20th IEEE Mediterranean Eletrotechnical Conference
IEEE MELECON 2020
June 16-18, 2020, Palermo, Italy
VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
20th IEEE Mediterranean Eletrotechnical Conference
June 16-18, 2020, Palermo, Italy
VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
quick access: Track 1: Smart Mobility | Track 2: Industry 4.0 | Track 3: Smart Health Care | Track 4: Smart Grids
Over the last years, the global community has been involved into an unprecedented revolution in the mobility sector, with a significant evolving of technology from internal combustion engine vehicles to hybrid and full electric vehicles. For this reason, the interest of researchers towards the transportation systems and the related environmental impact has significantly increased over the last years, evaluating the optimal integration of electric mobility systems in urban areas. These aspects refer to the use of public and private vehicle fleets fed by appropriate charging infrastructures and managed through advanced IoT platforms which allow the implementation of innovative strategies including demand response approaches and smart charging.
Keywords:AVehicle grid integration and related challenges Charging infrastructures Smart charging of electric vehicles Integration of electric vehicles with renewable sources Energy management systems Environmental impact evaluations Mobile and stationary distributed energy storage systems Policy/Regulatory Aspects V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid) and V2B (Vehicle-to-Building)
The term “smart city” has been used widely over these past couple of decades. With the rapid advancements in technology and evolution of fields such as artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, its scope is to encompass all areas that could be improvised to enhance the quality of life of citizens. In addition, the adoption of Electric and Hybrid Vehicles certainly offers greater impetus for lower energy investment at lower emission levels. EV produces fewer pollutant emissions than almost all comparable gasoline conventional and gasoline hybrid cars. In the smart city of the future the integration of electric vehicles in smart power grids and microgrids, characterized by a massive spread of renewable sources and storage systems, will be more and more fundamental. In this context, this session could be an opportunity for specialists coming from academia and industry to share their experiences and vision on electric mobility in smart cities.
Keywords:Smart city pilot projects, Hybrid and full electric passenger cars, light duty vehicles and buses, Electric micro mobility, Fuel cell technology in e-mobility, Vehicles and Environmental Aspects, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), Power Quality Monitoring and Mitigation, Smart road
Over the last years, the area of the mobility is poised to strengthen its traffic/transport infrastructures, facing a global mobility transformation. A number of technologies are converging to change the way people and goods travel from one point to another. The urban centers are seeing a huge growth in population and vehicles leading to congestion, pollution, increased fuel consumption, increased incidences of road accidents, parking issues, lack of pedestrian walkways etc. However, the evolving smart mobility ecosystem can bring in seamless, sustainable and safe connectivity. Therefore, smart mobility will eventually deliver true convergence of lifestyle and technology, improving the overall quality of life for citizens.
Keywords:Comprehensive transport network, Multimodal public transport, Shared mobility, Energy markets and aggregators, Charging tariffs and new business models linked to electric mobility, High speed rails emerging technologies
The new technologies in transportation and mobility are changing the way on how the mobility should be managed. It is expected that there will be over 250 million connected vehicles by 2022. This translates into huge data collection by integrated and interconnected sensors to create sophisticated global models on several parameters such as traffic flow or precise roadway maps. Moreover, connected vehicles and integrated communications technologies could provide valuable services to car user. Vehicles equipped with electronic control modules and sensors that enable Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications can proactively propose and recommend re-routings to avoid road hazards and calls for assistance in the event of an accident.
Keywords:Intelligent Transport Infrastructure and systems, Connected, Autonomous, self-driving systems, Shared Mobility and demand-responsive transport, Sustainable Mobility towards low-carbon Cities, Mass Transit Networks, Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V), Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications
In recent years, the increase of means of transportation in the marine sector has led to an increase of air pollution. Therefore, more rapid and comprehensive actions in addressing new technologies in this field are needed in order to address the H2020 requirements towards a sustainable development of the marine area. This session will focus on emerging electric ship technologies
Keywords:Energy Storage, Electric power system design tools and methods, Control Methods and Architectures, Electric Propulsion and Generation, Power Conversion in electrical ships, Electric Power System Architectures, Safety systems, Power Distribution, Cabling, and Grounding
The modern society is moving towards a green technological innovation, with the aim of reducing the gas emissions, minimizing the air pollution. In this context, the field of aerospace has faced a very fast development in terms of applied electrical machines, drives and power electronics, directing the effort for the achievement of More Electrical Aircrafts. This session will be an opportunity for specialists coming from academia and industry to share their experiences aimed at the improvement of air transportation, avionics, aerospace towards the development of more electrical aircrafts.
Keywords:Reliability and safety analysis, Fault tolerance, Condition monitoring and lifetime estimation, Fault prediction, Storage systems in air transportation, Innovative devices and converters for aerospace applications, Electric motors and drives for MEA, Efficiency enhancement in more electric aircrafts
Due to their distributed nature and high degree of modularity, IT systems for Industry 4.0 are prone to several security attacks that can be performed against every element of the infrastructure. For instance, two important security issues concern safeguarding of data produced by the machineries, as well as protecting intermediate or high-level information inferred through data analysis algorithms. The goal of this track is to put together relevant contributions addressing security and privacy issues coming from the design of intelligent systems for the future industries.
Keywords:IoT, Cyber Security, Smart Industries, Distributed and Secure data analysis
Cloud technology is one of the key enabler of the Industry 4.0 revolution. The possibility of having high computing power and large storage facilities, on demand, allows to design advanced industrial solutions that can take advantages from data coming form sensors and from AI-powered algorithms to perform optimal controls. It even represents an opportunity for computation offloading by IoT applications executing at the edge or to host context aware smart services. To this end, powerful Cloud architecture must be investigated taking into account also aspects such as security, responsiveness, accuracy, energy efficiency, interoperability and emerging standards.
Keywords:Cloud-based frameworks, Cloud-edge integration, Virtualization, Elastic-computing
Session "Industrial Internet, 5G and Internet of Things" aims to bring together experts from various domains, such as IT, Telecommunication, Automation, Smart Grids, and many others, in order to discuss the current challenges in the field of industrial communication. In such areas, industrial communication systems need to face several strict requirements, such as low latency, high reliability, real-time transmissions, safety, and security, while involving many cooperative computational elements controlling time-critical physical entities. Typically, there is no one-fits-all solution that can serve as the single communication technology, but a mixture of several interconnected technologies is required. This poses several challenges for the integration, maintenance, configuration, and management of such systems. Moreover, the increasing penetration of innovative computing, communication and intelligence paradigms, such as Software Defined Networking (SDN), edge/fog computing, Network Function Virtualization (NFV), and machine/deep learning approaches increases the complexity of these systems. As a result, in order to efficiently use such complex systems in the industrial domain, innovative approaches are needed to find the appropriate balance between communication performance, flexibility, interoperability, and user-friendliness. This session mainly focuses on the following topics:
Industrial Communications, Cloud, edge and fog computing, Communication for Industry 4.0, Real-time communications, SDN, NFV, 5G, TSN.
The ever-widespread presence of predictive systems for controlling the efficiency of complex systems has required the development of ad hoc powered sensors that often exploit energies that would otherwise be lost (harvesting principle). In this session we want to highlight all the new technologies that develop the power supply of sensors with the energy harvested from mechanical and electromagnetic systems.
Keywords:Energy harvesting sensing; Mechanical harvesters; Electromagnetic harvesters; Electronic circuits for the storage.
In recent decades we have witnessed a growing investment by all economic sectors in the acquisition of ever larger volumes of data and this has led to minting the term Big Data. Most of the data that is produced is accumulated in the cloud or in data servers and only a small fraction of the information it contains can be used through conventional processing techniques. The implicit information content of such data can be transformed into an asset of enormous value for companies, but to extract the most valuable content from big-data it is necessary to use the most advanced techniques of artificial intelligence, e, and in particular those based on machine learning. Analysts point to artificial intelligence as a major technological challenge that can open up new scenarios for businesses and that could double the growth rate of developed economies by 2035 and boost labor productivity with increases up to at 40%.
Keywords:Applications, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Brontobytes, Business Intelligence, Chatbots, Classification, Clickstream analytics, Cluster analysis, Cognitive computing, Convolutional neural networks, Data Analytics, Data Cleansing, Data Lakes, Data mining, Data visualization, Deep learning, Evolutionary Computation, Fuzzy logic, Genetic algorithm, IOT, Knowledge engineering, Machine learning, Machine perception, Natural language processing, Neural Networks, NoSQL, Particle Swarm Optimization, Pattern Recognition, Predictive analytics, Prescriptive analytics, Recurrent neural network, Semi+AC0-structured data, Sentiment Analysis. Stream modeling, Understandable learning machines, Unsupervised learning
This session is dedicated to Soft Robotics, Human-robot interaction, Collaborative robotics, Distributed decision systems, Automation, Cybernetic systems, Power machine control, Deep learning approach for control, Artificial intelligent, Consensus algorithms and formation control, autonomous systems (ground, aerial, water), planning, estimation and control for self-driving cars, hybrid systems, safe and secure systems, Intelligent Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering/Welding, System Modeling and Simulation Techniques, Laser Processing Technology, CAD/CAM Integration Technology, Computer-aided Geometric Design & Simulation, Precision Mechanics & Mechatronics, Quality & Reliability Engineering, Vehicle Dynamic Performance Simulation, Mechanical Reliability Theory and Engineering, Dynamic Mechanical Analysis, Optimization and Control, Structural Strength and Robustness
Keywords:Robotics, Automation and Advanced Manufacturing is one of the significant sessions of the Track 2: Industry. It provides a global forum for the robotics and manufacturing research community to explore the innovative research in intelligent robots, automation and manufacturing industry.
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Embedded Systems (ES), which overlap to a large extent, are core elements in supporting modern societies, from industrial applications to energy production and distribution, transportation, health systems and many devices that we use on a daily basis. Current CPS/ES are frequently networked and adaptive, communicating with other CPS/ES or with external systems such as Edge and Cloud, to provide the user with enhanced intelligent functions. However, to be effective, CPS/ES have to comply with numerous constraints, notably real-time, power, reliability, limited resources and cost. This track focuses on the challenges that arise from designing and analysing these systems, meeting all the constraints that apply. We welcome submissions of cutting-edge original work in this area, addressing not exclusively any of the keywords mentioned below.
Keywords:Cyber-physical systems, Embedded systems, Real-time systems, Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, Networked control, Networked embedded systems, Real-time cloud, Edge computing.
The roles of modern technology and innovative ICT solutions are increasingly diffused in Health Care Organisations today, aspiring to facilitate clinically relevant solutions to the complex problems connected to the various levels of medical care interventions: from centralised solutions to more proximal de-centralised ones, including the patient’s home and patient’s body itself. The objective of this Theme is to highlight emerging concepts, smart tools, and processes, while discussing practical solutions and associated applications, towards improving the quality of health services across the healthcare continuum, for the benefit of the patient.
Keywords:Health Care Organisation, Smart Health Care, Technological Impact on Health Care, Advanced Models of Diagnosis, Therapy and Rehabilitation, Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare Innovation, Connected Health, eHealth, mHealth, Healthcare Robotics.
A modern approach of Health Care is to integrate in a unique document (Electronic Medical Record-EMR) the data relative to the single patient, including also data from genomic analysis and from biosignals, in many cases recorded for long periods of time and using less invasive systems like wearable or contactless devices. Such an approach requires, from one side, to deal with a very large amount of data which need to be properly integrated and correctly interpreted, and from the other side it could contribute to push for the creation of a network of sensors for the recording of these parameters of medical/vital interest which will be easily inserted into everyday life objects (watches, garments, optical sensors for presence, ambient measurements, etc): the so-called approach of Internet of Things (IoT). The processing of these large amount of data might require the development of advanced biosignal processing techniques and the employment of machine learning algorithms and Artificial Intelligence.
Keywords:Electronic Medical Record, Health Big Data Analytics, Health Big Databases, Advanced and Smart Sensors, Body Area Network Sensors, Multivariate Biosignal Processing, Internet of Things (IoT) in Health, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Patient Classification
Advanced methods and technological devices are contributing to the so-called “Personalised Medicine” or “Precision Medicine”, i.e. to be able to care that single patient and not simply one patient belonging to a class of a “similar” pathology who is generally treated referring to a widely agreed protocol inside medical community which has received a consensus on an evidence-based aproach. There are various advanced solutions which allow to reach important results towards this direction, through the employment of sensors directly connected to the patient and correlating these data with other information contained into the EMR and to obtain a more personalised and targeted medical intervenction. Patient classification might be improved with advanced techniques of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.
Keywords:Personalised Medicine, Precision Medicine, E-Health, Patient Classification, Machine Learning for Diagnosis and Therapy
A great interest is actually dedicated to the comprehension of brain responses to neural and cognitive stimuli. That is done by integrating information from different sources of signals and images from the brain or from other organs which are directly influenced by cognitive stimuli (like as examples ECG signal, respiration, skin conductance and others). The extraction of various biomarkers from these sources of information are useful to better understand and to try to quantify how central nervous system is involved. Important applications are in the areas of cognitive control of prostheses and orthoses as well as in the evaluation of complex central functions, like memory, mental states, emotion classification, sleep studies, etc.
Keywords:Cognitive Engineering, Cognitive control of prostheses or ortheses, Mental processes, Man-Machine Interfaces, Study of emotions, Cognitive Neurophysiological Responses, Neural and cognitive engineering
In Health Care applications medical databases and medical records have recently encountered a great process of change due to the quick progress of methods and technologies which are employed. Let’s think of the concept of a continuos connection with a chronic patient inside but also outside the hospital: therefore important and reliable solution of telemedicine have to be developed. Further, medical robots and other equipment controlling the development of natural language interpretation and an easier communication with the computers, identification of input voice and complex and big data treatment like genomic databases. There is a large variety of new and powerful needs to be fulfilled by the designer and users of modern medical data bases and medical clinical data records.
Keywords:Medical Informatics, Medical Data Bases, Genomic Databases, Human-Computer Interfaces, Data Infrastructure for Health Applications
The great and important achievements which will be fulfilled in the fascinating area of “Personalised Medicine”, in which patient could be monitored every time, everywhere and for long period of times will be certainly possible only if proper technological implementations will be correctly developed and put into the market. New devices and sensors are needed which must be reliable and well functioning even in problematic but realistic cases of low signal/noise ratio. The peculiarity of devices for medical applications are considered in order to obtain an information which is really significant to the level of diagnosis, therapy and rehabilitation. New European Regulations on Medical Devices and In-Vitro Diagnostics Medical Devices, including Software for Medical Applications, will become mandatory next year (2020), introducing further requirements in respect to the existing relevant Standards based upon existing Directives.
Keywords:Sensors and Devices for Medical Applications, Medical Devices: Requirements and Regulations; Design of Medical Devices; Safety and Security in Medical Devices; Wearable and Minimally Intrusive Medical Devices; New Medical Devices: Impact and Sustainability; Health Technology Assessment
The development of models for a better comprehension of electromagnetic activity of the human body is of extreme importance for the conception of new methods of signal and biomarker detection, coupled with innovative numerical strategies, to be added to the more traditional ones. On the other hand, electromagnetic stimulation is of fundamental importance in the area of therapy and rehabilitation. These approaches will make use of parameters obtained from bio-signals and images relative to various sources and various bodily districts and properly integrated. Another aspect is the correct measurement of exposure to EM field in Health environment which is extremely important both in adults and mainly in children.
Keywords:Bio-Electromagnetic Modelling, Numerical Methods, Electric Stimulation, Magnetic Stimulation; Exposure to EM Field in Health Environment"
Small islands are, in the most of cases, autonomous energy systems not supplied by the main power grid and essentially based on local diesel generators and renewable energy plants. The energy efficiency issue for such systems has become one of the hottest subjects for the EU and various research organizations worldwide. In the last years, many research organizations have extensively studied both the transition of the traditional power system of such islands towards a smart grid structure and the rational utilization of the local resources for hot water production, air-conditioning, heating and other building services. On this base, high quality papers that address the (electric) energy and environment issues are called. The suggested topics are (but not limited to):
smart islands; small islands; microgrids; smart grids; smart cities; renewable; electric storage; thermal storage; photovoltaics; wind plants; energy efficiency; energy savings; aggregation; BAC systems; GHG emissions.
Net zero energy systems (NZESs) are systems designed and operated in a way allowing to reduce, toward zero, the energy demand from fossil fuels and the subsequent GHG emissions. This objective can be achieved thanks to local generating plants based on renewable sources and able to fully meet the yearly energy requirements of the system, thermal and electrical storage systems, improved thermal insulation of buildings and pipelines, high performance domestic hot water producers and air-conditioning systems, Demand Side Management and so on. NZESs are fundamental in an era characterized by the need of reducing GHG emissions and teaching the importance of an ecological use of the available resources. On this basis, high quality papers that address the energy and environment issues discussed above are called. The suggested topics are (but not limited to):
Net-zero energy buildings; Net-zero energy systems; insulation; retrofit; renewables; demand side management; air-conditioning; hot water production; BAC; TBM; SRI.
The expected increase in energy needs, expecially in the southern and eastern Mediterranean areas, is challenging the electro-energetic systems of the region. Technical, regulatory, and socioeconomic challenges must be faced for creating a new platform for exchanging energy and values through the sea and promoting the rise of a more interconnected Mediterranean grid. A new meshed electrical grid through the Mediterranean sea, connecting together Countries from Africa, Asia and Europe, will lead to a shared electricity market and the full exploitation of renewable energy sources. In this context, new HVDC and HVAC underwater cable connections will help greatly the share of clean energy from new RES-based plants. In this framework, we encourage the submission of papers dealing with (but not limited to) the following topics:
Mediterranean region; Smart grids; Microgrids; Renewables; HVDC; HVAC; Underwater cables; Electricity market; Capacity market.
In the last few years, demand response (DR) and load aggregation (LA) have become very hot topics due to the great potential that the coordinated management of distributed flexible resources has on power systems’ design and operation. Various demand response policies and aggregation schemes have been proposed worldwide and balancing service providers are rising in a competitive and innovative scenario where a new typology of end-user, the so-called “prosumer”, can impact the electric power system and the electricity market. Moreover, Vehicle-to-Grid and Power-to-Gas solutions are opening new interesting scenarios for DR and LA involving beside classical power system’s actors also stakeholders from transportation and gas-distribution sectors. On this base, high quality papers that address the DR and LA issues are called. The suggested topics are (but not limited to):
demand response; demand side management; controllable loads; prosumers; flexibility; balancing service; ancillary services; balancing service provider; aggregation; aggregator; support policies; grid impact; electric storage; Power-to-Gas; Vehicle-to-Grid.
Tokamak, Superconducting Magnets, High Current and High Voltage Electronic Power Converters, Quench Protection Systems, Additional Heating and Current Drive Systems.
Demand Response; Distributed Energy Generation Community; distributed ledger; blockchain; aggregation; IoT; IoE; Virtual Power Plant;