Date:

2006-2009

Themes:

Agent Based Computing, Decentralised Information Systems, Sensor Technology, e-Defence, Disaster Management

Funding:

Defence Technology Centre on Data and Information Fusion

This project is addressing the need for an integrated approach that allows sensors deployed within a sensor network to manage their own local energy requirements, and where possible, harvest energy from their local environment, whilst simultaneously coordinating their activities in order to achieve system-wide aggregate goals.

It is a collaborative project across two groups within the School of Electronics and Computer Science (IAM and ESD) and seeks to demonstrate the use of agent-based coordination algorithms within sensors (based upon the Chipcon 2431 System-on-Chip) that are capable of understanding, predicting and managing their own energy use and production.

Primary investigator

• acr

Secondary investigators

• Neil White
• Nick Jennings
• Nick Harris
• wtlt
• Neil Jonathan Grabham
• asw05r

Associated research groups

• Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
• Electronic Systems and Devices Group
• Electronics and Electrical Engineering
• Agents, Interaction and Complexity

Date:

2006-2009

Themes:

Agent Based Computing, Decentralised Information Systems, Artificial Intelligence, e-Defence

This project is concerned with investigating and developing the basic mechanisms that enable collectives of software agents to self-organise, self-repair and self-optimise in response to dynamic environments. Such autonomic behaviour is needed to ensure the agents are able to best achieve both their individual objectives and the objectives of the collective as a whole in the face of a constantly changing and highly uncertain operational environment. In such cases, the resources available (communication and computation) to the agents are in a constant state of flux and the set of agents in the system is constantly changing. In such cases, it is impossible for the a priori system design to continue to be maximally effective because many of its operational assumptions and parameters are changing. Thus, the system can gradually degrade its performance or it can endeavour to respond to such changes by reorganizing itself in order to best achieve its objectives.

Primary investigator

• Nick Jennings

Secondary investigators

• nnc
• pv
• tr
• Sebastian Stein
• rck05r

Partners

• BT
• General Dynamics
• QinetiQ
• Imperial College

Date:

2006-2008

Themes:

Logic, Model-Based Verification

Funding:

EPSRC

Model-based verification is a highly successful formal method for hardware/software development. Depending on the hardware/software systems of interest, existing model-based approaches to verification use different types of mathematical models to describe abstract system behaviour, and the verification techniques they employ are tailored to these model types. However, different approaches also share certain aspects of the underlying mathematical models and of the associated verification methodologies. So far, no effort has been invested into formally relating different model-based approaches to verification. Consequently, no support is available for transferring verification methodologies between different modelling approaches, or for combining/reusing existing verification methodologies in the context of new types of models. The present project aims to address this issue, by developing the theoretical underpinnings of a modular approach to model-based verification.

Such an approach will offer several advantages, including:

(i) a unified treatment of existing modelling approaches and of their relationships,

(ii) the provision of abstraction-based verification techniques which exploit the relationships between different modelling approaches to increase the efficiency of verification,

(iii) the ability to combine/reuse existing modelling approaches/ verification methodologies when considering new classes of systems.

Primary investigator

• Corina Cirstea

Secondary investigator

• ms6

Associated research group

• Dependable Systems & Software Engineering

Date:

2003-2006

Themes:

Agent Based Computing, e-Science, Grid and Distributed Computing

Funding:

EPSRC

The Semantic Firewall project deals with the enforcement of network security policies between trust domains in the presence of dynamically changing and unpredictable Grid communication needs.

The problem is that whilst traditional static policies allow the type of access mechanisms required by Grid applications, the same mechansims can be exploited by crackers for malicious purposes, so firewall policies cannot remain static for long. By combining conventional Grid security with semantic reasoning methods, we aim to provide dynamic, adaptive network security that allows legitimate access but still prevents unauthorised access

Primary investigators

• trp
• Mike Surridge

Secondary investigators

• Ronald Ashri
• Mariusz Jacyno
• Darren Marvin
• Steve Taylor
• E. Rowland Watkins

Partner

• SRI International

Associated research groups

• Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
• IT Innovation Centre

Date:

2006-2008

Themes:

Pervasive Computing and Networks, Knowledge Technologies, Grid and Distributed Computing

Funding:

EPSRC (EP/C010078/1)

The aim of the project is to investigate and innovate at the intersection of the Semantic Grid and the physical world, by focusing on the capture, distribution and use of semantic annotation in the context of pervasive devices. It addresses important computer science challenges that have arisen in e-Science projects by focusing on the future forms of scientific record that may emerge from the use of a pervasive e-Science infrastructure. The formation of this new form of scientific record raises research challenges in three distinct areas:

Challenge 1:

Recording the record requires a disparate set of information to be captured and related to each other. We need to reduce significantly the cost of capturing this additional information and develop appropriate representations for codifying this information. This will require:

• The development of devices and techniques that map from real world actions and activities to higher level semantic representations to provide real time information streams representing the ubiquitous computing environment.
• The investigation of semantic annotation techniques to information streams drawn from real world sensors for use in e-Research applications using multiple ontologies.

Challenge 2:

Sharing the record requires a careful re-examination of the relationship between the underlying architecture and the semantic annotations used to form the record of activities. Sharing this record across a distributed community requires:

• The development of techniques to allow the distribution and synchronisation of multiple information sources across the infrastructure in a scalable and reliable manner.
• To create a distributed annotation architecture that move beyond existing centralised services such as RDF triplestores to address the engineering challenges inherent in meeting the requirements of continuous or real-time media across a distributed infrastructure.

Challenge 3:

Replaying the Record requires us to consider how best to represent the record to scientists and how this might best be understood by scientists. This will require:

• The development of interfaces and devices that present the record to scientists through a range of different interface devices including mobile and ubiquitous computing devices.
• The development of techniques to support multiple perspectives on the underlying annotations to allow the record to be presented in an appropriate manner to those who would seek to replay it.

The Semantic Media project has been funded under the second round of the EPSRC Computer Science Challenges to Emerge from e-Science programme.

Primary investigator

• David De Roure

Secondary investigators

• Nicholas Gibbins
• Jeremy Frey
• Tom Rodden
• Chris Greenhalgh
• Danius Michaelides

Partner

• University of Nottingham

Associated research group

• Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group

Date:

2006-2009

Themes:

Knowledge Technologies, Grid and Distributed Computing, Agent Based Computing

Funding:

EU (FP6-026460)

Significant initiatives such as WSMO, METEOR-S, ODE-SWS, SWSI, and others are creating the engineering platforms for next-generation service-based component federation and service-based application integration. Trial testbeds in large-scale commercial settings are on-going, and progress is promising for the short-to-medium-term uptake of this new technology in enterprise applications development.

The goal of the TAO project is to define a low-cost route to transitioning legacy systems to the open semantic Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs), which will enable semantic interoperability between heterogeneous data resources and distributed applications. This low-cost migration path will be accessible to both SMEs (which are cost sensitive) and large enterprises (with huge investments in complex and critical IS).

TAO is motivated by the realisation that the time is now right for the creation of an open source infrastructure to aid transitioning of legacy applications, via ontologies and refactoring into Semantic Web Services (SWSs), to SOAs. This will enable the multitude of companies to take-up these new developments without having to re-implement their applications. In this way TAO will widen the uptake of B2B and B2C eCommerce models, which:

• are scaleable: services can be distributed on many machines, with no single point of failure;
• have component-based architectures: that can have alternative implementation and tuning to support different service levels for different users in various market sectors;
• encompass heterogeneous knowledge: consistent access across media types, associated semantic annotations (metadata), databases, and ontologies;
• support multi-purpose access: for humans, services and Grid applications;
• are supported by a development and integration toolset.

TAO will tackle several major bottlenecks of knowledge technologies in the areas of semi-automatic creation of ontologies; automated methods for metadata creation and augmentation of legacy content; and distributed heterogeneous repositories. The project will build on and enhance research and technology from diverse areas into an infrastructure for transitioning legacy systems.

Primary investigator

• trp

Secondary investigators

• Nicholas Gibbins
• hw
• amms

Partners

• University of Sheffield
• Atos Origin
• Jožef Stefan Institute
• Mondeca
• Ontotext
• Dassault Aviation

Associated research group

• Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group

Date:

2006-2010

Themes:

Agent Based Computing, Decentralised Information Systems, Machine Learning

RoboCupRescue Simulation Project is an open resource of research results. Various people worldwide participate in this simulator for research, entertainment, training, or education via the Internet. A diverse spectrum of possibilities of this technology will contribute to the creation of the safer social system in the future.

Here at Southampton, we are developing new agent strategies and testbeds to allow intelligent agents to coordinate in a robust fashion in environments that are uncertain and dynamic. The RoboCup Rescue Project is mainly driven as a sub-project of the ALADDIN Project.

Primary investigators

• Nick Jennings
• Sarvapali Ramchurn
• acr

Secondary investigators

• iv
• rkd
• mhaw05r
• nnc
• gc2
• saw06r
• rck05r
• pv
• tr

Date:

2006-2008

Themes:

Trust and Provenance, E-Business Technologies

The essential problem posed by this competition is one that we all face in daily life. That is, how do we make good decisions in the face of uncertainty? Part of the answer to that question lies in making good assumptions. We are use to thinking of assumptions as bad things because we tend only to notice them when they are exposed in a negative light. However, that fact remains that, without taking risks on our assumptions, we would never achieve anything.

With artificial intelligence, there is no exception. Many of the real life problems that we target here at Southampton require computers to make decisions, despite not having all the relevant information available. The type of problem that inspired this competition is just one example of this, in which our agent had to identify which of its competitors provided reliable information, decide how best to use that information, and how best to spend its income to make a profit. With this in mind, our starting point had to be good assumptions about our competitors' strategies, based on careful consideration of the rules of the game. The rest of the work involved churning those assumptions though the mathematical machinery of statistics, and implementing the solutions we got out.

Primary investigators

• rkd
• tdh
• Nick Jennings
• wtlt

Associated research group

• Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group

Date:

2006-2010

Themes:

Nanoelectronics, Photovoltaics and Energy

Funding:

EPSRC ("Metal-Free Carbon nanotube Growth for nanoelectronics applications")

A metal catalyst free growth method of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) has been developed using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of CNTs on carbon implanted SiGe islands on Si substrates. From SEM and Raman measurements, the fabricated CNTs are identified as single wall CNTs (SWNTs) with diameter ranging from 1.2 to 1.6 nm. Essential parts of the substrate preparation after CVD SiGe growth and carbon implant are a chemical oxidization by hydrogen peroxide solution and a heat treatment at 1000°C prior to CNT growth. We believe that these processes enhance surface decomposition and assist the formation of carbon clusters, which play a role in seeding CNT growth. The growth technique is a practical method of growing metal free CNTs, opening up the prospect of merging CNT devices into silicon very-large-scale-integration (VLSI) technology.

Primary investigators

• pa
• Kees De Groot
• tu
• David Smith (Physics)

Secondary investigators

• mk09v
• Bourdakos Konstantinos (Physics)

Partner

• University of Oxford

Associated research groups

• Nano Research Group
• Southampton Nanofabrication Centre

Date:

2006-2008

Themes:

Knowledge Technologies, Dependable Systems, Web Science, Semantic Web

Funding:

EU (026764)

ReSIST is an NoE that addresses the strategic objective “Towards a global dependability and security framework� of the Work Programme, and responds to the stated “need for resilience, self-healing, dynamic content and volatile environments�.

It will integrate leading researchers active in the multidisciplinary domains of Dependability, Security, and Human Factors, in order that Europe will have a well-focused coherent set of research activities aimed at ensuring that future “ubiquitous computing systems�, the immense systems of ever-evolving networks of computers and mobile devices which are needed to support and provide Ambient Intelligence (AmI), have the necessary resilience and survivability, despite any residual development and physical faults, interaction mistakes, or malicious attacks and disruptions.

The objectives of the Network are:

1. Integration of teams of researchers so that the fundamental topics concerning scalably resilient ubiquitous systems are addressed by a critical mass of co-operative, multi-disciplinary research.
2. Identification, in an international context, of the key research directions (both technical and socio-technical) induced on the supporting ubiquitous systems by the requirement for trust and confidence in AmI.
3. Production of significant research results (concepts, models, policies, algorithms, mechanisms) that pave the way for scalably resilient ubiquitous systems.
4. Promotion and propagation of a resilience culture in university curricula and in engineering best practices.

Primary investigators

• Hugh Glaser
• Nigel Richard Shadbolt

Secondary investigators

• Ian Charles Millard
• aoj04r
• br205r

Partners

• Budapest UTE (HG)
• City U. (UK)
• TU Darmstadt (DE)
• Deep Blue Srl (IT)
• France Telecom R&D (FR)
• IBM Research GmbH (CH)
• Institut Eurecom (FR)
• IRISA (FR)
• IRIT (FR)
• LAAS-CNRS (FR)
• Lisbon U. (PT)
• Newcastle upon Tyne U. (UK)
• Pisa U. (IT)
• Qinetiq (UK)
• Roma U. ‘La Sapienza’ (IT)
• Ulm U. (DE)
• Vytautas Magnus U. (LT)

Associated research groups

• Dependable Systems & Software Engineering
• Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group