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This paper proposes the use of an event camera as a component of a vision system that enables counting of fast-moving objects – in this case, falling corn grains. These cameras transmit, in an asynchronous manner, information about the change in brightness of individual pixels and are characterised by low latency, no motion blur, and correct operation in different lighting conditions, as well as very low power consumption. The proposed counting algorithm processes events in real time. The operation of the solution was demonstrated on a stand consisting of a chute with a vibrating feeder, which allowed the number of falling grains to be adjusted. The objective of the control system with a PID controller was to maintain a constant average number of falling objects. The proposed solution was subjected to a series of tests to determine the correctness of the developed method operation. On their basis, the validity of using an event camera to count small, fast-moving objects and the associated wide range of potential industrial applications can be confirmed.

Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie prawnych uregulowań dotyczących haktywizmu – cyfrowych form nieposłuszeństwa obywatelskiego. W artykule scharakteryzowano najważniejsze grup haktywistów, wskazując metody ich działań w sieci. Omówiono również legislację Wspólnoty Europejskiej odnoszącą się do cyberprzestępczości i ewentualnej penalizacji działań haktywistów. Artykuł podsumowuje opis działań grupy Anonymous, aktywnie wspierającej działania o charakterze cyberwojennym wymierzone przeciw Rosji podczas wojny w Ukrainie oraz dyskusja dotycząca uzasadnienia owych działań w świetle obowiązujących norm prawnych oraz przyjętych założeń dotyczących prowadzenia wojny w cyberprzestrzeni.

The spectroscopic properties of Eu3+-doped Bi12SiO20 (BSO) were investigated and compared with that of Eu3+-doped Bi12GeO20 (BGO). The emission properties and the absorption spectra have been measured at 10 K as well as at 300 K (room temperature). Luminescence was detected due to the direct excitation of the 5D0 level of Eu3+, as well as through the excitation of the 5D1 level. The Judd–Ofelt theoretical framework was used to compute the radiative lifetimes (τ) and the omega parameters (Ωλ). The electric dipole transition probabilities, asymmetry ratios (R), along with the branching ratios (β) were also determined based on the obtained experimental data. The strongest detected luminescence belongs to the 5D0 → 7F0 transition observed at 578 nm, similar to the BGO sillenite. Reasons for the major presence of the 5D0 → 7F0 emission, theoretically forbidden by the Judd–Ofelt Theory, were investigated and compared with that of the BGO sillenite. Obtained results showed that the strong 5D0 → 7F0 line is also present in Eu:BSO, indicating that this is a feature of the entire sillenite family and not just Eu:BGO.

This paper proposes the use of an event camera as a component of a vision system that enables counting of fast-moving objects - in this case, falling corn grains. These type of cameras transmit information about the change in brightness of individual pixels and are characterised by low latency, no motion blur, correct operation in different lighting conditions, as well as very low power consumption. The proposed counting algorithm processes events in real time. The operation of the solution was demonstrated on a stand consisting of a chute with a vibrating feeder, which allowed the number of grains falling to be adjusted. The objective of the control system with a PID controller was to maintain a constant average number of falling objects. The proposed solution was subjected to a series of tests to determine the correctness of the developed method operation. On their basis, the validity of using an event camera to count small, fast-moving objects and the associated wide range of potential industrial applications can be confirmed., Paper accepted for the Automation 2023 (7-9 March 2023, Warsaw, Poland) conference and PAR journal (original manuscript in Polish)

This article addresses the legal aspects of the financing of adaptation to climate change, with special consideration given to one of the climate funds – the Adaptation Fund (AF). In the complex structure of climate finance, the AF attracts attention as it differs from other funds in several aspects. As an exception from other United Nations (UNs) climate funds, AF has not been recognised as an operating entity of the Financial Mechanism of the Convention. AF is also an unprecedented example under the Convention of a fund serving in parallel two decision-making bodies (CMP and CMA) under two agreements (Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement) ratified by non-overlapping sets of parties; with a Fund Board elected by both bodies collectively. AFs funding source is specific, it was designed to be financed from shares of the proceeds of sales of certified emission reduction units (CERs) generated by Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects but since 2012 there is a limited possibility of offsetting the emissions with CERs under the EU emissions trading system (ETS). For several years Parties were unable to agree the operating principles and procedures of a new mechanism established in article 6(4) of the Paris Agreement, which will resemble CDM, and would constitute a source of funding for the AF. Once this source of funding is available, the AF would cease to serve the Kyoto Protocol. Despite the above problems, AF was seen as a good example of how future climate funding can be designed. We examine the evolution of the above legal problems, including the most recent decisions and conclusions adopted during Conference of Parties (COP)25 in Madrid.

The article presents findings from the multidimensional comparative study focusing on the implementation of the Smart City concept in selected cities of the Visegrad Group (V4). V4 has been established by its member states (Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary) in a joint effort to break from the communist past and develop the common democratic values of the European Community. Aforementioned efforts involved meeting other important goals, such as socio-economic convergence processes including reaching better living conditions for V4 citizens. At present, strategies that aim to improve the wellbeing of citizens are manifested by Smart City concepts and are being implemented in V4 cities. The main research task in this article is to answer the question regarding regional (state) divergence in Smart City implementation in selected cities. The results of the study show that the best Smart City implementation scores are shared by Czech Republic towns. Polish cities (Kielce, Rzeszów, Lublin) located in the eastern regions of the country (which are also eastern border regions of the European Union) have the worst Smart City implementation scores, according to the value of the synthetic measure.

In this paper, a hardware implementation in reconfigurable logic of a single-pass connected component labelling (CCL) and connected component analysis (CCA) module is presented. The main novelty of the design is the support of a video stream in 2 and 4 pixel per clock format (2 and 4 ppc) and real-time processing of 4K/UHD video stream (3840 x 2160 pixels) at 60 frames per second. We discuss several approaches to the issue and present in detail the selected ones. The proposed module was verified in an exemplary application – skin colour areas segmentation – on the ZCU 102 and ZCU 104 evaluation boards equipped with Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC devices.

In this study, the authors demonstrate that transmission rate in white phosphorescent light emitting diode (LED) transmitter communication-illumination system can be increased significantly by simultaneous transmission of an additional infrared (IR) channel. Unlike in typical colour multiplexing, the IR channel does not require a dedicated receiver filter as the channel crosstalk can be removed using digital signal processing. Both channels can operate in synchronous or asynchronous mode. The experimental results in this study demonstrate a significant increase in the data rate.

Neuromorphic vision is a rapidly growing field with numerous applications in the perception systems of autonomous vehicles. Unfortunately, due to the sensors working principle, there is a significant amount of noise in the event stream. In this paper we present a novel algorithm based on an IIR filter matrix for filtering this type of noise and a hardware architecture that allows its acceleration using an SoC FPGA. Our method has a very good filtering efficiency for uncorrelated noise - over 99% of noisy events are removed. It has been tested for several event data sets with added random noise. We designed the hardware architecture in such a way as to reduce the utilisation of the FPGA's internal BRAM resources. This enabled a very low latency and a throughput of up to 385.8 MEPS million events per second.The proposed hardware architecture was verified in simulation and in hardware on the Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ MPSoC chip on the Mercury+ XU9 module with the Mercury+ ST1 base board., Comment: Accepted for the DSD 2022 conference

The paper presents findings regarding AI and Machine Learning and how “thinking machines” differ from human beings? In the next part the paper presents the issue of AI and Machine Learning’s impact on day-to-day activities in the following areas: 1. Microtargetting and psychometrics – with the examples from the business and politics; 2. Surveillance systems, biometric identification, COVID 19 tracing apps etc. – the issue of privacy in the digital era; 3. The question of choice optimization (AI-driven Web browsers and dating apps, chatbots and virtual assistants etc.); whether free will still exist in the AI supported on-line environment? The article is summed up with conclusions.

Deep learning algorithms are a key component of many state-of-the-art vision systems, especially as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) outperform most solutions in the sense of accuracy. To apply such algorithms in real-time applications, one has to address the challenges of memory and computational complexity. To deal with the first issue, we use networks with reduced precision, specifically a binary neural network (also known as XNOR). To satisfy the computational requirements, we propose to use highly parallel and low-power FPGA devices. In this work, we explore the possibility of accelerating XNOR networks for traffic sign classification. The trained binary networks are implemented on the ZCU 104 development board, equipped with a Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC device using two different approaches. Firstly, we propose a custom HDL accelerator for XNOR networks, which enables the inference with almost 450 fps. Even better results are obtained with the second method – the Xilinx FINN accelerator – enabling to process input images with around 550 frame rate. Both approaches provide over \(95\%\) accuracy on the test set.

This work describes the hardware implementation of a connected component labelling (CCL) module in reprogammable logic. The main novelty of the design is the "full", i.e. without any simplifications, support of a 4 pixel per clock format (4 ppc) and real-time processing of a 4K/UltraHD video stream (3840 x 2160 pixels) at 60 frames per second. To achieve this, a special labelling method was designed and a functionality that stops the input data stream in order to process pixel groups which require writing more than one merger into the equivalence table. The proposed module was verified in simulation and in hardware on the Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ MPSoC chip on the ZCU104 evaluation board., Submitted to DSD 2021

Deep learning algorithms are a key component of many state-of-the-art vision systems, especially as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) outperform most solutions in the sense of accuracy. To apply such algorithms in real-time applications, one has to address the challenges of memory and computational complexity. To deal with the first issue, we use networks with reduced precision, specifically a binary neural network (also known as XNOR). To satisfy the computational requirements, we propose to use highly parallel and low-power FPGA devices. In this work, we explore the possibility of accelerating XNOR networks for traffic sign classification. The trained binary networks are implemented on the ZCU 104 development board, equipped with a Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC device using two different approaches. Firstly, we propose a custom HDL accelerator for XNOR networks, which enables the inference with almost 450 fps. Even better results are obtained with the second method - the Xilinx FINN accelerator - enabling to process input images with around 550 frame rate. Both approaches provide over 96% accuracy on the test set., 12 pages, 2 figures, 6 tables. Submitted for the CORES 2021 conference

The article proves that common LEDs may act as photodetectors with limited sensitivity, if they are polarized with an appropriate reverse voltage. The measured responsivities are ranged between 0.002 and 0.156 A/W and they depend on the LED type. The only one exception are white (phosphorescent) LEDs which do not exhibit any photosensitivity. There have also shown that a bandwidth of LEDs, which were examined in a role of photodetectors, is of a few tens of MHz, which is an order of magnitude greater than their modulation bandwidth as transmitters. The reasons of the observed LEDs behaviour are explained theoretically. The obtained results are indicated that some of them may be used as both transmitters and receivers in the VLC links working in a bi-directional half-duplex mode.

The atomic bomb used in 1945 by the United States disturbed the military and symbolic balance of the world then. It became a sign of the Western power. The communist propaganda sought to neutralize the meaning of a new weapon. The text reconstructs the attempts of this neutralization and indicates the ways of presentation of nuclear weapons in the Polish poetry of socialist realism. Several motifs can be mentioned here: juxtaposition of the atomic bomb with apocalyptic motifs, highlighting the lack of intellectual and moral qualifications for possessing it, and emphasizing that it is a dangerous by-product of the Western desire for profit. Above all, however, the poetry of socialist realism underlined that Western culture is an incomprehensible and inhuman evil.

We present a hardware implementation in reconfigurable logic of a single-pass connected component labelling (CCL) and connected component analysis (CCA) module. The design supports a video stream in 4 pixel per clock format (4 ppc) and allows real-time processing of 4K/UHD video stream (3840\(\,\times \,\)2160 pixels) at 60 frames per second. We discuss the applied modification and simplifications and their impact on the algorithm’s performance. We verified the proposed module in an exemplary application – skin colour areas segmentation – on the ZCU 102 evaluation board with Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC device.

This paper presents the theoretical issues of data security in information systems, a practical implementation of the Clark-Wilson model on the example of Business Intelligence tool, performing the function of a telecommunications operator sales module, and an evaluation of the increase of security of the system created, using risk analysis.

The article presents the concept solution of two main issues of visible light communication systems, i.e. the lack of a cost-effective feedback channel and the handling of high throughput. The concept is based on merging of the multiple input multiple output approach, well-known from radio transmission domain, with using of LEDs in a double role, i.e. both as emitters and detectors of light. The feasibility of the proposal was confirmed by the results of the research, carried out for two-channel system of this type.

In this paper, we attempted to match an analytical model to the observed dynamic nonlinearity of the optical power versus driving current characteristic of lighting LED. Among the models tested were the (generalized) Wiener model, the Hammerstein model, and a variant of the generalized Wiener-Hammerstein model. Unfortunately, it turned out that neither model fits the data obtained from LED power versus current dynamic measurements.

The article presents methodology of obtaining the channel impulse responses (CIRs) on a way of numerical calculation for optical wireless transmission systems working indoor, including also those which work in scope of visible spectrum of light (VLC), based on the modified Monte Carlo ray tracing algorithm (MMC), which allows to determine them with really good quality for any room conditions in a short time. The influence of transmission channel is one of the most important factors, which is taken into consideration when design of wireless transmission systems is done. Using of the CIR is commonly applicable technique for this purpose. Based on the channel impulse response we can among others analyze and predict the link performance in the presence of noise and other factors, which can have significant impact on it final performance.

The possibility of using MIMO technique for purpose of increasing information capacity of optical camera communication systems (OCC) has been experimentally proved in regard to a smartphone used as a receiver. Among others, a successful 2-channel transmission at a distance longer than 4 m has been presented. By use of traditional modulation schemes the throughputs which can be achieved in the OCC systems are typically only a few dozen bits per second. The MIMO is promising technique to overcome this limitation.