25th FRUCT Conference: News and Updates

29.10.2019

We proudly announce that Patrick Halford will give a keynote talk of IDEA19 workshop on Drone Consortium Development and Commercialisation Examples from Denmark & Iceland.

With the acceleration of drone technologies across the Nordics, and the support from Government regulatory agencies, more industries are trying to understand how to scale drone capabilities. Whether it is agriculture, energy & utilities, transportation & logistics or any other industry, opportunities are expanding to commercialise drone technology to transform markets. Corporations/SMEs, startups, research & academia and government institutions often speak different languages, and run at different clock speeds. But to get the benefit of drone technologies at scale across industrial markets we need to improve the collaboration between these organisations. We need to accelerate commercialisation, transform supply chains into sustainable processes and develop strong feedback loops back to research and government institutions. Developing funded consortiums which combine corporations/SMEs, startups, research & academia is a great way to get drone solutions into the market fast, breaking down barriers and opening up new opportunities for collaboration, venture funding and driving economic growth. We will discuss some examples from across the Nordics and show how we are using Business modeling techniques to bridge the gap between industry, research, operators and institutions. 

Patrick Halford is CEO of Gaoithe, based in Otaniemi, which helps develop Nordic consortiums between industry, startups, research, academia and institutions. He is on the faculty of Singularity University for mobility & drones, and a Senior Advisor to Gaia Consulting. He is on the board of a number of Nordic drone and space startups and a mentor at startup accelerators in Turku, Copenhagen, Reykjavik and the Basque Region. He has worked on ecosystem developments in Denmark, Iceland and Finland (Kotka/Cursor) and he is part of the Danish Drones4Energy consortium. He is also a conference moderator and speaker, and he teaches business model innovation at Hanken & SSE Executive Education.

23.10.2019

We proudly announce that the Sensors Journal (impact factor 2.677) is a partner of the 23rd FRUCT conference. The best conference papers will be invited to publish extended version of the paper in Sensors Journal with 10% discount.

22.10.2019

The draft of conference program is now available for download. Don't forget to register to the Conference.

22.10.2019

We proudly announce that Dr. Rune Storvold will give a keynote talk on Drone based operation support system for ice navigation.

Navigating vessels efficiently through sea-ice is challenging. The ice is dynamic highly variable in thickness and have pressure ridges that form impenetrable barriers, depending on the vessel ice class. To help vessel navigating through sea-ice choose the most optimal path, it is necessary to set up a system that combines satellite based analysis of sea-ice properties and ice drift modelling and forecasting. Based on initial analysis of these data drones may be used to map ice properties like thickness, leads and pressure ridges in the likely path direction. This will enable the vessels to choose the most efficient path with regard to time and fuel efficiency. Here we will present data collected by satellites, sea-ice radars and drones at the CAATEX cruise with the Norwegian Coast Guard icebreaker KV Svalbard to the North Pole in August-September 2019. The Centre for Integrated Remote Sensing and Forecasting in for Arctic Operations (CIRFA) was established in 2015 as a center for research based innovation to explore the combination satellite remote sensing, drones and forecasting to develop operations support systems. We present a system developed in CIRFA to support maritime navigation in sea-ice covered waters where the use of drones plays an important part. During this work this work we have developed a drone based ground penetrating radar system to measure ice type, snow on ice and freeboard. Drone based stereographic cameras have been developed to make high resolution 3D surface models and measure ice ridge volumes and small fixed wing drones have been developed for mapping ice surface and scout leads. A vessel based interferometric radar was placed on top of the KV Svalbard icebreaker bridge and data from this radar was fused with drone data to evaluate potential and limitations of ship based radars. These radars are important as drones are more limited by weather and the optimal navigation support solution must work 24/7 and in all weather conditions. To fuse the data from multiple sources in near real-time and present this to the navigator require data exchange between the different parts of the system in near real time to accommodate drone flight planning and to pass corrections and more accurate input data to the drift forecast models. The results must be presented in an easily interpretable manner for the navigators. To facilitate this we have developed cryocore a flexible middleware system for drones that facilitate sensor control, real-time processing and real-time data flow, this is coupled to NLIVE a time synchronized data fusion and visualization system that allow the user to interact with the system and analyze the results.

Rune Storvold is the Research Director at the Drones and Autonomous Systems Research Group in the NORCE Technology Department. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Engineering  Cybernetics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Director for Arctic Center for Unmanned Aircraft. He has background in optics and atmospheric physics from the University of Bergen (MS 1993) and University of Alaska Fairbanks (PhD, 2001). He started working at Norut in 2003 using synthetic aperture radar data for measurements of cryospheric properties and doing modeling of microwave scattering and propagation in snow and ice. In 2005 he established the Unmanned Aircraft Group at Norut. In 2019 Norut merged with NORCE. The Drones and Autonomous Systems group is currently involving 14 fulltime scientists, pilots and engineers in the development and research on unmanned aircraft and sensor systems. He has been at the board of directors of UAS Norway since its founding in 2008.

16.10.2019

We proudly announce that Prof. Valeriy Vyatkin will give a keynote talk on IoT as enabler of future factories.

The Internet of Things technologies and their wide penetration to the industrial domains bring new opportunities for making industrial automation systems truly flexible, and intelligent and are often associated with the 4th industrial revolution. Smart things in the automation context look like machines and components thereof equipped with a good deal of computational power. Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) currently form the backbone of industrial automation hardware and software. PLCs were one of the symbols of the third industrial revolution. How shall the PLC architecture change in the view of these tectonic shifts? In this talk we discuss the concept of virtual PLC which is adjusted to the realities of highly distributed networked automation systems, but still retains compatibility with the legacy PLC programming paradigms. The concept decouples physical hardware architecture of the automation systems from the way programs are organised, developed and maintained. The Virtual PLC concept brings the transparency of software deployment to any hardware topology, from the traditional PLC “box”, to the highly distributed sensor and actuator network where the central processing device “dissolves”. We will discuss benefits of this architecture for flexibility and reliability of automation systems, the same time we will outline some challenges on the way to this picture. The ongoing research and development works toward this end, along with the international standardisation activities will be summarised.

Prof. Valeriy Vyatkin (M’03–SM’04) is on joint appointment as Chaired Professor (Ämnesföreträdare) of Dependable Computation and Communication Systems at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, and Professor of Information and Computer Engineering in Automation, Aalto University, Finland. He is also co-director of the international laboratory of Computer Technologies at ITMO University, Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Previously he has been with Cambridge University, U.K., as a visiting scholar, and on permanent academic appointments with The University of Auckland, New Zealand, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, and with Taganrog State University of Radio Engineering, and postdoc at Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan. Current research interests of Dr. Vyatkin include dependable distributed automation and industrial informatics, software engineering for industrial automation systems, distributed architectures, specifically IEC 61499 and multi-agent systems applied in various industry sectors, including Smart Grid, material handling, building management systems, and reconfigurable manufacturing. He is also active in research on dependability provisions for industrial automation systems, such as methods of formal verification and validation, and theoretical algorithms for improving their performance. Dr. Vyatkin was awarded the Andrew P. Sage Award for the best IEEE Transactions paper in 2012.

14.10.2019

We proudly announce that Dr. Jan Erik Ekberg will give a keynote talk on Run-time / memory protection on future mobile processors.

The next few years will bring us several new hardware-assisted micro-architectural security features in consumer devices. Future ARM processors come with support for pointer integrity (PAuth, ARMv8.3A), Branch Target Protection (BTI, ARMv8.5A), also available in ARMv8M-class controllers, and memory tagging (MTE, ARMv8.5A). I will present these features, as well as explore academic contributions in this domain, done in collaboration between Aalto Systems Security Group, and Huawei Technologies (Finland). I will round off the presentation by discussing future options, where the combination of microarchitecture and software design may achieve memory protection against run-time attacks at an even higher granularity.
Dr. Jan Erik Ekberg is CTO, Mobile Security at Huawei Finland. His background is partly in the telecom industry, where he worked for 18 years at Nokia Research Center, and partly in developing secure mobile device platforms (7 years in Trustonic Inc and DarkMatter Llc). His primary interests are with issues related to platform security architectures, TEEs, TPM, mandatory access control mechanisms and protecting mobile software against run-time attacks. He also has a background in (securing) network protocols and telecom systems, as well as with securing and standardizing short-range communication technologies like NFC, BT-LE and WLAN. In his latest role his main focus is in securing the Huawei mobile device platform at the hardware and system software levels. Jan-Erik received his doctorate in Computer Science from Aalto University, and is currently also serving as a part-time Adjunct Professor in the System Security Group in his alma mater.

2.10.2019

We proudly announce that Prof. Valtteri Niemi will give a keynote talk on advances in 5G Security and Privacy.

Prof. Valtteri Niemi is a Professor of Computer Science in University of Helsinki and leads the Secure Systems research group. Earlier he has been a Professor of Mathematics in two other Finnish universities: University of Vaasa during 1993-97 and University of Turku during 2012-2015. Between these two academic positions Niemi served for 15 years in various roles at Nokia Research Center and was nominated as a Nokia Fellow in 2009. At Nokia, Dr. Niemi worked for wireless security, including cryptological aspects and privacy-enhancing technologies. He participated 3GPP SA3 (security) standardization group from its beginning and during 2003-2009 he was the chairman of the group. He has published more than 80 scientific articles and he is a co-author of four books and more than 30 patent families.

17.06.2019

We proudly announce that this time the Demo and Posters section is organized in cooperation with Future Internet Journal (ISSN 1999-5903). The best demo/poster of the conference will be recognized by the diploma and great prize, sponsored by Future Internet Journal. All conference participants are warmly welcome to take part in the event. Moreover, the best conference papers will be invited to publish extended version of the paper in Future Internet Journal with 20% discount.

30.04.2019

The 25th FRUCT conference is sponsored by IEEE Finland Section.

11.02.2019

We don't offer centralized accommodation, as nowadays most people prefer to make own booking. So please use our VENUE page to find accommodation that best fits your expectations or just direct link to booking.com, including some good discounts on your reservations during the conference days.

08.11.2018

Please note that if you need certificate of participation in the conference please notify us latest by November 1, 17.00CET. Otherwise we will be able to email scan copies of the certificate after the conference.

31.10.2018

We welcome patrons/sponsors to join the conference team. Please refer to the overview of patrons' packages and contact us in case of any questions and proposals.

31.10.2018

The program of the 25th FRUCT conference will be published on October 21, 2019.

31.10.2018

The selected conference papers will be invited to submit extended versions to the International Journal of Embedded and Real-Time Communication Systems (IJERTCS).

31.10.2018

Submission of papers to the 25th FRUCT conference is now open. Information on conference fees and other details can be found at CFP and Registration pages.

31.10.2018

In preparation of the paper please follow provided paper templates: MS Word, LaTeX. Please note the following major changes in the templates: The size of page should be Letter (21.59 cm × 27.94 cm). If you are using Word margins must be: top - 1.9 cm, bottom - 1.6 cm, left - 1.57 cm and right – 1.57 cm.

31.10.2018

The conference submission deadline is September 16, 2019 and authors will receive a notification of accepted by October 7, 2019. If due to travel and visa arrangements you need to have earlier decision then use earlier submission deadline - August 19, 2019. Authors of the papers received before the earlier submission deadline will receive a notification of accepted by September 16, 2019. If you need even earlier arrangments please write to email info<at>fruct.org and be prepared to make even earlier submission of your paper.

31.10.2018

The conference page and Call for Participation of the 25th FRUCT conference are available. The conference will be held in Helsinki, Finland, on November 5-8, 2019. As usually the first day is reserved for trainings and internal meetings of the FRUCT Association members, and the main conference days are November 6-8, 2019.