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Smart software for smart products
From cooking pots to cars and aeroplanes, the products of the future will be increasingly intelligent – able to communicate and cooperate with humans, other devices and their environment. EU-funded research is assisting this smart products trend that promises to make everyday life easier, more comfortable and productive.
Dr Daniel Schreiber, head of the Telecooperation Group at Technische Universitaet Darmstadt in Germany, has led the technical development of innovative software and systems to enable a wide variety of smart products to function.
His team developed a set of ontologies and reasoning methods to characterise proactive knowledge and embed it into smart products in order to support context-aware interactions with users and other products. In some instances, knowledge is stored directly in the product, while in other cases a simple RFID chip is used to identify the product and knowledge about it is drawn from a distributed database using an internet connection, for example. The team also developed ubiquitous computing middleware, called MundoCore, that combines different communication methods and ensures interoperability.
The technology was integrated in the SmartProducts platform, based on OSGi and Java and designed to provide all essential services and functionality for a wide variety of smart products. Working with consumer-electronics manufacturer Philips, the team applied the technology to kitchen appliances, developing smart chopping boards, cooking pots and a cocktail mixer that guide users on ingredients, recipe preparation, nutrition and cooking. Visit: www.cordis.europa.eu/marketplace/
The UK Technology Strategy Board (www.innovateuk.org) is to invest up to £2.75 million to encourage the development and commercialisation of innovative processes that will generate high-value chemical products through industrial biotechnology and renewable feedstocks.
The aim of the competition is to assist businesses in de-risking new processes and developing projects through to pilot and to demonstrate scale. Projects that consider novel or under valorised biomass sources such as agriculture or marine by-products, as well as those that take a bio-refinery approach to multi-product systems, are encouraged.
Projects must be led by a UK business and are open to the inclusion of one or more Norwegian companies; Innovation Norway intends to provide additional funding to Norwegian companies that join UK-led projects. Visit: www.innovateuk.org/content/competition/sustainable-high-value-chemical-manufacture-throug.ashx
Cryostats for XFEL
The European XFEL, the 3.4km-long X-ray laser project, will open up areas of research that were previously inaccessible. Using the X-ray flashes of the European XFEL, scientists will be able to map the atomic details of viruses, decipher the molecular composition of cells, take three-dimensional images of the nanoworld, film chemical reactions and study processes such as those occurring deep inside planets.
Two research cryostats are part of Poland’s in-kind contribution to the XFEL Project. The first cryostat was shipped to DESY research centre on Wednesday, August 8. The other is to be shipped within about two months.
Cryostats are among elements crucial for the success of the entire XFEL project. The two hi-tech cryostats will be used to test niobium superconducting 1.3 GHz resonators of the XFEL accelerating structures, the ‘heart’ of the XFEL facility.
“Cryostat is a device built to conduct research at temperatures close to absolute zero, i.e. around minus 271 degrees Celsius,” explains Ewa Niec, chairman of Kriosystem, cryostat manufacturer.
“I am deeply proud that such a complicated and specialised device was manufactured in Wroclaw,” points out Professor Maciej Chorowski, Mechanical and Power Engineering Faculty Dean at the Wroclaw University of Technology. “The device was designed by Wroclaw University of Technology scientists and manufactured by the Kriosystem company operating within the Wroclaw Technology Park. WTP provided comprehensive technological support for the company and facilitated mutual cooperation of all Kriosystem partners within the cryostat manufacture project.” Visit: www.ncbj.gov.pl/en/node/1787
