- Date:
- 2013-2016
- Funding:
- EPSRC
This project will create a shared, facilitated learning environment in which social scientists, engineers, industrialists, policy makers and other stakeholders can research and learn together to understand how better to exploit the technical and market opportunities that emerge from the increased interdependence of infrastructure systems. The Centre will focus on the development and implementation of innovative business models and aims to support UK firms wishing to exploit them in international markets. The Centre will undertake a wide range of research activities on infrastructure interdependencies with users, which will allow problems to be discovered and addressed earlier and at lower cost. Because infrastructure innovations alter the social distribution of risks and rewards, the public needs to be involved in decision making to ensure business models and forms of regulation are socially robust. As a consequence, the Centre has a major focus on using its research to catalyse a broader national debate about the future of the UK's infrastructure, and how it might contribute towards a more sustainable, economically vibrant, and fair society.
Primary investigators
- Nick Jennings
- Prof Bakr Bahaj
- Sarvapali Ramchurn
Secondary investigator
- dz1a13
Partners
- University of Brighton
- University of Bristol
- Cranfield University
- University of Sussex
- University College London
Associated research group
- Agents, Interaction and Complexity
- Date:
- 2012-2016
- Theme:
- Decentralised and Autonomous Systems
- Funding:
- EPSRC
This project aims to develop control and planning algorithms for future applications of autonomous vehicles. In particular, it will investigate solutions to problems that require multiple robotic platforms to act together, in a coordinated fashion, so that the best use is made of their combined resources to tackle the task in hand. To achieve to this, the project is adopting a practical multidisciplinary approach, in which multiagent planning and coordination algorithms will be developed and deployed on real robotic platforms, including Autonomous Ground Vehicles (AGVs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). These platforms will operate under the principle of flexible autonomy, in which robotic platforms will operate in a fully autonomous manner when appropriate, while still being guided by human involvement when key operating decisions need to be made.
Primary investigators
- Prof Sandor M. Veres
- Nick Jennings
- acr
- Eric Rogers
- Sarvapali Ramchurn
Secondary investigators
- J.P. Scanlan
- A.Sobester
- wtlt
Associated research groups
- Agents, Interaction and Complexity
- Communications, Signal Processing and Control
- Date:
- 2011-2014
- Themes:
- Bionanotechnology and Biosensors, Nanophotonics and Biomimetics
- Funding:
- EUFP7
The PHOTOSENS project aims to develop a low-cost, mass-manufacturable, nano-structured, large-area multi-parameter sensor array using Photonic Crystal (PC) and enhanced Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) methodologies for environmental and pharmaceutical applications. Integrating the PC and SERS based sensors with integrated optics coupling structures within a single sensor platform allows the implementation of a high-performance multi-parameter sensor. Currently, utilization of multi-parameter sensing is hindered by the lack of low-cost and, highly reproducibility fabrication methods for nano-structured surfaces.
PHOTOSENS addresses these challenges by developing new roll-to-roll nanoimprinting manufacturing methods. Scientific work includes development of the multilayer nanophotonic sensor structure, nanoimprint materials for large-area fabrication, functionalized molecularly imprinted polymers (MIP) and mass-manufacturing methods including Roll-to-Roll (R2R) nanoimprint processes for nano-texturing of large-area plastic films. PHOTOSENS will greatly increase understanding of photonic and plasmonic dispersion and field localization effects in periodic nanostructures, such as Photonic Crystals, and their applicability to sensing purposes. PHOTOSENS demonstrates a multi-parameter large-area sensor platform for environmental and pharmaceutical sensing.
Primary investigator
- Martin Charlton
Secondary investigators
- Stuart Pearce
- Michael Pollard
- Ruiqi Chen
- SweZin Oo
Partners
- VTT
- Nanocomp
- Renishaw
- University of Vienna
- 3DAG
- TNO
Associated research group
- Nano Research Group
- Date:
- 2013-2013
- Themes:
- Multimedia, Data Science / Big Data, Open & Linked Data
- Funding:
- EPSRC SematicMedia Mini-Project
SemanticNews is a mini-project funded by Semantic Media Network project whose goal is to address the challenge of time-based navigation in large collections of media documents. The aim of the Semantic News project is to promote people's comprehension and assimilation of news and augmenting live broadcast news articles with information from the Semantic Web in the form of Linked Open Data (LOD).
The SemanticNews project is a collaborative project with the following partners:
- Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton
- Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield
- BBC
The SemanticNews project runs from June to November 2013 and is a short 6 month project with 50% FTE effort at both the University of Southampton and the University of Sheffield. In this time we have decided to focus achieving our project goal for a single BBC programme, namely Question Time.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
- Wim Peters
- David Newman
- Mark Greenwood
Partners
- University of Sheffield
- BBC
Associated research group
- Web and Internet Science
- Date:
- 2014-2017
- Themes:
- Agent-Based Computing, Human-Computer Interaction
- Funding:
- EPSRC (EP/K039989/1)
Meaningful Consent in the Digital Economy (MCDE) is an EPSRC-funded research project that is examining issues related to giving and obtaining user consent online.
Despite being asked to "agree" constantly to terms of service, we do not currently have "meaningful consent." It is unclear whether having simple and meaningful consent mechanisms would change business fundamentally or enhance new kinds of economics around personal data sharing. Since consent is deemed necessary and part of a social contract for fairness, however, without meaningful consent, that social contract is effectively broken and the best intent of our laws undermined.
Our research challenges to address this gap are interdisciplinary: meaningful consent has implications for transforming current digital economy data practices; change will require potentially new business models, and certainly new forms of interaction to highlight policy without over burdening citizens as we go about our business. We have set out a vision to achieve an understanding of meaningful consent through a combination of interdisciplinary expert and citizen activities to deliver useful policy, business and technology guidelines.
MCDE is based at the University of Southampton, with industry and academic partners from across the world.
Primary investigators
- monica schraefel
- Enrico Harm Gerding
- Michael Vlassopoulos
Secondary investigators
- tb1m13
- rcg1v07
- Helia Marreiros
- Mirco Tonin
Associated research group
- Agents, Interaction and Complexity
- Date:
- 2011-2015
- Funding:
- European Commission
ADVANCE is an FP7 Information and Communication Technologies Project funded by the European Commission. The overall objective of ADVANCE is the development of a unified tool-based framework for automated formal verification and simulation-based validation of cyber-physical systems.
Unification is being achieved through the use of a common formal modelling language supported by methods and tools for simulation and formal verification. An integrated tool environment is providing support for construction, verification and simulation of models.
ADVANCE is building on an existing formal modelling language - Event-B - and its associated tools environment - Rodin - with strong support for formal verification. In ADVANCE, Rodin is being further strengthened and augmented with novel approaches to multi-simulation and testing.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigator
- jlco5r
Partners
- Alstom
- Critical Software Technologies
- Selex-ES
- Systerel
- University of Dusseldorf
Associated research group
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Date:
- 2013-2018
- Funding:
- EPSRC
PRiME, a ã5.6m EPSRC funded five year programme (2013-2018), brings together four universities with world-leading expertise in the complementary research areas of; low-power, highly-parallel, reconfigurable and dependable computing and verified software design. Working in collaboration with five companies and seven international visiting experts, PRiME will tackle the challenge of developing the theory and practice of future high-performance embedded systems utilising many-core processors.
Future many core processors will have a wide range of applications in embedded, mobile, general and high performance computing, where energy and reliability are central requirements. PRiME seeks to exploit the transformative potential of many-core processors; our objective is to enable processor core scaling with sustainable energy consumption and reliability.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigators
Partners
- Imperial College
- University of Newcastle
- University of Manchester
Associated research group
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Date:
- 2014-2016
- Themes:
- Environmental Monitoring, Communication and Networking, Web of Things
- Funding:
- NERC
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term given to the concept of ââ¬Åsmartââ¬? internet connected devices. This project aims to use cutting edge technology to study the environment and in particular to deploy a pilot system on the Cairngorm plateau for observing hydrological, peatland and frozen ground processes.
By using the Internet Protocols throughout the sensor network we will be able to investigate the benefits in terms of human interfaces, management and robustness.
This project is funded by the NERC Technology Proof of Concept programme.
Primary investigators
- Kirk Martinez
- Prof. Jane K. Hart
- pjb
- Dr Andrew Black
- Dr Olivia Bragg
Secondary investigators
- gmb1g08
- tw16g08
Partners
- School of Geography, University of Southampton
- School of the Environment, University of Dundee
- Wildland Ltd.
Associated research group
- Web and Internet Science
- Date:
- 2010-
- Themes:
- Software Engineering, Grid and Distributed Computing
Flocc (functional language on compute clusters) is a high-level language for Big Data/data parallel programming on clusters. Its compiler showcases a new technique to automatically optimize the storage of Big Data collections on clusters, that works for distributed arrays, maps, and lists. It is much more flexible than existing techniques like HPF and MapReduce that don't optimize their distributed data layouts, and typically only work for one collection type. The compiler works by considering using different distributed-memory implementations of a program's high-level data-parallel operators (encoded as higher-order functions), and uses a type system and type inference algorithm to automatically derive distributed data layout information for these operators. It then code generates MPI programs in C++ from possible plans, and uses a performance feedback based search to look for optimal cluster implementations of input programs.
Primary investigators
- taj105
- Bernd Fischer
Associated research group
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Date:
- 2013-2016
- Theme:
- Accessibility
- Funding:
- Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF)
The background to this research into the development of a freely available Arabic symbol dictionary is based on the premise that there is a paucity of freely available culturally suitable Arabic pictograms, icons, symbols or other graphical representations of language for use within the Arabic community by those who have a wide range of communication difficulties. There is a growing recognition about the number of individuals who could benefit from this type of support. Their needs are being met by the use of externally developed Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) symbol systems which are not entirely suitable for use within the Qatari culture or surroundings. Some commercially available symbol sets have added additional Arabic culturally recognizable symbols but these are not available to all users as the costs are high. There is also a significant gap in the knowledge around the type of individuals who can make use of pictorial symbol systems and how symbols can be integrated into education and daily life.
Images, symbols and pictograms can be part of a toolkit of strategies to benefit two main groups of people with a communication difficulty. First those people for whom speech and text communication is impossible, where there is a push to investigate the use of natural language processing to speed access to symbols when used with electronic AAC devices, and secondly those people with low levels of literacy, learning disabilities or specific learning difficulties, including those with Dyslexia where symbols can aid reading and writing skills. In this situation it is important to have a symbol dictionary that contains frequently used words based on standard classical Arabic. There are also some individuals who have social interaction difficulties such as severe Autism where symbols can act as prompts. Symbols may also work in a similar way for those who acquire speech and language difficulties due to strokes and brain injury.
Symbols as indicators have value in supporting the understanding of Arabic for those with little knowledge of the language and symbols as pictograms can also be used as indicators within the built environment to assist in way finding or act as health and safety warnings in a way that is obvious to the widest possible audience.
Primary investigators
- Mike Wald
- Dr Amal Ahmad
Secondary investigators
- E.A. Draffan
- David Banes
- Amatullah Kadous
- nh
- Nadine Zeinoun
- Amatullah Kadous
- cd
- Dana Lawand
Partners
- Mada
- Hamad Medical Corporation
Associated research group
- Web and Internet Science