Hybrid LoRa-IEEE 802.11s Opportunistic Mesh Networking for Flexible UAV Swarming

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and small drones are nowadays being widely used in heterogeneous use cases: aerial photography, precise agriculture, inspections, environmental data collection, search-and-rescue operations, surveillance applications, and more. When designing UAV swarm-based applications, a key "ingredient" to make them effective is the communication system (possible involving multiple protocols) shared by flying drones and terrestrial base stations. When compared to ground communication systems for swarms of terrestrial vehicles, one of the main advantages of UAV-based communications is the presence of direct Line-of-Sight (LOS) links between flying UAVs operating at an altitude of tens of meters, often ensuring direct visibility among themselves and even with some ground Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs). Therefore, the adoption of proper networking strategies for UAV swarms allows users to exchange data at distances (significantly) longer than in ground applications. In this paper, we propose a hybrid communication architecture for UAV swarms, leveraging heterogeneous radio mesh networking based on long-range communication protocols—such as LoRa and LoRaWAN—and IEEE 802.11s protocols. We then discuss its strengths, constraints, viable implementation, and relevant reference use cases

Redundant and Loosely Coupled LiDAR-Wi-Fi Integration for Robust Global Localization in Autonomous Mobile Robotics

This paper presents a framework addressing the challenge of global localization in autonomous mobile robotics by integrating LiDAR-based descriptors and Wi-Fi fingerprinting in a pre-mapped environment. This is motivated by the increasing demand for reliable localization in complex scenarios, such as urban areas or underground mines, requiring robust systems able to overcome limitations faced by traditional Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based localization methods. By leveraging the complementary strengths of LiDAR and Wi-Fi sensors used to generate predictions and evaluate the confidence of each prediction as an indicator of potential degradation, we propose a redundancy-based approach that enhances the system's overall robustness and accuracy. The proposed framework allows independent operation of the LiDAR and Wi-Fi sensors, ensuring system redundancy. By combining the predictions while considering their confidence levels, we achieve enhanced and consistent performance in localization tasks.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in the 21st International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2023

Agroinoculation of Grapevine Pinot Gris Virus in tobacco and grapevine provides insights on viral pathogenesis

The Grapevine Pinot Gris disease (GPG-d) is a novel disease characterized by symptoms such as leaf mottling and deformation, which has been recently reported in grapevines, and mostly in Pinot gris. Plants show obvious symptoms at the beginning of the growing season, while during summer symptom recovery frequently occurs, manifesting as symptomless leaves. A new Trichovirus, named Grapevine Pinot gris virus (GPGV), which belongs to the family Betaflexiviridae was found in association with infected plants. The detection of the virus in asymptomatic grapevines raised doubts about disease aetiology. Therefore, the primary target of this work was to set up a reliable system for the study of the disease in controlled conditions, avoiding interfering factor(s) that could affect symptom development. To this end, two clones of the virus, pRI::GPGV-vir and pRI::GPGV-lat, were generated from total RNA collected from one symptomatic and one asymptomatic Pinot gris grapevine, respectively. The clones, which encompassed the entire genome of the virus, were used in Agrobacterium-mediated inoculation of Vitis vinifera and Nicotiana benthamiana plants. All inoculated plants developed symptoms regardless of their inoculum source, demonstrating a correlation between the presence of GPGV and symptomatic manifestations. Four months post inoculum, the grapevines inoculated with the pRI::GPGV-lat clone developed asymptomatic leaves that were still positive to GPGV detection. Three to four weeks later (i.e. ca. 5 months post inoculum), the same phenomenon was observed in the grapevines inoculated with pRI::GPGV-vir. This observation perfectly matches symptom progression in infected field-grown grapevines, suggesting a possible role for plant antiviral mechanisms, such as RNA silencing, in the recovery process.</div

A Modular Multi-interface Gateway for Heterogeneous IoT Networking

The massive deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) architectures and applications, in many fields over the last decade, has accelerated research efforts on low-power wireless connectivity protocols. Moreover, many standards have been introduced, highlighting the need to make data flow among different communication protocols and network interfaces feasible. To this end, devices like Gateways (GWs) play a crucial role in many IoT applications and will impact future developments and possibilities. In this paper, the design and deployment of a new modular and scalable GW architecture solution, suitable for a wide plethora of use case scenarios and useful as a starting point for many possible improvements and applications, is proposed. Experimental performance results are discussed, showing the roles of different interfaces in specific use cases in which the proposed this solution may be applied

Experimental Analysis of the Effect of Cathodic CO2 Supply to Industrial Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

In the SOS-CO2 cycle, a newly developed hybrid cycle for blue power production, the SOFC cathode is supplied with a CO2-rich oxidizing stream, while the anode is fed with a reformate mixture. The performance and the durability of 25 cm2 Ni-YSZ anode-supported SOFCs are experimentally evaluated under the SOS-CO2 cycle conditions for 150 h. By testing symmetric cells with LSCF-GDC and LSC-GDC electrodes, the effects of the CO2-rich atmosphere on the cathodic material are also investigated. The results show that the loss of performance caused by the cathodic supply of CO2 is stable in time, but also reversible when switching back to air. The cathodic supply of CO2 causes both an increase of the polarization resistance and of the ohmic resistance, suggesting a reduction of electronic conductivity compatible with formation of carbonates on the perovskite surface

Smart Selective Antennas System (SSAS): Improving 4G LTE Connectivity for UAVs Using Directive Selective Antennas

In this paper, the prototypical deployment of a Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) antennas system, denoted as Smart Selective Antennas System (SSAS), aiming at mitigating inter-cell interference effects of cellular networks for in-flight Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), is discussed. In detail, the proposed SSAS is beneficial to increase the communication reliability over existing cellular networks, especially with regard to complex Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drones&#x2019; missions and applications. Its deployment is motivated as existing 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular networks (as well as 5G networks) are mainly designed and optimized for terrestrial utilization, thus not taking into account interference effects on flying connected devices. The prototypical implementation of the SSAS has been expedient to conduct multiple experimental flights with a drone at different altitudes, collecting performance results and validating the proposed SSAS as a viable solution for inter-cell interference mitigation

RISC-V Processor Technologies for Aerospace Applications in the ISOLDE Project

Modern space applications impose significant challenges to the design of hardware and software platforms. Beyond traditional applications such as avionics, Attitude Orbit Control, and signal/telemetry processing, new developments increasingly leverage Machine Learning models to enhance the autonomy of spacecraft. Such AI-based functionalities promise significant advantages, but require computing power beyond what can be provided by current on-board platforms. At the same time, the challenge of technological sovereignty requires a move towards open hardware and software. To achieve these objectives, within the KDT ISOLDE project started in 2023, we propose the development of a new family of processors for AI-based applications to be deployed on board of satellites. In this paper, we showcase some examples of space applications with their requirements, and highlight the possible solutions as well as the corresponding work that will be carried out in ISOLDE, and the expected results