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.

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Sponsorship

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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

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