Unmanned aerial vehicles are becoming prevalent in tactical networks as they are proving to be an extremely flexible platform for a variety of applications. Increasingly, UAVs need to cooperate with each other in order to perform complex tasks such as target monitoring and prosecution, information gathering and processing, and delivery between disconnected portions of the network. However, UAV cooperation in tactical scenarios represents a major challenge from both the coordination and communication perspectives. In fact, cooperating UAVs must achieve a high degree of coordination in order to accomplish complex tasks in a dynamic and uncertain environment. In turn, as UAVs interact with other entities, the effective coordination of multiple-UAV operations requires specific support in terms of efficient communication protocols and mechanisms exploiting UAVs as mobile assets that facilitate and hasten critical information flows. This article presents a series of considerations and lessons learned that we have collected in our experience with multiple- UAV coordination and communications in tactical edge networks, and discusses some of the main components of a middleware we specifically designed to support multiple-UAV operations.

Tactical edge networks present extremely challenging environments for communications given their wireless ad hoc nature and the inherent node mobility. Military applications such as Blue Force Tracking, inter-team communications, remote unmanned vehicle control, and sensor data mining/fusion thus have to deal with unstable links with limited bandwidth and variable latency. The peculiar characteristics of tactical networks call for peer-to-peer approaches to realize complex, adaptive, and fault-tolerant applications to be deployed in the battlefield. This article reports on our observations from several tactical networking experiments in which we have deployed state-of-the-art applications and services that leverage P2P communications. More specifically, we discuss why P2P approaches are critical for tactical network environments and applications. We then analyze the requirements that should be satisfied by P2P middleware for tactical environments. Finally, we discuss a case study, the Agile Computing Middleware, and present experimental results that demonstrate its effectiveness.

While smart metering applications have initially focused on energy and gas utility markets, water consumption has recently become the subject of increasing attention. Unfortunately, despite the large number of solutions available on the market, the lack of an open and widely accepted communication standard means that vendors typically propose proprietary data collection solutions whose adoption causes non-trivial problems to water utility companies in term of costs, vendor lock-in, and lack of control on the data collection infrastructure. There is the need for open and interoperable smart water metering solutions, capable of collecting data from the wide range of water meters on the market. This paper reports our experience in the development and field testing of a highly interoperable smart water metering solution, which we designed in collaboration with several water utility companies and which we deployed in Gorino Ferrarese, Italy, in collaboration with CADF (Consorzio Acque Delta Ferrarese), the water utility serving the city. At the core of our solution is SWaMM (Smart Water Metering Middleware), an interoperable wireless IoT middleware based on the Edge computing paradigm, which proved extremely effective in interfacing with several types of smart water meters operating with different protocols.

The widespread adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is profoundly changing manufacturing. Several Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 solutions deployed in production environments have pushed for standardization efforts, most notably Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI 4.0), typically focusing on smart factory environments. However, ICT evolution is also enabling novel smart appliance scenarios, where relatively cheap machines, connected and integrated, are deployed outside the typical industrial environment with a wide range of stakeholders involved. The paper reports about a real-world use case composed of more than 12000 ice cream machines connected worldwide and shows how, anticipating the state-of-the-art, the underlying design of the ICT platform presents many interesting similarities with RAMI 4.0. The integration of appliances in a smart value chain enables to develop novel services for different stakeholders, ranging from ice cream manufacturer and maintenance technicians to ice cream shop owners and final consumers. The important synergies with RAMI 4.0 and the extensive on-the-field validation make the proposed solution a compelling reference application, from which to draw useful and generally applicable guidelines for the development of future Industry 4.0 smart appliance platforms.

Within the Industry 4.0 vision, digital twins (DTs) have gained great attention as a promising approach to improve remote monitoring and control by means of virtual representations of physical objects. However, while DTs are becoming more and more sophisticated and even adopted for mission-critical applications, their resilience assessment has not received the required consideration yet. This article originally proposes chaos engineering to assess and improve the resilience of DTs by testing multiple aspects of industrial environments in a coordinated, automated, and replicable manner. First, the article discusses why and how chaos engineering is promising to improve the resilience of DTs. Then, it identifies and introduces a set of chaos engineering profiles specifically designed to take into account the many aspects an industrial environment is composed of. Finally, it shows the feasibility of assessing the resilience of a proof-of-concept DT through a testbed based on widely-adopted, open-source tools.