, Single-Blind, Randomized Crossover Study

Stephanie Clarke, José del Rocio Millán Ruiz, Silvio Ionta, Andrea Maesani, Andrea Biasiucci

Objective To evaluate the effects of electrically assisted movement therapy (EAMT) in which patients use functional electrical stimulation, modulated by a custom device controlled through the patient's unaffected hand, to produce or assist task-specific up ...

Elsevier2017

One Constraint at a Time: Using Viability Principles in Integrative Modeling of Macromolecular Assemblies

Dario Floreano, Matteo Thomas Degiacomi, Matteo Dal Peraro, Andrea Maesani, Giorgio Elikem Tamo

Cell Press2017

Memetic Viability Evolution for Constrained Optimization

Dario Floreano, Andrea Maesani, Giovanni Iacca

The performance of evolutionary algorithms can be heavily undermined when constraints limit the feasible areas of the search space. For instance, while Covariance Matrix Adapta- tion Evolution Strategy is one of the most efficient algorithms for unconstrai ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2016

Neuroprosthetic System Restoring Upper Limb Function Through Coordinated Electrical Stimulation

Andrea Maesani, Andrea Biasiucci

Neuroprosthetic device for restoring daily-life action movements of upper limbs in patients suffering from motor impairments. The neuroprosthetic device comprises several non-invasive electrodes adapted to be fixed on a patient body, in a way as to stimula ...

2016

Non-invasive drawable electrode for neuromuscular electrical stimulation and biological signal sensing

Stefano Silvio Giovanni Varricchio, Andrea Maesani, Andrea Biasiucci

Non-invasive "drawable", or "paintable", electrode for electrical stimulation or biological signal sensing comprising a pervious and electrically conductive layer (1), at least one electrically insulating element (2) for maintaining the electrically conduc ...

2016

Viability evolutionary algorithms and applications to neuroscience and biology

Andrea Maesani

Evolutionary algorithms are heuristic methods that operate on a population of individuals, which represent candidate solutions to optimization problems. Individuals with better quality, or fitness, are reproduced at a higher rate than less fit individuals ...

EPFL2015

Fluctuation-driven neural dynamics reproduce Drosophila locomotor patterns

Dario Floreano, Andrea Maesani, Pavan P Ramdya, Kyle Gustafson

The neural mechanisms determining the timing of even simple actions, such as when to walk or rest, are largely mysterious. One intriguing, but untested, hypothesis posits a role for ongoing activity fluctuations in neurons of central action selection circu ...

2015

Viability Principles for Constrained Optimization Using a (1+1)-CMA-ES

Dario Floreano, Andrea Maesani

Viability Evolution is an abstraction of artificial evolution which operates by eliminating candidate solutions that do not satisfy viability criteria. Viability criteria are defined as boundaries on the values of objectives and constraints of the problem ...

Springer International Publishing2014

Soft Cells for Programmable Self-Assembly of Robotic Modules

Dario Floreano, Jürg Markus Germann, Andrea Maesani, Ramon Pericet Camara

Programmable self-assembly of chained robotic systems holds potential for the automatic construction of complex robots from a minimal set of building blocks. However, current robotic platforms are limited to modules of uniform rigidity, which results in a ...

2014

Artificial Evolution by Viability Rather Than Competition

Dario Floreano, Andrea Maesani, Pradeep Ruben Fernando

Evolutionary algorithms are widespread heuristic methods inspired by natural evolution to solve difficult problems for which analytical approaches are not suitable. In many domains experimenters are not only interested in discovering optimal solutions, but ...

Public Library of Science2014

RoboGen: Robot Generation through Artificial Evolution

Dario Floreano, Ludovic Daler, Andrea Maesani, Titus Cieslewski, Pradeep Ruben Fernando, Grégoire Hilaire Marie Heitz, Przemyslaw Mariusz Kornatowski, Ilya Loshchilov, Joshua Evan Auerbach, Deniz Aydin

Science instructors from a wide range of disciplines agree that hands-on laboratory components of courses are pedagogically necessary (Freedman, 1997). However, certain shortcomings of current laboratory exercises have been pointed out by several authors ( ...

The MIT Press2014

Soft Cell Simulator: A tool to study Soft Multi-Cellular Robots

Dario Floreano, Manuel Stöckli, Jürg Markus Germann, Andrea Maesani

Modular or multi-cellular robots hold the promise to adapt their morphology to task and environment. However, research in modular robotics has traditionally been limited to mechanically non-adaptive systems due to hard building blocks and rigid connection ...

2013

Enhancing the Specular Effect of Metallic Color Prints by Reducing the Use of Yellow Ink

Roger Hersch, Thomas Bugnon, Andrea Maesani

The MetallicArt technique is used as a visual security feature to hide patterns in CMY images using an additional silver ink. The patterns are hidden under nonspecular viewing conditions and visible under specular viewing conditions. By varying the amount ...

2011