Real-Time Abnormal Event Detection for Enhanced Security in Autonomous Shuttles Mobility Infrastructures

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are already operating on the streets of many countries around the globe. Contemporary concerns about AVs do not relate to the implementation of fundamental technologies, as they are already in use, but are rather increasingly centered on the way that such technologies will affect emerging transportation systems, our social environment, and the people living inside it. Many concerns also focus on whether such systems should be fully automated or still be partially controlled by humans. This work aims to address the new reality that is formed in autonomous shuttles mobility infrastructures as a result of the absence of the bus driver and the increased threat from terrorism in European cities. Typically, drivers are trained to handle incidents of passengers’ abnormal behavior, incidents of petty crimes, and other abnormal events, according to standard procedures adopted by the transport operator. Surveillance using camera sensors as well as smart software in the bus will maximize the feeling and the actual level of security. In this paper, an online, end-to-end solution is introduced based on deep learning techniques for the timely, accurate, robust, and automatic detection of various petty crime types. The proposed system can identify abnormal passenger behavior such as vandalism and accidents but can also enhance passenger security via petty crimes detection such as aggression, bag-snatching, and vandalism. The solution achieves excellent results across different use cases and environmental conditions. Document type: Articl

Design of complex low power and high performance embedded systems

Embedded systems are everywhere. Although it is not very long since they have been introduced into the market place, they have managed to become an essential part of our daily lives. The design and implementation of embedded systems is still an open issue posing many challenges to research engineers all over the world. Thus, the design of an embedded system is a challenge for the designer to achieve the best performance, with low power consumption, low cost and little effort. The multitude of special requirements of these systems, in conjunction with the great number of functions, that they are used for, has prompted many designers to propose a plethora of design techniques, as it can be seen in the technical and scientific literature.In this Ph.D Thesis, we deal with the problem of designing embedded systems by presenting a unified framework, consisting of four different independent methodology parts, and being a complete embedded system design methodology. These four parts are used to successfully deal with the four most important issues that hinder the achievement of high performance and low power consumption. More specifically, these parts are: (a) data memory hierarchy design, (b) instruction cache memory design, (c) improvement of memory's bandwidth, and (d) application specific circuit design. Our methodology produces efficient solutions, in terms of performance, power consumption, or both. The proposed high level methodology uses estimating techniques, in order to decide about the best implementations, regarding accuracy and speed. Estimations on eleven real-life applications, and comparisons with other researchers 's work, demonstrated the superiority of the methodology proposed in this Ph.D Thesis.Τα ενσωματωμένα συστήματα βρίσκονται παντού. Μέσα σε λίγα χρόνια έχουν καταφέρει να εισχωρήσουν σε κάθε τομέα της ζωής μας. Όμως, παρόλη τη μεγάλη διείσδυση στην κοινωνία μας, ο σχεδιασμός και η υλοποίησή τους παραμένει ένα πρόβλημα που ταλανίζει πλήθος ερευνητών μηχανικών. Γι" αυτό το λόγο, ο σχεδιασμός ενός πολύπλοκου ενσωματωμένου συστήματος αποτελεί μια μεγάλη πρόκληση για το σχεδιαστή, προκειμένου να επιτύχει τις καλύτερες επιδόσεις, με τη χαμηλότερη κατανάλωση ισχύος, με το ανταγωνιστικότερο κόστος και το μικρότερο χρόνο σχεδιασμού. Τα ποικίλα ιδιαίτερα χαρακτηριστικά των συστημάτων αυτών, σε συνδυασμό με το μεγάλο πλήθος των λειτουργιών που αυτά καλούνται να εκτελέσουν, έχουν ως αποτέλεσμα την ύπαρξη, στη βιβλιογραφία, αρκετών διαφορετικών μεθοδολογιών σχεδιασμού. Στην παρούσα Διδακτορική Διατριβή, αντιμετωπίζουμε επιτυχώς το πρόβλημα του σχεδιασμού των ενσωματωμένων συστημάτων, παρουσιάζοντας ένα ενοποιημένο πλαίσιο αποτελούμενο από τέσσερα διαφορετικά αυτοτελή τμήματα μεθοδολογίας. Η μεθοδολογία μας αποτελείται από τέσσερα τμήματα, τα οποία αντιμετωπίζουν τους τέσσερις πιο σημαντικούς παράγοντες που αποτελούν τροχοπέδη στην επίτευξη υψηλών επιδόσεων και χαμηλής κατανάλωσης ισχύος. Συγκεκριμένα, τα τμήματα αυτά είναι: (α) σχεδιασμός της ιεραρχίας της μνήμης δεδομένων, (β) σχεδιασμός της σκιώδους μνήμης εντολών, (γ) βελτιστοποίηση του εύρους ζώνης της μνήμης, και (δ) σχεδιασμός του εξειδικευμένου κυκλώματος ως προς την εφαρμογή. Οι λύσεις που βρίσκονται από τη μεθοδολογία μας, είναι βέλτιστες ως προς τις επιδόσεις ή την κατανάλωση ισχύος, ή και τα δύο. Μάλιστα, η υψηλού επιπέδου προτεινόμενη μεθοδολογία χρησιμοποιεί μοντέλα εκτιμήσεων, ώστε να καθοδηγείται γρήγορα και με ακρίβεια προς τις βέλτιστες λύσεις. Οι εκτιμήσεις έντεκα πραγματικών εφαρμογών και οι συγκρίσεις με αντίστοιχες εργασίες άλλων ερευνητών αποδεικνύουν την υπεροχή της προτεινόμενης μεθοδολογίας

Enhancing the Hardware Pipelining Optimization Technique of the SHA-3 via FPGA

Information is transmitted between multiple insecure routing hops in text, image, video, and audio. Thus, this multi-hop digital data transfer makes secure transmission with confidentiality and integrity imperative. This protection of the transmitted data can be achieved via hashing algorithms. Furthermore, data integrity must be ensured, which is feasible using hashing algorithms. The advanced cryptographic Secure Hashing Algorithm 3 (SHA-3) is not sensitive to a cryptanalysis attack and is widely preferred due to its long-term security in various applications. However, due to the ever-increasing size of the data to be transmitted, an effective improvement is required to fulfill real-time computations with multiple types of optimization. The use of FPGAs is the ideal mechanism to improve algorithm performance and other metrics, such as throughput (Gbps), frequency (MHz), efficiency (Mbps/slices), reduction of area (slices), and power consumption. Providing upgraded computer architectures for SHA-3 is an active area of research, with continuous performance improvements. In this article, we have focused on enhancing the hardware performance metrics of throughput and efficiency by reducing the area cost of the SHA-3 for all output size lengths (224, 256, 384, and 512 bits). Our approach introduces a novel architectural design based on pipelining, which is combined with a simplified format for the round constant (RC) generator in the Iota (ι) step only consisting of 7 bits rather than the standard 64 bits. By reducing hardware resource utilization in the area and minimizing the amount of computation required at the Iota (ι) step, our design achieves the highest levels of throughput and efficiency. Through extensive experimentation, we have demonstrated the remarkable performance of our approach. Our results showcase an impressive throughput rate of 22.94 Gbps and an efficiency rate of 19.95 Mbps/slices. Our work contributes to advancing computer architectures tailored for SHA-3, therefore unlocking new possibilities for secure and high-performance data transmission

Effectiveness of the IoT in Regional Energy Transition: The Smart Bin Case Study

As part of the European Green Deal, the EU aims to become climate-neutral and reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Lignite has long dominated the electricity system of Greece, providing cheap and reliable energy, given the abundant and low-cost domestic resources at the cost of increased emission. In line with its national and international commitments to climate action, Greece needs to urgently transform its energy system and overcome its technological lock-ins, paving the way for a net-zero emission economy by the mid-century. The Internet of Things plays a significant role in this direction, providing with its technologies the protection of the environment and creating new jobs. The smart bins constitute an interesting proposal for areas in the energy transition. This research work reflects the current situation in the region of Western Macedonia and proposes the smart bin project as a part of the solution in the transition to the post-lignite era. For this purpose, survey research has been conducted in the municipalities of Greece on waste management technology

A music sharing platform using an embedded system

Due to the rapid growth of technology over the last few decades, the urban e-waste generation rate has constantly been increasing. Discarded electronic appliances such as mobile phones, computers and televisions have caused increasing environmental concerns. Recycling and reusing these products is the only way to make a sustainable environment. In this paper, we propose a low cost system based on the Arduino Nano microcontroller that uses obsolete hardware that would otherwise be considered garbage, such as floppy and disk drives to play music using MIDI files. The system can be used as an instrument in schools to teach students about music, about how sound is produced and also compose music. The cost of the proposed system is lower compared to other implementations found in literature. Finally, we evaluated the performance of the proposed prototype by using a wide range of audio files in different scenarios

Secure Autonomous Cloud Brained Humanoid Robot Assisting Rescuers in Hazardous Environments

On 31 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global emergency after the discovery of a new pandemic disease that caused severe lung problems. The spread of the disease at an international level drew the attention of many researchers who attempted to find solutions to ameliorate the problem. The implementation of robotics has been one of the proposed solutions, as automated humanoid robots can be used in many situations and limit the exposure of humans to the disease. Many humanoid robot implementations are found in the literature; however, most of them have some distinct drawbacks, such as a high cost and complexity. Our research proposes a novel, secure and efficient programmable system using a humanoid robot that is able to autonomously move and detect survivors in emergency scenarios, with the potential to communicate verbally with victims. The proposed humanoid robot is powered by the cloud and benefits from the powerful storage, computation, and communication resources of a typical modern data center. In order to evaluate the proposed system, we conducted multiple experiments in synthetic hazardous environments

Secure Autonomous Cloud Brained Humanoid Robot Assisting Rescuers in Hazardous Environments

On 31 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global emergency after the discovery of a new pandemic disease that caused severe lung problems. The spread of the disease at an international level drew the attention of many researchers who attempted to find solutions to ameliorate the problem. The implementation of robotics has been one of the proposed solutions, as automated humanoid robots can be used in many situations and limit the exposure of humans to the disease. Many humanoid robot implementations are found in the literature; however, most of them have some distinct drawbacks, such as a high cost and complexity. Our research proposes a novel, secure and efficient programmable system using a humanoid robot that is able to autonomously move and detect survivors in emergency scenarios, with the potential to communicate verbally with victims. The proposed humanoid robot is powered by the cloud and benefits from the powerful storage, computation, and communication resources of a typical modern data center. In order to evaluate the proposed system, we conducted multiple experiments in synthetic hazardous environments