The attention of many developed countries has increasingly focused on the security and protection of critical infrastructure. The use of Unmanned Systems (USs) for this purpose has been growing rapidly in recent years, as advances in technology, increased versatility and smaller size, together with the reduced risks and costs associated with removing the need for a pilot or operator on board, have all made these systems more attractive. This book, Monitoring and Protection of Critical Infrastructure by Unmanned Systems, presents 15 papers delivered at the NATO Advanced Training Course (ATC) of the same name hosted in Chisinau, the Republic of Moldova, from 30 May to 5 June 2022. This event was held in a hybrid format, and was attended in-person by 12 of the 31 speakers and the majority of the 92 attendees. The aim of the ATC was to explore the monitoring and protection of critical infrastructure using USs. Various USs, including ground control stations (GCS), data communication links, and a range of unmanned aerial (UAV), ground (UGV) and underwater (UUV) vehicles are covered, and the papers included here also deal with topics such as the use of drones for buildings inspection and the new technologies which can help with the recognition and monitoring of anthropogenic threats and natural hazards. There is also a focus on data analysis and modeling. Providing an overview of the use of unmanned vehicle systems and sensor-network technology for monitoring and protection, the book will be of interest to all those working to protect critical infrastructure.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Workshop on Cyber-Physical Security for Critical Infrastructures Protection, CPS4CIP 2020, which was organized in conjunction with the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, ESORICS 2020, and held online on September 2020. The 14 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 24 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: security threat intelligence; data anomaly detection: predict and prevent; computer vision and dataset for security; security management and governance; and impact propagation and power traffic analysis. The book contains 6 chapters which are available open access under a CC-BY license.

This book collects the latest research results on security-related advanced technologies. The chapters contain relevant and interesting topics from numerous research. Data science and artificial intelligence research nowadays one of the most important topics for the industry and the security sectors. The autonomy and counter-autonomy research topic are also very interesting. Autonomous cars have become a part of the common days, but their safe and secure application is not assured. The research results in this field want to support and assure safe and secure autonomous applications in our quotidian life. Also, the safe and secure robotics in the industries and the defence assure a high standard of living and the given research results in this area can use to increase it. The researchers work on it and publish the results that can be interesting for the other researchers and the innovators, but also the industrial part members. The researchers work on it and publish the results that can be interesting for the other researchers and the innovators, but also the industrial part members. Communication is a part of our life, but the communication systems mesh all around the world. Communication is the basis of modern life because without it life stop. One other interesting and very important research area is the material sciences. Virtual life cannot exist without hardware and materials. The new technical applications require new materials, that can suffice the mechanical and physical, chemical properties demand. Nowadays a common requirement of the materials the high strength and lightweight. Researchers want to serve the industrial requests and innovate new composite materials or increase the properties of the material through a new technological process. The authors publish the latest results of the security-related research area including the newest innovations and technologies which rise the interest of the defence and the modern industries even the interest of other researchers.

The information infrastructure – comprising computers, embedded devices, networks and software systems – is vital to operations in every sector: chemicals, commercial facilities, communications, critical manufacturing, dams, defense industrial base, emergency services, energy, financial services, food and agriculture, government facilities, healthcare and public health, information technology, nuclear reactors, materials and waste, transportation systems, and water and wastewater systems. Global business and industry, governments, indeed society itself, cannot function if major components of the critical information infrastructure are degraded, disabled or destroyed. Critical Infrastructure Protection XIV describes original research results and innovative applications in the interdisciplinary field of critical infrastructure protection. Also, it highlights the importance of weaving science, technology and policy in crafting sophisticated, yet practical, solutions that will help secure information, computer and network assets in the various critical infrastructure sectors. Areas of coverage include: Aviation Infrastructure Security; Vehicle Infrastructure Security; Telecommunications Systems Security; Industrial Control Systems Security; Cyber-Physical Systems Security; and Infrastructure Modeling and Simulation. This book is the fourteenth volume in the annual series produced by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 11.10 on Critical Infrastructure Protection, an international community of scientists, engineers, practitioners and policy makers dedicated to advancing research, development and implementation efforts focused on infrastructure protection. The book contains a selection of sixteen edited papers from the Fourteenth Annual IFIP WG 11.10 International Conference on Critical Infrastructure Protection, held at SRI International, Arlington, Virginia, USA in the spring of 2020. Critical Infrastructure Protection XIV is an important resource for researchers, faculty members and graduate students, as well as for policy makers, practitioners and other individuals with interests in homeland security.

Autonomous systems are on the frontiers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, and they are slowly finding their business applications. Driven mostly by Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods (one of the most difficult, but also the most promising modern AI algorithms), autonomous systems help create self-learning and self-optimising systems, ranging from simple game-playing agents to robots able to efficiently act in completely new environments. Based on in-depth study of more than 100 projects, Andrzej Wodecki explores RL as a key component of modern digital technologies, its real-life applications to activities in a value chain and the ways in which it impacts different industries.

This book provides an update to the capabilities of unmanned systems since my two previous books entitled Unmanned Systems: Savior or Threat and The Importance and Vulnerabilities of U.S. Critical Infrastructure to Unmanned Systems and Cyber. Our world is undergoing a revolution in how we send and receive goods, conduct surveillance and launch attacks against our enemies, and reach out and explore our terrestrial neighbors and distant galaxies. It is akin to the introduction of fire to ancient mankind and automobiles at the turn of the nineteenth century. There is much that is being done and much more yet to be developed before we accept these new wonderous and simultaneously dangerous additions to our lives. By mating autonomous unmanned systems with artificial intelligence, we are taking a step closer to the creation of a "Skynet" entity.

Neural network control has been a research hotspot in academic fields due to the strong ability of computation. One of its wildly applied fields is robotics. In recent years, plenty of researchers have devised different types of dynamic neural network (DNN) to address complex control issues in robotics fields in reality. Redundant manipulators are no doubt indispensable devices in industrial production. There are various works on the redundancy resolution of redundant manipulators in performing a given task with the manipulator model information known. However, it becomes knotty for researchers to precisely control redundant manipulators with unknown model to complete a cyclic-motion generation CMG task, to some extent. It is worthwhile to investigate the data-driven scheme and the corresponding novel dynamic neural network (DNN), which exploits learning and control simultaneously. Therefore, it is of great significance to further research the special control features and solve challenging issues to improve control performance from several perspectives, such as accuracy, robustness, and solving speed.

This book represents a timely overview of advances in systems safety and security, based on selected, revised and extended contributions from the 2nd and 3rd editions of the International Workshop on Systems Safety and Security – IWSSS, held in 2014 and 2015, respectively, in Bucharest, Romania. It includes 14 chapters, co-authored by 34 researchers from 7 countries. The book provides an useful reference from both theoretical and applied perspectives in what concerns recent progress in this area of critical interest. Contributions, broadly grouped by core topic, address challenges related to information theoretic methods for assuring systems safety and security, cloud-based solutions, image processing approaches, distributed sensor networks and legal or risk analysis viewpoints. These are mostly accompanied by associated case studies providing additional practical value and underlying the broad relevance and impact of the field.