Partners

Contact person:

Aníbal Ollero

AICIA - Project Coordinator

The Association of Research and Industrial Co-operation of Andalucia (AICIA) is a public interest non-profit Association linked to the University of Seville with 43 industrial companies as associates. Its objectives are to boost, guide and promote industrial research, and the technology transfer. The activities of AICIA are set out in a long list of research and development projects, engineering works, tests, evaluations, reports, analysis and consultations. AICIA had 29 international projects in 2003. The Robotics, Vision and Control group will participate in the project. The group has emphasised applications in outdoor natural environments including autonomous ground and aerial vehicles, perception systems and forest fire applications. The group participated in 23 projects in the last years including 4 projects of the IV and Framework Program (DEDICS, INFLAME, FAMIMO, ROSPIR), three projects of the V Framework Programme (SPREAD, EURFIRELAB and COMETS) and the Embedded Wisents Coordination Action of the VI Framework Programme. In the last years the group specialized in distributed networked systems and co-operating object approaches. AICIA has been the Scientific and Technical Coordinator of the Consortium in the COMETS project "Real-time coordination and control of multiple heterogeneous unmanned aerial vehicles". The AICIA group also coordinated the CROMAT Spanish project on the coordination of aerial and ground autonomous vehicles.

Contact person:

Konstantin Kondak

The Real-Time Systems and Robotics group (Prozessdatenverarbeitung und Robotik – PDV), led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. h.c. Günter Hommel. One research area of the group is Robotics, with the focus on autonomous intelligent systems. Since 1993, the group has been developing and constructing unmanned autonomous vehicles. In 1997, the group started the development of the flying robot MARVIN (Multipurpose Aerial Robot Vehicle with Intelligent Navigation), which is based on an outdoor model helicopter. MARVIN participated in the International Aerial Robotics Competitions (IARC) in USA of 1999 and 2000, organised by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, and showed the best performance in each competition. A second research area of the group is the modelling of complex real-time, communication, and production systems in order to derive reliability and performance measures, mostly using stochastic Petri nets. The tool TimeNET, which has been developed in the group and permanently updated, is a state-of-the-art tool for stochastic Petri net modelling and has been deployed to more than 300 institutions and companies around the world.

Contact person:

Emmanuel Previnaire

Flying Cam is a SME world-leader on the application of remotely piloted helicopters for cinematography having obtained a Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science in 1995 for the pioneering concept and for the development of mounting a motion picture camera on a remotely-controlled miniature helicopter. Furthermore, FC develops helicopters for the Media industry conducts a project on autonomous helicopters and has R&D personnel with expertise in autonomous helicopters. FC is currently working on the Flying-Cam III Diamond Project which include the SARAH Concept: Special Aerial Response Autonomous Helicopter, and also participated in the NASA DART (Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team) event in San Francisco for a Site Assessment exercise after a simulated bombing. It is the ideal partner for the experimentation and validation for the Media industry and assures the exploitation for this application.

Contact person:

Paul J.M. Havinga

University of Twente / CTIT is a multidisciplinary research institute of the University of Twente (UT), Enschede, The Netherlands, within the area of telematics and information technology. The Embedded Systems group performs research on distributed systems and computer architecture of (real-time) embedded and communication systems and has a significant research background on various aspects of ubiquitous computing. These are complex, heterogeneous, networked systems that operate in often hostile environments, and under severe resource constraints. CTIT is primarily focused on system architectures covering the entire systems design trajectory from digital devices, efficient wireless network protocols, distributed systems, and security. For experiments the group has extensive prototyping facilities, development boards, computer infrastructure including development software in their laboratories. They have a long experience in building complex distributed systems (software as well as hardware). The group has developed and deployed a very large wireless sensor network (750 nodes, perhaps the largest in the world), which is being used for testing protocols and developing applications.

Contact person:

Klaus Herrmann

Universität Stuttgart - Institute of Parallel and Distributed Systems (IPVS, formerly known as IPVR) at the University of Stuttgart (USTUTT) in Germany was founded in 1989. Scientists at the IPVS work on research and development projects for government agencies, associations and industry (Daimler-Chrysler, Bosch, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft...). The SCOOP project (IST-2000-25200), an example for a European project at the IPVS, developed a production planning and control system for highly dynamic distributed e-business and e-works environments in the printing and textile industry. Recently, the distributed systems research group of the IPVS participated in the CarTALK project (IST2000-28185). While the overall objective of CarTALK is the development of driver assistance systems using ad hoc communication between vehicles, the distributed systems research groups contributed routing protocols for ad hoc networks. Currently, IPVS is participating in the Embedded WiSeNts project (FP6-004400). Additionally, a large research program - the nexus project - which is set up for twelve years investigates the structure, management and possibilities of an augmented world model for context-aware applications. The nexus project is funded by the German DFG and currently incorporates nine project partners in 14 research projects at the University of Stuttgart. One of the main current focuses of the distributed systems research group is the area of ubiquitous information systems. In the 3PC project, architectures and protocols are being developed to create system software that supports adaptive applications in Peer-to-Peer-based spontaneous networks.

Contact person:

Jason Lepley

SELEX Sensors and Airborne Systems Ltd is the UK's foremost supplier of electronic systems for civil and military platforms in the air, at sea and on land. SELEX involvement within this programme will be through its Electro-optics Sector business unit based in Basildon UK. SELEX specialises in developing world class integrated sensor solutions for land sea and air domains. It is a leader in radars and electro-optical surveillance, tracking and targeting and imaging systems. SELEX are also a leader in the field of security and homeland defence supplying a range of surveillance products that are actively in use world-wide helping to maintain the security of the borders and other key facilities. The SELEX experience in complex surveillance system design will be employed within this programme ensuring the requirements capture and system design phases of this programme are addressed in a systematic manner. The SELEX product range is diverse and ranges from ISTAR infrastructure, platforms, mission systems, HMI products and Sensors and this extensive coverage provides a unique in site into the issues of whole system integration. Products of particular applicability to the AWARE programme include: Mobile Surveillance and Control Unit, EO sensors, Unattended ground sensors, Passive Littoral surveillance systems and UAV payload systems.

Contact person:

Ramon Gil

ITURRI is a Spanish group of companies with 65 years of activities centred on industrial safety equipment and systems including their own developments and the integration and marketing from other manufacturers. The company Protec-Fire of the Iturri group, is the leader in the Spanish fire-fighting vehicles and equipment, and also has significant presence in international markets. Iturri develops the engineering and implementation of fire systems for large industries and oil refineries, including all the prevention and extinguishing equipment. Furthermore, ITURRI has important expertise in demonstration of these equipment and systems and has strong relationships with these agencies. Thus, it is the ideal partner for the preparation and running of the experiments providing the required equipment and facilities. It also assures the validation and exploitation of the project results for disaster management.

Contact person:

Pedro Marrón

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn - Sensor Networks and Pervasive Computing (SNPC) was founded in 2007 with the change in position of Pedro José Marrón, the head of the group, from the University of Stuttgart to the University of Bonn. Scientists at SNPC have worked on research and development projects for government agencies, associations and industry. One example of completed EC projects is the Embedded WiSeNts coordination action whose goal was to find out a vision as well as a roadmap towards wireless sensor networks and cooperating embedded systems. Currently SNPC is participating as a founding member in the AWARE project and the EMMA project, both funded by the EC. The goal of AWARE is to combine the capabilities of UAVs, robots, cameras and sensor networks to fight the spread of fire in indoor scenarios. The members of SNPC are responsible for the design and implementation of a publish/subscribe middleware that allows for the seamless communication of entities in the system. The goal of the EMMA project is the development of a novel embedded communication middleware for wireless cooperating objects in automotive applications. The SNPC group is also working on middleware systems that enable the efficient utilization of sensor networks in Ubiquitous Computing applications with a specific focus on home and office automation. Finally, SNPC has a bilateral project with Siemens AG for the development of robust self-management concepts for the operational maintenance in wireless sensor network deployments.