ISURF: RFID Enabled Collaborative Supply Chain Planning Environment

To be able to cope with the requirements of today’s competitive and demanding digital world of business, companies, especially SMEs, need to be more agile, and be ready to react to the changing requirements of the sector. This requires a better view and a more comprehensive analysis of the whole marketplace which can be achieved through a knowledge oriented collaborative supply chain planning initiative. The parties also need to be capable of monitoring the supply chain visibility in a real time fashion, which can be enabled through the use of RFID devices. RFID enabled collaborative supply chain planning has been achieved by big industry players in well defined restricted business circumstances through some selected standard message schemes. However, SMEs are still far behind in this process due to their small IT budgets. In iSURF Project we address this problem by providing a set of open source tools to enable seamless collection of supply chain visibility, synchronizing this with master data, exchanging supply chain visibility and other planning data with each other through a service oriented supply chain planning environment which also handles the interoperability of the messages exchanged

Low-frequency gravitational-wave science with eLISA/NGO

We review the expected science performance of the New Gravitational-Wave Observatory (NGO, a.k.a. eLISA), a mission under study by the European Space Agency for launch in the early 2020s. eLISA will survey the low-frequency gravitational-wave sky (from 0.1 mHz to 1 Hz), detecting and characterizing a broad variety of systems and events throughout the Universe, including the coalescences of massive black holes brought together by galaxy mergers; the inspirals of stellar-mass black holes and compact stars into central galactic black holes; several millions of ultracompact binaries, both detached and mass transferring, in the Galaxy; and possibly unforeseen sources such as the relic gravitational-wave radiation from the early Universe. eLISA's high signal-to-noise measurements will provide new insight into the structure and history of the Universe, and they will test general relativity in its strong-field dynamical regime.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, proceedings of the 9th Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves. Final journal version. For a longer exposition of the eLISA science case, see http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.362

Laser Interferometer Space Antenna

Following the selection of The Gravitational Universe by ESA, and the successful flight of LISA Pathfinder, the LISA Consortium now proposes a 4 year mission in response to ESA's call for missions for L3. The observatory will be based on three arms with six active laser links, between three identical spacecraft in a triangular formation separated by 2.5 million km. LISA is an all-sky monitor and will offer a wide view of a dynamic cosmos using Gravitational Waves as new and unique messengers to unveil The Gravitational Universe. It provides the closest ever view of the infant Universe at TeV energy scales, has known sources in the form of verification binaries in the Milky Way, and can probe the entire Universe, from its smallest scales near the horizons of black holes, all the way to cosmological scales. The LISA mission will scan the entire sky as it follows behind the Earth in its orbit, obtaining both polarisations of the Gravitational Waves simultaneously, and will measure source parameters with astrophysically relevant sensitivity in a band from below $10^{-4}\,$Hz to above $10^{-1}\,$Hz.Comment: Submitted to ESA on January 13th in response to the call for missions for the L3 slot in the Cosmic Vision Programm

Collaborative Augmented worker and Artificial Intelligence in Zero defect Manufacturing environment

New technologies are bringing together shopfloor elements which were separated before. The human worker, the IOT system and the Artificial Intelligence can co-operate together in order to better prevent and solve any possible problem which can lead to a product defect. Collaboration is enabled by a platform connecting the worker via Augmented Reality with data from the industrial IOT and the suggestions from the Artificial Intelligence

Digital Transformation in Aeronautics through the ICARUS Aviation Data and Intelligence Marketplace

Today, digital transformation has drifted all industries with its proven capacity to improve operations and boost revenues while building a value chain ecosystem. The aeronautics ecosystem is almost unanimously invested in some way into a digital transformation strategy in which data typically plays an instrumental role. However, despite the vast quantity of data across myriad parameters that never stop flowing across the aircraft-passengers-luggage-cargo journeys, the aviation-related stakeholders are still at a relative disadvantage in terms of data gathering and sharing, especially since the eternal questions of “who owns the aircraft” and “who owns the passenger” remain open. In this contact, the present paper focuses on the design and delivery of the ICARUS data and intelligence platform that aims to enable trusted and fair data sharing and insightful data analytics in an end-to-end secure manner. The methodology followed during the implementation of the ICARUS platform is defined, the aviation data value chain is elaborated, the ICARUS Minimum Viable Product is outlined and the theoretical foundations of the ICARUS data management and value enrichment methods are introduced, giving way to a brief reference to the ICARUS unique selling points and platform implementation

Context-Aware Interaction Models in Cross-Organizational Processes

Abstract—Rigidly pre-planned business processes are applied in the field of production planning and product development to coordinate the collaboration of single enterprises. Each step in these workflows is precisely scheduled, accounting for external constraints such as availability of material, delivery dates, and efficiency of humans and machines. However, finally all these steps are performed, or at least controlled, by humans and it is likely that in human-operated environments failures happen, and misunderstandings require adaptations and adhoc interference to avoid delays in workflow executions. In this paper, we discuss the role of human interaction support in traditional process-oriented environments, and present new approaches to dynamic involvement and interactions with collaboration partners. We highlight a typical use case where human experts are flexibly involved in certain steps of workflows that assist single tasks owners to solve emerging problems. In our approach, experts are discovered based on dynamically changing contextual constraints, such as problem areas and required expertise, and we enable their fast involvement by using Web 2.0 communication facilities. Keywords-Context-aware collaboration, dynamic expert involvement, cross-organizational process models, trust I

Measuring Thermal and Electrical Performances of Additively Manufactured Magnetic Shielding Material: An Active Thermography Approach

The thermal and electrical responses of additive manufactured specimens were analysed for a additive manufactured steel magnetic shield as a case study. The analysis was based on the evidence that variations in the thermal properties of a material can be measured as a phase delay in thermal diffusion through the material bulk. The signal post-processing was performed, and the results were presented in a phase diagram. The results showed that after heat treatment, the slope of the phase diagram changed to less steep, indicating an increase in thermal diffusivity and hence thermal conductivity. The electrical conductivity was predicted using the thermal conductivity and the Weidemann-Franz law and validated by experimental measurements of the electrical conductivity. The same approach was applied to predict the electrical conductivity in the magnetic shielding, taking into consideration the scaling of the density due to porosity. The results showed that the thermographic non-destructive full field non-contact approach can be used to evaluate the electrical properties of a component and that the heat-treated specimens show better thermal diffusivity and hence thermal and electrical conductivity

L’utilizzo dell’induzione magnetica come sorgente termica per l’analisi dei difetti mediante termografia attiva: risultati preliminari

La termografia `e una tecnica di controllo non distruttivo basata sull’analisi dell’emissione o della risposta termica di un componente. Le tecniche termografiche possono essere raggruppate in due categorie: le tecniche passive, dove viene acquisita l’emissione termica del componente sotto esame senza che venga introdotta nessuna fonte di calore esterna; le tecniche attive, dove `e presente una forzante termica esterna e viene studiata la risposta termica del componente o del materiale. Questo lavoro presenta un approccio preliminare allo sviluppo di un sistema di riscaldamento a induzione magnetica da utilizzare come sorgente termica per la tecnica termografica. A differenza delle fonti di eccitazione esterna utilizzate comunemente, lampade alogene o laser, che producono un riscaldamento superficiale, la tecnica induttiva produce un riscaldamento volumico sulla parte di componente analizzata. Un ulteriore vantaggio di questa tecnica `e portato da una concentrazione maggiore di calore in corrispondenza dei difetti che porta ad una maggiore evidenza per contrasto nel termogramma e quindi ad una migliore capacit`a di rilevarli. Un altro vantaggio di questa tecnica deriva dal fatto che l’eccitazione termica non introduce piu calore attraverso la superficie, che quindi potrebbe portare molte false indicazioni legate a corrosione superficiale, irregolarit`a, vernici e difetti superficiali varie