NIFeb 19
Voice-Driven Semantic Perception for UAV-Assisted Emergency NetworksNuno Saavedra, Pedro Ribeiro, André Coelho et al.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted networks are increasingly foreseen as a promising approach for emergency response, providing rapid, flexible, and resilient communications in environments where terrestrial infrastructure is degraded or unavailable. In such scenarios, voice radio communications remain essential for first responders due to their robustness; however, their unstructured nature prevents direct integration with automated UAV-assisted network management. This paper proposes SIREN, an AI-driven framework that enables voice-driven perception for UAV-assisted networks. By integrating Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) with Large Language Model (LLM)-based semantic extraction and Natural Language Processing (NLP) validation, SIREN converts emergency voice traffic into structured, machine-readable information, including responding units, location references, emergency severity, and Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements. SIREN is evaluated using synthetic emergency scenarios with controlled variations in language, speaker count, background noise, and message complexity. The results demonstrate robust transcription and reliable semantic extraction across diverse operating conditions, while highlighting speaker diarization and geographic ambiguity as the main limiting factors. These findings establish the feasibility of voice-driven situational awareness for UAV-assisted networks and show a practical foundation for human-in-the-loop decision support and adaptive network management in emergency response operations.
CVMay 22, 2024
TS40K: a 3D Point Cloud Dataset of Rural Terrain and Electrical Transmission SystemDiogo Lavado, Cláudia Soares, Alessandra Micheletti et al.
Research on supervised learning algorithms in 3D scene understanding has risen in prominence and witness great increases in performance across several datasets. The leading force of this research is the problem of autonomous driving followed by indoor scene segmentation. However, openly available 3D data on these tasks mainly focuses on urban scenarios. In this paper, we propose TS40K, a 3D point cloud dataset that encompasses more than 40,000 Km on electrical transmission systems situated in European rural terrain. This is not only a novel problem for the research community that can aid in the high-risk mission of power-grid inspection, but it also offers 3D point clouds with distinct characteristics from those in self-driving and indoor 3D data, such as high point-density and no occlusion. In our dataset, each 3D point is labeled with 1 out of 22 annotated classes. We evaluate the performance of state-of-the-art methods on our dataset concerning 3D semantic segmentation and 3D object detection. Finally, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the results along with key challenges such as using labels that were not originally intended for learning tasks.
NIOct 4, 2025
A4FN: an Agentic AI Architecture for Autonomous Flying NetworksAndré Coelho, Pedro Ribeiro, Helder Fontes et al.
This position paper presents A4FN, an Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) architecture for intent-driven automation in Flying Networks (FNs) using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as access nodes. A4FN leverages Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) to enable real-time, context-aware network control via a distributed agentic system. It comprises two components: the Perception Agent (PA), which semantically interprets multimodal input -- including imagery, audio, and telemetry data -- from UAV-mounted sensors to derive Service Level Specifications (SLSs); and the Decision-and-Action Agent (DAA), which reconfigures the network based on inferred intents. A4FN embodies key properties of Agentic AI, including autonomy, goal-driven reasoning, and continuous perception-action cycles. Designed for mission-critical, infrastructure-limited scenarios such as disaster response, it supports adaptive reconfiguration, dynamic resource management, and interoperability with emerging wireless technologies. The paper details the A4FN architecture, its core innovations, and open research challenges in multi-agent coordination and Agentic AI integration in next-generation FNs.
NIAug 6, 2025
CONVERGE: A Multi-Agent Vision-Radio Architecture for xAppsFilipe B. Teixeira, Carolina Simões, Paulo Fidalgo et al.
Telecommunications and computer vision have evolved independently. With the emergence of high-frequency wireless links operating mostly in line-of-sight, visual data can help predict the channel dynamics by detecting obstacles and help overcoming them through beamforming or handover techniques. This paper proposes a novel architecture for delivering real-time radio and video sensing information to O-RAN xApps through a multi-agent approach, and introduces a new video function capable of generating blockage information for xApps, enabling Integrated Sensing and Communications. Experimental results show that the delay of sensing information remains under 1\,ms and that an xApp can successfully use radio and video sensing information to control the 5G/6G RAN in real-time.