Recent advances in machine learning have driven a step-change in robot perception with modalities such as vision, where large amounts of training data are readily available or cheap to collect. However, in tactile perception, the relatively high cost of data collection still largely impedes the adoption of such data-driven learning solutions. In this article, we introduce TactGen, a novel, cross-modal framework to tackle this challenge. In particular, using a two-step data generation pipeline, we leverage easily accessible vision data to synthesise artificial tactile data for downstream classifier training. Specifically, we use readily collected video data of objects of interest to efficiently learn neural radiance field (NeRF) representations. The NeRF models are then used to render red–green–blue-depth (RGBD) images from any desired vantage points. In the second stage, the RGBD images are translated into corresponding tactile images typically generated by camera-based tactile sensors using a conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN). The cGAN model is itself trained with a large set of visuo-tactile images collected in simulation, and can be transferred into the real world without fine-tuning or additional data collection. We extensively validate this approach in the context of tactile object classification, showing that it effectively reduces data collection time by a factor of 20 while achieving similar performance to training a classifier on manually collected real data.

Tactile gesture recognition systems play a crucial role in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) by enabling intuitive communication between humans and robots. The literature mainly addresses this problem by applying machine learning techniques to classify sequences of tactile images encoding the pressure distribution generated when executing the gestures. However, some gestures can be hard to differentiate based on the information provided by tactile images alone.In this paper, we present a simple yet effective way to improve the accuracy of a gesture recognition classifier. Our approach focuses solely on processing the tactile images used as input by the classifier. In particular, we propose to explicitly highlight the dynamics of the contact in the tactile image by computing the dense optical flow. This additional information makes it easier to distinguish between gestures that produce similar tactile images but exhibit different contact dynamics. We validate the proposed approach in a tactile gesture recognition task, showing that a classifier trained on tactile images augmented with optical flow information achieved a 9% improvement in gesture classification accuracy compared to one trained on standard tactile images.

Recent advances in machine learning have driven a step-change in robot perception with modalities such as vision, where large amounts of training data are readily available or cheap to collect. However, in tactile perception, the relatively high cost of data collection still largely impedes the adoption of such data-driven learning solutions. In this article, we introduce TactGen, a novel, cross-modal framework to tackle this challenge. In particular, using a two-step data generation pipeline, we leverage easily accessible vision data to synthesise artificial tactile data for downstream classifier training. Specifically, we use readily collected video data of objects of interest to efficiently learn neural radiance field (NeRF) representations. The NeRF models are then used to render red–green–blue-depth (RGBD) images from any desired vantage points. In the second stage, the RGBD images are translated into corresponding tactile images typically generated by camera-based tactile sensors using a conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN). The cGAN model is itself trained with a large set of visuo-tactile images collected in simulation, and can be transferred into the real world without fine-tuning or additional data collection. We extensively validate this approach in the context of tactile object classification, showing that it effectively reduces data collection time by a factor of 20 while achieving similar performance to training a classifier on manually collected real data.

The design of complex engineering systems is an often long and articulated process that highly relies on engineers’ expertise and professional judgment. As such, the typical pitfalls of activities involving the human factor often manifest themselves in terms of lack of completeness or exhaustiveness of the analysis, inconsistencies across design choices or documentation, as well as an implicit degree of subjectivity. An approach is proposed to assist systems engineers in the automatic generation of systems diagrams from unstructured natural language text. Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques are used to extract entities and their relationships from textual resources (e.g., specifications, manuals, technical reports, maintenance reports) available within an organisation, and convert them into Systems Modelling Language (SysML) diagrams, with particular focus on structure and requirement diagrams. The intention is to provide the users with a more standardised, comprehensive and automated starting point onto which subsequently refine and adapt the diagrams according to their needs. The proposed approach is flexible and open-domain. It consists of six steps which leverage open-access tools, and it leads to an automatic generation of SysML diagrams without intermediate modelling requirement, but through the specification of a set of parameters by the user. The applicability and benefits of the proposed approach are shown through six case studies having different textual sources as inputs, and benchmarked against manually defined diagram elements.

This paper investigates the joint optimal beamforming and power-splitting receiver architecture design for simultaneous information and power transfer (SWIPT) under non-linear energy harvesting (EH) circuit environment, where hybrid access point (H-AP) equipped with multiple antennas simultaneously transmits information and power to multiple single-antenna users. For such a system, in order to achieve green communication design, we formulate an optimization problem to minimize the total transmit power of H-AP subjecting to the required signal-to-interference-plus- noise ratio (SINR) and the harvested power constrains at each user under non-linear EH model. Since the problem is non-convex, the relaxed semidefinite program (SDP) is used to solve it, and it is proved that the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) process is tight and our optimal solution achieves the global optimum. Numerical results show that a considerable gain could be achieved if the SWIPT beamforming vector and the power splitting ratios are jointly designed under the non-linear EH model compared with traditional linear EH model, since the non-linear EH model captures and matches the real EH circuits' non-linear features. Moreover, the feasible region of traditional linear EH model in the non-linear EH circuit environment is also characterized.

Phishing is a form of online identity theft. Phishers use social engineering to steal victims' personal identity data and financial account credentials. Social engineering schemes use spoofed e-mails to lure unsuspecting victims into counterfeit Websites designed to trick recipients into divulging financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames, passwords and social security numbers. This is called a deceptive phishing attack. In this paper, a thorough overview of a deceptive phishing attack and its countermeasure techniques, which is called anti-phishing, is presented. Firstly, technologies used by phishers and the definition, classification and future works of deceptive phishing attacks are discussed. Following with the existing browser-side anti-phishing techniques in literatures and research-stage technologies are shown, and a thorough analysis which includes the advantages and shortcomings of countermeasures is given.