2010, December: Newsletter #8

EVENTS

WELCOME

Welcome to the special end-of-year edition of Embedded Systems Australia's newsletter.  In this special edition Dr Chris Nicol — Chief Technology Officer (Embedded Systems) at NICTA — presents a challenge for the Embedded Systems industry in Australia — What will you do with 100 cores?.  Challenges often bring opportunity.  Are you ready?

About ESA

Embedded Systems Australia is a horizontally aligned, project-based national industry cluster.  Our members are interested in developing embedded systems technologies and marketing smart products to global supply chains. The activities span the complete product life cycle of embedded systems development and deployment. These include Design: electronics, software, computer aided design and methodologies; Manufacturing & systems integration to create competitive smart products for vertical applications; and Marketing, sales and support of embedded systems product development.

This Year

ESA TruckOn team.  From Left: David Haley (Cohda Wireless), Philip Lark (Braetec), Heath Raftery (ResTech), Karina Taylor (CPE Systems), Neil Temperley (NICTA), Peter Stepien (ResTech), Tim Wylie (ResTech).

This was a big year for ESA. We completed our first collaborative project TruckOn - Overhead Collision Prevention within a challenging timeframe of just 3.5 months. This project was supported by a $100,000 grant from Industry and Investment NSW matched by cash and in-kind resources of the RTA.  Microsoft assisted with $11,000 sponsorship, and The Warren Centre provided assistance during the project’s inception.  ESA, with NICTA’s support, made this project possible by arranging a grant from Industry & Investment NSW, workshops, and project discussions with the RTA.  The project was delivered by ESA members NICTA, Braetec, Cohda Wireless, CPE Systems and ResTech.

To view a project 'brochure', movie, photo galleries and TruckOn-related information visit www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/truckon. TruckOn was a fantastic effort by our participating ESA members and continues to stimulate interest in industry and government.

In other ways the year was a quieter one.  Due to stretched resources (including very busy committee members), we ran fewer events and newsletters.

We wound up 2010 with our end-of-year event - Embedded Systems Moving Forward. As usual this proved to be a great time to catch up with industry friends.  This year featured talks by a variety of passionate embedded systems experts: Robert Bosshard of Ptronik explained his dust extractor cleaning technology that achieved a 'highly commended' at the recent Sydney Engineering Excellence Awards; John Judge reminded us of the good work of the National Computer Science School in introducing secondary students to robotics programming (see the previous Newsletter for details of NCSS www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/Newsletter_2010_November); Robi Karp of Fluffy Spider reminded us of the huge complexity that lies inside a modern mobile phone's interface and the opportunities this creates for resuable code frameworks; Grant Wendsor of Sage Consulting reminded us of the importance of good customer communication to ensure a great outcome; Chris Nicol of NICTA expained the trend to multi-core processing and clockless architectures as a means to overcoming clock-speed limitations in silicon chips; and finally I gave a brief run-down on TruckOn.

Chris always has an interesting perspective on the future.  We thought it would be useful to reproduce some of his argument in the article What will you do with 100 cores? below.

We wish you a great and safe Christmas and a happy New Year.

Neil Temperley
ESA Secretary.

FEATURE

What will YOU do with 100 cores?

By Dr. Chris Nicol, Chief Technology Officer, NICTA.

There is an inflexion point approaching the computing industry. Consider the following statement and see if it could apply to your business.

“Any software business or embedded computing provider that derives competitive advantage from the execution speed of a single thread of code is at risk.”

Why is this true and what does it mean? Most software written for computers is written in a sequential programming language like C. Most secondary and tertiary computer courses teach this type of programming skill. All of it is rapidly becoming out of date, and much of the trillions of lines of software that has been developed in the past, may need to be re-written or become obsolete. Multi-core processors are about to change everything. Processors have taken a dramatic shift in architecture over the past few years from superscalar to multi-core. A multi-core machine is essentially a parallel processing architecture known as Multiple Instruction Multiple Data (MIMD). This architectural trend started with the Intel Core Duo and has continued to Opteron, PowerXCell, UltraSparc, Cortex, SuperH and so on. All of these processor platforms are shipping multi-core chips. This trend will continue over the next decade. At the IEEE ISSCC conference in Feb 2010, Intel announced a 48-core processor chip. By 2015 we will likely have over 100 cores on a “many-core” processing chip in our notebook computers.

What will you do with 100 cores? Not much is my guess. If you open the Performance tab on the Task Manager of your Corei7-based computer you may notice that most of the 8 CPU threads are underutilised [1]. This is because most of the software written for a PC executes as a single sequential thread on one of the processors. In a 100 core system, much of your software will have access to less than 1% of the available computing power of the machine. Yet as customer problem sets continue to grow, the computation needed to process them will also grow and therefore execution times will get longer. Even though a 100 core computer will have 25 times the processing capability, a single program will actually be slower unless it is re-written.

A large amount of software will need to be re-written for multi-threaded execution to exploit multi-core systems. This is a difficult undertaking because there is a shortage of people who know how to do it. At the Intel Developers Conference in 2009, Intel estimated that <2% of the world’s programmers understand multi-threaded programming and most of these are developing computer games. Multi-threaded programming remains a graduate level course in many degree programs and there are few tools available to assist with the re-architecture of legacy software. It follows that even those organisations with the most adaptive of strategies, may not be able to find or train the talent needed to re-architect their software in time. The CAD software industry is an example of one that could be redefined by the proliferation of multi-core computing.

Why we are where we are

The transition to multi-core has occurred due to the escalating power consumption of advanced processors hitting a ceiling of 130 Watts.  The chart below shows the power consumption of Intel processors since 1970. With the Itanium, Intel processors peaked at 130 Watts. The x86-64 compatible processor architectures have been optimised over many years to extract the maximum performance from a single thread of sequential code (Using techniques like multiple on-chip phase-locked loops, Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) architectures, fine-grained pipelining, branch prediction, speculative execution etc). When processors hit the 130W power ceiling, the only way to get more performance (and continue to deliver to Moore’s Law) is to place several cores on the chip. Furthermore, the cores have hit a peak clock rate of 4GHz (called the Clock Wall). This is in part due to the fact that large synchronous digital chips in 32nm CMOS are not much faster than those in 45nm and 65nm. One reason for this is that the clock requires increased overhead in deep sub micron technology nodes. Typically, about 10% of the clock period is overhead to cover variance of device parameters and operating conditions. In technology nodes below 45nm, the increased variance of device parameters has required an increase in the amount of overhead added to the clock. So while typical device performance may improve, the overall clock period does not. Therefore, the performance available from any single core has essentially peaked – and herein is the problem for much of today’s software.

There are considerable research efforts underway to develop tools that assist with mapping programs written in “C” to parallel processors. This is a very difficult problem. The Wikipedia page on Automatic Parallelization explains why this is a difficult and as-yet unsolved problem:

“The goal of automatic parallelization is to relieve programmers from the tedious and error-prone manual parallelization process. Though the quality of automatic parallelization has improved in the past several decades, fully automatic parallelization of sequential programs by compilers remains a grand challenge due to its need for complex program analysis and the unknown factors (such as input data range) during compilation.”

Researchers are now shifting attention to new languages that enable the description of the concurrency of the problem. At NICTA, we are taking the approach of building domain-specific languages on top of a functional programming paradigm.  Unlike imperative languages (e.g. C), a functional language requires the user to explicitly specify the relationship between computations.  This enables the automatic generation of a parallel implementation by a compiler that maps concurrent threads onto multiple cores to achieve speed-up. Indeed, NICTA’s Scalable Vision Machines project  is developing a domain specific language for describing computer vision and real time image processing algorithms; and aims to automatically deploy their implementation to typical heterogeneous processing architectures found in smart IP camera systems. (For example we are mapping algorithms to a multi-core processor with a (Single Program Multiple Data) graphics co-processor). Some approaches being considered by researchers and developers are Intel Concurrent Collections, F Sharp, CUDA , OpenCL and Haskell.

The cores will get simpler.

When scaling to 100 cores, it makes less sense to use high performance super-scalar cores (like the x86) as the individual processing units. To keep the power consumption at a minimum in a many core system, more computationally efficient cores will be needed. This will be true for power-efficient Ultra High Performance Computing (UHPC) systems. The Silverthorne architecture (Atom) has a computational efficiency that is 3 times that of the Nehalem (Corei7 and Xeon) (Kanter, 2009) and is a better choice for a many-core system.

This trend will continue, and we could see chips with over 1000 cores before 2020. These chips will have substantially simpler cores than the ones used in processors today. Indeed, these systems will start to resemble what computer architects have for decades called “Massively Parallel Processors (MPP)”.

The age of spatial computing

In today’s systems, programs written in a high level language like C are sequenced into a single processor by a compiler. The single processor is called a Central Processing Unit (CPU). The focus on a “central” processing unit has led to several processes (for multiple users) being time-multiplexed into a single, complex processor using a multi-tasking operating system like Linux.

However, when we have 1000 cores on a chip – the concept of a Central processing unit is no longer relevant. In an MPP system, we may start to see programs being mapped across many cores (spatial computing) rather than sequenced into a single processor. This type of spatial mapping will lead to a fundamental shift in the way that software is developed and mapped to MPP arrays. It will also redefine what we mean by an operating system.

Continuing this trend, these MPP systems may eventually start to resemble FPGAs with programmable cores and local interconnection networks. We could imagine that some day, reconfigurable computing and general purpose processing may in fact merge.

What should I do?

You can assume that the performance you get from your single threaded program today is the most you are ever likely to get. Map out the execution times for increasing sizes of customer data sets over the next 5 years. How will your program perform in the future? Imagine how the customer will feel when they realise your program with their data sets are squeezed onto a single core in their 100 core machine. You should be thinking about how to partition it across 2 cores. Then transfer the same executable onto an n core machine. How will you partition up the data sets to get a speedup across n cores?  What speed-up would you get?  Can you predict the expected speed-up for n = 2...100 and will this be sufficient to maintain your competitive advantage?  If you understand the above and are comfortable with your expertise in this area then you could be one of the 2% that Intel speak of.  If not, you can wait for parallelising C compilers to emerge from research labs, or you can take matters into your own hands and undertake a course in multi-threaded programming.

As individuals, it is our responsibility to manage our personal value proposition.  If you are trained in multi-threaded programming, you will have a skill that will be highly sought after over the next decade.  No matter how proficient you are at programming C or Java, you should consider adding multi-threaded programming to your set of skills. This is not something you should try to learn on your own. It is much harder to learn than sequential programming.  If you are a Technical Manager, you should invest in retraining your key staff in multi-threaded programming.  You might also monitor the research activities in concurrent programming languages (like those listed above).  You can be sure that your competitors will.

Footnote

^[1]The Intel Corei7 has 4 hyper-threaded processors with two threads per core giving 8 concurrent threads in total.

About the Author

Chris Nicol received the PhD degree from the University of New South Wales in 1995.  He joined AT&T Bell Laboratories Research in the United States, returning to Australia in 1998 to create a Bell Labs R&D centre for Lucent Technologies.  In 2003 he transferred the team to Agere Systems, designing 3G mobile wireless integrated circuits.  In 2006 he joined NICTA as Chief Technology Officer. Chris has served on committees of several IEEE conferences and journals.  He addressed PMSEIC in 2000, was a Board Member of the ARC, and until 2008 was a member of Innovation Australia’s IT&T Committee overseeing Commercial Ready.  He is inventor on 19 US patents, is an ATSE  Fellow and won the 2008 NSW Scientist of the Year award for Computer Science and the 2009 Clunies Ross Award.  Also in 2009, he graduated from the Australian Graduate School of Management with an MBA (exec).

You can contact Chris, at chris [dot] nicolnicta [dot] com [dot] au.

Wireless Health Conference — Sydney, 18/2/2011

ESA sponsor BCS Innovations is helping to organise this conference with support from several other ESA members.

BCS Innovations in collaboration with Macquarie University and AusBiotech are proud to announce the first annual Wireless Health Conference, Delivering Wireless Health Solutions, where leaders of the industry will come together to discuss the future of eHealth. Hear from senior executives of Australia’s and the United States’ most successful medical device/wireless companies on how they were able to grow their operations and transition them to the lucrative US market.

Full details can be found here: www.wirelesshealth.com.au.

Get Noticed!

Is your company or university R&D team missing from ESA's Capability Directory?  Check here to find out:  http://www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/capability-directory

Creating an entry costs you nothing and makes you an official Embedded Systems Australia member.  It's not hard to do.  The instructions can be found here: http://www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/capability_directory_how_to

Sound Bytes

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity.  I have erased this line."
— Oscar Levant (1906 - 1972)

"It has been said that man is a rational animal.  All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."
— Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

Contact

General Enquiries	adminembeddedsystemsaustralia [dot] com [dot] au
Dr Chris Nicol	Chris [dot] Nicolnicta [dot] com [dot] au
Neil Temperley (ESA Secretary & Editor)	Neil [dot] Temperleynicta [dot] com [dot] au

 ESA Sponsors

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Silver

Bronze

Supporters

2010, November: Newsletter #7

EVENTS

WELCOME

Welcome to the latest edition of Embedded Systems Australia's newsletter. Embedded Systems Australia is a horizontally aligned, project-based national industry cluster. Our members are interested in developing embedded systems technologies and marketing smart products to global supply chains. The activities span the complete product life cycle of embedded systems development and deployment. These include Design: electronics, software, computer aided design and methodologies; Manufacturing & systems integration to create competitive smart products for vertical applications; and Marketing, sales and support of embedded systems product development.

FEATURES

TruckOn - Overhead Collision Prevention

We are pleased to announce the completion of ESA's first project "TruckOn - Overhead Collision Prevention".  TruckOn was a 'proof-of-concept demonstrator' that showed that Wireless Vehicle Communications via DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications) can be used to prevent over-height vehicles colliding with overhead infrastructure such as tunnels, overpasses and enclosed bridges.

This was the culmination of a intense effort by the project Partners to develop and test a proof-of-concept technology in just 3.5 months.  It truly demonstated what can be achieved when partners work together in a true spirit of collaboration.

The following is an outline of the project.  To view a project 'brochure', photo galleries and TruckOn-related information visit www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/truckon.

Background

Warnings are regularly ignored: this over-height truck has driven through a stop sign projected onto a water curtain at the entrance to the Sydney Harbour Tunnel.

Collisions between over-height vehicles and infrastructure costs the Roads and Traffic Authority NSW (RTA) millions per year in repairs. There are approximately three collisions with infrastructure per month. Such accidents occur despite the deployment of sophisticated warning systems such as road side electronic ‘variable message’ signs or stop signs projected onto a ‘water curtain’ directly across the path of the vehicle. Drivers may think the message is for another road user, or may think they should be able to squeeze through.  Some drivers do not know the height of their truck — particularly if the load determines the height.

How does it work?

When an over-height vehicle breaks a height detection beam our road side control system uses wireless vehicle communications (Dedicated Short Range Communications - DSRC also known as M5) to transmit to all vehicles in the vicinity the GPS location and exact time when the beam was broken. It also sends a ‘map’ of the road ahead that includes: distance to the overhead infrastructure and location of a diversion (if available). Systems on board each vehicle process this information to determine if they were guilty of tripping the detector.  The guilty vehicle’s on-board system then begins transmitting its identity, speed and other tracking information to the road side controller.  Meanwhile, its on-board system also delivers warnings and advisories to the vehicle driver. These are tailored to the location on the road (e.g. distance to the infrastructure) and to the driver’s response.

If a driver ignores advice to take a diversion or pull over, then, as the distance to the infrastructure decreases, a speed control system progressively slows the vehicle until it halts short of the danger. The speed control is reset automatically by the driver taking a diversion or on remote command from a Transport Management Centre.

The Transport Management Centre is kept informed of vehicles that don’t comply with instructions or that need assistance to safely clear the area.

Short History

As many readers would know, TruckOn is the end result of ESA initiative to begin a collaborative project in Wireless Vehicle Communications via DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications).  That initiative began in June 2008 with a promise of $100,000 funding from ESA supporter Industry and Investment NSW (previously known as NSW Dept of State and Regional Development), for the right project supported by matched industry resources.  ESA, with strong support from The Warren Centre, began a long search for a suitable DSRC application — relevant to industry, with commercial possibilities in Australia and overseas.  After ESA conducted several industry workshops we discovered the RTA had both the problem and the matching $100,000 cash and in-kind support to make a viable project.

The project began on 12th March 2010 and ended with a live demonstration to RTA, government and industry stakeholders on 8th July 2010.  It was also presented to the NSW Minister for Roads, Minister Borger in a special briefing session on 19th August 2010.  The project ran to a very tight time frame with only 3.5 months from the beginning to the deadline for completion of trials.  We began preliminary trials using a Toyota Hi-Lux on 7th May.  We completed these on the 23rd June and then ported the equipment onto a Fuso truck on 25th June for a live demonstration on 8th July 2010.

Partners

Embedded Systems Australia industry cluster (www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au) with NICTA’s support, made this project possible by arranging a grant from Industry & Investment NSW, workshops, and project discussions with the RTA.  The project is delivered by ESA members NICTA, Braetec, Cohda Wireless, CPE Systems and ResTech.

From Left: David Haley (Cohda Wireless), Philip Lark (Braetec), Heath Raftery (ResTech), Karina Taylor (CPE Systems), Neil Temperley (NICTA), Peter Stepien (ResTech), Tim Wylie (ResTech).

Drivers may not be aware of the height of their trucks.  The height of this truck depends on how its crane is stowed.

Nima Alam (UNSW).

From Left: Stuart Pringle (RTA), Bonnie Chen (RTA), Raed Dabid (RTA), Neil Temperley (NICTA).

Agreements

In the end it was simpler to have an agreement between the RTA and NICTA, and NICTA 'subcontract' the work to the other partners: Braetec, Cohda Wireless, CPE Systems, DISplay, ResTech and Nima Alam.  Thus in total the project involved 7 agreements!

Broad Work Breakdown

• Braetec — on-board equimpent (touch screen PC, audio system) and all on-board equipment installation.  All computers.
• Cohda Wireless — on-board and roadside DSRC radios.
• CPE Systems  — LabVIEW architecture and device drivers.
• DISplay — advice on project design and management.

• NICTA — project management, system algorithms, LabVIEW software, test manager.
• Nima Alam — test assistant, experiment design critique, data analysis.
• RTA — project management, test site facilities (RTA Crash Lab), test vehicles, drivers, test assistants, problem definition.

TruckOn Sponsors and Supporters

This project has been supported by a $100,000 grant from Industry and Investment NSW matched by cash and in-kind resources of the RTA.  Microsoft assisted with $11,000 sponsorship, and The Warren Centre provided assistance during the project’s inception.

It was a truly collaborative project with all partners contributing significant in-kind support.

Acknowledgements

The project was a success largely due to the efforts of individuals within our collaboration partners.  We would like to acknowledge these people in particular.

TruckOn Enquiries

The project web page www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/truckon contains details of the project, a picture gallery as well as examples of accidents involving over-height vehicles.

For more information contact:

• Neil Temperley, Neil [dot] Temperleynicta [dot] com [dot] au, Ph: +61 2 9376 2163 or
• Stuart Pringle, Stuart_Pringlerta [dot] nsw [dot] gov [dot] au, Ph: +61 2 8837 0307.

Other Projects

NICTA's resources have been focussed on the TruckOn project and we have not driven activities in other areas.  Unfortunately, our significant progress with the Assisted Living project came to a halt when project 'champions' within our potential customer - a state government health agency - changed due to management reshuffles and a retirement.

National Computer Science School

2010 has been an excellent year for the NCSS-ESSS. After a successful trial in 2009 we launched the program in 2010 with sponsorship support from Altium, Industry & Investment NSW and CargoWise.

Awards

In 2010 the NCSS was the recipient of a number of industry awards. We won the NSW State iAward for e-Learning and the National iAward in the same category with a nomination centred on the technology supporting the Embedded Challenge.

In addition, the entire NCSS program was the recipient of a Sydney Division Engineers Australia Engineering Excellence Awards in the Education and Training category. The NCSS is now a finalist in the National Engineering Excellence Awards to be decided in November.

Sydney Division Engineering Excellence Awards sponsors and winners.  From left to right: Michael Cahill (NCSS), Rachel Sieff (Industry & Investment NSW), Richard White (CargoWise), Sheila O'Reilly (Macquarie Group), James Curran (NCSS), Tara Murphy (NCSS), Matthew Schwaiger (Altium), John Judge (NICTA).

John Judge and James Curran won both the NSW and National iAward tropy for e-Learning.

NCSS Sponsorship

The NCSS are seeking additional sponsors for the program in 2011. There are two primary activities for the year:

• the Summer School, an intensive 10 day computer programming residential for around 100 high school students at the University of Sydney in January, and
• the Challenge, a five week online programming course open to high school students across Australia.

Both are designed to address the skills shortage in ICT and attract a higher proportion of talented high school students to consider ICT tertiary studies.

The Summer School provides the best and brightest kids an insight into where their interest in ICT may take them. They meet like-minded peers, experience aspects of university life and have the opportunity to engage in dialogue with adults working in ICT jobs. They find out that they are not alone and are shown paths to interesting and rewarding careers.

The Challenge is unique amongst ICT outreach activities in offering support to students who have no local resources to assist them in exploring the world of computer programming.  For five weeks a year NCSS provides students with the opportunity of finding out for themselves whether or not programming is an interest and a talent. The self-selected can return for more in depth exposure and aspire to attending the Summer School.

By sponsoring the NCSS you have the chance to place your brand in front of the ICT professionals of the future.  The students who attend the Summer School are a collection of the best ICT students from across Australia.   Typically they are already the computer “go to” people in their own family and communities and in a few short years they will be highly desired graduates. The Summer School is a fun, rewarding and life building experience for these young people and the event lends a positive association to the sponsors associated with it.

To find out more about sponsorship please contact John Judge at John.Judge at nicta.com.au.

The NCSS is brought to you by the University of Sydney and NICTA.

Get Noticed!

Is your company or university R&D team missing from ESA's Capability Directory?  Check here to find out:  http://www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/capability-directory

Creating an entry costs you nothing and makes you an official Embedded Systems Australia member.  It's not hard to do.  The instructions can be found here: http://www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/capability_directory_how_to

Engineering Excellence Awards

Congratulations to the following ESA winners at the recent Sydney Division Engineers Australia Engineering Excellence Awards!

• Cochlear for the "Cochlear™ Nucleus® 5 System"

• Joint entrants NICTA & University of Sydney for the National Computer Science School (NCSS) (See above for details).

Sound Bytes

"Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself."
— Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

Contact

General Enquiries	adminembeddedsystemsaustralia [dot] com [dot] au
Dr Chris Nicol	Chris [dot] Nicolnicta [dot] com [dot] au
Neil Temperley (ESA Secretary & Editor)	Neil [dot] Temperleynicta [dot] com [dot] au

 ESA Sponsors

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Supporters

2009, December: Newsletter #6

EVENTS

WELCOME

Welcome to the Fourth edition of the Embedded Systems Australia newsletter in 2009. Embedded Systems Australia is a horizontally aligned, project-based national industry cluster. Our members are interested in developing embedded systems technologies and marketing smart products to global supply chains. The activities span the complete product life cycle of embedded systems development and deployment. These include Design: electronics, software, computer aided design and methodologies; Manufacturing & systems integration to create competitive smart products for vertical applications; and Marketing, sales and support of embedded systems product development.

FEATURES

Sponsorship

Now is the time to sign up for ESA sponsorship!  Learn more here!

A Message from the Chair

Welcome to the Fourth edition of the Embedded Systems Australia newsletter in 2009. During this quarter, we have focussed on launching ESA activities in Victoria, events in NSW and growing our projects.

On November 17, we held the ESA Breakfast Seminar in Melbourne to launch ESA activities there. The event was organised with Jefferson Harcourt of Grey Innovation and Peter Lewis of Hydrix. It featured a plenary talk by Edwin Ho, Director Industry Policy Management for the Defence Materiel Organisation. The topic of the event was engaging ESA SMEs with Defence projects. In his talk, Mr Ho spoke about the importance of systems integration, with a substantial proportion of defence spending going into this area over the coming years. It is interesting that the challenges being faced by Defence (like the rapid development of very complex systems), are now becoming increasingly important in embedded systems development. The Empirical Software Engineering group at NICTA have recently launched a project to investigate new "non-V" development methodologies for embedded systems development.  Prof. Ross Jefferey and Dr Liming Yu are responsible for this project if you are interested in learning more. There is a follow up ESA project meeting planned for Victoria in February 2010.

On November 19th, we held the 2009 Engineers Australia Sydney Division Engineering Excellence Awards Finalists seminar session. The Software and Embedded Systems award category was proposed by ESA in 2007, is judged by representatives from several ESA companies and is sponsored by NICTA.

The seminar session was organised by Robi Karp, CEO of Fluffy Spider and award judge. The evening included presentations by Keith Walsh of Cochlear, Winner Software and Embedded Systems award, and Winner of Health and Safety. We then had Rustom Kanga of iOmniscient, Highly commended, Software and Embedded Systems and winner Small Business Ventures. This was followed by Andy Wyatt of Adaptronic, Highly commended, Control systems and communications and Bill Shui of NICTA, Highly commended, Research and Development. The final presentation was given by Brett Barnard of Ballistic Mobile, Highly commended, Software and Embedded Systems and winner, Product, manufacturing, Facilities and Process. At our December steering committee meeting, it was decided that ESA would promote the Software and Embedded Systems award category across other divisions of Engineers Australia with the aim of making it a National award category.

On December 2nd, we held the 2009 ESA Showcase event. This included a steering committee meeting, project meetings (including a microelectronics meeting), the main showcase event with presentations by Dr. Glenn Wightwick, Director of IBM Australia Development Laboratory, Nigel Poole, Executive Director of Commercial, CSIRO and Dr. Takayuki Kawahara, Hitachi Labs, Japan. The event had technology displays by BCS, Sage, Braemac, Advantech, and DirectTV. The event was followed by a dinner with the speakers, sponsors and supporters.

Dr. Wightwick spoke about innovation jam, an online crowd-sourcing mechanism created by IBM to colect ideas from 150,000 people in 67 companies. As a result, IBM invested $100M into 10 new business ideas. He also spoke about the smart planet initiative and the impact this could have on Australian infrastructure, transport, environmental mangement, education and even households.

Nigel Poole spoke about the CSIRO Wireless LAN patent (that led to the creation of the WiFi 802.11a/g standard - now deployed in hundreds of millions of devices around the world). Mr Poole outlined the court case that led to the CSIRO claiming hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties. Mr Poole also introduced the $150M CSIRO ICT endowment fund that will seed innovation in Australian ICT sector.

Dr Kawahara gave a detailed presentation on advances in embedded systems silicon chip research at Hitachi labs. This included a multi-core embedded processor chip with individually controlled clock and voltage domains for minimising power consumption whilst achieving required performance. From Kawahara's talk, we learn that multi-core chips are going to be everywhere (and yet only 2% of the world programmers are trained in multi-threaded programming). Every embedded systems developer (either individual or company) needs a multi-core strategy.

On the project front, the Wireless Vehicle Communications via DSRC project with the RTA has made significant progress with many companies expressing interest in participation. This project aims to deliver a working prototype for the RTA in 2010 (hopefully with a State-wide deployment some time thereafter).

In 2010, ESA will continue to hold events, seminars, project workshops and training courses. We will grow our high school outreach activities and we are considering taking ESA to the Communicasia show in Singapore. ESA will be running two industry courses in 2010. One on rapid virtual prototyping and one on the ARM embedded processor family.

ESA Objectives for 2010 include:

• Supporting and growing our existing projects
• Launching a project in Victoria
• Growing our industry short course program
• Completing a successful embedded systems summer school at the National Computer Science School
• Representation at an international trade show

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our sponsors for 2009. Your support has enabled us to have a series of events, meetings, high school outreach activities and projects. I would also like to thank the Steering Committee, for helping us to organise several interesting events and activities this year. I wish you all a peaceful holiday season and a very happy New Year.

Sincerely,

Dr. Chris Nicol
Interim Cluster Chair
Embedded Systems Australia

Project Roundup

Here is a short update on some of ESA's projects...

Wireless Vehicle Communications via DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications)

NICTA and RTA have been in discussions regarding a proof-of-concept project to prevent over-height vehicles colliding with infrastructure, i.e. enclosed steel truss bridges, low overpasses and tunnels.  Some 15 ESA members have taken part in two information meetings regarding this project.  If the project goes ahead it will be truly collaborative and require considerable in-kind support from the final participants.  The project will be eligible for $100,000 special grant funding from ESA supporter Industry and Investment NSW (previously known as NSW Dept of State and Regional Development).

Contact: Neil [dot] Temperleynicta [dot] com [dot] au to learn more.

Assisted Living

The team are currently following up on an encouraging workshop held with a key State government Health Agency.  The Assisted Living team is Keep in Touch Australia, HETECH/Techome, NICTA with support from HL7 Australia and Industry and Investment NSW.

Project Goal: To apply smart ultra-ease-of-use technologies to reduce isolation and boredom and increase safety for elderly and disabled living alone or community care. 

Contact: Mark Steiner (HETECH/Techome) marktechome [dot] com [dot] au

OASIS (the project formally known as Funky Kiosk)

The goal of this project is to uniquely identify customers in a store and provide them with a personalised and improved shopping experience.  The project is currently exploring the potential of some NICTA technology to facilitate customer recognition.  If you are interested in this becoming part of this project please contact Bill Horton of Directtv billdirecttv [dot] com [dot] au.

Collaboration Underpins Competitive Advantage

The 2008 OECD Science Technology and Industry Outlook Report (www.oecd.org/sti/outlook) reveals some startling statistics regarding industrial innovation in Australia. For example, while 41% of Australian firms claim to be innovative, the OECD classifies most of this as incremental in nature. According to the report, only 7% of Australian SMEs innovate to bring new products to market. Furthermore, of the firms that do innovate, most is low-medium tech. In fact we rate second bottom (between Poland and Czech Republic) in the OECD for high tech innovation (with less than 40% of innovation in Australia qualifying as high-tech by OECD standards).

Do we collaborate?

Only 9% of Australian firms collaborate with an external partner in the process of innovation and this places us at the bottom of the OECD for collaboration. The definition of external partner includes both industry and academia. In Belgium, a whopping 60% of large firms collaborate with external partners in their process of innovation whereas in Australia this number is around 20%. No wonder it is so hard to get collaborative cluster projects up and running in Australia.

It is also difficult for Australian academics to secure meaningful collaborations with Australian industry partners. This is a shame because Australian researchers actually punch well above their weight when it comes to research outputs that have impact.

The OECD report shows that Australian researchers publish over 2% of the world’s publications and rank 16th outright for impact. Alas when it comes to industry collaboration with Australian Universities, the OECD rank Australia bottom in the world (with less than 5% of large firms and about 1% of small firms collaborating with Australian higher education institutions). The report ranks Australia 2nd worst (slightly ahead of Greece) for industry collaboration with Government funded research institutions (like NICTA, CSIRO, CRCs etc).

To say that this paints a bleak picture for Australian innovation would be a huge understatement.

Why industry clusters?

At ESA, we aim to encourage firms to collaborate with each other and with Universities to develop new innovative products for international markets. We believe that the greatest opportunities come from the commercialisation of discontinuous innovation into global supply chains. We leverage our combined networks to understand and identify global trends where Australian industry can collaborate to create an unfair advantage. In the absence of Government funding schemes to provide incentives for collaborative activities, we must co-invest to fund these collaborative projects. While having Government funding would certainly help to stimulate greater levels of innovation, the co-investment model ensures that each investment is targeting a real return for ESA partners in a reasonable timeframe.

Thinking strategically about global opportunities.

In each of our projects, we think strategically about the global implications of a project’s success. In most cases, we can identify substantial export opportunities for project collaborators. For example, Australia has some strategic assets in the road transport space upon which we can leverage competitive advantage. In New South Wales the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) are collaborating with ESA to develop innovative systems based on Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communications. Via distribution networks, the RTA have deployed the SCATS traffic control system across some 130 cities in 30 countries. By developing innovative V2I applications, we may be able to take advantage of the SCATS international customer base to deploy our ITS systems globally. For this reason, our collaboration with the RTA is very important and strategic.

Lessons from our 2009 Showcase.

Anyone that attended the 2009 showcase might have taken away the following relevant messages:

1. Global business opportunities come from open innovation models (like the Innovation Jam that IBM run to identify areas for new business activities).
2. Intellectual Property can be extremely valuable if properly secured (as per the CSIRO Wireless LAN patent).
3. Collaboration with Universities can deliver discontinuous innovation and enable companies to achieve amazing results. (The Hitachi presentation included details of collaborations with several Japanese Universities).

What can we do better?

I end this article with a few questions for you to consider:

1. What more can we do to leverage the talented researchers in our Universities and Research Institutes? Can we utilise the support available from the Researchers in Business program?
   http://www.enterpriseconnect.gov.au/Manufacturing/AssistancetoImplementC...
2. What are we doing to leverage each other’s capabilities to grow supplier strength in global supply chains? Let’s identify these opportunities and create collaborative projects to go after them. ESA will support you.
3. Can we be more open with each other about ways we can work together to unlock value from our strategic resources?

Chris Nicol
Chair, ESA

What's New on the ESA Website?

Jobs

ESA sponsors can now post vacancies on ESA's website at no cost.  The relevant link is www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/jobs.  We are also experimenting with ad posting for individuals who are seeking employment.

Images

Do you have images that you own, that we could add to our website to give it more pizzazz!  Images of Embedded Systems applications would be ideal.  Please email these to adminembeddedsystemsaustralia [dot] com [dot] au

Sound Bytes

"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance."
— Orville Wright (1871 - 1948)

"I intend to live forever.  So far, so good."
— Steven Wright (1955 - )

Contact

General Enquiries	adminembeddedsystemsaustralia [dot] com [dot] au
Dr Chris Nicol	Chris [dot] Nicolnicta [dot] com [dot] au
Neil Temperley (ESA Secretary & Editor)	Neil [dot] Temperleynicta [dot] com [dot] au

 ESA Sponsors

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Supporters

2009, October: Newsletter #5

EVENTS

WELCOME

Welcome to the Third edition of the Embedded Systems Australia newsletter in 2009. Embedded Systems Australia is a horizontally aligned, project-based national industry cluster. Our members are interested in developing embedded systems technologies and marketing smart products to global supply chains. The activities span the complete product life cycle of embedded systems development and deployment. These include Design: electronics, software, computer aided design and methodologies; Manufacturing & systems integration to create competitive smart products for vertical applications; and Marketing, sales and support of embedded systems product development.

FEATURES

Sponsorship

Now is the time to sign up for ESA sponsorship!  Learn more here!

A Message from the Chair

Welcome to the Third edition of the Embedded Systems Australia newsletter in 2009. During this quarter, we have focussed on events, projects and launching our outreach activities.

On July 14, we held the “ESA Means Business” event at the offices of the NSW Government in Sydney. This event was proposed, organised and facilitated by Nick Fondas of iTech as part of the iTech in-kind contribution to the operation of the ESA cluster. At this event, we had presentations by Peter Seebacher of AusEng, Chris Vonwiller of Appen, Simon Wehr of Clipsal and John Best of Thales. We also had table-top displays by Opengear, Braemac, Sage Consulting, BCS Innovations, and iTech. Also in July, I gave a presentation on ESA to headmasters and careers advisors for Sydney secondary schools at the DSRD office in Parramatta as a part of ICT Careers Week. NICTA hosted the ACoRN industry day www.acorn.net.au with speakers from Telstra, ACMA, RTA and others. At this event, I presented the future of wireless vehicle communications and the impact of 5.9GHz DSRC systems including the ESA Project on Wireless Vehicle Communications via DSRC.
 
On August 6th, we held a project meeting in Brisbane to discuss ESA project ideas. We discussed autonomous vehicles and the Global Cooperative Driving Challenge, systems for crane control, and load control for managing peaks in electricity demand.

The OASIS project (formerly funky kiosk) held a highly successful exhibit at the Retail 2020 section of the Retail Expo in Melbourne. The team led by Bill Horton of DirectTV, created a concept display for the OASIS platform that creates unique and innovative point of sale marketing concepts for a rich consumer experience. The display was so successful that the team were awarded a grant to develop the exhibit for next year.

ESA sponsored the inaugural Legends of Innovation event for secondary school students. Prof. Rodney Brooks, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Founder and former Chief Technology Officer of iRobot and Founder of Heartland Robotics, gave an inspiring presentation to a few hundred secondary students. Prof. Brooks encouraged students to follow their passion and to never give up. This event coincided with the NICTA Techfest exhibition. After the talk, students were able to wander the NICTA technology displays. Thanks go to Nick Fondas of iTech for his role in leading the team that organised the Legends of Innovation event. ESA received great sponsorship exposure alongside Microsoft, Open Education Trust, Cosmos Magazine, NICTA and the Australian Industry Group.

Also in August, I presented the ESA industry cluster to the Australian Industry Research Group meeting at Parliament house (www.airg.org.au).  At this event, I presented the slides on Australia’s performance in collaboration. Some of the statistics from this presentation appeared in the article on ESA in the Sydney Morning Herald.

In September, the Artemis project Reconfigurable Image Chains (RICH) was submitted to the EU Artemis Joint Undertaking. This project is described by the NICTA project leader Rami Mukhtar later in this newsletter.

On Friday 18th of September, the Engineers Australia Sydney Division, Engineering Excellence Awards were held. The “Software and Embedded Systems” category featured entries from BCS Innovations, Iomniscient, NICTA and Cochlear. Congratulations to Cochlear, who won the award for their Hybrid system. In November, ESA will host an event to celebrate the achievements of the award finalists. Finalists will be invited to present talks about their technology.

Also in August, the National Computer Science School launched it’s inaugural Embedded Systems stream. ESA is a primary sponsor of this activity. This year, we shipped 50 boards to secondary school teachers across Australia.

Please keep December 2nd free in your calendar for our end of year event for 2009. The event will feature project meetings in the afternoon prior to the main event at 5pm. We will have interesting international speakers, great technology demonstrations, updates from the ESA projects and a special meeting of the Australian microelectronics industry.

Sincerely,

Dr. Chris Nicol
Interim Cluster Chair
Embedded Systems Australia

Project Roundup

ESA has several project concepts in various stages of team formation.

Wireless Vehicle Communications via DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications)

While safety is one of the key long-term drivers for the uptake of WiVeC via DSRC this project has been seeking to establish an early demonstrator in other applications.  There has been a lot of work behind the scenes to uncover the most valuable early application demonstrator.  For example, earlier this year, The Warren Centre facilitated a workshop to explore options with Transport and Logistics companies.  The strongest candidates for this project are:

1. Bridge Asset Protection collaboration with the RTA to apply WiVeC to prevent over-height vehicles entering enclosed bridges (or tunnels).
2. Green Vehicle Applications where WiVeC is used to communicate between infrastructure (e.g. traffic lights) and vehicles to enable reduced fuel consumption and emissions.

Contact Neil [dot] Temperleynicta [dot] com [dot] au to learn more.

Assisted Living

The team has had a very encouraging workshop with a program leaders of a key State government Health Agency.  The workshop was very well received with interest expressed to explore possible trials.  The Assisted Living team is Keep in Touch Australia, HETECH/Techome, NICTA with support from HL7 Australia.  May thanks to Rachel Sieff of Industry and Investment NSW for her role building linkages to potential government users/ stakeholders.

Project Goal: To apply smart ultra-ease-of-use technologies to reduce isolation and boredom and increase safety for elderly and disabled living alone or community care. 

Contact: Mark Steiner (HETECH/Techome) marktechome [dot] com [dot] au

OASIS (the project formally known as Funky Kiosk)

Project coordinator Bill Horton of Directtv created a concept demonstrator "2020 Store of the Future" section of the Retail Expo last August.  The significant interest created by the demonstrator has given the project a real boost.  The goal is to uniquely identify customers in a store and provide them with a personalised and improved shopping experience.  If you are interested in this becoming part of this project please contact Bill billdirecttv [dot] com [dot] au.

Reconfigurable Image Processing Chains (RICH)

NICTA has played a key role in the submission of an ARTEMIS project proposal for Reconfigurable Image Chains (RICH) lead by Philips Healthcare, Europe.  The ARTEMIS project proposal has been submitted, a decision for funding the project is expected by mid October 2009.  

NICTA is also considering an internal research project to facilitate the rapid deployment of computer vision algorithms on platforms equipped with Graphics Processing Units (GPU)s, which are commonly found in both portable and desktop devices.  This project is closely aligned with the deliverables of the ARTEMIS RICH proposal.  NICTA is soliciting any interest from industry and academic organizations interested in participating in the internal project.  If your organization is interested in the internal NICTA project, please contact Dr Rami Mukhtar of NICTA (Rami [dot] Mukhtarnicta [dot] com [dot] au) for more information.

e-BENEFIT

Standing for "Embedded Intelligence for Boosting Energy Efficiency and Micro-Generation" the project looks at metering (and sub-metering), connection of micro-generation resources, communication with energy utilities and systems for recommending energy use options to the home or business user.  

NICTA is no longer participating in the ARTEMIS e-BENEFIT project proposal and it is closed as an ESA activity.  However, this activity has led directly to a new project possibility in residential power management (see Home Power Demand Control below).

What's New on the ESA Website?

Perfect Match!

Should ESA provide a dating service?  We think the answer is a definite yes!  But it's not a case of, "Young systems engineer seeks mechatronic designer with own soldering station.  Send photo of soldering station."  However, finding a partner for collaboration is like finding a suitable partner in life (and some would say just as difficult) with the same promise of joy when all works out and sorrow if it doesn't.  While ESA can't guarantee 'happily ever afters', we can help match industry to R&D organisations with a similar skill set.  Our successful online Industry and Research Capability Directory now  has this as a new feature.  Click on a company in the Directory (or on a Sponsor Logo) and scroll down to see which R&D Organisations' capability claims are a good match to those of the company.

But caveats apply — not every claim on the Internet is true — we can't guarantee that your Perfect Match will be everything you expect!  A cautious date or two may be required...

If you feel like you are missing out, add an entry for your company or R&D organisation department.  There is no cost.  Start by registering on the ESA website here http://www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/user/register and we'll set you up.

 Jobs

ESA sponsors can now post vacancies on ESA's website at no cost.  The relevant link is www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/jobs.  We are also experimenting with ad posting for individuals who are seeking employment.  See below for and example.

Images

Do you have images that you own, that we could add to our website to give it more pizzazz!  Images of Embedded Systems applications would be ideal.  Please email these to adminembeddedsystemsaustralia [dot] com [dot] au.

 Recent Events

NICTA Techfest

Every year NICTA conducts its Techfest in a different state. Techfest is an opportunity for industry, stakeholders, and R&D organisations to get an overview of NICTA's research activities.  At these showcase events, NICTA attempts to make its R&D more understandable by focusing on applications and benefits of each of its 30 research projects.  The event held in August 2009 in Sydney, was NICTA's largest yet and intentionally co-incided with the Legends of Innovation event (below). 

Project posters from Techfest can be viewed here http://nicta.com.au/nicta_events/techfest2009.

Legends of Innovation

In the lead up to the event high school students were invited to enter a robotic poster competition. The task was to create a poster outlining the design of a robotics system that improves the performance, safety or productivity of a job done by a person. The idea is not to replace the job of the person, but rather to make the person more productive, safe and/or comfortable. The poster should include diagrams and detailed explanations where appropriate and should outline how the robotic system would deliver benefits to both the person doing the job and also to their employer. Major sponsorship from Microsoft Australia, Open Systems Education Trust and COSMOS magazine allowed us to offer substantial prizes for the competition winners. First prize in the competition was awarded to Anindita Sarker, Sihaam Sarder, Myra Muhammed and Sara Syed from Beverly Hills Girl’s High School for their entry “The Magic Wheelie”.

What's On

FPT is the premier conference in the Asian Pacific region on field- programmable technologies including reconfigurable computing devices and systems containing such components.  We welcome the participation of students, researchers, practitioners and exhibitors interested in learning about or promoting the latest research results and developments in the areas of:

• Tools and Design techniques for field-programmable technology
• Architectures for field-programmable technology
• Device technology for field-programmable logic
• Applications of field-programmable technology

Conference Workshops

• Embedded Linux on MicroBlaze, Xilinx University Program Workshop, University of New South Wales, 7-8 Dec
• Workshop on FPGA Architectures and Applications, University of Sydney, 2-6pm 8 Dec
• Enhancing Education with Altera's Technology and Teaching Materials, Altera University Program Workshop, University of New South Wales, 12 Dec.

Keynote & Invited Talks

• Prof Jürgen Teich, Co-Ordinator of the German Research Foundation's Priority Program on Reconfigurable Computing Systems
• Dr John Bunton, Australian SKA Pathfinder Project Engineer, Digital Systems
• Dr Gordon Brebner, Distinguished Engineer, Xilinx Research Labs

See website http://www.icfpt.org for more details.

CHIK Health-e-Directory

If you sell into the Health Sector this may be of interest...

Not-for-profit organisation CHIK Services is preparing to produce a new printed version of its Health Directory.  A basic entry in the on-line and printed version is free.  See www.health-e-directory.com.au to view the on-line directory and http://www.health-e-directory.com.au/signup.php for the pricing structure.

Jobs: Seeking Position as Embedded Software Engineer

I am a highly skilled Embedded Software Engineer, with more than 4 years of practical experience. I am looking for employment in a company that deals with interesting and challenging embedded projects where I can use my experience and apply my skills and abilities to contribute to their development.

• (Embedded/Application level) C/C++ Programming (CodeWarrior, VC++ , gcc, g++)
• Device Driver Development (Linux, LabView), BSP
• Cross-Platform Development (x86 / ARM / MIPS / PowerPC)
• Embedded Linux (Snapgear, OpenWRT, Cavium Soho uClinux)
• Toolchains (ARM Toolchain, MIPS Toolchain, Sigma designs 8622L/8634 toolchains)
• Multi-threaded Programming (Windows/Linux)
• Network Programming (TCP/IP(Unicast, Multicast, Broadcast),
• 802.3 Ethernet, 802.11 Wireless, 802.16 WiMAX
• Real-time Programming
• RTOS platforms (VxWorks, OC2000, uCos, LabView RTOS)
• GUI Development, Qt/GTK, MFC
• Script Programming (Bash/TCL)

Name: Andrii Voloshyn
Title: Embedded Software Engineer (Australian Permanent Resident)
Phone: 0422 165 886
Email: andrii [dot] voloshyngmail [dot] com

Sound Bytes

"America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week."
— Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)

Contact

General Enquiries	adminembeddedsystemsaustralia [dot] com [dot] au
Dr Chris Nicol	Chris [dot] Nicolnicta [dot] com [dot] au
Neil Temperley (ESA Secretary & Editor)	Neil [dot] Temperleynicta [dot] com [dot] au

 ESA Sponsors

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Supporters

2009, June: Newsletter #4

EVENTS

WELCOME

Welcome to the Second edition of the Embedded Systems Australia newsletter in 2009.

Embedded Systems Australia is a horizontally aligned, project-based national industry cluster. Our members are interested in developing embedded systems technologies and marketing smart products to global supply chains. The activities span the complete product life cycle of embedded systems development and deployment. These include Design: electronics, software, computer aided design and methodologies; Manufacturing & systems integration to create competitive smart products for vertical applications; and Marketing, sales and support of embedded systems product development.

FEATURES

Sponsorship

Now is the time to sign up for ESA sponsorship!  Learn more here!

A Message from the Chair

This quarter, we are grateful for the strong show of support by many of our new sponsors. Gold Sponsors include Sage, Fluffy Spider, iTech and Cochlear, Silver Sponsors are Opengear and Advantech and Bronze sponsors include Cisra, BCS Innovations and Braemac. All these sponsors have made commitments to ESA commencing this quarter. ESA has a sponsorship model where Gold sponsors on the steering committee can contribute both cash and in-kind support to the administration and management of the cluster activities. Your support is highly appreciated.

During this quarter, we have increased our activities in Queensland, held our first steering committee meeting (under new industry sponsored model) and put in place the groundwork for a strong secondary school outreach program.

In May, NICTA’s Queensland Research Lab opened it’s doors and hosted a NICTA project workshop for ESA companies. The workshop featured presentations by Prof. Brian Lovell (NICTA safety and security activities), Dr. Abbas Bigdeli (NICTA smart cameras, facial recognition and visual sensor networking) and myself. Barry Sutherland of Boeing presented issues relating to the use of autonomous vehicles and aircraft for emergency services. Slides for these talks (except for Boeing) are available at the ESA website.

Also in May, we held an ESA event in Sydney with presentations by Nick Fondas of iTech, Robi Karp of Fluffy Spider and Bill Horton of DirectTV. Following this event, we held our first steering committee meeting with new sponsors.  Meeting attendees were Grant Wensor, Robi Karp, Nick Fondas, Neil Temperley, John and Janice Humphries and myself. Also in attendance as observers were Stuart Cumming of the Warren Centre and Rachel Sieff of DSRD.

I would like to draw your attention to the ESA event in Sydney on July 14. This is a business opportunities event called “ESA Means Business”. The event is being held at DSRD offices in Sydney at 2pm. The idea behind this event is to generate new business opportunities for ESA members. We invite speakers who are not necessarily ESA members, but who are working in vertical sectors where ESA systems could be applied. In July, we have presentations by Peter Seebacher of AusEng, Chris Vonwiller of Appen, Simon Wehr of Clipsal and John Best of Thales. These speakers are talking about future opportunities in their industry. ESA companies are given opportunity to showcase their capability on tables hired from ESA. The event has been organised by Nick Fondas of iTech who is doing a terrific job at managing the event – including managing attendees, speakers and exhibitors. Nick is setting the bar high for industry engagement with ESA and I am grateful to him for his excellent contributions to ESA.

In this quarter, NICT led Australian involvement in two Artemis proposals in the EU 7th framework program. Dr. John Judge (eBenefit project) and Dr. Rami Mukhtar (Rich Project) are leading Australian involvement in these projects. The final project submissions are due to Artemis in September. Project descriptions are provided in the Artemis project update in this newsletter.

Earlier this year, the Federal Government announced the "Researchers in Business" program which provides financial support for eligible Australian SMEs who provide short-term employment for researchers from Universities, NICTA, CSIRO or other scientific institutions. The Government will pay for up to 50% of the salary of the researcher for periods of 2 to 6 months. This is a great scheme for facilitating the commercialisation of inventions and research outcomes from organisations like NICTA. It helps to offset the commercial risks in commercialising step innovation.

In May, NICTA hosted a visit by Mr Karel De Gucht, Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade. I presented the Embedded Systems Australia cluster to the delegation and outlined the capability directory showing Australias strengths in the embedded systems  industry. Mr De Gucht was very impressed with the coupling of research and industry in Australia. NICTA was contacted by the Belgian organisers of the delegation the following week with a request for an additional 10 copies of the directory.

It is not all good news however; the DSRC project in Sydney has failed to get up and running with industry support. This is disappointing for everyone involved. If we cannot get industry support for a project that leverages our first funding grant of $100K, ESA is unlikely to make it very far. While all the other things we do are nice to have, the primary reason for ESA’s existence is to launch projects for our industry members. Our strategy for the DSRC project is to shift focus away from the freight and logistics applications. One project that we are considering is to pursue the co-operative optimisation and control of emissions, fuel consumption and impact on infrastructure caused by vehicles travelling on smart DSRC-enabled roads. We will be discussing a way forward for this project at the steering committee meeting in July.

A few other project opportunities have been pursued – mainly companies working directly with NICTA on the development of prototypes for commercialising NICTA technologies.

The Embedded Systems stream of the National Computer Science School is preparing for inaugural online programming challenge. 2500 posters have been printed (with ESA logo as one of 3 primary sponsors) and distributed to schools in Australia. All ESA Sponsors will receive a poster… Please encourage students that you know in years 9-10 to consider the online course that launches August 1st at www.ncss.edu.au. Under the program, secondary students will each be sent a subsidised embedded computing platform that connects to their PC or notebook. It contains various I/O devices and is compliant with the Arduino open-source computing platform www.arduino.com. Students are taught the “C” programming language over the net via a 5 week course created by NICTA staff. Sage Consulting contributed towards the design of the computer boards for this course.

Nick Fondas of iTech has led the planning of the inaugural “Legends of Innovation” presentation series for secondary students in NSW. In August, we hope that many secondary students will visit the ATP to hear Prof Rodney Brooks speak about the role of Artificial Intelligence embedded into advanced robots. Rodney Brooks is Prof. of Robotics at MIT and founder and ex-CTO of iRobot Corporation. To attend, students must create posters outlining a robotics concept that boosts human performance in the workplace and enter them to a poster competition. A team led by Nick Fondas will select the winning posters and Rodney Brooks will announce the winners after his presentation. The event is co-located with the NICTA techfest exhibition, where students will be treated to a private tour of NICTA research on display. To promote this event, 900 posters have been printed and distributed to schools in NSW. ESA is branded as a sponsor of this event. The main sponsors are the Open Systems Education Trust, COSMOS science magazine and Microsoft Corp. Other sponsors include NICTA, The Regional Industry Career Advisors group within the AIG, the NCSS and iTech.

These represent two major outreach activities that involve ESA and get ESA branding out to High Schools around the state and country. My thanks go out to Nick Fondas, John Judge and all the other people who have made substantial contributions towards the success of these projects. In a space of a few months we have launched two major outreach activities.

Also in this Quarter, the NICTA-sponsored Concertina from University of Adelaide came 2nd place in the international Artemis Orchestra competition. Congratulations to the team. They went on to win an iAward in South Australia.

Acknowledgements

I would to thank those people who have done much of the work to get ESA into a new model of industry sponsored activities. John and Janice Humphries of Global Innovation Centre have served as cluster mentors to myself and Neil Temperley and guided us through this process. We are now at the point where industry sponsors on the steering committee are gifting us with initiative and passion which is terrific to see. Our strategy is to follow and invest in such people.

Sincerely,

Dr. Chris Nicol
Interim Cluster Chair
Embedded Systems Australia

Project Roundup

ESA has several project concepts in various stages of team formation.

Wireless Vehicle Communications via DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communications)

The DSRC team has been focusing on end-user engagement to ensure a "customer pull" focus.  A key contribution has been made by The Warren Centre who hosted a workshop on Wed 6th May featuring industry representatives of trucking carriers, the Sydney Port Authority, National Transport Commission, Australian Quarantine & Inspection Service (AQIS), Transport Certification Australia, FALCONSW and other transport and logistics experts.  These were followed up with one-on-one interviews conducted by a working party consisting of Stuart Cumming (The Warren Centre) and Neil Temperley (NICTA).  The goal of these discussions was to better understand industry issues and to uncover those that emerging Wireless Vehicle Communications technologies could address.  The team discovered that "existing technology coupled with some customisation of ‘off the shelf’ solutions' met the sector’s immediate needs".  The short-term value proposition for involvement in a DSRC demonstrator project focusing on future developments is low, particularly when there is no past experience of involvement in this kind of collaborative project.

Our immediate plan is to continue these discussions with some industry service and technology providers.  Our strategy is to seek to rescope the project to focus on fuel consumption and emissions reduction applicable to all vehicle types (not just trucks).  Large benefits can be obtained via a tight coupling of: traffic management systems (e.g. traffic lights); general traffic and detailed neighbouring vehicle movements; and terrain data to engine management systems.  Low latency wireless vehicle communications via DSRC is a vital enabler for these solutions.

Contact Neil [dot] Temperleynicta [dot] com [dot] au to learn more.

Assisted Living

How can technology improve the lifestyle and safety of the elderly or disabled living at home? Is it possible to make technology so easy to use that it elderly people will embrace it? While the team has received some strong initial interest from a government health agency, more work needs to be done to promote the concept to potential stakeholders.  Mark Steiner (HETECH/Techome) marktechome [dot] com [dot] au is leading the team exploring these possibilities. 

Assisted Vision

Couple a miniature camera in a headset with some world-leading embedded system smarts and you get a system that can aid a visually impaired person to recognise the visual world — from identifying friends to find the margarine at the supermarket.

[This project is currently 'on-hold' as our project champions have had to focus on more pressing matters.  Contact Neil [dot] Temperleynicta [dot] com [dot] au if you'd like to get involved.]

Funky Kiosk

Innovative customised advertising and the potential to wirelessly download high definition movies in less than a minute are the ingredients to make the future kiosk funky and fun.  This project has generated considerable interest and there has been several meetings with prospective technology partners.  Project coordinator Bill Horton of Directtv has created a concept demonstrator which will feature inside the "2020 Store of the Future" section of the Retail Expo 2009 on 11-13 August, 2009 in Melbourne.  If you are interested in this becoming part of this project please contact Bill billdirecttv [dot] com [dot] au.

ARTEMIS Project Update

The ARTEMIS JTI (Joint Technology Initiative) is a research funding program for European projects in the area of Embedded Systems. Funding comes from both the EU and from the science and technology research administrations in individual member countries. Projects need to include industry partners and research partners from at least 3 member countries. Projects are funded approximately ½ by industry in-kind contributions, 1/3 by home-country research administrations (paid to researchers in that country), 1/6 from EU funds.

See www.artemis-ju.eu for information on Artemis.

NICTA is leading ESA engagement in the following Artemis project proposals:

Reconfigurable Image Processing Chains (RICH)

NICTA is championing Australian participation in an ARTEMIS project proposal for Reconfigurable Image Chains (RICH) lead by Philips Healthcare, Europe.  The RICH project objectives are closely aligned with several high impact NICTA projects in computer vision including: AutoMap (digital map creation from video data), and SAFE AS (Safe Advanced Surveillance).  NICTA is also representing a consortium of relevant industry partners that includes: iOmniscient and Conicom.

The RICH project aims to develop a standardised specification and modelling environment for image processing components, as well as compiling a sample model library and data reference sets.  This will enable architects of embedded image processing or computer vision systems to efficiently specify their systems and ascertain the performance for various embedded hardware and software implementations, facilitating optimization of embedded implementations of image processing elements. 

The Australian team intends to participate in the RICH project by playing an active role in formulating the specification and modelling standard, developing sample reference models and contributing sample data sets.  In return NICTA and industry partners will gain premium access to world leading tools and methodologies in the embedded image processing and computer vision space.

Contact Dr. Rami Mukhtar of NICTA (Rami [dot] Mukhtarnicta [dot] com [dot] au) for more information on this project.

e-BENEFIT

Standing for "Embedded Intelligence for Boosting Energy Efficiency and Micro-Generation" the project looks at metering (and sub-metering), connection of micro-generation resources, communication with energy utilities and systems for recommending energy use options to the home or business user. NICTA is examining options for project participation, please contact John [dot] Judgenicta [dot] com [dot] au if you wish to know more.

Schools Program 

ESA's liasion with careers advisers in secondary schools plus NICTA's contacts to robotics researchers has resulted in the following exiting event.  

Embedded Systems Australia is hosting the "Legends of Innovation" presentation with Rodney Brooks, Professor of Robotics at MIT and Founder of iRobot, the world's leading supplier of robots. The presentation for high school students will be held at Australian Technology Park, Eveleigh on 11 August. Students attending will also have the opportunity to visit the NICTA TechFest exhibition and see the latest in Australian ICT research. In conjunction with the "Legends of Innovation" presentation with Rodney Brooks, ESA is running a Robotic Poster competition. Entry to the presentation is limited to first 100 teams to enter the Robotic Poster competition. So if you are a student form a team now!  For more information on the event and the poster competition click here.

This event is sponsored by ESA, Microsoft, Open Systems Education Trust, COSMOS Magazine, iTech Corporation, NICTA, AIGroup and NCSS.

Click here to see the kind of robots he works on.

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ARTEMIS Orchestra

ESA member NICTA was once again heavily involved in this year's competition.

This year's entry was a NICTA sponsored robotic Concertina from the University of Adelaide. The Concertina achieved second place with the TeamDARE acoustic guitar based entry from Netherlands taking out the first prize. The Concertina also did well at home winning the Tertiary Student Project category at the SA iAwards and achieving a merit at the national iAwards.

Contact John [dot] Judgenicta [dot] com [dot] au if you wish to learn more.

And so this is what it sounds like!..

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New Website

If you're reading this on the internet, chances are that you've discovered ESA's new website at www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au.  Our new site enables ESA members to log on and contribute content, e.g. project discussions and comments.  It now features our complete Industry and Research Capability Directory online.

Now we have the basics working, we want to improve the website's look and feel.  We are working on layouts, fonts and colour schemes.  If you own any images that you grant us permission to use, or know of any good public domain images, please email these to adminembeddedsystemsaustralia [dot] com [dot] au.

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 Recent Events

ESA Delivers its first industry course

On 15 June 2009, ESA, in cooperation with NICTA, delivered its first industry course Advanced Embedded Systems Design, by Dr Rami Mukhtar of NICTA.  The course introduced 18 participants to the Electronic System Level (ESL) design methodology and popular electronics virtualization tools and languages.  This model driven methodology is rapidly gaining momentum world wide.  The course took participants through a practical example to demonstrate how the tools and methodology can be applied to a real design problem. The feedback forms indicate that this course was well received and there is talk of repeating it later in the year in other states.  If you'd like to attend please register your interest with Rami, Rami [dot] Mukhtarnicta [dot] com [dot] au.

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What's On

Altium Designer Course

Sydney: 27-29 July, 2009

Three day Altium Designer Schematic Capture & PCB editing training 27-29 July, 2009.  This course is suitable for users who are unfamiliar with Altium Designer as well as users wanting to brush-up on the latest schematic and board-level features of Altium Designer. The course begins with a basic introduction but quickly advances to have you designing and laying out your own schematics and PCBs. Contact ryan [dot] freealtium [dot] com to learn more.

How to Build an Image

Melbourne: 11th & 12th August at Advantech – Keysborough
Perth: 15th & 16th September at Burswood – Perth

Learn the ABC's and do-it-yourself of building an image/operating system.  Silver Sponsor Advantech, and ESA Members Microsoft's Embedded Systems Division and ROK Technology, are running a series of training seminars in Melbourne and Perth.  Email ms [dot] aauadvantech [dot] com [dot] au for more details.

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Recommended Reading

Gold Sponsor Nick Fondas of itech Corporation recommends this article to you all: Embedded.com / EE Times article "Use lossless datacompression in embedded systems".  The link to the PDF is http://www.eetasia.com/STATIC/PDF/200907/EEOL_2009JUL08_EMS_TA_01.pdf?SOURCES=DOWNLOAD.

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Special Offer for ESA Members Who Develop C/C++ Code!

The best time to catch bugs is as early as possible — before the code is ever run.

If you create C/C++ code and use the Eclipse or Microsoft Visual Studio Integrated Development environments then this offer is of interest to you! 

Goanna is a cutting edge software bug detection tool.  It is the implementation of four years’ scientific research at NICTA and is the first static code analysis solution based on model checking technology to detect bugs during software development. Red Lizard software offers ESA Members a 50% discount on all its Goanna license purchases prior to August 21st 2009.

How to make use of this offer:

1. Your company must be a member of ESA, i.e. your company appears in our Capability Directory here http://www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/industry_capability or here http://www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au/research_capability.  If you aren't a member you can join at no cost: start by registering on this site, and the administrator will set you up with an company entry page to fill.
2. Then click on this link http://www.redlizards.com/index1.html and use the product code "ESA" when ordering your software.

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Sound Bytes

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962)

Contact

General Enquiries	adminembeddedsystemsaustralia [dot] com [dot] au
Dr Chris Nicol	Chris [dot] Nicolnicta [dot] com [dot] au
Neil Temperley (ESA Secretary & Editor)	Neil [dot] Temperleynicta [dot] com [dot] au

ESA Sponsors

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Supporters

2009, March: Newsletter #3

Events

Sponsorship

Now is the time to sign up for ESA sponsorship!  Learn more here!

WELCOME

Welcome to ESA's third newsletter!  In these difficult times, ESA is working hard to deliver value to existing and potential members.  This newsletter will give you an idea of how we are progressing.

Embedded Systems Australia is a horizontally aligned, project-based national industry cluster. Our members are interested in developing embedded systems technologies and marketing smart products to global supply chains. The activities span the complete product life cycle of embedded systems development and deployment. These include Design: electronics, software, computer aided design and methodologies; Manufacturing & systems integration to create competitive smart products for vertical applications; and Marketing, sales and support of embedded systems product development.

FEATURES

2009 A New Beginning

2009 marks the beginning of ESA’s new management structure under a new funding model. Our Steering Committee has formally stepped down to make way for a new committee operating under the new model. This was part of a planned move as a step toward ultimately making ESA self sustainable. Most of you will have received emails inviting you to become sponsors. Gold sponsors can automatically be part of the new Steering Committee. 

Your feedback has indicated that events should be opportunities to meet customers.  In these tough times, we are offering our Gold and Silver sponsors opportunities to showcase their technologies to customers at key ESA events. 

Join now!  Please consider whether you believe ESA is an investment in the future of your company and your industry.  Contact ESA nicta.com.au to learn more.

National Computer Science School (NCSS)

Last summer holidays, 13 high school students had a competition to program a robot that would successfully navigate a maze in the shortest possible time. A tricky task since many had only had their first task of C programming in the same week! Some robots barely got started, others streaked ahead promisingly, only to take a wrong turn. This competition was the climax of an exciting new course undertaken by ESA and NICTA in collaboration with NCSS. See www.ncss.edu.au for program information.

Congratulations and thanks to ESA educators John Judge (NICTA) and Stuart Cummings (inContact) for running such an exciting and effective program. If you want to be involved in this year’s program please contact John.Judge nicta.com.au.

Schools Program

ESA is liaising with careers advisors to devise out-reach programs for secondary schools.  Nick Fondas (iTech) nfondas itechcorp.com.au is leading this team to build awareness amongst our youth of the fun and excitement that an embedded systems related career can bring.

ESA has the pleasure to announce that robotics guru Prof Rodney Brooks of MIT will be presenting to several hundred schools students in August.  Click here to see the kind of robots he works on.

Rodney Brooks in action:

ARTEMIS Orchestra

		Remember how ESA supported the Roboclarinet that won the Artemis Orchestra Competition in Europe?  If you don't, then have a look at this video.

Two ESA members contributed to this success — a ResMed pump provide the ‘lung’ pressure and LX Innovations did circuit board layouts and assembly.

The competition is on again.  This year it is a robot Concertina from the University of Adelaide. The Concertina is short-listed for a state iAward. Contact John.Judge nicta.com.au if you wish to learn more.

ARTEMIS Projects

However, our connections with the EU are not just about competitions.  ESA members have been able to join forces to work with NICTA for submissions for Artemis projects.

Excerpt from Prof. Neil Bergmann trip report from Artemis Project Brokerage Workshop, Jan 2009. 

The ARTEMIS JTI (Joint Technology Initiative) is a research funding program for European projects in the area of Embedded Systems. Funding comes from both the EU and from the science and technology research administrations in individual member countries. Projects need to include industry partners and research partners from at least 3 member countries. Projects are funded approximately ½ by industry in-kind contributions, 1/3 by home-country research administrations (paid to researchers in that country), 1/6 from EU funds.

 There are annual project calls — this meeting was promoting the 2009 call for proposals. ARTEMISIA is an Industry Association which promotes the ARTEMIS JTI. The ARTEMIS JU (Joint Undertaking) is a joint venture between the EU and ARTEMISIA which administers grants.

The 2008 Round

In summary, 27 proposals were received, 17 were judged as fundable, there was sufficient funding for 12 to be funded, with a total budget of approximately 90 million euros. Some projects were not funded because proposals were top-heavy with French and German applicants, so those countries’ funding pools were most quickly exhausted.

The largest 3 projects were allocated 65% of the budget, the other 35% was distributed amongst the other 9 projects. So there are 3 very large projects at around 20-30 million euros cash (+ matching in-kind). Typically projects were 3 years. A number of projects had non-ARTEMIS member country partners, such as USA or Japan. This is OK, but these partners can’t get any ARTEMIS funding.

The 2009 Round

This round will run similarly to 2008, with a few enhancements.

The submission process is a two stage process

1. A compulsory expression of interest / summary proposal is due in April.
   Feedback is provided, but no culling of applicants.
2. Final applications are due in August.
   Decisions in November/December with projects atrting as early as January 2010.

The funding pool will be slightly larger in 2009, somewhere in the 100-150 million euros. There are 8 different sub-programmes ranging from Safety-Critical Systems to Human-Computer Interface.

See www.artemis-ju.eu for information on Artemis.

 NICTA is leading ESA engagement in the following Artemis project proposals:

1. Reconfigurable Image Processing Chains (RICH) — contact Dr. Lars Petersson of NICTA (Lars.Petersson nicta.com.au) for more information on this project. Currently three Australian SMEs are involved in this prioject.
2. Smart homes for the Smart Grid — Contact John Judge of NICTA (John.Judge nicta.com.au)  for more information on this project.

Contact Chris.Nicol nicta.com.au to learn more about the Artemis JTI in the 7th Framework

New Website

If you're reading this on the internet, chances are that you've discovered ESA's new website at www.embeddedsystemsaustralia.com.au.  The new site enables ESA members to log on and contribute content, e.g. project discussions and comments.  We plan to extend this capability to have our Industry and Research Capability Directory able to be updated on line.

Project Roundup

ESA has four project concepts in various stages of team formation.

Wireless Vehicle Communications via DSRC (aka DSRC — Dedicated Short Range Communications)

Enabling wireless vehicle communications via DSRC is already in the production plan of several manufacturers of highend vehicles. Vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communications unlocks many applications for safety (collision avoidance), congestion minimisation and business (tolling and payments). It will undoubtedly revolutionise the road user’s experience. The potential for positive impact in Transport and Logistics has already attracted the strong support of the NSW Dept or State and Regional Development via a matching funds grant of $100,000. ESA is working closely with the AusDSRC consortium.

Contact Neil.Temperley nicta.com.au to learn more.

Assisted Living

How can technology improve the lifestyle and safety of the elderly or disabled living at home? Is it possible to make technology so easy to use that it elderly people will embrace it? Mark Steiner (HETECH/Techome) mark techome.com.au  is leading the team exploring these possibilities.

Assisted Vision

Couple a miniature camera in a headset with some world-leading embedded system smarts and you get a system that can aid a visually impaired person to recognise the visual world — from identifying friends to find the margarine at the supermarket.

[This project is currently 'on-hold' as our project champions have had to focus on more pressing matters.  Contact Neil.Temperley nicta.com.au if you'd like to get involved.]

Funky Kiosk

This is a project that has been given new life as the ESA cluster mechanism has uncovered synergies between members. Innovative customised advertising and the potential to wirelessly download high definition movies in less than a minute are the ingredients to make the future kiosk funky and fun. Chris Nicol (NICTA) Chris.Nicol nicta.com.au is the interim leader of this team.

ESA announces first industry course for members!

Advanced Embedded Systems Design (June, 2009)

Presenter: Dr Rami Mukhtar, NICTA

Further details and registration forms are available here.

State Project Meetings

ESA Queensland Project Meeting — March 2009

On Thursday March 5th, at the offices of Sage Consulting, a meeting was held to discuss the feasibility of an ESA group in Queensland. The participants included: 

• Grant Wensor — Sage
• Barry Sutherland — Boeing
• Neil Davidson — CMD
• Bill Horton — Direct TV
• Chris Bishop — Intellidesign
• Neil Bergmann — University of Qld
• Bob Waldie — Snapgear
• John Judge — NICTA
• Chris Nicol — NICTA
• John Humphreys — GIC

Three market areas that best aligned with Queensland Government/Queensland Industry were identified as follows:

1. Mining/Mining Technology Services,
2. Transport & Logistics,
3. Emergency Services/Security.

It was agreed that project opportunities for each of these areas would be investigated over the next few weeks, with a further follow-up meeting to be held post-Easter. Following the second meeting, focus group meetings will be arranged to further discuss the projects. It was agreed that the following people would be responsible for following up the sectoral projects as follows:

1. Mining: Grant Wensor and Bob Waldie
2. Transport & Logistics: Chris Bishop (supported by John Humphreys)
3. Emergency Services/Security: Barry Sutherland, Chris Bishop and Bill Horton  

 For information on the ESA Queensland activity (Chris.Nicol nicta.com.au)

ESA Victoria Project Meeting — March 2009

On March 23rd, ESA held a project workshop at the offices of Innovation@257 in Melbourne. The meeting was attended by:

• Trish Messiter — Clarinox
• David Levy — Tectonica
• Rached Hussein — Tectonica
• Chris Farmer — CPE Systems
• Mark Brydon — Hydrix
• Daryl Chambers — M2M Connectivity
• David Jones — VPAC
• Prof Jack Singh — Latrobe University
• David Harris — Dejai Live
• Sean Worth — Procept
• Chris Nicol — ESA/NICTA
• John Humphreys — Global Innovation Centre
• Janice Humphreys — Global Innovation Centre

The group identified the following areas of focus in Victoria.

• Automotive (including fleet and aftermarket)/Public Transport
• Human Performance (defence), including fitness and cognitive training
• Telemedicine, incorporating assisted living
• Environmental — Efficient Energy as a sound project area to explore, given that it would have immediate impact and funding is available through the Climate Ready Fund
• Smart Grid Project
• Rapid Prototype Laboratory

Overall, the group wished to pursue larger infrastructure projects which would attract/leverage on Victorian government funding and grant schemes. David Levy (Tectonica) indicated there are two possible sources of funding within Victoria and  provided further information on the following programs: 

• Smart SMEs Market Validation Program
• Victoria's Science Agenda Investment Fund
• ICN Victoria

It was agreed that the following potential project areas would be pursued by smaller teams, including:

1. Telemedicine (including Assisted Living): Trish Messiter (Clarinox) and Chris Farmer (CPE Systems)
2. Environmental/Efficient Energy: Prof Jack Singh, Daryl Chambers (M2M Connectivity)
3. Human Performance (defence), including fitness and cognitive training: David Levy (Tectonica), Mark Brydon (Hydrix), Sean Worth (Procept)
4. Public Transport/Automotive (including fleet and aftermarkets): David Harris (Dejai Live), David Levy (Tectonica), Daryl Chambers (M2M Connectivity)

For information on the ESA Victoria activity (Chris.Nicol nicta.com.au).

About ESA

Embedded Systems Australia was launched on Tuesday 11 December 2007 at the Premier's Reception Room in Governor Macquarie Tower. Its members are collaborating to strengthen the embedded systems and related industries in Australia. The cluster aims to provide the following business benefits to participating companies:

• expanded market opportunities
• resource exchange
• joint tendering
• identification of skills and synergies
• development of leads in new markets
• collaborative projects

The initial cluster consortium was representative of prominent companies, industry associations, NSW government and ICT research. The founding steering committte members were: AiGroup, BCS Innovations, CiSRA (Canon), Cochlear, Global Innovations Centre, iTech, Invetech, Machinery Automation Robotics, Microsoft, NICTA, NSW Department of State & Regional Development, ResMed, Sinclair Knight Merz and The Warren Centre.

The founding chairman was NICTA's CTO of Embedded Systems Dr Chris Nicol.

Sound Bytes

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." ~ Alan Kay

Contact

General Enquiries	ESA nicta.com.au
Dr Chris Nicol	Chris.Nicol nicta.com.au
Neil Temperley (Editor)	Neil.Temperley nicta.com.au

ESA Sponsors

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Supporters

2008, December: Newsletter #2

The Magic Within... Newsletter #2

WELCOME

Welcome to the second and 2008 “wrap up” edition of the Embedded Systems Australia newsletter. Embedded Systems Australia is a horizontally-aligned, project-based national industry cluster.

Our members are interested in developing embedded systems technologies and marketing smart products to global supply chains. The activities span the complete product lifecycle of embedded systems development and deployment. These include Design: electronics, software, computer aided design and methodologies; Manufacturing & systems integration to create competitive smart products for vertical applications; and Marketing, sales and support of embedded systems product development.

Download the attached newsletter to read on...

Attachment	Date	Size
200812-The Magic Within Newsletter-002.pdf	09/08/09 10:30 pm	520.69 KB

2008, November: Newsletter #1

The Magic Within... Newsletter #1

Welcome to the first edition of the Embedded Systems Australia newsletter. Embedded Systems Australia is a horizontally-aligned, project-based national industry cluster.

Our members are interested in developing embedded systems technologies and marketing smart products to global supply chains. The activities span the complete product lifecycle of embedded systems development and deployment. These include Design: electronics, software, computer aided design and methodologies; Manufacturing & systems integration to create competitive smart products for vertical applications; and Marketing, sales and support of embedded systems product development.

Download the attached file to read the complete newsletter...

Attachment	Date	Size
200811-The Magic Within Newsletter-001.pdf	09/08/09 10:22 pm	492.68 KB