Ricerc@Sapienza

We address the problem of devising an optimized energy aware flight plan for multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) mounted Base Stations (BS) within heterogeneous networks. The chosen approach makes use of Q-learning algorithms, through the definition of a reward related to relevant quality and battery consumption metrics, providing also service overlapping avoidance between UAVs, that is two or more UAVs serving the same cluster area.

Small cells (SCs) mounted on top of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are a promising solution to boost the capacity in hotspot areas. However, the adoption of UAV-SCs involves the planning of their missions over time, which includes the scheduling of recharging actions of each UAV-SC at ground sites. Typically, the energy needed to recharge UAV-SCs is derived from the grid, which can be coupled with microgeneration exploiting renewable energy sources (e.g., solar panels).

The last few years have seen a growing use of robots to replace humans in dangerous activities, such as inspections, border control, and military operations. In some application areas, as the latter, there is the need to hide strategic information, such as acquired data or relevant positions. This paper presents a vision based system to find encrypted targets in unknown environments by using small-scale robots and visual cryptography. The robots acquire a scene by a standard RGB camera and use a visual cryptography based technique to encrypt the data.

This paper presents some of the results obtained from the integrated use of 3D surveying techniques and illustrates some types of analysis and graphic representations that can be conducted and reproduced. The case study concerns the church of San Nicola in Montedoro that is one of the oldest in the city of Martina Franca in the province of Taranto (Italy) and presumably dates back to the fourteenth century.

Caves have been used by humans and animals for several thousand years until present but, at these time scales, their structures can rapidly change due to erosion and concretion processes. For this reason, the availability of precise 3D models improves the data quality and quantity allowing the reconstruction of their ancient appearance, structure and origin. However, caves are usually characterised by lack of light, high percentage of relative humidity, narrow spaces and complex morphology. Thus, quite often the traditional topographic instruments cannot be employed.