CDT-EI Annual Report 2017-18

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Annual Report 2017/18


Contents Design for EI

2. Welcome 3. Cohort Hall of Fame 7. 2017/18 Timeline 8. The Transition Zone TM 9. PhD Spotlight

11. Group Project

Packaging & Interconnect

Intelligent Software

Applications Engineering

13. Student Reports 17. Awards and Prizes 19. Publications

20. Our Industry Collaborators 22. Collaborate with us

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Manufacturing Solutions

System Services


Welcome from the Directors The 2017/18 academic year has brought many successes for staff and students of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Embedded Intelligence. By far one of the highlights of the year has been the news that our acclaimed Transition Zone TM training programme is now a registered trade mark. Across our community of academic supervisors we have seen many be awarded with new grant funding, several of which are of a direct result from the collaborations that have been built with industrial partners via the co-sponsorship of PhD research projects. Speaking of our research projects, our students have travelled the world this year presenting their research efforts at conferences spanning topics areas such as control engineering, robotics, intelligent vehicles, composite materials. We are delighted to report that several of our students have won awards for their work and contributions, one even met royalty! You can read more about these and our most recent published work later in this newsletter. Our students have also continued to excel in their leadership and management training and have been awarded certificates. As we enter the 2018/19 academic year we are excited about what lies ahead. We shall meet our fifth and final cohort and see the first cohort of our students graduate. It has been an privilege to support them on their PhD journeys and, although it will be sad to see them leave for pastures new, we will be welcoming them back as CDT-EI alumni.

Prof Paul Conway Director

Dr Carmen TorresSanchez Executive Director

Dr Keith Brown Co-Director

Dr David Flynn Co-Director

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Cohort 1

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Adrian Ayastuy-Rodriguez

Dimitrios Pantazis

Michael Johnson

Mohamed Alrefaie

Pawel Ladosz

Co-Sponsor: Moredun Institute

Co-Sponsor: HSSMI

Co-Sponsor: BMW

Co-Sponsor: BMW

Co-Sponsor: multi-partner consortium

Smart Sensors for Detection of Lack of Appetite in Cattle

M2M Wireless Intelligence

User Experience of Driving for the Future

Deploying Future Materials for Responsive Car Interiors

Ian Park

Joe Holt

Samantha Gunn

Co-Sponsor: Taylor Hobson

Co-Sponsor: Far UK Ltd

Co-Sponsor: Macphie

Coherent Measurement of Surface Geometry on a Large Scale

Design and Manufacture of Functionally-tailored Multi-material Structures with Embedded Intelligence

Microwave Sensors for the Quality Control of Food Products

Support Autonomous Operation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems with Computer Vision


Cohort 2 Adam Kaye

Athanasios Pouchias

David Czerski

Gajarajan Sivayogan

Jamal Umer

Co-sponsor: PEL Electronics

Co-Sponsor: TWI

Co-Sponsor: Renishaw

Co-Sponsor: AVL GmbH

Co-Sponsor: BP

Ink-jet Printing Antennas on 3D Curved Surfaces

RTM Process Monitoring and Predictive Analysis

Remote sensing and positioning by Tribo-dynamic analysis of bevel using Galfenol on remotely powered and hypoid gears surface wave acoustic devices

Lubricant-surface system for IC engines

Melanie Zimmer

Rhys Comissiong

Robert Turnbull

Ruben Kruiper

Tobias Reichold

Co-Sponsor: HSSMI

Co-Sponsor: Caterpillar

Co-Sponsor: AVL GmbH

Co-Sponsor: Freeform Construction

Co-Sponsor: Renishaw

Multi-agent negotiation strategies for dynamic energy reduction in manufacturing

Finding optimal sensor and actuator configurations

Elastohydrodynamic lubrication in piston-ring pack assemblies

Development of an ontology in biomimetics using concepts of classical problem solving

High-speed micro 3D metrology

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Cohort 3

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Chris Miles

Christos Kouppas

Darius Roman

David Spendlove

Gergely Hantos

Co-sponsor: Solvay

Co-sponsor: Motion Robotics Ltd

Co-sponsor: Baker Hughes

Co-sponsor: Rolls Royce

Co-sponsor: Cirrus Logic

Real Time Data Monitoring for Flame Retardant Detection on Textiles

Bi-Pedal Robots whose limbs can be moved at high speed designed with Motion Robotics Flexmotor actuator

Modelling of critical assets and Fusion Prognostics for Predicting the Remaining Useful Life of the Drill String

MBSE with formally specified QoS attributes in Embedded Real-time Systems

Embedded Intelligence for Self-Test of a MEMS microphone

Joel Earps

Jorge Garcia Armenta

Lorenzo Stilo

Marcus Pollard

Matthew Hammond

Co-sponsor: Ford

Co-sponsor: NPL and Epigem

Co-sponsor: Ford

Co-sponsor: Izon Science

Co-sponsor: EffecTech Ltd

The Design of an adaptive, personalised and integrated next generation ebike

Synthetic Aperture Interferometry

Development of a new generation eBike

Responsive Porous Materials for detection of analytes

Improving methods and efficiency for the production, use and measurement of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)

Robin Hamer

Ross Dickie

Wen Gu

Youssef Hamid

Zhao Gao

Co-sponsor: EDF

Co-sponsor: Mactaggart Scott

Co-sponsor: DETC

Co-sponsor: GE Druck

Co-sponsor: Arm

Safety II in the Nuclear Industry

Fusion Prognostics for Predicting the Remaining Useful Life of Maritime Assets

Distributed hybrid vehicle embedded controller

Embedded & Intelligent Pressure Sensing Applications

Content Aware, Environmentally Adaptive, Intelligent, Ultra High Definition Video Creation from High Definition Video


Cohort 4 Cesar Ruiz:

Jake Rankin

Javier Garcia

Lucas Kirschbaum

Luke Wilkinson

Co-sponsor: Pyreos Limited

Co-sponsor: J C Bamford Excavators

Co-sponsor : Airquick Ltd

Co-sponsor: Baker Hughes

Co-sponsor: H.K Wentworth

Development of Smart Pyrodetector for Gesture Applications

Development of SMART Systems for Enhanced On-Site Excavation

Performance optimisation of train-wash systems using novel sensors

Data Analytics to Predict the Remaining Useful Life of Critical Assets

Maren Schnieder

Matthew Smith

Shaun Smith

Simon Blackwell

Steven Hayward

Co-sponsor: Ford

Co-sponsor: Ordnance Survey

Co-sponsor: Jaguar Land Rover

Co-sponsor: Far UK Ltd

Co-sponsor: S2S

Development of a new generation eBike

Using embedded sensors in mobile/wearable devices to provide customised navigation support and enhanced digital maps through crowdsourced information

Numerical continuation applied to IC engine calibration process

Manufacturing cellular solids

End of Life traceability and monitoring within the factory and throughout the supply chain

Stephen Ward

Temi Jegede

Peter De'Ath

Co-sponsor: INMM - IN MANIBUS MEIS

Co-sponsor: Jaguar Land Rover

Co-sponsor: Innospec

High Performance Computing for Powertrain Control Applications

Optimisation Studies for Acid Chloride Synthesis and Scale-up

Real-time biomedical physiological sensing for first responders or exposed workers

Optimising Encapsulation Resin Levels for the Electronics Sector

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A year in the life of CDT-EI

Jul ❖ DEN Summer School in association with CDE ❖ OS Site visit

Jun ❖ UK Robotics Week ❖ Scholarship Skills Course

Sept

Jun

May ❖ Managing industrial stakeholders course ❖ MTC Site visit Apr ❖ Welcome new starters ❖ Coaching for Leadership Course ❖ Industry Open Day 7

Year-round Activities ❖ Training Modules and Workshops ❖ Foresight Seminar Series ❖ Group Projects

Sept ❖ Welcome Cohort 4 ❖ Transition week at The Burn

Dec

Mar

Dec ❖ ILM Innovation and Change Module

Jan ❖ Welcome new starters ❖ Orientation Day ❖ ILM Enterprise Awareness Module

Feb ❖ Industry Advisory Board


The Transition Zone TM

The Transition Zone TM is unique to the CDT in Embedded Intelligence. Due to the numerous requests from external sources, we decided to protect the brand and this year the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) awarded us the trade mark.

CDT-EI Executive Director and Director of Training, Dr Carmen Torres-Sanchez explains the rationale behind the programme.

"We have continued evolving and honing our training programme with valuable feedback and input from our students and co-sponsors. It is our intention to remain flexible and relevant to those with whom we have created a platform for scientific advancement, professional development, business growth and realisation of impact.“ The Transition Zone™, accredited by the Institute for Leadership & Management (centre no. 025657A), is our bespoke training programme to support transitions through different stages in researcher’s career: (1) into doctoral studies as a high performing researcher, (2) through doctoral studies to make the most out of their doctorate and associated training and, (3) on exiting, to empower and equip them as highly employable graduates.

“A graduate would be expected to enter a 2-year scheme to be trained and learn about the company. A PhD should be able to skip this stage and apply for entry level research scientist roles. The ILM training provides a framework for behaviour and puts CDT-EI PhD ahead, in particular during interview.” CDT-EI Industrial co-sponsor February 2018 Advisory Board Congratulations to all those who have passed ILM assignments this year Enterprise Awareness Adrian Ayastuy Rodriguez Dimitris Pantazis Ian Park Matt Hammond Rob Turnbull

Understanding Innovation and Change in an Organisation Joe Holt

Managing Workplace Projects Matt Hammond Mohamed Alrefaie

Understanding Good Practice in Workplace Coaching Joe Holt

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PhD Spotlight Pawel Ladosz joined the CDT in Embedded Intelligence at Loughborough University in 2014 after graduating with an MEng in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Manchester. In his first year Pawel spent time at both partner institutions and completed group projects with Renishaw plc and BAE Systems Ltd. During the later years of his PhD he has taken the opportunity to spend time in South Korea and complete an internship with The High Speed Sustainable Manufacturing Institute (HSSMI). The focus of my PhD research has been about using unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs), or drones, as a communication relay in an urban environment. The main application is in emergency situations, for example, where there is a group of rescue workers in a city working through a natural disaster scenario. In these situations the workers want to use wireless communications to coordinate their efforts and work more efficiently. Unfortunately, under the condition in a built up urban environment there are many obstacles such as the buildings and the wireless communications do not work very well. This is something that everyone experiences when you travel to a big city such as London and try to use GPS. You find it does not work as well as expected and that is because of the buildings and other obstacles present in urban environments. At present there are no ideal solutions out there. One potential solution is to use a number of unmanned vehicles to help the workers communicate with each other. My particular focus was to find the best position, or trajectory, for the vehicles. There are vehicles are based on the ground and there are also vehicles in the air helping them talk to each other using wireless communications. There are a number of assumptions I have needed to make such as that you do not have control over the ground people. This is valid because they just want to do their job and do not want to be disturbed. Conversely, I assume I have full control over the air vehicles. One of the main problems implementing this approach is that you would have limited resource. It is not possible to use an unlimited number of UAVs because it is not cost effective. The challenge is to use the resources you have as efficiently as possible, and this work was about finding the most effective and efficient number of vehicles and their positions to maximise the benefit.

So far, the majority of my PhD work has been modelling, I use a lot of Matlab. At the moment, the final part of my PhD is trying to design a practical experiment to summarise every piece work I have done. The end goal is that the practical experiment will validate the models that have been built. I just need to get the robots to do what I want them to do, which is proving a little bit challenging as they have a mind of their own!

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If I could go back to the beginning of my PhD, I would say spend a lot more time doing the literature review, and then you have a very good understanding of the field you are in and can see where you fit. Be smart about it, categorise, split them up by methodology, by source material – anything! Producing a mind map to show where everything lies and how they fit and link together.

The key point you are trying to get, at least in my field, is what are the benefits of the methodology, and more importantly, what are the limitations or possible improvements.


Travelling the Globe The highlight of my PhD has been presenting at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots (IROS) 2017 in Vancouver, Canada. IROS is very prestigious, perceived by many to be the second or third best conference in robotics in the world. Being accepted to present was an achievement I am very proud of because it indicated that my work makes sense, is correct and valued by my research community. As well as an oral presentation, I submitted a poster. I think, depending on how the poster sessions are structured, they are often better for networking. You can talk to people and make useful connections. Exposing your work to people at early stage is very useful because you can see what people are interested in and it allows you to direct your work. I learnt a lot from my first presentation at the International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems 2016 (ICUAS) in Washington DC. Feedback I received helped me to look at my work from another perspective, and this is what got me to look at machine learning to help predict communication. Last year I spent 3 months in Ulsan in South Korea undertaking a research placement at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST). This was with one of my supervisors who had been offered an assistant professorship. As well as conducting my own PhD research I was assisting them set-up a new robotics lab. I am very grateful to have experienced working in a different country. The working culture is very different, you come to work at 9am and you do not leave until 10pm. This was not a difficult adjustment for me but I did start to feel homesick by the end of 3 months. My South Korean colleagues were kind enough to take me to visit many places such as Seoul, Busan, the city by the sea and introduced me to some of the best food I have ever tasted.

Working with Industry During the CDT-EI Summer School in 2017, I was fortunate to have a conversation with the CDT Directors and the CEO of HSSMI. It transpired that they were looking for someone with expertise optimisation to complete a piece of work for them on a short-term basis. I used optimisation a lot during my PhD so after a number of meetings and discussing the idea with my supervisors I moved to London to work with them for 3 months. I was also able to work part-time for 2 months when I returned to my PhD studies. The work I did was related to the an EU funded project about how factories should be in the future. My work was optimisation e.g. given that the number of products you want to produce – how do you produce them efficiently in the timeframe and with resources you have available? It was a good experience and provided me with a different perspective. During my PhD I often compare myself to my peers and don’t feel like an expert, but found myself as the only person specialised in my field. This was stressful at first but made me feel appreciated. I felt that I had spent 3 years of my life learning something that was valued and I could provide a solution to a problem. There were a lot more ‘softer skills’ required and communication were vital. I learnt about speaking to people who are not necessarily knowledgeable in your field. If I done this 3 years ago, without the CDT, I would have struggled. However, I knew what to be aware of, speak clearly, ensure you are understood, bring everyone on board. Those kind of things came from the CDT-EI training – e.g. group projects were very helpful. Once you have the experience you can apply it to new situations.

Group project team with sponsor BAE Systems

Life after PhD….. I am planning to submit my thesis around October time, but this is dependent on how well the practical experiments go! The CDT-EI experience has been nothing but positive for me as it has allowed my to understand what I like and what I do not like. One of the biggest changes that has happened over the course of my PhD is that I realised I do not want to work in industry. I discovered that I like tackling technical challenges and exploring the weird and wacky ideas. In industry you often don’t have time to dig deeper into solutions. I have had a start-up business with my partner since last year. The CDT training gave me an appreciation of enterprise but my main passion is for the research and problem solving. I am applying for postdocs around the world with a robotics focus. The area I am interested in is called “learning to learn” in robotics applications, which is teaching robots how to learn new tasks autonomously.

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Group Project Showcase Industrial Partner GenRev (UK) Ltd

Project Title Overnight Secure Delivery System

CDT-EI Expertise Luke Wilkinson, Jake Rankin, Lucas Kirschbaum

The Results

The Challenge GenRev UK Ltd is a logistics company that delivers specialist parts to engineers. Their business model focuses on increasing the efficiency of its customers by offering overnight delivery services. Currently GenRev operate an ‘In-Boot’ delivery service which requires access to the customer's vehicle. GenRev challenged CDT-EI students to come up with a delivery system that is secure, inexpensive and does not require access to a property or vehicle.

The team developed a modular design concept split into three distinct stages; the Door Attachment Mechanism, Product Containment and Security Attachment. This would allowed each stage to be developed independently of one another, thus making the design process more efficient. The modular design also gave GenRev the option of keeping any section that was particularly successful and further developing other sections based on their findings and recommendations. Over the 12-week project period the team were able to successfully design, manufacture and test a door attachment mechanism concept (images right). The team also developed an app and software based security attachment concept and were able to propose an associated database.

The Outcome “We were impressed with how the students were able tackle the challenge we set them and step out of their comfort zone. We had an idea for the solution but the students came up with a product we are looking to patent” Aubrey Forkuoh, GenRev Ltd

GenRev UK Ltd have applied for a patent a "Smart Parcel Delivery Bag" which allows for parcels to be delivered to end users without the need for anyone to receive it. The bag is ideal for situation when there is nobody at home to receive the parcel. It can be used for both day and night time deliveries providing alert to end user to notify them when their delivery is completed and sending proof of delivery to carriers. For further information please contact Aubrey Forkuoh info@genrevuk.com

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From research to outreach - Or how the CDT-EI sent me on my STEM outreach journey Written by Melanie Zimmer, Cohort 2 When I started my PhD back in 2015, I would have never thought that I would engage with students to encourage them to consider a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). But, here I am doing exactly that.

This amazing and valuable journey started after participating in an online event called I’m an engineer get me out of here! (IAEGMOOH) in March 2016. IAEGMOOH was mentioned to us by Donna, our CDT-EI Centre Manager, and after reading about it, I thought it sounded like a lot of fun – little did I know at that point how nerve-wrecking (in a positive way!) it would be. IAEGMOOH is an X-Factor style online event, where 5 engineers compete against each other and are judged by school students based on the interaction taking place in a forum and 30-minute live chats. In my allocated group, the Robotics Zone, the students would grill us with questions ranging from “What is your favourite food?”, “What is the best thing about your job?” to “If robots more intelligent than humans are created, will they be able to create robots more intelligent than themselves?” and “Does being a female effect the way you’re treated being a scientist?”! It was a really great experience to be exposed to these kinds of questions, and to see how curious the students were. Since then, a lot more different outreach activities have happened in form of other online events (I’m a Scientist - Careers Zone, CyberMentor) as well as company and school visits.

CDT-EI School Visit to St. Bartholomew's Church of England Primary School, Loughborough, in March 2018.

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The latest school visit took place earlier this year with two other CDT-EI students from Cohort 1, Mohamed and Joe. Mohamed had organised for us to visit St. Bartholomew's Church of England Primary School in Loughborough as part of their participation in the Primary Engineer Leaders Awards and 3M Cargo Challenge. We gave short presentations about our work and provided the students with feedback on their boat design, which had to be as light as possible while carrying up to 5kg without sinking. Later that day, the students had to write a short pitch for a (literally) fantastic idea, which would then be judged for the Primary Engineer Leaders Awards. After this visit, I realised how much interest in doing STEM outreach activities exists within the CDT-EI. We are currently in the process of getting our own STEM outreach group started across Heriot-Watt and Loughborough University. Although these outreach activities are not directly related to our research as such, they are still beneficial. Amongst other things, they help improve communication and presentation skills as you need to think about how you can pitch your work to different audiences and age groups, and you take away food for thoughts and new ideas (yes, especially from y5&6!). By engaging with the students like this, I hope to give them an idea of how versatile science and engineering can be. It would have been nice to have had the opportunity to meet some “real engineers” back at school as until my last year, I never included “becoming an (software) engineer” as something I would want to do after graduating. Thinking about what made me change my mind towards these ideas, the main influencing factor was probably my first ever (after primary school) female maths teacher. Not that my previous maths teachers had been bad (on the contrary!), but her passion about maths and her job in general was so inspirational for me! Trying to provide a role model to the younger generations (both, girls AND boys) and challenge existing stereotypes to have an ongoing impact on the students and their careers, is my main motivation in doing the outreach activities – with feedback like the following, it is easy to continue on this journey.

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Nicola and Debs from Merton Park Primary School for the wonderful experiences we have made so far! I would also like to thank Loughborough Grammar School STEM (Twitter: @LboroGSSTEM) for the pictures used in this article. And last but not least, the CDT-EI for making this whole STEM outreach adventure possible in the first place!

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New Scientist Live We received lots of interest from industry, school children and academic visitors and had the opportunity to speak with the end-users (i.e. the general public). We were able to discuss their needs and opinions about having a robot in their home. This provided us with valuable insight from the perspective of potential customers. For example, comments were made that the robots feet look too bulky. We took this feedback on board and for our next exhibition we made them smaller.

Cohort 3 researcher, Chris Kouppas, had the opportunity to represent his co-sponsor Motion Robotics and showcase his work on SARAH, (a bipedal humanoid silent, agile, robotic, semi-autonomous, host vehicle) at two large exhibitions, New Scientist Live and Innovate 2017.

Innovate UK Intended applications of SARAH include robotic health care, search and rescue, hazard detection or companionship and domestic services.

Motion Robotics were invited to attend the Innovate 2017 Exhibition, a business to business exhibition facilitating discussions and interactions between all walks of industry. ​Particular interest was shown to Sarah in the frame of advanced security services. By attending I gained experience talking with business and companies about potential collaborations, either for the end product or the on-going research. We ran a demonstration and showed investors the first steps of our project (literally, the first steps of our robot!).

Representing Industry Cohort 4 researcher, Steve Ward had the opportunity to attend the Ambition UK Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response Expo with his co-sponsor In Manibus Meis (INMMÂŽ Srl u.s.). Ambition UK ran alongside the Security and Counter Terror Expo, and Forensics Europe Expo as part of UK Security Week. During the expo we demonstrated the research currently being undertaken in wearable sensors for patients in mass casualty incidents, first responders and exposed workers, and its link with their commercial offerings. Whilst at the event, I spent time on the companies exhibition stand meeting key stakeholders and gaining a deeper insight into the operation of the business. There was a few prominent interested parties the company will be exploring further. Additionally, over the course of the two days there were opportunities to expand my own personal network, and attend a variety of talks by a wide range of interesting speakers as part of the conference programme. The insights gained from this will be extremely beneficial in applying my research outputs, taking into account the current relevant problems within the wider industry.

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Deep Diving into New Learning Skills and Environments Written by Simon Blackwell, Cohort 4

Written by Gergely Hantos, Cohort 3

External educators from Cambridge Spark, Kevin Lemagnen and Tim Hillel, travelled to Loughborough to deliver a 3 day course on ‘Data Science with Python’ to PhD researchers Javier Garcia-Garcia, Joel Earps, Joe Holt, Jake Rankin, Rhys Comissiong, Steven Hayward, and Simon Blackwell.

A Heriot-Watt based Cohort 3 CDT-EI student, Gergely Hantos took part in the 6-months Cambridge Spark Applied Data Science Bootcamp. The course gave an excellent knowledge of the most relevant Data Science skills matching industry needs.

The objective of the course was to give the researchers an understanding of the concepts and benefits of data science and machine learning, and a solid foundation on how to apply those techniques. The first day covered the concepts of supervised and unsupervised learning, machine learning, using Jupyter notebooks, the Numpy and Pandas libraries, and principal component analysis (PCA). Day 2 covered the scikit-learn library, k-means clustering, density-based clustering (DBScan), k-nearest neighbour, cross validation and hyperparameter tuning. The final day covered machine learning methods such as random forests, decisions trees, ensemble models, logistic regression, regularisation, and support vector classifiers. Although the attendees had varying degrees of expertise, which meant a steep learning curve for some, the course educators did an excellent job of pitching the material at a level where everyone was learning but without anyone being overwhelmed.

Each student had to carry out a one-month real-life project backed by industry partners that covered problem understanding, data cleaning and feature engineering, visualisation, model selection, training, evaluation and optimisation. 3rd year Heriot-Watt based CDT-EI student Gergely Hantos, worked on a project for Entomics, a biological waste valorisation company that transforms organic waste into high value agricultural products using insect larvae as a unique bioconversion engine. The objective was to create a predictive machine learning model that optimizes the bioconversion by predicting the daily waste intake of the larvae.

Gergely delivered a solution that worked with so little prediction error that Entomics was able to use the output immediately. The outcome of this project has opened up a specialised software engineer position at Entomics. A conference paper based on the work achieved was delivered for the First Symposium on Smart Systems Integration (SS1S) by Gergely on the 31st of August 2018 in Balatonvilágos, Hungary and is currently under review for publication in Periodica Polytechnica Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Cambridge Spark, the company delivering the course was also impressed by the work, and published a blog article about the project available here: Project Partner Case Study: Entomics that includes a video interview with Fotis Fotiadis, Co-Founder and CTO of Entomics.

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CDT-EI researchers had the opportunity to discuss their research and career aspirations Industrial Advisory Board and Industry Open Day

Cohort 1 researcher Adrian Ayastuy Rodriguez had the opportunity to meet HRH The Princess Royal and speak to her about his research during her recent visit to his co-sponsoring company, Moredun. The special visit was to celebrate Moredun’s partnership with the farming industry. More details about the visit can be found on Moredun website.

As members of the Digital Economy CDT Network CDT-EI researchers have participated in: ❖ Writing Retreats ❖ Entrepreneurship workshop ❖ Diversity Network Meetings ❖ Annual Showcase at the Digital Catapult ❖ 2018 Summer School

Features of the Year 16


Our Enterprising Researchers Digital Economy Network. Entrepreneurship workshop

Engineering YES Written by Rhys Comissiong

Orange Gao and Youssef Hamid took part in

As part of the CDT programme we take part in a unique set of training focusing on leadership, management and teamwork skills under the Transition Zone TM. Several CDT-EI students got the opportunity to apply these skills at Engineering YES 2017. The challenge consisted of two full days of training and mentoring before we pitched a business to a panel of judges on the final day in the form of a presentation.

experience which was a successful combination of workshops led by Prof. Philip Treleaven, from UCL and practical hands on business creation simulations. The round table workshops focused on entrepreneurship methodologies (i.e. Identifying your idea, branding and vision) and skills to acquire (e.g. Business model canvas, funding pitches). The PhD entrepreneurial journey was put in perspective by 4 real experience presentations where ExPhD students told the stories of their transition from a PhD student to a CEO or Confounders of their businesses.

The CDT-EI was formed by cohort 2 and 3 students including Rhys Comissiong (CEO), Marcus Pollard (Finance Director), Joel Earps (Research and Development Director), Robin Hamer (Commercial and Marketing Director) and Athanasios Pouchias (Operations Director).

Participants were encouraged to take a part 0f the Dragon's Den competition where teams of 4 to 5 PhD students pitched their new business ideas to the events organizational board. The £1000 prize winner idea “Cycle Rack” presented a mobile app offering London cycling commuters a safe and affordable parking spaces. The winning team included Youssef Hamid - CDT-EI, Alex Owen - Web Science CDT, Yitong Huang - Horizon CDT and Cristina Guerrero - IGGI CDT.

Even though we were pitching a fictional company for a fictional investment, we still applied the knowledge we had gained through the seminars and training sessions in finance, marketing strategies and intellectual property to develop a real and convincing business model. For this reason the competition was an invaluable experience to undertake during the PhD. In addition to our studies, we got the opportunity to see and understand the necessary steps in building a start-up company and what must be considered. One of the most insightful aspects of the competition was the ability to see and reflect upon other groups and other entrepreneurs work, and see what methods were successful in obtaining funding. As early career researchers gaining an understanding of this is truly valuable. Also, we had hours of personal mentoring with financial experts, business leaders and venture capitalists who were able to reflect upon their own experiences within obtaining and giving funding.

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The business was called ‘Intelligent Cold Engineering – ICE’ and aimed to reduce food waste within the cold store part of the supply chain through technology based on the internet of things and sensor-based intelligent management system.

I believe this was a fantastic opportunity to practice presentation and finance skills. However, what I was most grateful for was the opportunity to see how non-technical audiences interpret the work of the CDT. Embedded intelligence is a very technical field and often as PhD students we spend the majority of our time communicating with our technical audiences, often we can forget just how important it is to develop our communication skills to all audiences and understand what their agenda and take away might be. I would thoroughly recommend this experience to students in the other cohorts, but make sure you approach it with a positive attitude where your aim is to learn as much as possible from the experience, even in failure. This is a particularly important skill as an entrepreneur because if you aren’t failing, you aren’t trying hard enough.


Awards and Prizes

Christos Kouppas won the award of the best oral presentation in his session with title “Robot System Design and Path Planning” at The 3rd International Conference on Control and Robotics Engineering, ICCRE 2018.

Ian Park won the prize for ‘best PhD poster’ at Loughborough University School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering PGR Conference.

Matt Smith won the prize for ‘most aesthetic presentation’ earning him a signed copy of ‘Introduction to Human Factors and Ergonomics’ Fourth Edition by Robert Bridger and a cap at The Ergonomics & Human Factors Conference 2018 PhD Consortium.

Joe Holt was nominated by his peers for the ‘John Philips Contribution to Community Award’, which recognises the impact and efforts of a volunteer who has given much of their own time to improve the postgraduate experience at both campuses by creating a close-knit and supportive postgraduate community.

Athanasios Pouchias won ‘best oral presentation’ at the NSIRC Conference 2018 Luke Wilkinson won 1st prize in the Materials Category of the Royal Society of Chemistry Twitter poster competition #RSCposter. Above is the winning poster and @errantscience interpretation of his work.

Matt Smith and Gergely Hantos were awarded the first and second prizes at the Kaggle workshop for fine tuning a machine learning model and Gergely Hantos won first place of the 30 seconds elevator pitch at the "Comedy Workshop Presenting with Humour“ at the Digital Economy Network Summer School 2018.

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2018 Publications Kouppas, C., Meng, Q., King, M., Majoe, D., S.A.R.A.H.: The Bipedal Robot with Machine Learning Step Decision Making. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 379-384, July 2018. DOI: 10.18178/ijmerr.7.4.379-384 Kruiper, R., Vincent, J.F.V., Abraham, E., Soar, R.C., Konstas, I., Chen-Burger, J., Desmulliez, M.P.Y. (2018). Towards a Design Process for Computer-Aided Biomimetics. Biomimetics, Vol. 3(3), DOI: 10.3390/biomimetics3030014 Park, I.S., Middleton, R. J.C., Coggrave, C. R., Ruiz, P. D., Coupland, J. M. (2018). Characterization of the reference wave in a compact digital holographic camera. Applied Optics. 57, 1, A235-A241 DOI:10.1364/AO.57.00A235 Umer J, Morris N, Leighton M, Rahmani R, Howell-Smith S, Wild R, Rahnejat H (2017). Asperity Level Tribological Investigation of Automotive Bore Material and Coatings, Tribology International 117:131-140 DOI: 10.1016/j.triboint.2017.08.023 Turnbull R, Mohammad Pour M, rahmani R, rahnejat H, Offner G. (2017). Coupled Elastodynamics of Piston Compression Ring Subject to Sweep Excitation, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part K: Journal of Multi-body Dynamics, 2017, 231(3) 469-479 DOI: 10.1177/1464419317725942 Ladosz, P., Oh, H. & Chen, WH (2017). Trajectory Planning for Communication Relay Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Urban Dynamic Environments, Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems, 1-19. DOI: 10.1007/s10846-017-0484-y Ladosz, P., Coombes, M., Smith J., Hutchison M., 2018. A generic ROS-based System for Rapid Development and Testing of Algorithms for Autonomous Ground and Aerial Vehicles. Robot Operating System (ROS) The Complete Reference (Volume 3) DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-91590-6_4 Kruiper R., Vincent J.F.V., Chen-Burger J., Desmulliez M.P.Y. (2017). Towards Identifying Biological Research Articles in Computer-Aided Biomimetics. Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Living Machines 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 10384. Springer, Cham DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-63537-8_21 Kruiper R., Chen-Burger J., Desmulliez M.P.Y. (2016) Computer-Aided Biomimetics. Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems. Living Machines 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 9793. Springer, Cham DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-42417-0_13 C. Kouppas, M. Rodosthenous, N. Sagyndyk, Q. Meng, M. King, and D. Majoe, “Designing a novel bipedal Silent Agile Robust Autonomous Host (S.A.R.A.H),” UKRAS CONFERENCE: “ROBOTS WORKING FOR & AMONG US 2017, pp. 114–117.

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2017/18 Group Projects Over a period of 12 weeks our first year CDT-EI PhD researchers become consultants to an industrial partner. The team of researchers tackle a real-world challenge the company faces.

Sponsor

Title

CDT-EI Expertise Cesar Ruiz, Javier Garcia, AkzoNobel Underwater sensing tiles Lucas Kirschbaum Value Optimisation of a Glycerine Luke Wilkinson, Peter Croda Plc Process Stream De'Ath, Stephen Ward colour monitoring of patterned Javier Garcia, Peter C-TEX NTX Ltd fabric De'Ath, Shaun Smith IEQube NO2 and Temperature Simon Blackwell, Stephen Cundall Sensor Ward, Steven Hayward Jake Rankin, Lucas GenRev (UK) Ltd Overnight Delivery Bag/Box Kirschbaum, Luke Wilkinson David Spendlove, Maren IBM Reduce Bed Blocking in the NHS Schnieder, Wen Gu Lestercast Ltd

Research Rapid Prototypes

Jake Rankin, Matthew Smith, Simon Blackwell

Moog Group

New generation 6 axis sensor

Maren Schnieder, Shaun Smith, Steven Hayward, Temiloluwa Jegede

A huge thanks to our industry partners and supporters this year

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Foresight Seminars and Company Visits

Topic

Speaker

Being Right is Not Good Enough - Why knowledge management initiatives fail Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction based on Mechanical Design R&D to ROI £ - Monetising Data Science through digital transformation

Prof Ray Dawson, Loughborough University

Evolution in the Built Environment

Dr Ozak Esu, Cundall

Prof. Shigeki Sugano, Waseda University Peter Dean, Aviation Intelligence Ltd

The Future of the Information Business Steve Lockwood, IBM The Need for Intelligence in the Circular Economy Data Analytics and Smart Devices within Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Prof Martin Goosey, MTG Associates

Lifesaving Capsule Robots

Dr Pietro Valdastri, University of Leeds

David Belton, Quentis

Right: Site visit to The MTC, Coventry “The day allowed me to gain insight into the work taking place at The MTC: 3D printing, metrology, robotic and AR/VR and the ethos of the organisation. A particular highlight was the tour of the MTC technology workshop and being able to virtually manipulate jet engines using their VR suite. Furthermore the visit to the MTC enabled my to make contact with their electronics department's staff which could potentially lead to a collaboration towards my PhD Project”

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Youssef Hamid, Cohort 3

Above: Site visit to Ordnance Survey, Southampton “We very much welcomed the opportunity to host the students for a day and provide an overview of OS data collection, processing, product and research activities. It was a positive experience both ways. Our presenters certainly appreciated being able to discuss their work with such an engaged group” by Nick Groome at Ordnance Survey.


Work with us

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General enquiries w w w. c d t - e i . o r g cdt-ei@lboro.ac.uk 01509 227 688

Engage with us @CDT_EI /cdtei epsrc-cdt-in-embedded-intelligence


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