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

Development of a Ground-Based Aerial-Tracking Instrument for Open-Path Spectroscopy to Monitor Atmospheric Constituents

A ground-based aerial-tracking instrument, known as the Ground Tracker, designed to provide spectral data to quantify greenhouse gases is under development. The Ground Tracker includes an Optical System including a high power rifle scope, video camera, and spectrometer used to locate an active light source from the Emitter, and collect spectral data by utilizing an actuating mirror. The implementation of this instrument could be made low cost by utilizing existing weather balloon infrastructure to allow the Emitter to be placed into the lower stratosphere. The recovery of the emitter will be possible by tracking the GPS coordinates. Weather balloon instrument packages contain shipping instructions and postage for those packages that go beyond GPS range or are lost. The Ground Tracker and Emitter Gimbal, while not ready for implementation, demonstrate the feasibility of a spectroscopy system that could provide important data for climate observation and modeling at temporal and spatial resolutions not currently available to state-of-the-art satellites

Cooperative tracking for persistent littoral undersea surveillance

Thesis (Nav. E.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 39-40).The US Navy has identified a need for an autonomous, persistent, forward deployed system to Detect, Classify, and Locate submarines. In this context, we investigate a novel method for multiple sensor platforms acting cooperatively to locate an uncooperative target. Conventional tracking methods based on techniques such as Kalman filtering or particle filters have been used with great success for tracking targets from a single manned platform; the application of these methods can be difficult for a cooperative tracking scenario with multiple unmanned platforms that have considerable navigation error. This motivates investigation of an alternative, set-based tracking algorithm, first proposed by Detweiler et al. for sensor network localization, to the cooperative tracking problem. The Detweiler algorithm is appealing for its conceptual simplicity and minimal assumptions about the target motion. The key idea of this approach is to compute the temporal evolution of potential target positions in terms of bounded regions that grow between measurements as the target moves and shrink when measurements do occur based on an assumed worst-case bound for uncertainty.(cont.) In this thesis, we adapt the Detweiler algorithm to the scenario of cooperative tracking for persistent undersea surveillance, and explore its limitations when applied to this domain. The algorithm has been fully implemented and tested both in simulation and with postprocessing of autonomous surface craft (ASC) data from the PLUSNet Monterey Bay 2006 experiment. The results indicate that the method provides disappointing performance when applied to this domain, especially in situations where communication links between the autonomous tracking platforms are poor. We conclude that the method is more appropriate for a "large N" tracking scenario, with a large number of small, expendable tracking nodes, instead of our intended scenario with a smaller number of more sophisticated mobile trackers. The method may also be useful as an adjunct to a conventional Bayesian tracker, to reject implausible target tracks and focus computational resources on regions where the target is present.by Robert Derek Scott.S.M.Nav.E

Spacecraft applications of advanced global positioning system technology

The purpose of this study was to evaluate potential uses of Global Positioning System (GPS) in spacecraft applications in the following areas: attitude control and tracking; structural control; traffic control; and time base definition (synchronization). Each of these functions are addressed. Also addressed are the hardware related issues concerning the application of GPS technology and comparisons are provided with alternative instrumentation methods for specific functions required for an advanced low earth orbit spacecraft

Privacy in Inter-Vehicular Networks: Why simple pseudonym change is not enough

Inter-vehicle communication (IVC) systems disclose rich location information about vehicles. State-of-the-art security architectures are aware of the problem and provide privacy enhancing mechanisms, notably pseudonymous authentication. However, the granularity and the amount of location information IVC protocols divulge, enable an adversary that eavesdrops all traffic throughout an area, to reconstruct long traces of the whereabouts of the majority of vehicles within the same area. Our analysis in this paper confirms the existence of this kind of threat. As a result, it is questionable if strong location privacy is achievable in IVC systems against a powerful adversary.\u

Integration of ADAS algorithm in a Vehicle Prototype

International audienceFor several years, INRIA and Toyota Europe have been working together in the development of algorithms directed to ADAS. This paper will describe the main results of this successful joint project, applied to a prototype vehicle equipped with several sensors. This work will detail the framework, steps taken and motivation behind the developed technologies, as well as address the requirements needed for the automobile industry

ReCon: Revealing and Controlling PII Leaks in Mobile Network Traffic

It is well known that apps running on mobile devices extensively track and leak users' personally identifiable information (PII); however, these users have little visibility into PII leaked through the network traffic generated by their devices, and have poor control over how, when and where that traffic is sent and handled by third parties. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of ReCon: a cross-platform system that reveals PII leaks and gives users control over them without requiring any special privileges or custom OSes. ReCon leverages machine learning to reveal potential PII leaks by inspecting network traffic, and provides a visualization tool to empower users with the ability to control these leaks via blocking or substitution of PII. We evaluate ReCon's effectiveness with measurements from controlled experiments using leaks from the 100 most popular iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps, and via an IRB-approved user study with 92 participants. We show that ReCon is accurate, efficient, and identifies a wider range of PII than previous approaches.Comment: Please use MobiSys version when referencing this work: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2906392. 18 pages, recon.meddle.mob