Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are increasingly used in real applications and thus significantly penetrates the field of embedded and especially cyberphysical systems. A typical example is the image analysis subsystem for self-driving cars or intelligent sensors. Unlike the big data area, these systems have limited computing power and have high variability in hardware architecture, and in addition, these systems are subject to additional requirements, especially for real-time processing, security and reliability, explainability, power consumption and chip size. From these perspectives, the resulting implementation must be optimized to minimize hardware resources while maintaining functionality and reliability to meet economic goals. Automated conversion of machine learning models such as deep neural networks into ASIC hardware and especially programmable hardware (FPGA) is currently a very current topic.

The subject of the proposed topic is the research of algorithms, procedures, methodologies and tools for the synthesis of artificial intelligence models and machine learning into programmable hardware. Current research is in the field of approximate calculations, hardware optimization using limited accuracy targeted according to the values of individual parameters, including other aspects of mapping to the target platform (consumption, chip size, timing). The subject of research will be not only a simple mapping of the learned model to hardware, but also the optimization of the AI model with respect to the implementation in hardware, which requires a closer connection of AI tools with tools for high-level and logical synthesis. The topic can be extended to the synthesis of networks with spiking models of neurons and the integration of learning algorithms into hardware, which is currently an unsolved or little solved problem.

• [1] Shubham Raif, et al. Logic Synthesis Meets Machine Learning: Trading Exactness for Generalization. arXiv:2012.02530v2 [cs.LG] 15 Dec 2020.
• [2] Chia-Chih Chi and Jie-Hong R. Jiang. Logic Synthesis of Binarized Neural Networks for Efficient Circuit Implementation. In IEEE/ACM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN (ICCAD ’18), November 5–8, 2018, San Diego, CA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3240765.3240822
• [3] Yifan Qian, et al.: Approximate Logic Synthesis in the Loop for Designing Low-Power Neural Network Accelerator. 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) | 978-1-7281-9201-7/20/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ISCAS51556.2021.9401451

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

doc. Ing. Pavel Hrabák, Ph.D.

Department of Applied Mathematics

This bachelor thesis addresses the problem of tracking the movement of cars or other models on the floor of an intelligent embedded systems laboratory in real time using a static camera. The goal was to enable sophisticated tracking using deep neural networks in addition to model localization based on simple markers, with an emphasis on fast adaptation of the tracking system to new models. I used ArUco Markers for localization using markers. For object detection using deep neural networks, I used the YOLO model. I designed and implemented a method of automatic data labeling using background subtraction, which greatly accelerated the adaptation of the tracking system to the new models.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Josef Hlaváč, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Martin Kohlík, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

This work aims to develop a practical application for holographic smartglasses HoloLens. Final program is going to visualize telemetric data, such as sensory data, PWM signals, code variables etc., from connected robots in a way that user can see the physical robot and its data simultaneously. HoloLens are fully untethered device, thus not impeding the ability to move of its users. Application is on recommendation from Microsoft developed in game engine Unity 3D, then exported into Visual Studio and lastly installed as UWP C\# onto HoloLens. Communication is based on Wi-Fi technology with possible extension to Bluetooth in subsequent development. Connected robots (Sunfounder Smart Video Car and Hexapod in demo) are not constrained in their programming language as long as they support TCP/IP sockets and JSON serialization. Aquired data is presented on floating panels tracking real-world marker placed on targeted robot coming in two configurations. Default configuration shows up to three entries and the second up to five on both side panels.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Tomáš Borovička

Department of Theoretical Computer Science

This thesis focuses on design and implementation of system for automated performance testing of artificial neural network algorithms. Testing is mainly focused on embedded systems. To achieve this, we have developed application which generates implementations of artificial neural networks and systems for it's automated testing.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Jakub Zahradník

Department of Digital Design

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Jiří Buček, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Dr.-Ing. Martin Novotný

Department of Digital Design

This bachelor's thesis deals with design of educational kit with the Peltier device. The kit can cool and warm up liquid on preset temperature using thermoelectric cooling and warming. The goal was reached with discrete controller, which is controlling Peltier device by pulse width modulation. This thesis concerns construction of whole kit and designing cooler for Peltier device considering size of the kit. It also deals with design of electri cal scheme, circuit board and selecting right electronic components. Lastly, thesis deals with implementation of libraries for reading from sensors, discrete controller and sample application. The educational kit was succesfuly tested and should help to educate students at CTU in Prague.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

MSc. Juan Pablo Maldonado Lopez, Ph.D.

Department of Theoretical Computer Science

In my work, I researched machine vision and object recognition capabilities. I used the newest deep convolutional neural networks in framewok Keras. I examined their architecture and possibilities of their fine-tuning. In my experiments, I created new network combining two types of networks. Re- sults showed that this network is more successful in classification than the original ones. I trained selected networks for space recognition at Faculty of information technology CTU in Prague. The best networks were implemented in application for robot NAO, by which it can determine with 93.48% accu- racy where at the faculty is he located and with 76.09% accuracy in which of the buildings is he standing.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Ivo Háleček

Department of Digital Design

The aim of this thesis is to create a software library for six-legged robot. This library is created for the A-Pod hexapod by Lynxmotion controlled with Raspberry Pi and servo controller SSC-32u by Lynxmotion. This library enables the hexapod robot to walk on flat surface and over terrain as well using contact sensors. Inverse kinematic is used for planning the movement. This library can be used to create more complex applications for hexapod robot by other students of FIT CTU. Manual and CD with video of the robot walking is attached to this thesis.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Zdeněk Buk, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

This bachelor thesis covers the design and implementation of an application for the Pepper humanoid robot, which is aimed at supporting customer care at a mobile phone operator's branch office. The work analyzes the available technologies for the needs of the application and at the same time tries to avoid shortcomings and errors of similar solutions. The aim of the work is to implement an interactive application that will inform and entertain customers. The result is a robust solution that uses state-of-the-art cloud technology for speech recognition and artificial intelligence for localization and intent detection, which stands out in terms of communication, user-friendliness and user experience.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Martin Daňhel, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

The aim of this thesis is the development of autonomous parking software for the vehicle models at the Laboratory of Intelligent Embedded Systems at FIT CTU. The thesis includes a research study of algorithms for autonomous parking and an analysis of the current hardware and software equipment of the models. Based on the research and analysis, an algorithm for precise control of the vehicle models during parking was designed and implemented in the Python programming language. To facilitate working with the models, a terminal was implemented, which includes commands for various functionalities, such as model control and calibration. For easy testing, a simulator replicating the real vehicle model was created in the Godot engine. The designed control system and parking algorithm were implemented and systematically tested in the simulation and later on the hardware model. Parking tests were performed in rectangular parking spaces of varying lengths from different starting positions. The success rate of parking in the simulation was high, while on the hardware models, it was lower due to hardware inaccuracies and limitations. The main contribution of this work is the overall enhancement of the software equipment for the models, which will facilitate future work with them.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Jiří Buček, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Jaroslav Borecký, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

The thesis documents the design and the construction of an electronic musical instrument theremin, which can be played by a human as well as a robot. The aim of this work is developing the digital version of the instrument, which will include two different modes. In the first mode, the instrument behaves like an analog model. In the second mode, the tone of the theremin does not change continuously, but is defined by the tones of the chromatic scale. Electric circuit was build on universal PCB. Two antennas, made from copper tubes, were mounted on 3D printed casing. Functionality of the theremin was tested by person and robot Nao.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Pavel Kubalík, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

This thesis deals with design and implementation of simple peripherals in FPGA of system-on-chip Xilinx Zynq on Digilent ZYBO board. A total of four peripherals are designed, documented and implemented in this thesis. The peripherals have control and status registers visible via AXI bus to two ARM cores running Linux. The first peripheral only generates interrupts when change of buttons or switches takes place. It also allows write to LEDs. Other peripherals besides interrupts implement DMA transfers. The second periphe- ral implements simple transformation function, next one represents disk drive with scatter/gather support and the last one is configurable camera.

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

doc. Ing. Ivan Šimeček, Ph.D.

Department of Theoretical Computer Science

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to explore the field of speech recognition using neural networks with a goal to implement end-to-end speech recognizer as voice-user interface for robot NAO. The proposed speech recognizer architecture is consisted from three main components: feature extraction of speech signal using mel-frequency cepstrum coefficients method, recognizer as recurrent neural networks with long-short-term-memory cells, and connection temporal classification algorithm for predicting the final transcription. The result of this work is end-to-end speech recognizer trained on VCTK corpus and implemented in programming language Python, using deep learning library TensorFlow.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Jiří Chludil

Department of Software Engineering

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Jiří Kašpar

Department of Digital Design

This bachelor thesis addresses creation of a wheeled robot model for the purpose of computer simulation. The model in the simulator is used for testing without the need of the real robot. Simulator named Gazebo is used to implement this simulation and together with Linux operating system is essential for it. Also Robot Operating System framework is used to create communication layer between model and the software of real robot. This thesis will speed up development for the robot and it may also serve as a guide for creating model of any real robot.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Martin Daňhel, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

The goal of this thesis is to develop monitoring system which monitor environment using camera and transfers data of picture to cloud for further processing. Thesis targets security aspects of solution. The thesis describes possible opportunities to develop monitoring system using different approaches and describes their properties that results from selection. Thesis describes development of IoT device based on Azure Sphere platform which is connected to Microsoft Azure cloud, cloud application based on Azure services developed according to concept PaaS and user application presenting outputs from monitoring system to user. The thesis also describes some issues associated with development on the Azure Sphere platform and their possible solutions.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Dr.Ing. Tomáš Macek

Department of Software Engineering

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. David Bernhauer

Department of Software Engineering

This thesis is mostly taking look at designing (graphicly) and implementing web user interface and integration of this interface into the core (back-end) of information system for Laboratory of embedded systems which is being developped simultaniously. Firstly, the thesis will be aiming at analysis of relations between data, processes, functional system requirements and the design layout of web interface. As a next subject, this thesis looks at designing user interface (logical and graphical), technology and advantages that they provide for integration with system core. In implementation/realization section, emphasis is being placed on flexibility of the interface and its future expandability/extendebility, in case of changes in system functionality or even in case of needed design changes.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

doc. Ing. Petr Fišer, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

This thesis covers design and implementation of a generator, which generates hardware description in VHDL language from software model of a neural network designed in Keras API. It also covers a configuration of network parameters in a way, that allows to convert them to data types specified by the created configuration and is able to export them. The thesis analyzes Keras API, existing implementations which generate VHDL from the software models and proposes a solution, which achieves generating the VHDL straight from the Keras model without any stages in between. The result is a working application implemented in Python that is able to take a model implemented in Keras with given building blocks written in VHDL, generate synthesizable VHDL and export network's parameters converted to data types specified by the configuration.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

doc. Ing. Mgr. Petr Klán, CSc.

Department of Software Engineering

Subject of this bachelor thesis is to develop an application that provides web interface for control, configuration and diagnostics of four-wheeled robot. Application is running on RoBoard motherboard with linux operating system and WiFi. It uses WiFi for communication with clients using asynchronous queries over HTTP protocol. Low hardware requirements are important because application is running on less powerful embedded system.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Miroslav Prágl, MBA

Department of Computer Systems

This bachelor thesis is focused on the production of educational kit for work with IoT technologies. The kit allows students to try to connect pre-programmed programs or custom programs to MQTT and HTTP protocols. Using these protocols, kit can also be remotely controlled. For this purpose, the product is further fitted with simple sensors in the form of potentiometers, pressure sensors, buttons and photoresistor. The actors are represented by LEDs. These components allows interaction with the user. An important part is a touch pad built up of pressure sensors that demonstrates the use of multiple sensors to calculate the load location on the surface. The computational part of the product is built on the Raspberry Pi learning platform, which has been added the expansion module containing the sensors and the A/D converter missing on Raspberry Pi. To simplify access to sensor data, an extension module driver has been written in the form of a kernel module, which makes data available in the form of files. This allows reading with any programming or scripting language without the necessary knowledge of the sensors. The results and technologies used in this work are described in the following text.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. David Bernhauer

Department of Software Engineering

This bachelor thesis covers the analysis and implementation of a robot management system backend which will be used in laboratories of intelligent embedded systems. Mentioned backend will consist of device database, set of PHP libraries for data display and manipulation in web pages and a interface for executive device functions like remote file upload, remote configuration and status reporting. The thesis firstly deals with the analysis of available technologies and user requirements. Then, based on the previous analysis, the thesis focuses on the choices of technologies used in the project and the actual implementation of the system itself. The finished information system will help with the teaching of subjects which make use of the devices in the mentioned laboratories. You can find the source code, generated code documentation, integration instructions and picture gallery of the finished system in the attachments.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Martin Daňhel, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Jiří Buček, Ph.D.

Department of Computer Systems

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. František Štampach, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

The aim of this thesis is to develop an application suited for equation recognition and solving. This application is designed to run on the humanoid robot NAO, developed by Softbank Robotics. The thesis is divided into three main sections. The first section introduces the robot, NAO his hardware and software specifications. Later on it deals with the history of OCR, the technology and its principles. OpenCV and its functions are described in detail including the mathematics involved. We give a list of tools used for this thesis and some requirements to make the application run properly. At the end of the first section a flowchart diagram is used to describe the design of the program. The second section is dedicated to a detailed description and explanation of the program which is developed in the Choregraphe suite with additional Python scripts. The main blocks of the code are explained in detail including some built-in functions and packages of the Python language. NAO is able to recognize and solve problems including basic equations, multiple variable equations, limits and integrals. The application is controled by words using speech recognition, so it does not have to be run over and over. The last section addresses testing and results. This project can be used to solve problems from the blackboard or written on a paper, or to check whether they are correct or not. For future development it is possible to add an explanation module, which would explain the topic in more detail, a random problem generator for the selected topic or use the OCR engine to create a document, book, text reader.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Martin Daňhel, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

This bachelor thesis deals with connection of a game wheel to the CAN bus. In the solution of this problem is used data analysis of game wheel buttons, position analysis of a game wheel and foot pedals from which is formed a message for the CAN bus. Afterwards this message is sent to the modules with CAN bus interface that are connected to the development board Digilent ZYBO. To the software is added an option of monitoring transmissions on the CAN bus and print-out of messages in the text form on terminal or to the file. The result of a software design and implementation is the console application in C programming language for operating system Linux. Source codes of application can be found in the attachment.

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Miroslav Prágl, MBA

Department of Computer Systems

This bachelor thesis deals with the creation of a CAN bus to computer network gateway. Also, changes of car simulator Speed Dreams to make it able to be controlled from CAN bus using the created gateway and multiple running instances with different views into the scene synchronized over the network. To create the gate, the converter USB2CAN from the company CANLAB s. r. o and development board Digilent ZYBO were used. Simulator's control using CAN bus is realized with programmed driver in the simulator which respond to incoming messages from the converter. For the run with multiple views, changes to the already existing graphic module are needed. The result of a design and implementation is the application of the gateway in C programming language for operating system Linux and patch for the simulator enabling mentioned possibilities. Source codes, simulator and patch for the simulator can be found in the attachment.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Karel Klouda, Ph.D.

Department of Applied Mathematics

The aim of this work is to integrate genger, age and emotion recognition from face images in robot NAO. In first part, I will make a research of face recognition methods. In second part I will analyze existing implementations and choose the most suitable one. And I will analyze resources for work with robot NAO. In the last part I will modify selected implementation for robot and I will test it.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

doc. RNDr. Pavel Surynek, Ph.D.

Department of Applied Mathematics

In this thesis, an experimental single--channel EEG based BCI is implemented. Main contribution of this work is a Python aplication capable of recording and experimeting on EEG mental tasks. An experimental BCI for drone control by EEG signal was implemented and connected with the app. It was also discovered that with time the classification accurancy decreases drastically.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Robert Hülle

Department of Digital Design

This thesis deals with design and develop system for the managing NAO robots, linux devices and develop Arduino boards. The designed system is able to run the application, create backup of the devices, restart devices, and provide more functions. The literature search is about analyzing possibilities of identification various devices, question of secure connection with device and effective transfer of files between device and user. It enables to join with the web portal, which handles to the system. The system allows to give a name to Arduino device, this feature is not common in similar systems. Attachment of thesis contains user reference book for the system.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Jiří Khun

Department of Digital Design

This thesis is focusing on ways to control minidrone Parrot Mambo. Main goal is to create application able to autonomously navigate dron based on data gained from sensors and camera. Obstacle avoidance of drone is achieved with modified bug algorithm. Images from cameras are processed with neural network Detectron2 and library OpenCV.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Jakub Zahradník

Department of Computer Systems

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Petr Socha

Department of Digital Design

The goal of this thesis was to study a model of a robotic hand from the company YouBionic and then to design and implement software to control this product. This thesis in detail describes the original product, which was then upgraded in terms of both hardware and software. A glove with flex sensors was created to control the model by moving the user's arm. Software solution involved creating script for the control unit of the robotic hand and PC application in C language to control and demonstrate its capabilities.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Jiří Dostál, Ph.D.

Department of Computer Systems

The thesis deals with design and implementation of modules for robot NAO, which allows management of network connections. The designed module is capable of automatic recovery of the selected WiFi connection at his sudden loss, choose different WiFi networks and use voice to inform about state of the network. Voice output supports both Czech and English. The thesis also solves computer security issues, especially the security of network traffic via Wifi using the firewall. The functionality of the resulting module implemented in c++ was tested directly on the NAO robot.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Rudolf Marek

Department of Theoretical Computer Science

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Jan Bělohoubek

Department of Digital Design

This thesis investigates possibilities of increasing speech recognition performance, which is used in four-wheel ROBOT FIT faculty platform. The system have been suffering problems with distant speech recognition so far. The reason of these troubles is reverberation which appears in acoustic rooms and degrades the resulting signal at receiver. The object is to reduce reverberation maximally. There is a lot of solutions, less or more robust, with different hardware requirements. For our purposes, blind impulse response shortening algorithm has been chosen. It has generally low computational requirements, but still achieves the impulse response effect, namely early reflections, reduction. Interaction ability is a crucial feature for a robot. If it was capable of distant communication, it would increase its usability significantly. Here, an improvement was made, because the used implementation uplifts the speech recognition accuracy three times and reduces error rate down to approximately 5 % at most defined commands. The product of this thesis is libraries and applications system, which integrates external Distant Speech Recognition enhancements toolkit (DSR) into software equipment of the robot, and is designed to be easily extended and tested in the future.

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Tomáš Vaňát, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

The primary goal of this work is to create a car dashboard, which uses gauges and lights to indicate various vehicle conditions. Communication with other components is realized using CAN bus, which is widely used in the automotive industry. The work should become educational material at the Faculty of information technology at CTU in Prague.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

doc. Ing. Ivan Šimeček, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

This thesis deals with controlling the autonomous vehicle, based on microcomputer Raspberry Pi. This vehicle model was improved with sensors for measuring distance and with incremental encoders for measuring travelled distance, speed and direction. Additionally, the vehicle was improved with more parts for improved driving properties and simplifying the use of the model. For sensor connections printed circuit boards were created. The car's control software was also modified. A~complex autonomous driving system was created for the model, which included a track with road signs, ultrasound car localisation and an application for track recognition. Recognition is performed both in a traditional way (openCV) and with the use of neural networks. The driving system and the modified model were tested on different model tracks.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

Ing. Martin Kohlík, Ph.D.

Department of Digital Design

This diploma thesis aims to introduce the reader with the topic of development of a control software for a cooperative robot which interfaces with a human by holographic glasses. First part of the thesis deals with analysis and description of the development process for YuMi robot in RobotStudio IDE as well as with development of applications for holographic glasses HoloLens. The laboratory of intelligent embedded systems on FIT CTU can make use of this work when developing applications with students during classes. The thesis can also be a starting point for someone from the industry interested in implementing such cooperative system.

Thesis on DSpace

Ing. Miroslav Skrbek, Ph.D.

doc. Ing. Ivan Šimeček, Ph.D.

Department of Theoretical Computer Science

The aim of the thesis is to create software for the robot NAO, which will allow the robot to lead a lecture. The content of this work is the design and implementation of the application for entering the texts for the slides of presentation which the robot will read, and the subsequent start of the application led by the robot.

Thesis on DSpace