Plenary Lecture
Smart Sensors in Modern Applications for Emergency Avoidance and Handling
Professor Krzysztof A. Cyran
Director of Virtual Flying Laboratory
Silesian University of Technology (SUT)
Gliwice, Poland
E-mail: Krzysztof.Cyran@polsl.pl
Abstract: In the lecture I will present how modern technologies of smart sensing are used for handling and sometimes for preventing the emergency situations. The talk will address three different environments, covering: terrestrial, aviation and underground applications. The technologies used in terrestrial application will be presented based on the architecture of Emergency Prevention and Handling System (EPHS) developed in the EGALITE project (egalite.polsl.pl)
The system gathers crucial data about accidents delivered by mobile client-type applications and visualizes these data on terrain maps, what improves the process of decision making for professionals in rescue center. While dedicated primarily for emergency handling on earth, the system uses also technologies incorporated into EPHS from aviation sector, such as ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast) module supplying the information about localizations of rescue aircrafts, in particular medical helicopters. All contemporary aircraft are equipped with the ADS-B transponders, which broadcast constantly information about their ID, call sign, position, velocity, heading, vertical speed, etc. Such messages are received by the ground station, and sent to the EPHS server. The system relies on the results of our research regarding precision of satellite navigation receivers embedded into contemporary mobile phones, which are used as client-side platforms for accident detection system. The system’s automatic inference module is based on machine learning technology, which has evolved from our experiments performed in Matlab to become fully functional mobile application, freely available for users from the Google Play platform. As mentioned in the beginning, the lecture will address also emergency handling in the underground terrains. For this purpose, I will present the system being developed within Telerescuer project (www.telerescuer.eu). The goal of this project is to develop a system for the “virtual teleportation” (or virtual immersion) of rescuers to the subterranean areas of a coal mine that have been closed should a catastrophic event occurs. Such environment is particularly demanding for smart sensing, as visibility conditions are often adversely affected by the emergence of a dense dust. Last but not least, I will address communication issues which arise in such critical applications. These issues deserve strong attention at the development stage because without reliable and secure transfer of data, even the smartest sensing wouldn’t effectively work.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Prof. Krzysztof A. Cyran, the Director of Virtual Flying Laboratory at Silesian University of Technology (SUT), Gliwice, Poland, and one of SkyTech Research founders, has received at SUT his MSc. degree in computer science (1992), his PhD degree (with honors) in technical sciences (2000) and his DSc degree (habilitation) in technical sciences with specialty in computer science (2012). His PhD dissertation addresses the problem of image recognition with the use of computer generated holograms applied as ring-wedge detectors and his DSc dissertation concerns among other various methods of artificial intelligence and machine learning in knowledge acquisition and processing. His experience in managing the research and development in research-oriented companies has been built on his previous positions, one of them being the Head of software company Polstage Ltd, having many successful implementations in European Market in Germany and Austria. He has been an author and co-author of more than 100 publications, including technical papers in journals (several of them indexed by Thomson Scientific) conference proceedings and monographs with total number of citations exceeding 300. Since 2012 he is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Informatics at SUT. Prof. Cyran (in 2003-2004 and 2012-2013) was a Visiting Scholar in Department of Statistics at Rice University in Houston, USA. He was the Vice-Head of the Institute of Informatics at SUT. His current research interests include image recognition and processing, artificial intelligence and knowledge acquisition, decision support systems, aviation and aeronautics. Prof. Cyran has been involved in numerous scientific grants awarded in Poland as well as European projects within the 7the Framework Program (7FP) of the European Union. In particular, he was the coordinator and the Scientist in charge in the EGALITE project. He was also the local coordinator and Scientist in charge in SHERPA and HEDGE NEXT, the two other 7FP projects, related to application of ICT in aviation. Currently, he is involved in Telerescuer and SuperiorBlimp, co-funded by EU large projects, in which he works on application of virtual immersion of an operator to distant semi-autonomous vehicles.