Trends & Challenges in Embedded Systems
75 people from academi, industry, funding agencies and the press took part in this conference at the Norra Latin Conference Centre in Stockholm. The purpose of this all day conference was to present trends and challenges in embedded systems design, verification, architecting and integration from industrial and scientific viewpoints.
The theme was addressed by a program including:
* A keynote talk by Prof. Werner Damm (Offis)
* Invited presentations from industry and KTH
* Presentations of ICES visions, goals, activities and accomplishments,
addressing these challenges
* An exhibition, presenting ICES-related research projects, education
and industrial products
* A panel debate discussing how to meet the challenges.
The conference celebrated ICES first year anniversary, and ICES representatives from industry and KTH took the opportunity to present the drivers for ICES and accomplishments during the first year, as well as ICES vision, goals and concrete activities, including an inventory of Embedded Systems at KTH.
The Keynote Talk described trends and challenges from the viewpoint of the transportation sectors: Automotive, Aerospace and Railway. The three transportation domains share the need to develop advanced embedded systems to meet societal demands for increased mobility and accident reduction while reducing environmental load (CO2 emission and energy consumption) and maintaining high safety levels in spite of increasing traffic density and increased systems complexity. The domains are facing a highly competitive market and faces constraints imposed by (forthcoming) safety standards such as ISO CD 26262, Do178 B/C, CenelecEN 50128/50129, IEC 61508. Achieving continuous cost reduction, performance improvement and efficiently dealing with verification/certification will continue to be a challenge and a key focus in the domains. Werner Damm illustrated research efforts in the area by describing the SPEEDS and CESAR European projects, and their work to develop powerful and efficient supporting methods and tools for the development of safety critical embedded systems.
(A pdf of the slides from Professor Damm's talk is available from the right-hand column)
Invited industrial talks were given by:
* Micronic - addressing challenges in introducing model-based engineering into industrial development,
* Prevas - discussing challenges in embedded systems processes and testing
with examples taken from the telecom and automotive domains, and
* Stoneridge in developing future human machine interfaces.
(copies of these talks are only available from the ICES Members Area)
The KTH talks included overviews of trends and challenges in electronic computing platforms (multicore, terascale computing), wireless communication and automous robots. (pdfs of these talks are available from the right-hand column)
The Exhibition Room had contributions from some 10 research groups at KTH,
illustrating the depth and breadth of KTH research in the area (from systems on chip, over autonomous self-configuring systems to environmental friendly hybrid engine driven vehicles). Posters and demos by some of the industrial partners showed the integration between research and education and industry.
The conference concluded with a lively Panel Debate led by Tor Ericson
(ÅF, and ICES board chair) involving key industrial and academic
participants:
Inventor and IEEE Computer Pioneer Award winner, Harold "Bud" Lawson
KTH Vice Rector, Eric Giertz
KTH ICT Platform Coordinator, Carl-Gustaf Jansson
Keynote Speaker, Werner Damm from Offis
Lars-Gunnar Hedström from Scania
Jan-Erik Frey from ABB and
Per-Martin Andersson from Ericsson
The Panel Debate evolved over several topics, from business opportunities to the need to deal with the increasing technical complexity but also with the increasing performance demands. Recruitment of engineers is seen as central for industry. The role of future engineers is changing, and involves more reuse and configuration. The importance of pushing embedded systems as a discipline in its own right was put forward.
Several of the speakers stated the KTH really has the right competences
to establish a successful centre. ICES was encouraged to create a roadmap for embedded systems research and to investigate the possibility to create a reference technology platform, in terms of a shared repository of core technologies, where IP's can be shared.
(Extracts from the debate will be made available here soon!)
The conference was felt to be a great success, with presentations from multiple perspectives and a lot of useful discussion arising from the mixture of delegates - a good start to a productive 2nd year for ICES!
