University of Porto

The research undertaken by the Faculty of Engineering at Porto University (FEUP) http://www.fe.up.pt, a leading engineering school in Portugal will be done at the Network Centric Control Systems (NCCS) group http://whale.fe.up.pt/isr/node/4. NCCS develops basic and applied research in the areas of hierarchical decision and control in hybrid (mixed continuous-time and discrete-event systems) systems, with focus on frameworks for the design and implementation of systems encompassing the networking of systems in various scopes. The overall mission of this group is to contribute to the advancement of the state-of-the-art in concepts, methods and tools for network centric control systems, with emphasis on two large classes of applications: networked vehicles and devices, and networked enterprises.

Research is developed in co-operation with other universities and companies, as well as under international research contracts. In 1995 the NCCS founded the Enterprise Engineering Laboratory (EEL) to promote research, development, and engineering of advanced concepts, applications and frameworks for manufacturing systems.

The EEL addresses the problem of companies coordinating their activities within a general architecture for e-cooperation, which articulates the interoperation of internal and external business process, with different time scales and varied degrees of security requirements. The goal is the development of a formal framework for the systematic design and analysis of industrial and services enterprises operating in this networked business environment. This effort is routed on several challenges and experiences drawn from automotive, aeronautic, and electronics industries. The following issues are addressed:

• Cooperative Engineering: development of a formal model for inter-organizational models for the design and development of products and of their manufacturing systems by a network of companies coming together exclusively for that purpose.
• Patterns for organizational engineering: development of a unified theory and praxis for the analysis and development of organizational management processes and systems; addressing the process modelling and documentation methods and tools, and the project management methods and tools.
• Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSAN) for deployment in industrial environments and integration with enterprise applications; each sensor node is autonomous but is able to cooperate with other nodes, and together they form a sensor grid that feeds real time information into the enterprise business applications.

Researchers at Porto University have been involved in the last 20 years in fostering and growing a world-wide research community in this area. Porto University is a member of the Control and Dynamic Systems Alliance, which includes Caltech, UC Santa Barbara, and Princeton University in the US, Universidade de Campinas in Brazil, and Lund University in Sweden.

FEUP's role and contribution to I-RAMP³

FEUP will be mainly involved in the following activities of the I-RAMP³ project:

• Sensor and actuator development
• Sensors grid development
• Brings expertise for autonomous, self-powered and wireless devices in the project