A Low-cost Sensing System for Cooperative Air Quality Monitoring in Urban Areas

Air quality in urban areas is a very important topic as it closely affects the health of citizens. Recent studies highlight that the exposure to polluted air can increase the incidence of diseases and deteriorate the quality of life. Hence, it is necessary to develop tools for real-time air quality monitoring, so as to allow appropriate and timely decisions. In this paper, we present uSense, a low-cost cooperative monitoring tool that allows knowing, in real-time, the concentrations of polluting gases in various areas of the city. Specifically, users monitor the areas of their interest by deploying low-cost and low-power sensor nodes. In addition, they can share the collected data following a social networking approach. uSense has been tested through an in-field experimentation performed in different areas of a city. The obtained results are in line with those provided by the local environmental control authority and show that uSense can be profitably used for air quality monitoring

The “Eyeballing” technique : an emerging and alerting trend of alcohol misuse

Alternative methods of alcohol consumption have recently emerged among adolescents and young adults, including the alcohol “eyeballing”, which consist in the direct pouring of alcoholic substances on the ocular surface epithelium. In a context of drug and behavioural addictions change, “eyeballing” can be seen as one of the latest and potentially highly risky new trends. We aimed to analyze the existing medical literature as well as online material on this emerging trend of alcohol misusePeer reviewedFinal Published versio

Enabling Mixed-Precision Quantized Neural Networks in Extreme-Edge Devices

The deployment of Quantized Neural Networks (QNN) on advanced microcontrollers requires optimized software to exploit digital signal processing (DSP) extensions of modern instruction set architectures (ISA). As such, recent research proposed optimized libraries for QNNs (from 8-bit to 2-bit) such as CMSIS-NN and PULP-NN. This work presents an extension to the PULP-NN library targeting the acceleration of mixed-precision Deep Neural Networks, an emerging paradigm able to significantly shrink the memory footprint of deep neural networks with negligible accuracy loss. The library, composed of 27 kernels, one for each permutation of input feature maps, weights, and output feature maps precision (considering 8-bit, 4-bit and 2-bit), enables efficient inference of QNN on parallel ultra-low-power (PULP) clusters of RISC-V based processors, featuring the RV32IMCXpulpV2 ISA. The proposed solution, benchmarked on an 8-cores GAP-8 PULP cluster, reaches peak performance of 16 MACs/cycle on 8 cores, performing 21x to 25x faster than an STM32H7 (powered by an ARM Cortex M7 processor) with 15x to 21x better energy efficiency.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, published in 17th ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers (CF '20), May 11--13, 2020, Catania, Ital

Enabling mixed-precision quantized neural networks in extreme-edge devices

The deployment of Quantized Neural Networks (QNN) on advanced microcontrollers requires optimized software to exploit digital signal processing (DSP) extensions of modern instruction set architectures (ISA). As such, recent research proposed optimized libraries for QNNs (from 8-bit to 2-bit) such as CMSIS-NN and PULP-NN. This work presents an extension to the PULP-NN library targeting the acceleration of mixed-precision Deep Neural Networks, an emerging paradigm able to significantly shrink the memory footprint of deep neural networks with negligible accuracy loss. The library, composed of 27 kernels, one for each permutation of input feature maps, weights, and output feature maps precision (considering 8-bit, 4-bit and 2-bit), enables efficient inference of QNN on parallel ultra-low-power (PULP) clusters of RISC-V based processors, featuring the RV32IMCXpulpV2 ISA. The proposed solution, benchmarked on an 8-cores GAP-8 PULP cluster, reaches peak performance of 16 MACs/cycle on 8 cores, performing 21 7 to 25 7 faster than an STM32H7 (powered by an ARM Cortex M7 processor) with 15 7 to 21 7 better energy efficiency

GVSoC: A Highly Configurable, Fast and Accurate Full-Platform Simulator for RISC-V based IoT Processors

open6siembargoed_20220427Bruschi, Nazareno; Haugou, Germain; Tagliavini, Giuseppe; Conti, Francesco; Benini, Luca; Rossi, DavideBruschi, Nazareno; Haugou, Germain; Tagliavini, Giuseppe; Conti, Francesco; Benini, Luca; Rossi, David

DORY: Automatic End-to-End Deployment of Real-World DNNs on Low-Cost IoT MCUs

The deployment of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) on end-nodes at the extreme edge of the Internet-of-Things is a critical enabler to support pervasive Deep Learning-enhanced applications. Low-Cost MCU-based end-nodes have limited on-chip memory and often replace caches with scratchpads, to reduce area overheads and increase energy efficiency -- requiring explicit DMA-based memory transfers between different levels of the memory hierarchy. Mapping modern DNNs on these systems requires aggressive topology-dependent tiling and double-buffering. In this work, we propose DORY (Deployment Oriented to memoRY) - an automatic tool to deploy DNNs on low cost MCUs with typically less than 1MB of on-chip SRAM memory. DORY abstracts tiling as a Constraint Programming (CP) problem: it maximizes L1 memory utilization under the topological constraints imposed by each DNN layer. Then, it generates ANSI C code to orchestrate off- and on-chip transfers and computation phases. Furthermore, to maximize speed, DORY augments the CP formulation with heuristics promoting performance-effective tile sizes. As a case study for DORY, we target GreenWaves Technologies GAP8, one of the most advanced parallel ultra-low power MCU-class devices on the market. On this device, DORY achieves up to 2.5x better MAC/cycle than the GreenWaves proprietary software solution and 18.1x better than the state-of-the-art result on an STM32-F746 MCU on single layers. Using our tool, GAP-8 can perform end-to-end inference of a 1.0-MobileNet-128 network consuming just 63 pJ/MAC on average @ 4.3 fps - 15.4x better than an STM32-F746. We release all our developments - the DORY framework, the optimized backend kernels, and the related heuristics - as open-source software.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, 4 tables, 2 listings. Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Computers (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9381618

Characterization and modeling of CMOS-compatible acoustical particle velocity sensors for applications requiring low supply voltages

Acoustic particle velocity sensors have been obtained applying simple low resolution micromachining steps to chips fabricated using a standard microelectronic process. Each sensor consists of four silicided polysilicon wires, suspended over cavities etched into the substrate, and connected to form a heatstone bridge. Full compatibility of the micromachining procedure with the original process is demonstrated by integrating a simple pre-amplifier on the same chip as the sensors and showing that both blocks are functional. Proper design of the sensing structures allows them to operate with a single 3.3 V power supply. Sensitivity and noise measurements, performed to estimate the sensor detection limit, are described. Excess noise with a flicker-like behavior, not ascribable to the amplifier, is found when the bridges are biased in working conditions. In addition, the dependence of the sensitivity on the dc bias voltage of the bridges is investigated, comparing the experimental data with the results of a simple analytical model and finite element method simulations

FLOTAC for the diagnosis of Hymenolepis spp. infection: proof-of-concept and comparing diagnostic accuracy with other methods

Hymenolepis nana is the most common cestode parasitizing humans, yet it is under-diagnosed. We determined the optimal flotation solution (FS) for the diagnosis of this intestinal parasite with the FLOTAC method, and compared its diagnostic accuracy with an ether-concentration technique and the Kato-Katz method. Zinc sulphate (specific gravity 1.20) proved to be the best-performing FS. Using this FS, we detected 65 H. nana infections among 234 fixed fecal samples from Tajik and Sahrawi children (prevalence 27.8%). The ether-concentration technique detected 40 infections (prevalence 17.1%) in the same samples. Considering the combined results as a reference, the sensitivities of FLOTAC and ether-concentration were 95.6% and 58.8%, respectively. The Kato-Katz method resulted in a prevalence of only 8.7%. In terms of eggs per gram of stool, a significantly (P <0.05) higher value was obtained with the FLOTAC and Kato-Katz techniques compared to ether-concentration. In another study carried out in China, the FLOTAC method detected six Hymenolepis diminuta infections in 302 fecal samples, whereas five samples were found positive with the Kato-Katz technique. We conclude that FLOTAC is an accurate coprodiagnostic technique for H. nana and H. diminuta, two species which join a growing list of intestinal parasites that can be reliably diagnosed by this techniqu