Robotic ubiquitous cognitive ecology for smart homes

Robotic ecologies are networks of heterogeneous robotic devices pervasively embedded in everyday environments, where they cooperate to perform complex tasks. While their potential makes them increasingly popular, one fundamental problem is how to make them both autonomous and adaptive, so as to reduce the amount of preparation, pre-programming and human supervision that they require in real world applications. The project RUBICON develops learning solutions which yield cheaper, adaptive and efficient coordination of robotic ecologies. The approach we pursue builds upon a unique combination of methods from cognitive robotics, machine learning, planning and agent- based control, and wireless sensor networks. This paper illustrates the innovations advanced by RUBICON in each of these fronts before describing how the resulting techniques have been integrated and applied to a smart home scenario. The resulting system is able to provide useful services and pro-actively assist the users in their activities. RUBICON learns through an incremental and progressive approach driven by the feed- back received from its own activities and from the user, while also self-organizing the manner in which it uses available sensors, actuators and other functional components in the process. This paper summarises some of the lessons learned by adopting such an approach and outlines promising directions for future work

Wireless communication, identification and sensing technologies enabling integrated logistics: a study in the harbor environment

In the last decade, integrated logistics has become an important challenge in the development of wireless communication, identification and sensing technology, due to the growing complexity of logistics processes and the increasing demand for adapting systems to new requirements. The advancement of wireless technology provides a wide range of options for the maritime container terminals. Electronic devices employed in container terminals reduce the manual effort, facilitating timely information flow and enhancing control and quality of service and decision made. In this paper, we examine the technology that can be used to support integration in harbor's logistics. In the literature, most systems have been developed to address specific needs of particular harbors, but a systematic study is missing. The purpose is to provide an overview to the reader about which technology of integrated logistics can be implemented and what remains to be addressed in the future

Current challenges and future trends in the field of communication architectures for microgrids

[EN] The concept of microgrid has emerged as a feasible answer to cope with the increasing number of distributed renewable energy sources which are being introduced into the electrical grid. The microgrid communication network should guarantee a complete and bidirectional connectivity among the microgrid resources, a high reliability and a feasible interoperability. This is in a contrast to the current electrical grid structure which is characterized by the lack of connectivity, being a centralized-unidirectional system. In this paper a review of the microgrids information and communication technologies (ICT) is shown. In addition, a guideline for the transition from the current communication systems to the future generation of microgrid communications is provided. This paper contains a systematic review of the most suitable communication network topologies, technologies and protocols for smart microgrids. It is concluded that a new generation of peer-to-peer communication systems is required towards a dynamic smart microgrid. Potential future research about communications of the next microgrid generation is also identified.This work is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under Grant ENE2015-64087-C2-2. This work is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under grant BES-2013-064539.Marzal-Romeu, S.; Salas-Puente, RA.; González Medina, R.; Garcerá, G.; Figueres Amorós, E. (2018). Current challenges and future trends in the field of communication architectures for microgrids. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 82(2):3610-3622. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.10.101S3610362282

Design and evaluation of a privacy architecture for crowdsensing applications

By using consumer devices such as cellphones, wearables and Internet of Things devices owned by citizens, crowdsensing systems are providing solutions to the community in areas such as transportation, security, entertainment and the environment through the collection of various types of sensor data. Privacy is a major issue in these systems because the data collected can potentially reveal aspects considered private by the contributors of data. We propose the Privacy-Enabled ARchitecture (PEAR), a layered architecture aimed at protecting privacy in privacy-aware crowdsensing systems. We identify and describe the layers of the architecture. We propose and evaluate the design of MetroTrack, a crowdsensing system that is based on the proposed PEAR architecture

Internet of Satellites (IoSat): analysis of network models and routing protocol requirements

The space segment has been evolved from monolithic to distributed satellite systems. One of these distributed systems is called the federated satellite system (FSS) which aims at establishing a win-win collaboration between satellites to improve their mission performance by using the unused on-board resources. The FSS concept requires sporadic and direct communications between satellites, using inter satellite links. However, this point-to-point communication is temporal and thus it can break existent federations. Therefore, the conception of a multi-hop scenario needs to be addressed. This is the goal of the Internet of satellites (IoSat) paradigm which, as opposed to a common backbone, proposes the creation of a network using a peer-to-peer architecture. In particular, the same satellites take part of the network by establishing intermediate collaborations to deploy a FSS. This paradigm supposes a major challenge in terms of network definition and routing protocol. Therefore, this paper not only details the IoSat paradigm, but it also analyses the different satellite network models. Furthermore, it evaluates the routing protocol candidates that could be used to implement the IoSat paradigm.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft