Janis Peksa’s research while affiliated with Riga Technical University and other places

This paper presents an overview on the state of the art in copter drones and their components. It starts by providing an introduction to unmanned aerial vehicles in general, describing their main types, and then shifts its focus mostly to multirotor drones as the most attractive for individual and research use. This paper analyzes various multirotor drone types, their construction, typical areas of implementation, and technology used underneath their construction. Finally, it looks at current challenges and future directions in drone system development, emerging technologies, and future research topics in the area. This paper concludes by highlighting some key challenges that need to be addressed before widespread adoption of drone technologies in everyday life can occur. By summarizing an up-to-date survey on the state of the art in copter drone technology, this paper will provide valuable insights into where this field is heading in terms of progress and innovation.

Cybersecurity competencies are critical in the smart grid ecosystem, considering its growing complexity and expanding utilization. The smart grid environment integrates different sensors, control systems, and communication networks, thus augmenting the potential attack vectors for cyber criminals. Therefore, interdisciplinary competencies are required from smart grid cybersecurity specialists. In the meantime, there is a lack of competence models that define the required skills, considering smart grid job profiles and the technological landscape. This paper aims to investigate the skill gaps and trends in smart grid cybersecurity and propose an educational approach to mitigate these gaps. The educational approach aims to provide guidance for competence-driven cybersecurity education programs for the design, execution, and evaluation of smart grids.

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art in brain–computer interfaces (BCI). It begins by providing an introduction to BCIs, describing their main operation principles and most widely used platforms. The paper then examines the various components of a BCI system, such as hardware, software, and signal processing algorithms. Finally, it looks at current trends in research related to BCI use for medical, educational, and other purposes, as well as potential future applications of this technology. The paper concludes by highlighting some key challenges that still need to be addressed before widespread adoption can occur. By presenting an up-to-date assessment of the state-of-the-art in BCI technology, this paper will provide valuable insight into where this field is heading in terms of progress and innovation.

The paper provides analysis on the current state of the art in the field of green technologies, including green information technologies, and methods aimed to achieve effective energy consumption goals. Recent advances in the field summarized in prospective publications, were analysed. Modern Green IT and Green Energy strategies, aimed to reduce power consumption, environmental influence and improve sustainability, which assume the use of Cloud Technologies, renewable energy sources, proper recycling and reuse of devices and resources, were singled out. Finally, recommendations for IT and industrial companies aimed helping to achieve green strategies’ goals, were formulated.

Despite efforts to promote digital inclusion for all, individuals with disabilities continue to experience a significant digital divide. Developing usable and accessible solutions also demands conducting user-based testing with real end users, particularly for users with disabilities, to detect and address real problems and barriers they experience and improve usability and accessibility based on their feedback through a user-centered approach. When including users with disabilities in user testing, additional attention must be paid to ensure that the testing is planned and carried out in such a way as to enable the successful and efficient integration of users with disabilities. In doing so, it is necessary to consider various restrictions related to users’ disabilities. By conducting a systematic literature review, we collected and analyzed the challenges of including users with disabilities in user-based testing and best practices that researchers can apply in future user-based testing with users with disabilities. In the existing literature, a positive trend toward publishing articles describing testing with users with disabilities is noticeable. There is also an apparent need for more reporting on some phases of the testing studies. The main result of this study is a list of challenges and best practices that are important in the different phases of user-based testing with users with disabilities.

Traditional nonintrusive object inspection methods are complex or extremely expensive to apply in certain cases, such as inspection of enormous objects, underwater or maritime inspection, an unobtrusive inspection of a crowded place, etc. With the latest advances in robotics, autonomous self-driving vehicles could be applied for this task. The present study is devoted to a review of the existing and novel technologies and methods of using autonomous self-driving vehicles for nonintrusive object inspection. Both terrestrial and maritime self-driving vehicles, their typical construction, sets of sensors, and software algorithms used for implementing self-driving motion were analyzed. The standard types of sensors used for nonintrusive object inspection in security checks at the control points, which could be successfully implemented at self-driving vehicles, along with typical areas of implementation of such vehicles, were reviewed, analyzed, and classified.

Increase in trading and travelling flows has resulted in the need for non-intrusive object inspection and identification methods. Traditional techniques proved to be effective for decades; however, with the latest advances in technology, the intruder can implement more sophisticated methods to bypass inspection points control techniques. The present study provides an overview of the existing and developing techniques for non-intrusive inspection control, current research trends, and future challenges in the field. Both traditional and developing methods, techniques, and technologies were analyzed with the use of traditional and novel sensor types. Finally, it was concluded that the improvement of non-intrusive inspection experience could be gained with the additional use of novel types of sensors (such as biosensors) combined with traditional techniques (X-ray inspection).