Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) play a primary role in a plethora of technical and scientific fields owing to their wide range of applications. In particular, the provision of emergency services during the occurrence of a crisis event is a vital application domain where such aerial robots can contribute, sending out valuable assistance to both distressed humans and rescue teams. Bearing in mind that time constraints constitute a crucial parameter in search and rescue (SAR) missions, the punctual and precise detection of humans in peril is of paramount importance. The paper in hand deals with real-time human detection onboard a fully autonomous rescue UAV. Using deep learning techniques, the implemented embedded system was capable of detecting open water swimmers. This allowed the UAV to provide assistance accurately in a fully unsupervised manner, thus enhancing first responder operational capabilities. The novelty of the proposed system is the combination of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) techniques and computer vision algorithms for both precise human detection and rescue apparatus release. Details about hardware configuration as well as the system’s performance evaluation are fully discussed.

The integration of exponential technologies in the traditional manufacturing processes constitutes a noteworthy trend of the past two decades, aiming to reshape the industrial environment. This kind of digital transformation, which is driven by the Industry 4.0 initiative, not only affects the individual manufacturing assets, but the involved human workforce, as well. Since human operators should be placed in the centre of this revolution, they ought to be endowed with new tools and through-engineering solutions that improve their efficiency. In addition, vivid visualization techniques must be utilized, in order to support them during their daily operations in an auxiliary and comprehensive way. Towards this end, we describe a user-centered methodology, which utilizes augmented reality (AR) and computer vision (CV) techniques, supporting low-skilled operators in the maintenance procedures. The described mobile augmented reality maintenance assistant (MARMA) makes use of the handheld’s camera and locates the asset on the shop floor and generates AR maintenance instructions. We evaluate the performance of MARMA in a real use case scenario, using an automotive industrial asset provided by a collaborative manufacturer. During the evaluation procedure, manufacturer experts confirmed its contribution as an application that can effectively support the maintenance engineers.

Vision based human pose estimation is an non-invasive technology for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The direct use of the hand as an input device provides an attractive interaction method, with no need for specialized sensing equipment, such as exoskeletons, gloves etc, but a camera. Traditionally, HCI is employed in various applications spreading in areas including manufacturing, surgery, entertainment industry and architecture, to mention a few. Deployment of vision based human pose estimation algorithms can give a breath of innovation to these applications. In this paper, we present a novel Convolutional Neural Network architecture, reinforced with a Self-Attention module. Our proposed model can be deployed on an embedded system due to its lightweight nature with just 1.9 Million parameters. The source code and qualitative results are publicly available.

Efficient feature learning with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) constitutes an increasingly imperative property since several challenging tasks of computer vision tend to require cascade schemes and modalities fusion. Feature learning aims at CNN models capable of extracting embeddings, exhibiting high discrimination among the different classes, as well as intra-class compactness. In this paper, a novel approach is introduced that has separator, which focuses on an effective hyperplane-based segregation of the classes instead of the common class centers separation scheme. Accordingly, an innovatory separator, namely the Hyperplane-Assisted Softmax separator (HASeparator), is proposed that demonstrates superior discrimination capabilities, as evaluated on popular image classification benchmarks.

Vision based human pose estimation is an non-invasive technology for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Direct use of the hand as an input device provides an attractive interaction method, with no need for specialized sensing equipment, such as exoskeletons, gloves etc, but a camera. Traditionally, HCI is employed in various applications spreading in areas including manufacturing, surgery, entertainment industry and architecture, to mention a few. Deployment of vision based human pose estimation algorithms can give a breath of innovation to these applications. In this letter, we present a novel Convolutional Neural Network architecture, reinforced with a Self-Attention module that it can be deployed on an embedded system, due to its lightweight nature, with just 1.9 Million parameters. The source code and qualitative results are publicly available.