Professor Wendy Hall received the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from Loughborough University at their 2008 graduation ceremony.
Professor of Computer Science and former Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, Professor Hall received the Honorary Doctor of Science (Hon DSc)for her outstanding contributions to research in computer science and to leadership in science and technology.
Professor Hall has recently begun a two-year term of office as President of the Association for Computing Machinery, the first person from outside North America to hold this position. She is a founder director of the Web Science Research Initiative, along with Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Daniel J Weitzner.
The use of artificial evolution to enable robots to assume roles will be described by researchers at the ALIFE conference in Winchester this week.
On Friday 8 August, a paper entitled Self-Assembly in Physical Autonomous Robots: the Evolutionary Robotics Approach will be presented. The researchers will describe a new approach to the design of homogenous neuro-controllers for self-assembly in physical autonomous robots in which no assumptions are made about how agents allocate roles.
The researchers will describe how artificial evolution is used to set the parameters of a dynamic neural network that when ported on two physical robots allows them to co-ordinate their actions in order to decide who will grip whom.
The newly-formed Science and Engineering of Natural Systems (SENSe) group within the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) is hosting this yearâs conference, which will take place at the University of Winchester West Downs Campus, involving 250 participants and more paper presentations than ever before.
`This is a critical time for Artificial Life,' said Dr Seth Bullock at ECS, the conference chairman. `The field is on the verge of synthesising living cells, a feat that the Artificial Life community could only dream of when it started out in the late 80s.'
Keynote speakers include internationally leading experts such as Professor Stuart Kauffman, author of The Origins of Order, Professor Peter Schuster, editor-in-chief of the journal Complexity, Professor Eva Jablonka, author of Evolution in Four Dimensions (with Marion Lamb), and Professor Andrew Ellington, a leading pioneer in the new science of synthetic biology.
Professor Takashi Ikegami from the University of Tokyo will open the conference, speaking on work spanning self-organisation and autopoiesis in systems of birds, robots, children, flies, cells, and even oil droplets. The conference is unified by a focus on understanding the fundamental behavioural dynamics of embedded, embodied, evolving and adaptive systems.
Roke Manor Research Ltd is sponsoring a demonstration of robot technology on Wednesday at the International Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE XI).
ALIFE XI, hosted by the University of Southamptonâs School of Electronics and Computer Science, is being held at the University of Winchesterâs West Downs Campus from 5 to 8 August.
The Roke Robot Demonstration will take place on Wednesday 6 August at 5.30pm (with a press preview at 4.30pm). As well as sponsoring the event, Roke Manor Research Ltd, (a Siemens company; www.roke.co.uk) will also present some of their own latest technology, including DORA.
Robots at the Roke Robot Demonstration will be:
⢠Rokeâs robot DORA (demonstration of robot autonomy) - explores dull dark and dangerous environments. DORA represents a synthesis of Rokeâs expertise in autonomous systems, AI, sensor exploitation, vision systems, tracking and navigation and SLAM (Simultaneous location and mapping). Exploring potentially dangerous indoor environments is one of the most dangerous activities undertaken by military and emergency services personnel and Rokeâs research is leading the field. Exploiting Roke's feature-based structure-from-motion techniques, DORA builds up 3D information about objects and obstacles in its way. The current experimental system is entirely based on vision processing.
⢠A team of the worldâs cheapest swarm robots developed and built by a group of undergraduate students at the University of Southamptonâs School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS). These robots can be produced for as little as £24 each and swarms of up to 500 robots are envisaged, which could have long-term applications in earthquake or disaster scenarios as well as space exploration.
⢠The 14-inch long Miuro robot from Tokyo-based venture ZMP Inc. twists and rolls to music from an iPod in an intricate dance based on complex mathematics. Developers say this technology will enable robots to move about spontaneously instead of following pre-programmed motions.
⢠Self-assembling robots controlled by evolved neural networks which dynamically assign their own roles in a team, from the Free University of Brussels (ULB).
⢠Some of the worldâs most advanced humanoid robots developed by Professor Ralf Der at the University of Leipzig.
A new low cost platform for swarm robotics research which makes it possible to produce robots for as little as £24 each will be presented at the conference on Artificial Life being held in Winchester.
The robots will be at a press preview of a special robot demonstration tomorrow, Wednesday 6 August at 4.30pm.
At a presentation entitled 'Strategies for maintaining large robot communities' today, Alexis Johnson from the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) described how he and his fellow students developed a platform of 25 robots capable of more than two hours of autonomy and with sufficient code capacity and processing power to run complex algorithms. The other students were Stephen English, Jeffrey Gough, Robert Spanton and Joanna Sun.
The team employed motors normally used to vibrate mobile phones. These motors are designed to be attached to circuit boards in the standard manufacturing process---removing the need for manual assembly of the robots and bringing the cost of a swarm of robots within reach of a typical research project.
'This is truly exciting: now we can order robots from the same UK companies that regularly make circuit boards for our projects---for them it is just a circuit board they can mass-produce like any other, but actually it is a complete functional robot,' said Dr Klaus-Peter Zauner who teaches Biorobotics at ECS.
'This also poses important research questions: how can we maintain and control thousands of robots,â he added. âThe students have made first steps to answer this using software tricks inspired by the way bacteria exchange code for drug resistance.'
Swarm robotics platforms are used for the investigation of emergent behaviour. They permit the study of swarm behaviour by physical simulation: providing real world constraints and experimental scope unattainable in software simulation alone.
Long-term possible applications for swarm robotics are in earthquake scenarios, environmental monitoring, and the field of space science.
An algorithm for spam recognition inspired by the immune system was presented by researchers at the first European conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE XI) held in Winchester from 5-8 August 2008.
Alaa Abi-Haidar and Luis Rocha from the Department of Informatics, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA and the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia, Portugal, presented a paper entitled Adaptive Spam Detection Inspired by the Immune System on Thursday 7 August. They described how in the same way as the vertebrate adaptive immune system learns to distinguish harmless from harmful substances, these principles can be applied to spam detection.
In their presentation, the authors claimed that this bio-inspired spam detection algorithm based on the cross-regulation model of T-cell dynamics, is equally as competitive as state-of-the-art spam binary classifiers and provides a deeper understanding of the behaviour of T-cell cross-regulation systems.
The newly-formed Science and Engineering of Natural Systems (SENSe) group within the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) is to host this yearâs conference, which will take place at the University of Winchester West Downs Campus, involving 250 participants and more paper presentations than ever before.
`This is a critical time for Artificial Life,' said Dr Seth Bullock at ECS, the conference chairman. `The field is on the verge of synthesising living cells, a feat that the Artificial Life community could only dream of when it started out in the late 80s.'
The IU-ATC comprises a consortium of 22 major India-UK industry and academic partners, led by the University of Ulster, IIT Madras, and BT. The Virtual Graduate Research School will support the mobility of collaborative PhD and postdoctoral projects and a programme of exchange visits within the consortium. Funding of over $3 million will provide opportunities for 23 PhD scholarships and 16 industrial internship positions between the consortium partners in both countries over the next four years.
The ECS Comms group is one of the academic partners, representing the University of Southampton, along with the universities of Ulster, Queen Mary College, London, Surrey, Bristol, UCL, IIT Madras, IIT Mumbai, IIT Delhi and IISc Bangalore, which have provided
additional financial support for PhD scholarships.
The project has also attracted financial support from key industry partners in both countries, including BT, InfoSys, Wipro and Sasken. BT's support is particularly significant as it provides full PhD scholarships and industrial internships for project partners.
The IU-ATC's UK academic lead, Professor Gerard Parr from the University of Ulster, said: âThe IU-ATC has been set up to establish, for the first time, the support infrastructure and creative sponsorship opportunities that will enable successful collaboration between academic institutions, government and industry in Britain and India.
âThe long-term success of this large-scale initiative is dependent upon support received from key stakeholders, and we have had excellent engagement and support from BT, Indian organisations and the British and Indian governments. The funding we have received from the UKIERI-DST Award is very important as it provides our VGRS with the ability to function and provide real knowledge, mobility and research training for graduates to visit and work in both countries. It also provides us with a mandate to further develop our plans.â
Funding will be available to support PhD research training projects and exchange of consortium postgraduate and post-doctorate research scientists in areas of relevance to the IU-ATC work plan agenda. These include resilient communications infrastructures, embedded energy-aware low-cost devices, pervasive sensors, real-time network data analytics for fixed-wireless broadband, end-to-end network security protocols, cross layer protocols for real-time interoperability, smart antenna design for NG mobile wireless communications and advanced networked ICT services and systems.
âWe look forward to engaging the best intellectuals of the vast sub-continent of India in a mutually beneficial research endeavourâ, said Professor Lajos Hanzo, who leads the initiative in ECS.
âA million new mobile subscribers sign up in India every month and mobile communications is substantially contributing towards wealth-creation. We are preparing joint research proposals in the interest of augmenting our activities with the aid of further research funds.â
New ECS Professor Darren Bagnall manages an energetic research group within the Nano Group that is investigating new types of solar cell based on nanotechnology.
He is one of a number of staff in the School of Electronics and Computer Science who will be moving this month into the new Mountbatten Building, a £55M development for leading-edge research in nanotechnology and optoelectronics.
This is an incredibly exciting time for usâ, he says. âOver the last few years there has been a massive increase in funding for research into renewable energy. Even with currently available technology photovoltaics will probably provide 50 per cent of the worldâs energy in around 40 years time, but what we actually want is to use nanotechnology so that solar cells are efficient and reliable, and yet so cheap that they can be afforded by the tens of thousands of villages around the world that currently do not have electricity.â
Some of Darrenâs most eye-catching work includes the use of nanostructures that copy the complex patterns that produce extreme colour effects on moth-eyes and butterfly wings. He is also exploring the use of metallic nanoparticles â plasmonics - that can help to trap light within thin semiconductor layers in a solar cell.
IT Innovation, the School's off-campus applied research centre, are this week showcasing their groundbreaking work in digital content production at Europeâs largest film and television industry event, IBC in Amsterdam.
This vast annual exhibition attracts broadcasters, content creators, equipment manufacturers and support industries from around the world. IT Innovation are exhibiting in the New Technology Campus at IBC â the area of the show reserved for the very latest research and development work.
The four projects IT Innovation are presenting are the result of ongoing collaborations with major film and broadcast industry players including the BBC; Pinewood Group; leading equipment manufacturer Thomson Grass Valley; Digital TV Group, the industry association for digital television in the UK; and major Greek film producer Stefi Productions.
The AVATAR-m project addresses the challenge the industry faces in storing and preserving huge quantities of born-digital content. The project embraces a new world where archives can be deployed either in-house or as third-party services. It bridges the gap between archiving as a long-term preservation activity and the day-to-day business of using archives as working asset repositories. IT Innovation are demonstrating a service-oriented approach to digital preservation using federated storage services.
MUPPITS is a radical post-production infrastructure that promises to revolutionise the way Soho trades computing resource. It will allow end-users, facilities houses and service providers to come together in a secure environment to plan, manage and combine their collective resources dynamically and flexibly, reducing costs and making the industry a little bit greener.
The ANSWER project is drawing inspiration from the world of dance to develop a novel approach to planning and coordinating film production. A symbolic notation for film production, akin to Labanotation in dance, will allow directors to script set configurations, camera actions and actorsâ movements, and see their ideas rendered instantaneously as high-quality animated 3D storyboards.
Members of the SCOVIS team will also be on hand to explain how computer vision tracking techniques combined with automatic rule-based editing can create customised video sequences from multi-camera installations â the applications of this technology range from souvenir videos for tourists to interactive sports coverage.
In recent years IT Innovation has built a strong reputation in the film and broadcast industries, strengthened in 2006 by the appointment of Paul Walland, formerly Head of Collaborative Research at Hampshire-based broadcasting equipment manufacturer Snell and Wilcox.
IT Innovationâs Managing Director, Colin Upstill, explained the importance of IBC: âModern digital media developments such as the explosion of user-created content, moves to High Definition and 3D production, and digital online storage and distribution already present huge IT challenges for the broadcast industry.
âAs the industry event in Europe, IBC is the best possible arena to present our current work to key decision makers, build new relationships, and hear at first-hand the emerging challenges that we must address in future collaborations.â
IBC 2008 runs from 12 to 16 September at the RAI exhibition centre, Amsterdam.
ECS undergraduate students will be able to specialize in two of the most exciting areas of emerging technology when courses in mobile and secure systems come on stream in October 2009.
Developed with input from ARM, BT, IBM, NXP, Oracle and Zarlink, the new courses in Computer Science and Electronic Engineering will prepare students for a wide range of careers across high-tech business and industry, and is fully accredited by the BCS and IET as the University stage of training to Chartered Engineering status.
The two new programmes take a broad view of mobile systems. The course encompasses handheld devices, mobile robots, telemedicine and mobile software agents. All are enabled by a mix of low-power, system on chip, power harvesting and wireless technologies.
The experience of secure systems in the courses is similarly broad, ranging over penetration testing of network servers, threats such as viruses, spyware and rootkits and consumer technologies, including RFID, Oyster, and chip and PIN. Coverage of both the underlying theory couple with hands-on experience will enable student to develop real expertise.
Further information about the courses is available on the Undergraduate courses section of our web site.
ECS 2008 graduate Sean Nuzum has been named UK Student of the Year in the Real-World Magazine Awards for his contribution to university life.
Sean graduated this summer with a 2.1 Master of Engineering degree in Electronic Engineering. Throughout his four years at the University his organizational skills, energy and motivation have been enormously valued by the Studentsâ Union, the entrepreneurial society, Fish on Toast, and the School of Electronics and Computer Science. He has also been a keen member of the Universityâs JuJitsu squad, and has made a number of videos to promote student events.
At ECS he played a major role in the organization and running of the Electronics and Computer Science Society, of which he was President in 2005-6, organized the Schoolâs JumpStart student induction event in 2007 and is running it again this year. He is currently designing a Careers Hub web site for the Schoolâs students and planning an entrepreneurial career in which motivation of others will play a strong part.
Eric Cooke, Senior Tutor in ECS, said: âSean has contributed a huge amount to the academic support that the School needs from its students and to the Schoolâs social life which is also very important. The students in ECS have benefited enormously from his efforts.â
At this yearâs Graduation ceremony in July Sean was awarded the Head of School prize for his contribution to ECS.
He is delighted with the prize of £500, which he says will be ploughed straight back into activities that will benefit students. âIâm going to work with the Entrepreneurs Club and weâll use the money to generate more funds, which will be split between a donation to charity and funding for the company I plan to establish which will help students decide on their future careers.â
You can Sean's video entry for the awards on YouTube.