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The calibration system for XIPE is aimed at providing a way to check and correct possible variations of performance of the Gas Pixel Detector during the three years of operation in orbit (plus two years of possible extended operation), while facilitating the observation of the celestial sources. This will be performed by using a filter wheel with a large heritage having a set of positions for the calibration and the observation systems. In particular, it will allow for correcting possible gain variation, for measuring the modulation factor using a polarized source, for removing non interesting bright sources in the field of view and for observing very bright celestial sources. The on-board calibration system is composed of three filter wheels, one for each detector and it is expected to operate for a small number of times during the year. Moreover, since it operates once at a time, within the observation mode, it allows for simultaneous calibration and acquisition from celestial sources on different detectors. In this paper we present the scope and the requirements of the on-board calibration system, its design, and a description of its possible use in space.

This study explores the transformation of value creation into value co-creation and how the digitization of services plays a key role in this transformation within the health-care sector, which faces new challenges with the increasingly active role of the customer. Customers are becoming active participants in value co-creation and now have expectations based on their needs from the service. The objective of this study is to provide a more holistic view of the customer’s role and value cocreation within digital health-care services. This study emphasizes the necessity of the co-creation of value within the health-care sector and introduces a paradigm shift through the digitization of value co-creation This study illustrates a new mode of interaction in value co-creation in which both parties are independent in their own spheres, but the service (via digital platform) is available to both and has a timewise continuum that differs dramatically from traditional episode-based meetings between the service provider and the customer. This study points out the necessity of increasing the customer orientation of health-care services development. peerReviewed

During digital transformation, companies integrate digital technologies creating large and complex digital infrastructures. These digital infrastructures hold combinatory affordances enabling companies to achieve outcomes that are more than the sum of their parts (i.e., the individual digital technologies). Owing to the complexity of digital infrastructures, these combinatory affordances are ever-present but hidden in the thicket of the infrastructure making their effective use a challenge. We report on an ethnographic study of a large German car manufacturer (Car Inc.) that increasingly integrated digital technologies into its infrastructure as part of its digital transformation strategy. With its infrastructure growing into a ‘digital jungle’, the combinatory affordances remained hidden impeding the infrastructure’s effective use. To facilitate effective use of their infrastructure, that is, support employees to navigate the digital jungle, Car Inc. created a digital compass as a tool to articulate the affordances hidden in the thickets of the digital jungle. nonPeerReviewed

Despite having proven successful in generating precise motions under dynamic conditions in highly deformable soft-bodied robots, model based techniques are also prone to robustness issues connected to the intrinsic uncertain nature of the dynamics of these systems. This letter aims at tackling this challenge, by extending the augmented rigid robot formulation to a stable representation of three dimensional motions of soft robots, under Piecewise Constant Curvature hypothesis. In turn, the equivalence between soft-bodied and rigid robots permits to derive effective adaptive controllers for soft-bodied robots, achieving perfect posture regulation under considerable errors in the knowledge of system parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed control design is demonstrated through extensive simulations.

In this paper we revisit a taxonomy of client-side IoT software architectures that we presented a few years ago. We note that the emergence of inexpensive AI/ML hardware and new communication technologies are broadening the architectural options for IoT devices even further. These options can have a significant impact on the overall end-to-end architecture and topology of IoT systems, e.g., in determining how much computation can be performed on the edge of the network. We study the implications of the IoT device architecture choices in light of the new observations, as well as make some new predictions about future directions. Additionally, we make a case for isomorphic IoT systems in which development complexity is alleviated with consistent use of technologies across the entire stack, providing a seamless continuum from edge devices all the way to the cloud. peerReviewed

Digitalization offers new opportunities and changes how firms can explore and enter new markets. Current literature has deepened our understanding of the internationalization process of digital-based firms, but it provides very little guidance on how the specific characteristics of digital artifacts enable and accelerate internationalization or of the role of crossnational distance and cultural difference. We use a longitudinal single-case approach to explore how a Business-to-Business (B2B) platform provider internationalized its operations from inception. The case study illustrates that the ongoing development of the digital service and the integration with new devices played an important role in the firm’s internationalization and expansion into new markets. We also observed that cross-cultural distance and cultural differences played an unexpected role. Finally, we propose avenues for future research. peerReviewed

espanolIoT es un concepto que hace referencia a una red de objetos cotidianos interconectados a traves de Internet. Esta es una de las areas de creciente interes y necesario conocimiento para los estudiantes de Ingenieria de Telecomunicaciones/Telematica. Los principales obstaculos a los que se enfrentan los estudiantes con IoT son por un lado la integracion del hardware, asi como la necesidad de disponer de sistemas de gestion para manejar el volumen de datos que generan. Este trabajo muestra unas experiencias realizadas con un grupo de estudiantes en el grado de ingenieria telematica y en el master de telecomunicacion. EnglishIoT is a concept referred to a network of common objects interconnected through the Internet. This is one of the main areas with growing interest and also necessary for the Telecommunication and Telematics Engineering students. The main constraints which face the students with IoT are the integration of the hardware as well as the need for management systems to handle the amount of data they generate by specific software. This work shows some experiences done by a group of students in the Telematics Engineering Degree and the Master of Telecommunications.

We present a deep learning model with temporal memory to detect clouds in image time series acquired by the Seviri imager mounted on the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite. The model provides pixel-level cloud maps with related confidence and propagates information in time via a recurrent neural network structure. With a single model, we are able to outline clouds along all year and during day and night with high accuracy.

Mapping carbon stocks in the tropics is essential for climate change mitigation. Passive microwave remote sensing allows estimating carbon from deep canopy layers through the Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD) parameter. Although their spatial resolution is coarser than that of optical vegetation indices or airborne Lidar data, microwaves present a higher penetration capacity at low frequencies (L-band) and avoid cloud masking. This work compares the relationships of airborne carbon maps in Central and South America with both (i) SMAP L-band VOD at 9 km gridding and (ii) MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI). Models to estimate carbon stocks are built from these two satellite-derived variables. Results show that L-band VOD has a greater capacity to model carbon variability than EVI. The resulting VOD-derived carbon estimates are further presented at a detailed (9 km) spatial scale. The L-band VOD data are available from the authors upon request. This study has been supported by the Spanish government through the projects ESP2015-67549-C3-1-R and ESP2017-89463-C3-2-R, and through the award "Unidad de Excelencia María de Maeztu" MDM-2016-0600, financed by the "Agencia Estatal de Investigación" (Spain). The study has been supported also by the European Regional development Fund (ERDF). Maria Piles is supported by a Ramón y Cajal contract (MINECO) and by the project RTI2018-096765-A-100 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE). We thank the Carnegie Airborne Observatory for making the AGB maps available. Peer Reviewed