Federica Villa

Sheila Seidel, Hoover Rueda-Chacon, Iris Cusini et al.

The ability to form non-line-of-sight (NLOS) images of changing scenes could be transformative in a variety of fields, including search and rescue, autonomous vehicle navigation, and reconnaissance. Most existing active NLOS methods illuminate the hidden scene using a pulsed laser directed at a relay surface and collect time-resolved measurements of returning light. The prevailing approaches include raster scanning of a rectangular grid on a vertical wall opposite the volume of interest to generate a collection of confocal measurements. These are inherently limited by the need for laser scanning. Methods that avoid laser scanning track the moving parts of the hidden scene as one or two point targets. In this work, based on more complete optical response modeling yet still without multiple illumination positions, we demonstrate accurate reconstructions of objects in motion and a 'map' of the stationary scenery behind them. The ability to count, localize, and characterize the sizes of hidden objects in motion, combined with mapping of the stationary hidden scene, could greatly improve indoor situational awareness in a variety of applications.

Sara Rimoldi, Arianna De Vecchi, Hazem Hesham Yousef Shalby et al.

Wearable devices running Human Activity Recognition(HAR) on Inertial Measurement Units~(IMUs) waste energy by performing continuous classification for each window, even during long periods of unchanged activity. We address this with a lightweight change-detection gate: a non-parametric algorithm based on dynamic template matching that runs continuously at only approximately 16kFLOPs per step, requires no offline training, and does not need prior definition of target activity classes. The gate invokes the full HAR network only when it detects an activity change, reducing the computational load by over 67% in realistic monitoring settings. The algorithm is evaluated on smart glasses, smartwatch, and smartphone data, requiring only a brief device-specific calibration phase. The gate achieves 98% sensitivity on UCA-EHAR, ensuring no genuine activity transition is missed, while 75% specificity keeps unnecessary HAR invocations low. Results on WISDM are 97% sensitivity and 76% specificity, demonstrating robustness and flexibility to various settings.

Hazem Hesham Yousef Shalby, Arianna De Vecchi, Alice Scandelli et al.

Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML) is a novel research field aiming at integrating Machine Learning (ML) within embedded devices with limited memory, computation, and energy. Recently, a new branch of TinyML has emerged, focusing on integrating ML directly into the sensors to further reduce the power consumption of embedded devices. Interestingly, despite their state-of-the-art performance in many tasks, none of the current solutions in the literature aims to optimize the implementation of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) operating directly into sensors. In this paper, we introduce for the first time in the literature the optimized design and implementation of Depth-First CNNs operating on the Intelligent Sensor Processing Unit (ISPU) within an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) by STMicroelectronics. Our approach partitions the CNN between the ISPU and the microcontroller (MCU) and employs an Early-Exit mechanism to stop the computations on the IMU when enough confidence about the results is achieved, hence significantly reducing power consumption. When using a NUCLEO-F411RE board, this solution achieved an average current consumption of 4.8 mA, marking an 11% reduction compared to the regular inference pipeline on the MCU, while having equal accuracy.

Erik Armengaud, Georg Macher, Alexander Massoner et al.

The open and cooperative nature of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) poses new challenges in assuring dependability. The DEIS project (Dependability Engineering Innovation for automotive CPS. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 732242, see http://www.deis-project.eu) addresses these challenges by developing technologies that form a science of dependable system integration. In the core of these technologies lies the concept of a Digital Dependability Identity (DDI) of a component or system. DDIs are modular, composable, and executable in the field facilitating (a) efficient synthesis of component and system dependability information over the supply chain and (b) effective evaluation of this information in-the-field for safe and secure composition of highly distributed and autonomous CPS. The paper outlines the DDI concept and opportunities for application in four industrial use cases.

Alex Turpin, Gabriella Musarra, Valentin Kapitany et al.

Traditional paradigms for imaging rely on the use of a spatial structure, either in the detector (pixels arrays) or in the illumination (patterned light). Removal of the spatial structure in the detector or illumination, i.e., imaging with just a single-point sensor, would require solving a very strongly ill-posed inverse retrieval problem that to date has not been solved. Here, we demonstrate a data-driven approach in which full 3D information is obtained with just a single-point, single-photon avalanche diode that records the arrival time of photons reflected from a scene that is illuminated with short pulses of light. Imaging with single-point time-of-flight (temporal) data opens new routes in terms of speed, size, and functionality. As an example, we show how the training based on an optical time-of-flight camera enables a compact radio-frequency impulse radio detection and ranging transceiver to provide 3D images.