- Date:
- 2006-2010
- Themes:
- Energy Harvesting, Novel Sensors
- Funding:
- EPSRC (EP/D076250)
The project involves collaborative, multidisciplinary work combining materials research, device design and testing to develop a microgenerator/nanogenerator based on thermal power harvesting that can be used in applications such as wireless sensor systems, portable sensors, health care and industrial applications (such as embedded sensors in buildings and bridges).
Wireless operation enables such microsystems to be completely embedded in a structure with no physical connection to the outside. Typically, the energy necessary to power such wireless systems is stored in batteries which have the following drawbacks: they tend to be bulky, contain a finite amount of energy and have a limited shelf life. The replacement of batteries places an additional cost, maintenance and environmental burden on the use of wireless sensor systems and is not suitable for embedded applications where battery replacement is not possible.
The powering of wireless devices by harvesting energy from ambient sources present in the environment presents an opportunity to replace or augment batteries. The most common sources of ambient energy are: solar, vibration and thermoelectric.
Thermoelectric power generation can be used in applications where a thermal gradient exists and the approach has many advantages over competing techniques. These include solid-state operation with no moving parts, long life-times (around 200, 000 hours i.e. over 20 years), no emission of toxic gases, maintenance free operation, and high reliability.
The drawback of existing thermoelectric generators is their relatively poor efficiency. Commercially available devices are also quite bulky in size. The state-of -the-art of existing laboratory-developed prototype thermoelectric microgenerators delivers powers of about 1uW, which is just enough to power devices such as wristwatches, but this is not sufficient for modern day wireless sensor applications.
This proposal will address these drawbacks by using state-of-the-art micromachining/nanotechnology techniques and is aimed at developing a new generation of micro/nano thermoelectric generator for power harvesting applications to improve the efficiency and harvesting potential of these devices to useful levels.
Primary investigator
- NM White
Secondary investigators
- E Koukharenko
- MJ Tudor
- SP Beeby
Partners
- GSI (Germany)
- GANIL (France)
Associated research group
- Electronics and Computer Science
- Date:
- 2010-2012
- Funding:
- JISC
Sharing real world experience between operational technicians (CTOs, Lead Developers, Head System Administrators, etc) so as to assure that internationally we are all DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) i.e. saving technical operational money by learning from each other's previous experiences.
This project is concentrating on bringing together experts for regular meetings at conference around the world.
Primary investigators
- dct05r
- Les Carr
Secondary investigator
- Dave Challis
- Date:
- 2010-2011
- Theme:
- Digital Libraries
- Funding:
- JISC
he SWORDv2 Project has been funded by JISC, under the Information Environment 2011 Programme, to extend repository deposit to cover the wider scholarly communication infrastructure. The project will develop a second generation of the SWORD deposit protocol that will enable it to encompass a wider set of systems within the scholarly communication infrastructure, and to allow active management of artefacts as they change throughout their lifetime.
The original SWORD projects dealt with creating new repository resources by package deposit ââ¬â a simple case which was at the root of their success but which also represented a key limitation. This method of deposit could be summed up as ââ¬Ëfire-and-forgetââ¬â¢. SWORD supports the deposit of the content, but once it is deposited, the user of a SWORD client is unable to track the progress of the item through any workflows, make alterations or updates to the content, or to delete it.
The next version of SWORD will push the standard towards supporting a full deposit lifecycle for all types of scholarly systems by specifying and implementing update, retrieve and delete extensions to the specification. This will enable these systems to be integrated into a broader range of other systems within the scholarly infrastructure, by supporting an increased range of behaviours and use cases.
The project will deliver a new technical standard for the SWORDv2, repository implementations for DSpace, EPrints, and Fedora, and four client API libraries.
The first generation of the SWORD protocol was developed in the UK with funds from JISC and support from UKOLN, and has been adopted worldwide with acclaim. The project won an award for the most innovative project at the JISC Repositories and Preservation conference in 2009. The standard has gone on to be implemented in all major open source repository platforms, and has clients created in various forms ranging from Facebook to Microsoft Word.
Primary investigators
- dt2
- tdb2
- Les Carr
Partner
- UKOLN
Associated research group
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2010-2012
- Theme:
- Agent Based Computing
- Funding:
- EPSRC, Technology Strategy Board
The aim is to achieve greater energy efficiency in buildings without high capital spend, through greater engagement with building users, and develop toolkits and consultancy methods that can be rolled out rapidly to large commercial and industrial buildings. Our approach uses innovative software and lightweight technical approaches that can be easily retrofitted into buildings or existing IT solutions. These leverage and exploit existing infrastructure such as CCTV, IT servers, time management systems, phone systems, building management systems to provide highly visual analysis of energy usage, engaging communications and user-centric ââ¬Ëconversational tools and controlsââ¬â¢ to help facilitate greater energy efficiency.
Primary investigator
- acr
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Agents, Interaction and Complexity
This project seeks to apply novel artificial intelligence approaches to develop intelligent agents that will enable domestic consumers to visualise, understand and manage their energy use. It is a three year EPSRC project (EP/I000143/1), starting October 2010, within the 'Transforming Energy Demand through Digital Innovation' call. The project brings together expertise in artificial intelligence and software agents, renewable energy and energy efficiency in the built environment, and human factors in the design of automated control and feedback systems at the University of Southampton to address the challenges presented in this domain.
Primary investigator
- acr
Secondary investigator
- Date:
- 2011-2014
- Theme:
- Web Science
- Funding:
- EPSRC
Digital economy is founded on data. The current trend to develop intelligent, customer-led, interactive, real-time systems requires the ability to handle and interpret vast amounts of data efficiently, quickly, and with a degree of accuracy corresponding to the requirements. This point is underlined very well by two important recent developments. The Smarter Planet initiative, supported by the IBM, envisages 'instrumented, interconnected data systems' where main elements of the physical environment are equipped with sensors constantly exchanging information. Secondly, the new transparency drive of the UK government will make huge data sets available to the public, creating 'an opportunity to build innovative applications which will bring significant economic benefit'.
The need for synthetic geometric methods in data analysis arises because of the large size and of high dimensionality of the sets involved. This proposal will extend recent important theoretic results to create a set of geometric and topological tools for data analysis, placing special emphasis on flexibility, efficiency, and on close alignment with potential practical applications. This is an ideal and a very exciting time to launch a project of this nature, and its results are very likely to have direct and important consequences from the point of view of initiatives mentioned above and many other possible applications. A central theme of the proposal is the study of geometric properties of large data sets at various scales, which corresponds to varying degree of 'sharpness' with which a data set is viewed. For example, in searching large numbers of digital photographs for those that contain pictures of of people one requires a different resolution than when trying to identify a specific person.
This proposal offers a very exciting opportunity for developing pure mathematical methods to the point where they can be directly applied to important, difficult and timely practical problems. The proposed work is adventurous, interdisciplinary, and brings together pure and applied mathematicians, experts in OR, computer science, statistics, and energy systems. Potential for long-term practical applications will be tested in two specific areas of applications within the context of the wider Smarter Plane initiative. A main objective of the project is to develop geometric and cohomological tools of scale- dependent coarse geometry with special emphasis on applications to finite metric spaces and more specifically, to data sets. We will place strong emphasis on methods that can be developed into efficient tools for data analysis, and the research will be informed by specific problems arising from applications which range from the theoretical to the more practical. We will test the theoretical ideas and results two important cases: one, data sets arising from the Open data initiative, and secondly, data generated by large number of sensors monitoring various aspects of the performance of a power grid with the objective to provide an accurate matching between supply and demand.
Primary investigators
- Jacek Brodzki
- Joerge Fliege
- Les Carr
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Web and Internet Science
- Agents, Interaction and Complexity
- Date:
- 2010-2012
- Themes:
- Web Science, Digital Libraries
- Funding:
- JISC
The DepositMO project aims to develop an effective culture change mechanism that will embed an open access deposit culture into the everyday work of researchers and lecturers. The proposal will extend the capabilities of repositories to exploit the familiar desktop and authoring environments of its users. The objective is to turn the repository into an invaluable extension to the researcherââ¬â¢s desktop in which the deposit of research outputs becomes an everyday activity. The target desktop software suite is Microsoft Office, which is widely used across many disciplines, to maximise impact and benefit. Targeting both EPrints and DSpace, leveraging SWORD and ORE protocols, DepositMO outputs will support a large number of organisations. The ultimate goal is to change the Modus Operandi of researchers so that repository deposit becomes standard practice across a wide number of disciplines using familiar desktop tools.
Primary investigators
- Les Carr
- dt2
- sh94r
Secondary investigator
- Richard Boardman
Partners
- Microsoft Corporation
- CottageLabs
- School of Engineering Sciences, University of Southampton
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Web and Internet Science
- Date:
- 2010-2010
- Themes:
- Knowledge Technologies, Web Science
- Funding:
- JISC
Primary investigator
- John Darlington
Associated research group
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2010-2010
- Theme:
- Technology Enhanced Learning
- Funding:
- Self funded - no external funds requested
SRAS is a proof of concept project demonstrating the use of a simple turn based game engine in a learning context. The specification was originally given from the School of Nursing to replace a board game they used to train nurses. The idea has been adapted to allow the generic game engine to be used in a variety of different contexts with a redesign of the front end.
Primary investigators
Secondary investigators
- pra1g08
- tb1206
- cw3
Associated research groups
- Electronic and Software Systems
- Learning Societies Lab
- Date:
- 2010-2010
- Themes:
- Digital Libraries, Knowledge Technologies, Innovation in Science, Engineering and Technology Education
- Funding:
- JISC
Open Impact is a project to help collect evidence about the impact of research that has been undertaken in UK universities and to provide it to a range of stakeholders (government, funders, press etc) through an independent third party agency (a learned society). The project focuses on a specific discipline (Computer Science) mediated through a particular society (the British Computer Society). In particular, this project will produce software that helps to make institutional repositories effective in collecting evidence of the impact of their institutionsââ¬â¢ research - evidence that justifies the investment that government and research funders have made and that promotes the role of Universities in society.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigator
Partner
- British Computer Society
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Learning Societies Lab