With the latest standard releases, Bluetooth technology is becoming more and more relevant for building and industrial automation. At the same time, Bluetooth is now becoming fundamental for contact tracing applications, to support monitoring and containment of the COVID-19 pandemic. Critical facilities such as nursing homes and hospitals have been severely exposed to the pandemic, but the currently available short-range wireless technology still faces the fundamental limits of proximity accuracy, battery lifetime, and privacy in those complex indoor environments. The aim of this paper is to investigate effective ways of building an architecture with heterogeneous devices to support contact tracing in critical scenarios such as healthcare facilities, while meeting the required level of accuracy and privacy. A framework based on standard Bluetooth mesh networking technology is proposed, and the research challenges are discussed.

With the development of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles (AV), recent years have seen an increasing evolution of onboard sensors and communication interfaces capable of interacting with available infrastructures, including satellite constellations, road structures, modern and heterogeneous network systems (e.g., 5G and beyond) and even adjacent vehicles. Consequently, it is essential to develop architectures that cover data fusion (multi–sensor approach), communication, power management, and system monitoring to ensure accurate and reliable perception in several navigation scenarios. Motivated by the EMERGE project, this paper describes the definition and implementation of an On Board Unit (OBU) dedicated to the navigation process. The OBU is equipped with the Xsens MTi–630 AHRS inertial sensor, a multi–constellation/multi–frequency Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver with the u–blox ZED–F9P module and communication interfaces that afford access to the PointPerfect augmentation service. Experimental results show that GNSS, with corrections provided by augmentation, affords centimetre accuracy, with a Time To First Fix (TTFF) of about 30 s. During the on–road tests, we also collect: the output of fusion with inertial sensor data, monitoring information that assess correct operation of the module, and the OBU power consumption, that remains under 5 W even in high–power operating mode.

Green shuttle vehicle (GSV) is a multi-purpose, four wheeled electric vehicle designed to operate in naturally protected areas where the conventional vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICEs) should be forbidden as a possible source of noise and pollution. The powertrain is based on a traction system with four in-wheel, permanent magnet motors that allow the vehicle to exhibit potentially interesting performances in terms of longitudinal dynamics, autonomy, and stability, even considering degraded adhesion conditions. In particular, this work also simulates the behaviour of the vehicle in degraded adhesion conditions, implementing a preliminary version of electric traction/braking fuzzy logic controller. The complete design and simulation of the system are an interesting example of how modern multi-disciplinary simulation tools can really accelerate the development of such a system with time and cost that are affordable also for small scale production series.