Building an Aerial-Ground Robotics System for Precision Farming: An Adaptable Solution

The application of autonomous robots in agriculture is gaining increasing popularity thanks to the high impact it may have on food security, sustainability, resource use efficiency, reduction of chemical treatments, and the optimization of human effort and yield. With this vision, the Flourish research project aimed to develop an adaptable robotic solution for precision farming that combines the aerial survey capabilities of small autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with targeted intervention performed by multi-purpose unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). This paper presents an overview of the scientific and technological advances and outcomes obtained in the project. We introduce multi-spectral perception algorithms and aerial and ground-based systems developed for monitoring crop density, weed pressure, crop nitrogen nutrition status, and to accurately classify and locate weeds. We then introduce the navigation and mapping systems tailored to our robots in the agricultural environment, as well as the modules for collaborative mapping. We finally present the ground intervention hardware, software solutions, and interfaces we implemented and tested in different field conditions and with different crops. We describe a real use case in which a UAV collaborates with a UGV to monitor the field and to perform selective spraying without human intervention.Comment: Published in IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 29-49, Sept. 202

Resilient and Trustworthy Dynamic Data-driven Application Systems (DDDAS) Services for Crisis Management Environments

Future crisis management systems needresilient and trustworthy infrastructures to quickly develop reliable applications and processes, andensure end-to-end security, trust, and privacy. Due to the multiplicity and diversity of involved actors, volumes of data, and heterogeneity of shared information;crisis management systems tend to be highly vulnerable and subjectto unforeseen incidents. As a result, the dependability of crisis management systems can be at risk. This paper presents a cloud-based resilient and trustworthy infrastructure (known as rDaaS) to quickly develop secure crisis management systems. The rDaaS integrates the Dynamic Data-Driven Application Systems (DDDAS) paradigm into a service-oriented architecture over cloud technology and provides a set of resilient DDDAS-As-A Service (rDaaS) components to build secure and trusted adaptable crisis processes. The rDaaS also ensures resilience and security by obfuscating the execution environment and applying Behavior Software Encryption and Moving Technique Defense. A simulation environment for a nuclear plant crisis management case study is illustrated to build resilient and trusted crisis response processes

Systemic risks perspectives of Eyjafjallajökull volcano's 2010 eruption

In 2010, southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted, releasing ash that spread across Europe. Due to its potential to damage aircraft, much of European airspace was closed for six days. Known problems were brought to the forefront regarding the anticipation of and response to systemic risks. To contribute a deeper understanding of this situation, this paper explores this disaster through its fundamental causes and cascading impacts, highlighting perspectives from disaster risk reduction, complexity sciences, and health in order to support analysis and resolution of systemic risks. Two principal future directions emerge from this work. First, how to manage dependency on air travel. Second, how to think about and act to avert future calamities

A characterization of workflow management systems for extreme-scale applications

Automation of the execution of computational tasks is at the heart of improving scientific productivity. Over the last years, scientific workflows have been established as an important abstraction that captures data processing and computation of large and complex scientific applications. By allowing scientists to model and express entire data processing steps and their dependencies, workflow management systems relieve scientists from the details of an application and manage its execution on a computational infrastructure. As the resource requirements of today’s computational and data science applications that process vast amounts of data keep increasing, there is a compelling case for a new generation of advances in high-performance computing, commonly termed as extreme-scale computing, which will bring forth multiple challenges for the design of workflow applications and management systems. This paper presents a novel characterization of workflow management systems using features commonly associated with extreme-scale computing applications. We classify 15 popular workflow management systems in terms of workflow execution models, heterogeneous computing environments, and data access methods. The paper also surveys workflow applications and identifies gaps for future research on the road to extreme-scale workflows and management systems