Special Session 22

Accurate localisation of assets, robots and people would be a key enabler for Industry 4.0 applications in warehouses, production sites, retails especially in cooperative, high dynamic production sites of the future. The set of possible localisation technologies in an industrial environment is really wide, as it includes radio-frequency, vision, ultrasonic, magnetic and laser sensors. A number of challenges has been hindering the deployment of accurate positioning sensing systems and techniques to date. Moreover, an accurate characterisation of the location uncertainty is strictly dependent on the employed technology and the application scenario.

The special session is focused on new positioning, tracking and navigation solutions for Industry 4.0 scenario. The main topics are related to:

• Innovative localisation methods in Industry 4.0
• Robot navigation and tracking
• People positioning solutions
• Localisation of static/mobile agents
• Optical localisation
• Ultrasonic localisation
• Laser localisation
• Magnetic sensors
• Wi-Fi localisation
• Bluetooth localisation
• Ultra Wide Band localisation
• Localisation with Radio Frequency Identification Systems
• Hybrid positioning methods based on data-fusion algorithms
• Metrics, algorithms and position measurement uncertainty

Daniele Fontanelli received the M.S. degree in Information Engineering in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree in Automation, Robotics and Bioengineering in 2006, both from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. He was a Visiting Scientist with the Vision Lab of the University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, US, from 2006 to 2007. From 2007 to 2008, he has been an Associate Researcher with the Interdepartmental Research Center ``E. Piaggio’’, University of Pisa. From 2008 to 2013 he joined as an Associate Researcher the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science and from 2014 the Department of Industrial Engineering, both at the University of Trento, Trento, Italy, where he is now an Associate Professor. He has authored and co-authored more than 120 scientific papers in peer-reviewed top journals and conference proceedings. He is currently an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement and for the IET Science, Measurement & Technology Journal. From 2018 he is also an Associate Technical Program Committee Member for the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. His research interests include localisation algorithms, wheeled mobile robot control and service robotics, real-time estimation and control.

Alice Buffi was born in 1984. She received the bachelor’s and master’s (summa cum laude) degrees in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 2006 and 2008, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Applied Electro-Magnetism In Electrical And Biomedical Engineering, Electronics, Smart Sensors, Nanotechnologies from the University of Pisa in 2012, with Doctor Europaeus label. She was a Visiting Ph.D. Student with the Queen Mary University of London, London, U.K., in 2012. Since 2012 she has been with the University of Pisa, where she is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Energy, Systems, Territory and Construction Engineering. She co-authored several international journal papers and international conferences contributions and co-authored a European patent. Her research interests include measurement methods to locate static or moving items through Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems operating at the UHF band in Industry 4.0 scenario. Besides, she has interests in classification methods for smart gates and smart storage systems. She is a member of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society and the Antennas and Propagation Society. Dr. Buffi was a recipient of the Young Scientist Award from the International Union of Radio Science, Commission B, in 2013 and 2016.