EMBS Design Contest 2019

Every year, students in the Embedded Systems module take part in a design contest. In 2019, three teams competed in the task of setting up a multi-hop wireless network that is able to transmit information across the Computer Science building. This time, two teams managed to complete the task within the 2-hour slot allocated for the contest. The winner team, who finished only a few minutes earlier, received a box of chocolates and was granted the honour of having a picture published in this blog:

The second group to finish also received an honourable mention, and a smaller picture in the blog:

Here is the complete hall of fame, with links to the pictures of the top teams from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2012, 2011 and 2010 (in 2013, no group managed to finish the task).

EU-funded SAFIRE Project Concluded

We have now finished the work in the EU-funded SAFIRE project. The goal of the project was to investigate and develop technologies and infrastructure that enable Reconfiguration-as-a-Service for dynamic smart factory systems and manufactured smart products. York's role in the project was to design an optimisation engine based on Evolutionary Algorithms that can tackle large reconfiguration spaces by using a scalable cloud-based deployment.

York's optimisation engine was integrated to the situation determination and predictive analytics modules created by project partners ATB and IKERLAN, respectively, using a secure infrastructure provided by The Open Group. That way, every time a new situation in the factory is detected (for instance, if a mixer breaks or if the cost of wires has increased significantly), the optimisation engine is informed about it and it can evolve a new configuration that takes the new situation into account.

That approach was applied to three different case studies proposed by the industrial partners of the project: ONA (metal cutting machines), OAS (paint-making factory) and Electrolux (smart industrial kitchen). The results were disseminated by many publications, talks and keynotes, as well as newsletters and press releases.

I mention the SAFIRE project in this blog to show that embedded computing is dealing with much larger systems these days - embedded into a factory! - in a trend which is often referred as Cyber-Physical Systems.

More information and details in the SAFIRE website, which also includes links to all public reports and deliverables, as well as open source distributions of the code developed within the project.

SAFIRE was funded by the European Commission within its Horizon 2020 framework programme under reference 723634.