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Long-term corrosion of glass is studied using polarising light microscopy, FTIR and SEM including EDX and elemental mapping. Early 19th century beads made of lead-potassium glass are the object of the study. Non-uniformly distributed internal stresses were introduced into the studied glass during bead manufacturing. Corrosion of 19th century bead glass has been shown to comprise several mutually connected processes developing in parallel and intensifying one another. These processes are the depolymerization of glass, the directed migration of alkali-metal impurities and local glass leaching, and the nucleation of micro discontinuities followed by the formation of micro cracks and their gradual growth. In course of time, their cumulative and apparently synergistic effect results in glass fracturing terminated with bead crumbling into tiny discoloured particles. All these phenomena are controlled by the internal stress originated from the bead production process. Thus, the phenomenon of stressed bead glass corrosion is the process of the internal stress relaxation in glass through the nucleation and growth of cracks, which lasts for many decades at room temperature. It is dramatically accelerated when beads are heat treated. Annealing at 300{\deg}C for 15 min. is sufficient for artificial ageing of initially intact beads. The corrosion has been observed to occur in glass even if beads are kept in well-controlled museum environment. The local thermal-fluctuation mechanism is proposed to account for the corrosion phenomenon on an atomic scale. The approach based on the thermal-fluctuation mechanism is applicable to describe degradation and destruction processes in various solid substances and composite materials under stress; this approach enables understanding the phenomena of formation and degradation of nanostructures, e. g., heterostructures with quantum wells or quantum dots., Comment: 81 pages, 14 figures, 2 tables

Glass seed beads probably are the most numerous group of art historical glass. From the ancient times to the modern era, glass beads played an essential role in culture, as they were used, e.g., to decorate clothing, religious objects and functional tools, and served as an important good for global trade. The conservation state of items made of glass beads is an actual issue for curators and conservators. Glass, as well known, is often unstable material, so a number of internal and external factors are responsible for chemical and physical processes in glass and on the glass surface. It was noticed that some types of historical 19th century glass beads are subjected to more intense destruction than others. The samples of glass beads of different colours and conservation states were examined by means of SEM-EDX, EBSD, Raman and FTIR microspectroscopy. Research showed that some types of beads are characterized by the presence of nano- and microcrystals in glass, which could be one of the causes of glass destruction. The elemental composition of crystals is different in each case and depends on raw materials and technical components used for glass manufacturing. The structure of crystals was identified by means of EBSD analysis., Comment: Presented at Technart 2019: The European Conference on the Use of Analytical Techniques for Characterization of Artworks, Bruges, Belgium, 7 to 10 May 2019 [http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.36144.61443]; 18 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

We have detected Egyptian blue pigment in the paint layer of the "Birch. Spring" painting by Robert Falk (1907); we have also found this pigment in the paints of the sketch drawn on the canvas back side. This is probably the first discovery of Egyptian blue in a 20th century work of art. We have analyzed a modern commercial Egyptian blue pigment (Kremer) and found it to be suitable as a standard for photoluminescence spectral analysis. The characteristic photoluminescence band of CaCuSi$_4$O$_{10}$ reaches maximum at the wavelength of about 910 nm. The luminescence is efficiently excited by incoherent green or blue light. The study demonstrates that the photoluminescence spectral micro analysis using excitation by incoherent light can be efficiently used for the identification of luminescent pigments in paint layers of artworks., Comment: 35 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables

Electric Autonomous Vehicles (EAVs) have gained increasing attention of industry, governments and scientific communities concerned about issues related to classic transportation including accidents and casualties, gas emissions and air pollution, intensive traffic and city viability. One of the aspects, however, that prevent a broader adoption of this technology is the need for human interference to charge EAVs, which is still mostly manual and time-consuming. This study approaches such a problem by introducing the Inno-EAV, an open-source charging framework for EAVs that employs machine-to-machine (M2M) distributed communication. The idea behind M2M is to have networked devices that can interact, exchange information and perform actions without any manual assistance of humans. The advantages of the Inno-EAV include the automation of charging processes and the collection of relevant data that can support better decision making in the spheres of energy distribution. In this paper, we present the software design of the framework, the development process, the emphasis on the distributed architecture and the networked communication, and we discuss the back-end database that is used to store information about car owners, cars, and charging stations.

Decentralization, immutability and transparency make of Blockchain one of the most innovative technology of recent years. This paper presents an overview of solutions based on Blockchain technology for multi-agent robotic systems, and provide an analysis and classification of this emerging field. The reasons for implementing Blockchain in a multi-robot network may be to increase the interaction efficiency between agents by providing more trusted information exchange, reaching a consensus in trustless conditions, assessing robot productivity or detecting performance problems, identifying intruders, allocating plans and tasks, deploying distributed solutions and joint missions. Blockchain-based applications are discussed to demonstrate how distributed ledger can be used to extend the number of research platforms and libraries for multi-agent robotic systems.

Internet of Things (IoT) and robotics cannot be considered two separate domains these days. Internet of Robotics Things (IoRT) is a concept that has been recently introduced to describe the integration of robotics technologies in IoT scenarios. As a consequence, these two research fields have started interacting, and thus linking research communities. In this paper we intend to make further steps in joining the two communities and broaden the discussion on the development of this interdisciplinary field. The paper provides an overview, analysis and challenges of possible solutions for the Internet of Robotic Things, discussing the issues of the IoRT architecture, the integration of smart spaces and robotic applications.

The paper presents the study and implementation of the ground detection methodology with filtration and removal of forest points from LiDAR-based 3D point cloud using the Cloth Simulation Filtering (CSF) algorithm. The methodology allows to recover a terrestrial relief and create a landscape map of a forestry region. As the proof-of-concept, we provided the outdoor flight experiment, launching a hexacopter under a mixed forestry region with sharp ground changes nearby Innopolis city (Russia), which demonstrated the encouraging results for both ground detection and methodology robustness., Comment: 8 pages, FRUCT-2019 conference

The possibilities of decentralization and immutability make blockchain probably one of the most breakthrough and promising technological innovations in recent years. This paper presents an overview, analysis, and classification of possible blockchain solutions for practical tasks facing multi-agent robotic systems. The paper discusses blockchain-based applications that demonstrate how distributed ledger can be used to extend the existing number of research platforms and libraries for multi-agent robotic systems., Comment: 5 pages, FRUCT-2019 conference paper

The vision encompassing Smart and Software-defined Buildings (SSDB) is becoming more and more popular and its implementation is now more accessible due to the widespread adoption of the IoT infrastructure. Some of the most important applications sustaining this vision are energy management, environmental comfort, safety and surveillance. This paper surveys IoT and SSB technologies and their cooperation towards the realization of Smart Spaces. We propose a four-layer reference architecture and we organize related concepts around it. This conceptual frame is useful to identify the current literature on the topic and to connect the dots into a coherent vision of the future of residential and commercial buildings.

The article presents an experimental investigation of band-edge cathodoluminescence of CdZnSSe crystals that nucleated and grew in silicate glass melt during its production. We have studied Zn-rich red glass made for manufacture of seed beads in the 19th century and found it to contain CdZnSSe crystals. Due to colloidal staining using the CdZnSSe crystallites embedded in glass, glass makers were enabled to produce lustrous red glass that, as we presently know, manifests bright luminescence. The CdZnSSe crystallites exhibit intense band-edge cathodoluminescence both at room temperature and at liquid nitrogen temperature. We have found the band-edge cathodoluminescence of these crystals to peak in the range from 2.00 to 2.03 eV at 300 K and from 2.02 to 2.06 eV at 80 K. We have also estimated the value of the band gap derivative d$E_g$/d$T$ in the interval from 80 to 300 K and found it to lie in the range from $-2.5 \times 10^{-4}$ to 0 eV/K. CdZnSSe crystals in glass demonstrate high temperature and temporal stability. The glass-crystal composite on their basis is resistant to the electron-beam irradiation and long-term weathering. Possible applications of this composite in modern technologies, and processes and components that might be used for making glass stained with CdZnSSe in the past are also discussed., Comment: 7 figures, 1 table

Building detection from satellite multispectral imagery data is being a fundamental but a challenging problem mainly because it requires correct recovery of building footprints from high-resolution images. In this work, we propose a deep learning approach for building detection by applying numerous enhancements throughout the process. Initial dataset is preprocessed by 2-sigma percentile normalization. Then data preparation includes ensemble modelling where 3 models were created while incorporating OpenStreetMap data. Binary Distance Transformation (BDT) is used for improving data labeling process and the U-Net (Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation) is modified by adding batch normalization wrappers. Afterwards, it is explained how each component of our approach is correlated with the final detection accuracy. Finally, we compare our results with winning solutions of SpaceNet 2 competition for real satellite multispectral images of Vegas, Paris, Shanghai and Khartoum, demonstrating the importance of our solution for achieving higher building detection accuracy.

Human heartbeat can be measured using several different ways appropriately based on the patient condition which includes contact base such as measured by using instruments and non-contact base such as computer vision assisted techniques. Non-contact based approached are getting popular due to those techniques are capable of mitigating some of the limitations of contact-based techniques especially in clinical section. However, existing vision guided approaches are not able to prove high accurate result due to various reason such as the property of camera, illumination changes, skin tones in face image, etc. We propose a technique that uses video as an input and returns pulse rate in output. Initially, key point detection is carried out on two facial subregions: forehead and nose-mouth. After removing unstable features, the temporal filtering is applied to isolate frequencies of interest. Then four component analysis methods are employed in order to distinguish the cardiovascular pulse signal from extraneous noise caused by respiration, vestibular activity and other changes in facial expression. Afterwards, proposed peak detection technique is applied for each component which extracted from one of the four different component selection algorithms. This will enable to locate the positions of peaks in each component. Proposed automatic components selection technique is employed in order to select an optimal component which will be used to calculate the heartbeat. Finally, we conclude with a comparison of four component analysis methods (PCA, FastICA, JADE, SHIBBS), processing face video datasets of fifteen volunteers with verification by an ECG/EKG Workstation as a ground truth.

The decentralized trading market approach, where both autonomous agents and people can consume and produce services expanding own opportunities to reach goals, looks very promising as a part of the Fourth Industrial revolution. The key component of the approach is a blockchain platform that allows an interaction between agents via liability smart contracts. Reliability of a service provider is usually determined by a reputation model. However, this solution only warns future customers about an extent of trust to the service provider in case it could not execute any previous liabilities correctly. From the other hand a blockchain consensus protocol can additionally include a validation procedure that detects incorrect liability executions in order to suspend payment transactions to questionable service providers. The paper presents the validation methodology of a liability execution for agent-based service providers in a decentralized trading market, using the Model Checking method based on the mathematical model of finite state automata and Temporal Logic properties of interest. To demonstrate this concept, we implemented the methodology in the Duckietown application, moving an autonomous mobile robot to achieve a mission goal with the following behavior validation at the end of a completed scenario.

Electric Autonomous Vehicles (EAVs) promise to be an effective way to solve transportation issues such as accidents, emissions and congestion, and aim at establishing the foundation of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) economy. For this to be possible, the market should be able to offer appropriate charging services without involving humans. The state-of-the-art mechanisms of charging and billing do not meet this requirement, and often impose service fees for value transactions that may also endanger users and their location privacy. This paper aims at filling this gap and envisions a new charging architecture and a billing framework for EAV which would enable M2M transactions via the use of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).

Multiplayer computer games play a big role in the ever-growing entertainment industry. Being competitive in this industry means releasing the best possible software, and reliability is a key feature to win the market. Computer games are also actively used to simulate different robotic systems where reliability is even more important, and potentially critical. Traditional software testing approaches can check a subset of all the possible program executions, and they can never guarantee complete absence of errors in the source code. On the other hand, during more than twenty years, Model Checking has demonstrated to be a powerful instrument for formal verification of large hardware and software components. In this paper, we contribute with a novel approach to formally verify computer games. We propose a method of model construction that starts from a computer game description and utilizes Model Checking technique. We apply the method on a case study: the game Penguin Clash. Finally, an approach to game model reduction (and its implementation) is introduced in order to address the state explosion problem.