From erewhon to alphaGo: For the sake of human dignity, should we destroy the machines?

This paper asks whether, for the sake of human dignity, regulators should adopt a precautionary approach to the development of smart machines. Having identified a set of essential (or commons’) conditions for the existence of human social agents, including respect for human dignity in both foundational and non-foundational senses, consideration is given to human reliance on personal digital assistants, to the development of autonomous vehicles and lethal autonomous weapons systems, and to the use of smart machines in the criminal justice system. The paper concludes that, while smart machines should not be destroyed, a degree of precaution for the sake of human dignity is warranted. In particular, it is recommended that international agencies should monitor the impact of smart machines on the commons’ conditions; and that national commissions should facilitate the articulation of the local social licence for the development and application of such machines

Determining the Drivers and Barriers to the Adoption of Smart Vending Machine

The Internet of Things (IoT) revolution is revolutionizing numerous industries, including the vending machine industry. Smart vending machines are one example of how the Internet of Things is altering the way vending machines operate. Smart vending machines can do functions other than merely dispatching products in exchange for payment by combining modern technologies such as internet connectivity and touch screens. They can make purchasing more convenient for customers, track inventories in real-time, and even take mobile payments using a smartphone app. By surveying 412 business owners, this study employed a stacking classifier to analyze the determinants of smart vending machine adoption. The findings indicate that improved security and safety, as well as the decrease in operational costs, are the primary drivers of adoption among firms that have adopted the smart vending machine. Smart vending machines can be equipped with security cameras and alarms to deter theft and vandalism, as well as to prevent contamination or tampering. This can help to improve the vending machine's general security and safety, as well as the products it dispenses. By automating processes such as inventory management and refilling, smart vending machines can also help to minimize operating expenses. This can save the operator time and money. This study's findings also revealed that the primary barriers to adoption are upfront costs and technological challenges. The initial cost of purchasing and installing a Smart vending machine might be too expensive, particularly for SMEs. Operators may be required to spend on technical help and training in order to successfully use and maintain this equipment. The future of vending machines is expected to witness a steady move toward Smart vending machines. As sophisticated technology becomes more widely accessible and inexpensive, more operators are likely to realize it and make the switch

Forecasting transport mode use with support vector machines based approach

The paper explores potential to forecast what transport mode one will use for his/her next trip. The support vector machines based approach learns from individual's behavior (validated GPS tracks) to support smart city transport planning services. The overall success rate, in forecasting the transport mode, is 82 %, with lower confusion for private car, bike and walking

Multi-agent framework based on smart sensors/actuators for machine tools control and monitoring

Throughout the history, the evolutions of the requirements for manufacturing equipments have depended on the changes in the customers' demands. Among the present trends in the requirements for new manufacturing equipments, there are more flexible and more reactive machines. In order to satisfy those requirements, this paper proposes a control and monitoring framework for machine tools based on smart sensor, on smart actuator and on agent concepts. The proposed control and monitoring framework achieves machine monitoring, process monitoring and adapting functions that are not usually provided by machine tool control systems. The proposed control and monitoring framework has been evaluated by the means of a simulated operative part of a machine tool. The communication between the agents is achieved thanks to an Ethernet network and CORBA protocol. The experiments (with and without cooperation between agents for accommodating) give encouraging results for implementing the proposed control framework to operational machines. Also, the cooperation between the agents of control and monitoring framework contributes to the improvement of reactivity by adapting cutting parameters to the machine and process states and to increase productivity

A Field Programmable Gate Array-Based Reconfigurable Smart-Sensor Network for Wireless Monitoring of New Generation Computer Numerically Controlled Machines

Computer numerically controlled (CNC) machines have evolved to adapt to increasing technological and industrial requirements. To cover these needs, new generation machines have to perform monitoring strategies by incorporating multiple sensors. Since in most of applications the online Processing of the variables is essential, the use of smart sensors is necessary. The contribution of this work is the development of a wireless network platform of reconfigurable smart sensors for CNC machine applications complying with the measurement requirements of new generation CNC machines. Four different smart sensors are put under test in the network and their corresponding signal processing techniques are implemented in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based sensor node

Designing Secure Ethereum Smart Contracts: A Finite State Machine Based Approach

The adoption of blockchain-based distributed computation platforms is growing fast. Some of these platforms, such as Ethereum, provide support for implementing smart contracts, which are envisioned to have novel applications in a broad range of areas, including finance and Internet-of-Things. However, a significant number of smart contracts deployed in practice suffer from security vulnerabilities, which enable malicious users to steal assets from a contract or to cause damage. Vulnerabilities present a serious issue since contracts may handle financial assets of considerable value, and contract bugs are non-fixable by design. To help developers create more secure smart contracts, we introduce FSolidM, a framework rooted in rigorous semantics for designing con- tracts as Finite State Machines (FSM). We present a tool for creating FSM on an easy-to-use graphical interface and for automatically generating Ethereum contracts. Further, we introduce a set of design patterns, which we implement as plugins that developers can easily add to their contracts to enhance security and functionality

Industrial IoT devices and cyber-physical production systems: review and use case

“This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91334-6_40"The present paper describes the state of the art related to IIoT Devices and Cyber-Physical systems and presents a use case related to predictive maintenance. Industry 4.0 is the boost for smart manufacturing and demands flexibility and adaptability of all devices/machines in the shop floor. The machines must become smart and interact with other machines inside and outside the industries/factories. The predictive maintenance is a key topic in this industrial revolution. The reason is based on the idea that smart machines must be capable to automatically identify and predict possible faults and actuate before they occur. Vibrations can be problematic in electrical motors. For this reason, we address an experimental study associated with an automatic classification procedure, that runs in the smart devices to detect anomalies. The results corroborate the applicability and usefulness of this machine learning algorithm to predict vibration faults.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio