RATE

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Company info:

Name: Link Software Date founded: 2002 Number of employees: 15 Location: Elgazala Technopark, Ariana, Tunisia Software engineering, consultancy and development company operating in various fields of information technology. http://www.linkconet.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Runtime Architect – RATE

Challenge

Electronic systems with real-time performance constraints are found in many different application domains such as space, automotive, railway, aerospace, medical monitoring and imaging, industrial process control, robotics, etc.

A common trend amongst all these systems is the significant quantitative and qualitative increase of the functions to be implemented in order to respond to the growing needs for connectivity, automation, autonomy, security, etc. Among the different activities related to the development of real-time systems, Performance Engineering is one of the most challenged by this trend.

One of the major challenges today in the Performance Engineering of real-time systems is the integration of design models and runtime aspects. The timing behavior at runtime has to be matched with the design in order to identify the timing failures in design and deviations from the real-time requirements.

Solution

RATE will allow the architect performing a continuous system performance engineering cycle between design and runtime, thus ensuring the quality of the running real-time system while reducing the design and development efforts and costs, and getting valuable feedback that can be used to boost the productivity and provide lessons-learnt for future generations of the product

The following objectives will be fulfilled:

  1. Verify if timing requirements are met in the system execution (CPU) or communication (network/bus) and identify potential timing bottlenecks.
  2. Help the architect understanding the system timing behaviour based on numerical and graphical statistics for the system execution/communication.
  3. Perform consistency check between runtime and models to validate timing related assumptions taken at the design phase.
  4. Help the architect correcting timing errors and exploring design alternatives at the design phase based on the system runtime behaviour before investing time and efforts in implementing and testing.

FED4SAE Support

RATE has integrated theTime4Sys technology provided by THALES. By relying on the Time4Sys design model and the Time4Sys trace model, RATE then automatically benefits from current and future connections to Time4Sys of the various existing model-driven performance engineering tools such as design tools, scheduling analysis and simulation tools as well as tracing tools all at once. This guarantees high flexibility and add a valuable agnostic character to RATE by making it possible to easily integrate it in any runtime, design and any scheduling verification environment.

Impact

Runtime Architect gives to the architect access to knowledge on the system timing behavior based on the processing of runtime traces, thus allowing him to easily perform correction during validation and before delivery. Runtime Architect will allow reducing the design efforts (~15% gain estimated) while improving development efficiency as well as validation speed (~30% faster timing validation).

Through the integration of the Time4Sys technology, it becomes easy to use Runtime Architect in any runtime, design and timing verification environment, thus offering to our customer a seamlessly integrated solution that will deliver a full, round-trip support for runtime traces analysis, design modelling and timing verification.
Performance engineers have then the capability to rapidly integrate runtime aspects collected from traces into their design models. They can start from runtime traces and then change the system configuration virtually to easily predict the performance impact of modified timing properties of tasks, schedulers or hardware. Runtime Architect enables performance engineers to quickly iterate their designs as many times as they want, for both new developments and evolutionary extension and optimization of existing systems.

RobRad

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Company info:

Name: ASINCO GmbH
Date founded: 2012
Number of employees: 25
Location: Duisburg, Germany

www.asinco.de
www.radarmesstechnik.de

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Robustification of radar sensors for application in harsh industrial environments

Challenge

Due to the adverse environmental conditions in metal production, essential measurement technologies, e.g. optical and laser-based, reach their physical limits in various fields of application. Thus, observation of relevant process parameters stays fragmented over the whole process-chain.Radar-based measurement is insensitive to the adverse conditions (e.g. high temperature, dust, air humidity, mist from rolling emulsion or oil) and recording necessary measurement variables with sufficient precision. Due to advancement in innovative signal processing algorithms this is achieved without any discernible disadvantages compared to existing measurement technologies.

Solution

For improving the technological readiness level, well-structured and competently performed experiments and functionality tests are of core importance. Within the metal industry environmental conditions as high temperatures, dust, varying humidity and corrosive gases typically occur within the areas where sensors are located. This hinders many common sensors (optical, laser-based) from reaching their specified functionality.

The objectives within the application experiments in this project can be summarized as follows:

  • Testing and improving sensor performance in terms of real-time capabilities for digital signal processing (sampling time: up to 1 kHz)
  • Testing and improving sensor protection (housing) against harsh environment conditions with long-term continuous load tests against corrosive gases
  • Testing and improving sensor protection (electronic) against harsh environment conditions with long-term continuous load tests with temperatures up to 100°C and variable humidity

FED4SAE Support

The increasing use of sensor intelligence and data preprocessing capabilities has been successfully tackled as well with the use of the industrialized STM. By transferring main raw data processing onto a decentral embedded system included in the sensor, core requirements are provided for effectively implementing the sensing units as self-aware CPS in industrial environments.

The simulation of real process environments by exploiting the functionalities of the advanced platforms of the corrosive gases testbed perfectly rounds of the improvement of the technological readiness level of the radar sensors. ASINCO is already closely interconnected within the pan-European community of radar sensors and additionally within the steel producing community. These cross-border collaborations can and will be further enhanced.

Impact

In close compliance with the targeted objectives of the call, this project tackles the development of further enhancing an already novel and smart solution of a technologically specialized SME. Thereby, it becomes possible to expand ASINCO’s leading position in the target market of providing robust measurement solutions for the metal producing industry.

The initiation and further pursuit of the robustification and market readiness development of radar-based sensors is the main interest for ASINCO. Numerous preliminary talks and discussions with various stakeholders from universities over research institutes to clients, clearly shows that the systems currently available on the market obviously do not meet industrial requirements.

There is currently great interest in testing radar measurement technology for applications such as product tracking, geometry and speed measurement and control on hot wide strip mills. The radar-based system technology to be further developed and especially robustified for the industrial application also has the potential to be used in almost every process stage of metal processing, from continuous casting (slabs) and hot rolling (hot strip, heavy plate) to cold rolling and finishing, as well as in long product plants. In a comparison of today’s optically- or laser-based measuring systems, a previously unattained field of application, namely much closer to the process, can be opened up.

With the entry of this new measuring technology, possibilities for process improvement with associated energy savings are attained at many points in the metal production process. There is also potential in the use of other materials such as plastics, glass, wood and paper.

Safecility

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Company info:

Name: The Convex Lens
Date founded: 2018
Number of employees: 4
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Safecility’s innovative sensor technology enables property owners to easily meet their statutory obligations to test emergency lighting through automation.

www.safecility.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Safecility: automated sensor solutions for statutory building compliance testing

Challenge

Every year European businesses and public bodies spend €1bn on inspection of Life Safety Systems in public buildings. Emergency lighting testing is a segment of legally required fire safety testing that at present is conducted manually by technicians who inspect, test and affirm the lighting at a minimum four times per year. This is expensive and time consuming with huge potential for human error and thus non compliance. Smart sensor solutions which automate this testing can free up resources while streaming vital compliance data. This allows building owners to make informed compliance decisions resulting in smarter and safer buildings.

Solution

Safecility digitises the antiquated emergency lighting testing process seen within industry. In Europe emergency lighting testing is carried out in person with results recorded using paper in 90% of cases. Safecility replaces human input with wireless sensors which automate scheduled testing and stream the data to asset managers via a software platform. Building owners can be assured of their compliance status in real time through a simple visual dashboard and audit trail.

FED4SAE Support

Safecility Application Experiment has been implemented using the ST Microcontroller BL072Z and has been validated on the Digital Catapult LoRa testbed infrastructure in London, UK.

Impact

Safecility has automated and digitally recorded legally required emergency lighting testing while minimising the cost and time involved in maintaining compliance. By developing and validating this type of sensor technology using LoRa, Safecility was able to prove the future potential of a wide range of applications which would tackle additional statutory building compliance testing in smart cities.

Safecility has and continues to take strides towards a more transparent and accountable system for fire safety testing in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Human error or failures will be drastically reduced resulting in safer buildings and safer residents.

Achievements

Successful trial with Vivid Homes and Limerick Council.

Received Competitive Start Fund Grant from Enterprise Ireland in 2019.

Shortlisted by Lighting Industry Association for the Lux Awards 2020 Emergency Lighting Product of the Year.

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Sentinal

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Company info:

Name: Sentinum UG
Date founded: 2018
Number of employees: 3
Location: Nuremberg, Germany

Sentinum specializes in the implementation of large-scale wireless sensor networks for municipal use. Starting with the hardware, over the wireless communication up to data storage, evaluation and visualization.

www.sentinum.de

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

An energy-self-sufficient drainage monitoring system for critical event detection

Challenge

Rapid flooding of drainage systems is a well-known but hard to predict consequence of heavy rain that occurs in many climates around the world. The resulting high flow rate and pressure in the duct system can lead to considerable damage to the substance or even worse to detached manhole covers which pose a danger to pedestrians and traffic participants.

Solution

Only with a holistic sensor system an accurate picture of the events in the canal is generated and damage to infrastructure and people can be prevented. By recording the water level, flow rate and pressure, conclusions can be drawn in real time about events in the drainage system. We also record the position of the manhole cover and the presence of harmful gases such as H2S to protect people in the vicinity. The sensor is completely energy self-sufficient and wireless. The communication uses the latest LPWAN technologies. All data is stored by our cloud services and visualized for the customer.

FED4SAE Support

In the implementation of our product, we benefit especially from the partners provided to us via FED4SAE. Our energy self-sufficient sensors require low-power microcontrollers which nevertheless possess a certain performance. For this we use the STM32L4. With its extremely low power consumption in sleep modes it is predestined for our application. Via FED4SAE we have direct contact to ST-Microelectronics and can access this resource and expertise first hand. With the Fraunhofer IISB as test bed, we simulate the harsh environmental conditions prevailing in a sewer system and analyze its effects in a unique way. Being able to fall back on such practical tests during product development accelerates time-to-market extremely and increases the quality of our final product.

Impact

Our system affects two different areas. On the one hand, there are hardly any possibilities for planning offices and municipal civil engineering departments to evaluate how their sewer system works. With our system, data is continuously recorded over many years and processed to provide information about changes and anomalies. This opens up a completely new perspective on the planning phase, implementation and, above all, maintenance of the sewer systems.

The second point is increased safety for pedestrians and traffic participants. Injuries and even fatal accidents due to missing manhole covers occur more frequently than they should. Accidents or even drowning due to the tremendous suction of the backflowing water during heavy rain events. With our sensor system, depositioned manhole covers are instantly detected and warnings are transmitted to the relevant authorities, by voice call, sms or email. With this information, communities can act quickly and avoid resulting threats to people and the environment.

Smart-Tunnel

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Company info:

Name: ISSD
Date founded: 2009
Number of employees: 51
Location: Ankara, Turkey

ISSD is working on system design and integration, digital signal processing, software development and electronic design. The company provides solutions for Intelligent Transportation Systems, Traffic Management and Enforcement Systems.

www.issd.com.tr

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Smart-Tunnel: Improving automatic incident detection in tunnels

Challenge

In many road tunnels worldwide, human operators monitor the flow of traffic through CCTV cameras from a central control room to ensure the users’ safety. However, scrutinizing large numbers of monitors over extended periods of time is a cognitive challenge. Automatic Incident Detection (AID) systems help by analysing multiple video streams in real time and automatically alerting operators to events which they may need to act upon. Current AID systems utilize traditional computer vision image processing algorithms, which are subject to performance limitations inherent to their functional principle.

Solution

Artificial neural networks can outperform traditional approaches in computer vision. Therefore, ISSD has augmented their AID solution with deep learning to increase detection accuracy and performance. Specialized hardware for the neural network inference process keeps the server cost competitive. The solution can be deployed to both new and – as a retrofit – to existing tunnel monitoring infrastructure.

Achievements

ISSD has created a deep-learning based detection engine for their AID product that generates real-time alerts when pedestrians or a stationary vehicles appear in a video stream. After outperforming the previous solution against a representative set of video segments recorded in several road tunnels, the new detection engine was integrated into a live AID installation for evaluation at one of ISSD’s customers in Turkey.

In this test, the false alarm rate was reduced about half from the legacy solution, with the new engine still detecting all the events that the legacy engine detected, and doing so faster. The deployment environment for the detection engine employs Intel Movidius Myriad X visual processing units (VPU) in a highly scaled high-density deep learning (HDDL) configuration, processing camera video at a lower hardware cost per stream than the previous platform despite the increased computational requirements.

FED4SAE Support

Intel benchmarked the solution across multiple hardware platforms (CPU, FPGA, VPU) to confirm ISSD’s selection, provided performance tuning support of the network and assistance on the server configuration using the HDDL boards. Leading the technical coaching on neural networks, fortiss supported ISSD in applying the Neural Network Dependability Kit (NNDK) and in interpreting its analysis results to evaluate the object detection network model and improve its robustness against various kinds of image noise.

Blumorpho provided business innovation coaching and pitch training. Several joint dissemination and networking opportunities were enabled by all the partners.

Impact

  • After its maturity for production use is ensured, the improved detection engine will be an integral part of ISSD’s tunnel safety product.
  • The new technology will also be applied to other traffic monitoring products in ISSD’s portfolio.
  • Intel will partner with ISSD to assist them in scaling their portfolio of intelligent traffic management solutions to the global market, improving traffic safety worldwide.

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Time4PS

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Company info:

Name: Fent Innovative Software Solutions S.L. Date founded: 2010 Number of employees: 8 Location: Despacho 03 – UPV, Pedro Duque, 7, 46022 Valencia www.fentiss.com

Partners:

Innovation Management Partner:

Time4PS: Fully integrated development tools for partitioned systems

Challenge

The main goal of the project is to provide a complete set of tools that covers all the phases of the life cycle of the product: from the system design to the final configuration file of the partitioned system.

Goals

  • Connect our customers modelling tool with Time4Sys.
  • Give Time4Sys the ability to define partitioned systems.
  • Connect Time4Sys and Xamber so the timing performance verification is automatically done in Xamber.
  • Demonstrate de capabilities of the partitioned framework developed by means of an application experiment in the space domain.

Solution

In the architecture proposal three tools are connected to define the complete system. A modelling design tool (EEI/XPM) that is used  to model the system and generate the deployment and automatic code of the applications, Time4sys to define temporal information and a configuration tool to obtain the static configuration file for XtratuM (Xamber).

FED4SAE Support

fentISS worked at add support to Time4Sys for partitioned systems (Time4PS) and connect this new framework with Xamber, the XtratuM hypervisor scheduling analysis and configuration tool, and the corresponding modelling tool in order to close the development loop.

fentISS defined a partitioned meta-model for the generation of the final hypervisor static configuration file with which the system can be executed.

Thales provided a Flight Management System use case, its functional architecture in CAPELLA and expertise.

Impact

fentISS tool set is now able to generate a model, run the configuration and scheduling verification, and generate the deployment automatically with the Time4PS set of tools.

fentISS tool set will enable fentISS customers to use more sophisticated tools for modelling, analysis and integration of their system and it will give fentISS the ability to develop further support of their products. Also, it will empower fentISS to gain global competitiveness in three ways.

Firstly, it will allow fentISS to enter in customers who are already using Time4Sys. Secondly, it will improve the company products position in large and complex projects. Finally, the project will offer new opportunities to fentISS to enter in adjacent markets such as aviation, railways or automotive.