CDT-EI Annual Report 2018-2020 #4

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Annual Report 2020


Contents

Our Research Themes

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Welcome from the Directors

4- 8

Current and Graduated Student Researchers

9-12

CDT Training Activities: Transition Zone

13-21

Student Activities, events and dissemination

22-24

PhD and ILM Graduations

25-28

Advocacy in Digital Manufacturing, Post-

Graduate Training and Robotics and Intelligent Systems 29

Supporting the fight against Covid-19

30

Showcasing our Alumni

31-33

Publications

34

Collaborate with us

35

Contact details and where to find us

Design for EI

TM

Packaging & Interconnect

Intelligent Software Applications Engineering

Manufacturing Solutions

System Services


‌ from the Directors What a year ! Since we last reported the EPSRC CDT in Embedded Intelligence has seen our last cohort enrolled, students from cohorts 2-3 graduate and others enrich their academic experience with placements and secondments in Industry.

The disruption created by the global pandemic has not stopped our researchers continue their training and, sometimes remotely for longer than intended, they have been able to continue their research and PhD journey. Our students have made the most out of the digital tools to love, work, research and interact during these uncertain times. This report brings you examples of some of the activities by our researchers and stakeholders and news about the Centre. Hoping for a healthy and prosperous end of this year 2020 for us all.

Prof Paul Conway Director

Dr Carmen TorresSanchez Executive Director

Dr Keith Brown Co-Director

Dr David Flynn Co-Director

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Graduated (or pending graduation – postponed due to C-19) Joe Holt

Mohamed Alrefaie

Pawel Ladosz

Dimitrios Pantazis

Jamal Umer

Co-Sponsor: Far UK Ltd

Co-Sponsor: BMW

Co-Sponsor: multi-partner consortium

Co-Sponsor: HSSMI

Co-Sponsor: BP

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

Deploying Future Materials for Responsive Car Interiors

Support Autonomous Operation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems with Computer Vision

M2M Wireless Intelligence

Lubricant-surface system for IC engines

Finalised his studies and graduated

Finalised his studies and graduated

Finalised his studies and graduated

Finalised his studies and graduated

CONGRATULATIONS JOE !!

CONGRATULATIONS MOHAMED !!

CONGRATULATIONS PAWEL !!

Finalised his studies and successfully examined – pending graduation (delayed due to the C-19 disruption

CONGRATULATIONS JAMAL !!

CONGRATULATIONS DIMITRIOS !!

Adrian Ayastuy-Rodriguez

Tobias Reichold

Co-Sponsor: Moredun Institute

Co-Sponsor: Renishaw

Smart Sensors for Detection of Lack of Appetite in Cattle

High-speed micro 3D metrology

Finalised his studies and successfully examined – pending graduation (delayed due to the C-19 disruption

Finalised his studies and successfully examined – pending graduation (delayed due to the C-19 disruption

CONGRATULATIONS ADRIAN !!

CONGRATULATIONS TOBIAS !!

David Czerski Co-Sponsor: Renishaw Remote sensing and positioning by using Galfenol on remotely powered surface wave acoustic devices Finalised his studies and successfully examined for an MPhil – pending graduation (delayed due to the C-19 disruption

Robert Turnbull

Zhao Gao

Co-Sponsor: AVL GmbH

Co-sponsor: Arm

Elastohydrodynamic lubrication in piston-ring pack assemblies

Finalised his studies and graduated

CONGRATULATIONS ROB !!

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

Finalised her studies and examined – pending graduation

CONGRATULATIONS DAVID !! CONGRATULATIONS ORANGE !!

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Examined (pending graduation – postponed due to C-19)

Completed studies and awaiting examination

Athanasios Pouchias

Ruben Kruiper

Gajarajan Sivayogan

Ian Park

Co-Sponsor: TWI

Co-Sponsor: Freeform Construction

Co-Sponsor: AVL GmbH

Co-Sponsor: Taylor Hobson

Tribo-dynamic analysis of bevel and hypoid gears

Coherent Measurement of Surface Geometry on a Large Scale

Thesis submitted, awaiting decision

Thesis submitted, awaiting decision

Rhys Comissiong

Melanie Zimmer

RTM Process Monitoring and Predictive Analysis Finalised her studies and examined – pending graduation

Development of an ontology in biomimetics using concepts of classical problem solving Finalised her studies and examined – pending graduation

CONGRATULATIONS THANOS !! CONGRATULATIONS RUBEN !!

Co-Sponsor: Caterpillar Finding optimal sensor and actuator configurations

Research Extension

Co-Sponsor: HSSMI Multi-agent negotiation strategies for dynamic energy reduction in manufacturing Research Extension

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Cohort 3 - In write-up period

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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

Adam Kaye

Co-sponsor: EDF

Co-sponsor: Mactaggart Scott

Co-sponsor: DETC

Co-sponsor: GE Druck

Co-sponsor: PEL Electronics

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

Ink-jet Printing Antennas on 3D Curved Surfaces (cohort 2)


Active students - Cohort 4 Temi Jegede

Jake Rankin

Javier Garcia

Lucas Kirschbaum

Luke Wilkinson

Co-sponsor: Jaguar Land Rover

Co-sponsor: J C Bamford Excavators

Co-sponsor : Airquick Ltd

Co-sponsor: Baker Hughes

Co-sponsor: H.K Wentworth

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

Peter De'Ath

Steven Hayward

Co-sponsor: Ford

Co-sponsor: Ordnance Survey

Co-sponsor: Jaguar Land Rover

Co-sponsor: Innospec

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

Optimisation Studies for Acid Chloride Synthesis and Scale-up

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

High Performance Computing for Powertrain Control Applications

Optimising Encapsulation Resin Levels for the Electronics Sector

Stephen Ward Co-sponsor: INMM - IN MANIBUS MEIS Real-time biomedical physiological sensing for first responders or exposed workers

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Active students - Cohort 5 Anthony A. Adole

Hazel Carlin

Jack Prior

Zhu Zhou

Nelson Carlos de Sousa Campos

Co-sponsor: Surface Intelligence Ltd

Co-sponsor: Ford

Co-sponsor: AVL

Co-sponsor: Sichuan Dacheng

Co-sponsor: ARM Holdings

Hand-drawn Document Cognitive Systems

Using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) to support end-to-end visibility of a supply chain

Cognitive Computing for Automotive Design and Development

Simultaneous multi-thermal sensing for electrochemical energy devices

Framework for efficient Image Processing algorithm development in conjunction with rapid prototyping on FPGA

Lei Jiang

Paul LĂźckemann

Mert Bektas

Ryan Williamson

Yang Zhou

Co-sponsor: Suke Intel

Co-sponsor: Ping Golf

Co-sponsor: ARM

Co-sponsor: HSSMI

Co-sponsor: Witted SRL

Deep learning based object detection under occlusion and its embedded software implementation

Development of an intelligent motion capture system to transform golf club engineering

Framework for rapid prototyping of Convolutional Neural Networks on FPGA

Design and development of supply chain neural networks using AI for reconfigurability and 5G for smart and secure communications

Building embedded intelligence for curiosity driven underwater robotics for target exploration

Zain Shafiq

Co-sponsor: Leonardo

Intelligent Calibration of Active Antennas for Radar Applications

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Writing Retreat and Induction Week for Cohort 5 The Burn, Scotland


Annual Lecture 2019 – This year’s theme: Cybersecurity “Everything is Awesome!!!” or is it? Cyber Security Risks in Critical Infrastructure Industrial Control Systems play an important role in the monitoring, control, and automation of critical infrastructure such as water, gas, oil, and electricity. Recent years have seen a number of high profile cyber attacks on such infrastructure exemplified by Stuxnet and the Ukrainian Power Grid attacks. How should we manage cyber security risks in such infrastructure on which the day-to-day functioning of our society relies?

Prof Rashid discussed insights on the complexity of managing security in a landscape shaped by competing demands from stakeholders, e.g., managers, control engineers, enterprise IT personnel and field site operators, and how security decision-making patterns of the various stakeholders contrast with that of security experts.

Our Speaker:

Prof Awais Rashid is Professor of Cyber Security at University of Bristol. His research focuses on cyber security of large-scale connected infrastructure systems, taking an integrated view of technical and human factors. He heads the Cyber Security Group at Bristol and is Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Trust, Identity, Privacy and Security in Large-Scale Infrastructures (TIPS-atScale).


Industry Advisory Board – Cohorts networking and ‘Transition Out’ events Industry Advisory Board and Student Exhibition Our students presented their work to the Industrial advisory Board when they visited for the last Board Meeting. The poster exhibition was also an opportunity to showcase progress made by the students with their research and some shared plans for commercial applications or product development plans.

Dealing with Stakeholders As part of the ‘Transition Out’ programme of the ‘Transition Zone’, our students are trained on practical aspects in the dealings with those outside university or a research environment.

Coaching skills in the workplace environment Our ‘Transition Zone’ training programme is certified by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM). One of the strands of training and practicals is on Coaching as a tool to lead and manage (self- and others). Our students are trained in the various aspects of this prowerful tool that they can put into practice during their PhD studies and once they graduate and join the job market.

Networking events Current students had the opportunity to discuss professional careers and opportunities with our industrial sponsors at various events throughout the year.

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Annual Conference – UK RAS Network 2019 The Centre for Embedded Intelligence at Loughborough university was proud to play host to the UK

Robotics and

Autonomous Systems (UKRAS) Network’s annual conference. The UKRAS19 Conference on Embedded Intelligence UK took place on the 24th of January and the conference attracted over 130 delegates on the day. The programme included 12 paper presentations, 25 poster presentations and 4 plenary speakers:

Dr Slava Chesnokov, Senior Technical Director, Media Imaging, ARM, “ARM computational platforms for CV/Image Processing for future Robots: NN accelerator vs. fixed NN HW”; Prof. Tom Duckett, Professor of Robotics & Autonomous Systems Director, Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (L-CAS) “The Future of Robotic Agriculture”; Dr. Séverin Lemaignan, Senior Research

Fellow at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, “Robots for education: from social to non-social, a look at the challenges of tomorrow”; and Prof. Barry Lennox, Professor of Applied Control School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering /Dalton

Nuclear Institute, “Development of Robotic Systems for Nuclear Applications”.

Best Poster-paper:

“A Novel Wireless Measurement While drilling System for Geotechnical and Geophysical Applications” by: Moutaz Khater, Waleed Al-Nuaimy

Best Research-paper:

“Dynamic, Anytime Task and Path Planning for Mobile Robots” by Cuebong Wong, Erfu Yang, Xiu Yan, Dongbing Gu For more information on the event: https://www.ukras.org/news/ukras19-conference-on-embedded-intelligence

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A year in the life of a CDT-EI student researcher: Student activities ICPS 2019 Our cohort 2 student, Melanie Zimmer, attended the joint IEEE International Conference on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS2019) and IEEE International Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems (MFI2019) at the beginning of May to present part of her research work. Melanie says: “The conference was held over a total of four days and provided a nice balance between academia and industry. Sept One of the main focuses of the conference was on how industrial cyber-physical systems and services can be designed and deployed by industry. The event started with the IEEE International Industrial Summit on Robot Operating System (ROS) 2.0. During this summit, different keynote speakers from companies such as ADLINK Technology, NVIDIA, Microsoft and academic representatives from the National Taiwan University or Fraunhofer IPA covered aspects ranging from the future Jun Dec developments of ROS to industrial applications. One interesting announcement was the support for ROS on Windows and Visual Studio that has been officially released as this will open further possibilities for ROS developers. For the second and third day, additional industry-focused events had been organised for the first half of the respective day, discussing the topics of “AIOT and Robotics Activating Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems on Intelligent Manufacturing New Biz” and “Engineering Systems of Cyber-Physical Systems”. The remaining afternoon sessions on both days and the whole of Thursday were filled with conference presentations.

Mar

When presenting my own work, it was very encouraging to receive positive feedback from attendees, and importantly, to get told that the work I am currently focusing on is seen as having great potential to help operators on the shop floor with their processes.”

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A year in the life of a CDT-EI student researcher: Student activities ICONAN 2019 Our cohort 3 student

Marcus Pollard presented his work at ICONAN in Munich earlier this year.

Marcus says: “I recently had the opportunity to present my work at the International Conference on Nanomedicine and Nanobiotechnology (ICONAN) in Munich, I gave an oral presentation entitled: Miniaturized Nanopore Reader for Single Nanoparticle Detection and Analysis. The conference presented a great opportunity to see potential future applications for my work in the world of nanomedcine, as well I was able to meet and discuss these potential applications with the other attendees both industrial and academic. The plenary talks and workshops featured a variety of speakers, the talks which I enjoyed the most were about commercialisation of research and setting up spin out companies which were given by academics who had been through the process themselves. Overall, the conference was a great experience and I would highly recommend anyone with an interest to attend next year.”

Gas Analysis Symposium and Exhibitions 2019

Matthew Hammond (Cohort 3) recently attended the 10th Edition of the Gas Analysis Symposium in

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The Hague, Netherlands. The conference was attended by a variety of technical staff and researchers, as well as equipment manufacturers and end users to hear the latest developments in the analysis of gases. This year’s topics included natural gas and biogas, gas cylinders, health and safety, and standardisation, with a variety of speakers and a poster session. On the middle day of the conference, a social event was organised at a Scheveningen beach bar, with a BBQ and live music. Matthew presented his research on “Solid Formation in Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)”, being carried out at his cosponsor, EffecTech Ltd., who had three other speakers and a poster at the conference. The presentation covered the issues with freeze out of contamination in LNG production facilities, and the new experimental data Matthew has been collecting giving a unique insight into the behaviour of the solids. EffecTech were well represented at the conference; Matthew’s supervisor, Dr Paul Holland, presented a new cylinder design for LPG/NGL reference liquids, addressing the issues of performance and cost associated with current technologies. Gergely Vargha presented a new micro-preparation valve for the highly accurate preparation of very low amounts of components in gas mixtures, and Adam Lomax presented his work on dynamic performance evaluations of inferential natural gas quality instruments. Dr Joey Walker had a poster on developments in EffecTech’s LNG calibration facility. “The conference was a great opportunity to network with experts in a variety of areas in gas metrology and learn about the latest developments. In my session, there were several other presentations on LNG which were relevant to my research, and some interesting conversations were had. I enjoyed the experience of presenting at an international conference and meeting with industry professionals.”


A year in the life of a CDT-EI student researcher: Student activities Web Science Summer School 2019

Hazel Carlin

Our cohort 5 student attended the WSTNet. Hazel says: “I attended the Web Science Summer School, run by the Web Science Trust Network (WSTNet) and hosted by the Web Science Institute at Southampton University. It is an annual event and this year it covered topics of interest to me, such as data science and machine learning. There were only 12 full-time attendees who were mainly PhD students. The first day was focussed on ‘Web Science and AI’. There was a keynote speech by Prof Susan Halford on Web Science from a social science perspective. We were later given group projects based around using OpenStreetMap. My group had to investigate using it for town planning. There was a poster session in the evening. A couple of people were using machine learning in the fields of biochemistry and someone else was looking at the history of innovation in the web. Tuesday had an introduction to different types of machine learning and we had a tutorial which was based on Python. In the tutorial, a model was created to learn whether a set of ‘tweets’ were insults or neutral. The session was very short but the material gave a flavour of what can be done and it can be reviewed at a later date. On Wednesday, we focussed on ethics. There was an interesting lecture by a Philosophy lecturer about the risks of AI, such as threats to privacy, discrimination and fake data. Then we had a fascinating talk about biometrics by Professor Mark Nixon. His interest area was gait analysis. Then there was a workshop on ‘how to advise’. After hearing how it should be done, we went into groups and looked into the issues around facial recognition. The Office for National Statistics ran a workshop on ethical AI, where we thought of issues for using face recognition for identifying criminal-like behaviour. Thursday was spent at the Data Observatory at the Data Science Institute of Imperial College. We were shown the observatory by Prof Yike Guo. Several screens displayed large diagrams and visualisations of data, for example a map of wind speed and polluting sources over a city and a real-time display of bitcoin payments. Then we installed the OVE maps software but there was no time to use it. Afterwards we went to the GCHQ exhibition at the Science Museum which also had a section on machine learning for surveillance purposes. On Friday we presented our group project findings and then there was a keynote speech by Prof Dame Wendy Hall. She discussed a bit about the beginnings of the web and how it has developed. A social credit score has been suggested and possibly tested in China, to attempt to restrict online crimes. Finally there was a seminar on using digital twins to monitor infrastructure by Dr Matthew West of Information Junction. I found that the summer school was a good combination of lectures and practical sessions. I was able to re-visit concepts that I’d already studied and found out what other people were doing in these fields. The lectures gave plenty of thoughts on how data can be mis-used. The wealth of topics that we covered has given me further ideas on where my research can lead.”

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A year in the life of a CDT-EI student researcher: Student activities Deep Learning Summer School 2019 Cohort 5 student

Nelson de Sousa Campos attended the Deep Learning Summer School in Warsaw.

Nelson says: “Attending the Deep Learning Summer School in Warsaw was an opportunity to stay up to date with what is happening in both industry and academia. The topics that piqued my interest were audio and video processing applications using deep learning. What caught my attention the most was the lecture by a professor from the University of Alabama who was using high-level synthesis for machine learning applications using FPGAs. Furthermore, I used the opportunity to catch up and network on LinkedIn with a research engineer from Fraunhofer in Germany who shares similar interests and have worked in Nvidia at San Francisco.”

Cohort 5 student

Yang Zhou also attended the Deep Learning Summer School.

Yang says: “I spent one week in Warsaw for DeepLearn2019 training which focuses on the advanced deep learning algorithms and applications. The background of invited speakers covered from academia such as University of Florida to industry like Amazon, Google. During this week, the lectures deepened my understanding and insights to computer vision applications by deep learning, which is relevant to my PhD career. Moreover, it was an opportunity for me to network with researchers around the world, to discuss the artificial intelligence topics and to exchange the ideas.”

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A year in the life of a CDT-EI student researcher: Student activities European Academy of Design Conference 2019 Cohort 4 student

Mathew Smith attended the European Academy of Design Conference.

Mathew says: “The purpose was to attend the 13th European Academy of Design Conference to view the state of the art of more niche design research and to host a workshop that investigates the use of design methods to consider alternative forms of designing. As I was hosting a workshop, I was invited to a PhD gathering where I met fellow PhD students and had the opportunity to ask questions to leading Design Research academics. We took part in a number of activities, including attempting to draw out PhDs in a short space of time. We had to prepare a profile prior to the gathering. Mine, along side the others, can be found at: https://issuu.com/snevay/docs/ead_phd_journal_june2019 Following on from this was the conference proper. It was a four-day event with a huge number of paper tracks and a number of workshops (including mine). My workshop was on the 11th, it was positively received, and participants found it intriguing and engaging. One participant even mentioned that they may us my methods. I met a number of leading academics, including Rob Phillips from the RCA and Franaz Nickpour from Liverpool University who taught me during my undergrad. I hope to soon visit the RCA to discuss my work further. I also was in a group run by Claire Craig from Sheffield Hallam University who responded to questions and gave advice about undertaking a PhD. There were a number of networking meals including a trip to a Scottish Castle for the conference dinner and ceilidh (I did not dance) and a visit to the only V&A outside of London. Dundee was also recently voted UNESCO city of design.�

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A year in the life of a CDT-EI student researcher: Student activities

Pattern recognition and intelligent systems 2020

On the 30th July 2020, our Cohort 5 student Tony Adole was able to attend a virtual conference during the lockdown. This was an international conference on Pattern Recognition and Intelligent systems (PRIS) which was meant to be held in Greece but due to the pandemic, was moved to an online conference. The conference aims to present the latest research related to pattern recognition, intelligent systems and other related topics. Participants at the online conference were able to exchange ideas by the using oral presentation and poster presentation so they could establish a professional relationship that could enable future collaborations. At the online conference, attendees were informed that all registered and presented papers would be included into the volume of ACM international conference Proceeding series and it would be submitted to EI Compendex, Thomson Reuters (WoS) and other databases for review and indexing. For the conference, Tony presented his research on Faster RCNN Inception resnet v2 on Kanji handwriting characters. Due to the nature of his presented research and virtual presentation using a poster medium , his research direction was easily understood which provided him the opportunity to win the best Poster award. Many Congratulations Tony!

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A year in the life of a CDT-EI student researcher: Student activities The 24th international conference on applications of natural language to information systems 26–28 June 2019, at the University of Salford, MediaCityUK Campus, United Kingdom

Melanie Zimmer

Our student attended the NLDB2019 conference held at the University of Salford. The conference was first established in 1995 and gives the community interested in applications of Natural Language in the field of Information Systems a platform to come together. The conference covered topics such as information search and topic extraction, classification and sentiment analysis across the various fields of medicine, e-commerce, and social media. In addition to the presentation of the accepted papers, two talks of invited speakers were given: Robert Stevens from the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester shared his experience in bio-ontologies, and Vijayan Sugumaran from the Department of Decision and Information Sciences at Oakland University talked about detecting different states of emergency events using Web resources to help social groups and first responders handle these events effectively. The proceedings of the conference can be accessed here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-23281-8 More information can be found here: https://www.salford.ac.uk/conferencing-at-salford/conference-management/current-conference/nldb-conference-2019

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A year in the life of a CDT-EI student researcher: Student activities

Oil & Gas Focus Group Meeting, 21st May 2020, online Matthew Hammond presented at the Oil & Gas Focus Group Meeting. The meetings are normally run two to three times a year by TUV-SUD, switching between venues in Norwich and Aberdeen.

Matthew says: "I presented at last years’ meeting in Norwich and was selected to present at this year’s event alongside two other presenters. This year, the meeting was held online for the first time using Microsoft Teams. I presented on a slightly different topic to my PhD project; gas quality measurement challenges in a hydrogen economy. It was quite relaxing presenting from my own home but strange not being able to see the audience. Martin Hanton from TÜV SÜD National Engineering Laboratory also gave a presentation on hydrogen which shows that emphasis is shifting towards renewable energy even in the Oil & Gas sector. Martin talked about hydrogen measurement but from a flow metering perspective, so it was interesting to hear a different side to that topic. At its peak, the number of participants reached around 60 which was a good turnout for the first virtual meeting. The downside of virtual conferences is not being able to talk face to face with the other participants. Overall, everything went smoothly, particularly with the presentation handovers which can sometimes be a technical challenge. I look forward to attending or presenting at future Oil & Gas Focus Group meetings, virtually or in person."

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A year in the life of a CDT-EI student researcher: Student activities

Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2020 Cohort 4 student, Matt Smith attended the Doctoral Consortium on 9th and 10th of July 2020 which took place online due to the pandemic. The event was hosted by Kristina Höök (KTH), Mark Blythe (Northumbria University), and Caroline Hummels (TU/e). Matt says ‘The Doctoral Consortium consisted of going through each of the twelve student attendees’ work, discussing, offering ideas, references, and asking questions about the contributions of the work and next steps. There was also time spent discussing general elements of PhDs and career planning beyond the PhD. This event was hosted during the Designing Interactive System (DIS) conference. The theme of this conference was “beyond human-centred design” which align exceptionally well with my work. The Doctoral Consortium provided me with contacts (which may already be turning into collaborations), they helped me to reflect on how my PhD is going to constitute a contribution to knowledge, and began the process of considering post-PhD/postdoc opportunities and strategies.’

The paper Matt submitted was also put into the companion proceedings, it can be found here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3393914.3395832

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PhD Graduations

Congratulations to all those who have graduated Dr. Joseph Holt now a Development Engineer at Coventive Composites “Many thanks for your continued support throughout my studies. This

programme was fantastic and I’m proud to say I graduated through the CDT-EI!”

Dr. Mohamed Taher Alrefaie Specialist in Artificial Intelligence and founder of Premio.AI “The experiences during my PhD studies at the CDT-EI made me realise how much I can do with the skills I acquired and improved during those years.”

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The Transition Zone TM

Understanding Innovation and Change in an Organisation

Managing Workplace Projects

Leading and Motivating a Team Effectively

Understanding Good Practice in Workplace Coaching

Managing Yourself

Enterprise Awareness

Congratulations to all those who have passed the ILM assignments! 23


The Transition Zone TM

Huge congratulations to Matthew Hammond, Tobias Reichold and Melanie Zimmer for achieving Level 3 Certificate in Leadership & Management from the ILM !

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Advocacy in Digital Manufacturing, Robotics and Intelligent Systems, and promoting the Transition Zone™ Training Programme abroad Digital Innovation in Manufacturing - Roadmap to Recovery The day event organised by the UKTech Cluster Group (https://uktechclustergroup.com/) was aimed to discuss how to tackle the issues stemming from the Covid-19 disruption and what practical plans the public sector should put in place by utilising the tech & the start-up communities across the UK. One of the afternoon sessions was dedicated to understanding international recovery programmes and to learn from best practices. The Executive Director of the EPSRC CDT in Embedded Intelligence, Dr Carmen Torres-

Sanchez, was invited to contribute to the ‘Tech for smart manufacturing’ Panel facilitated by David Hardman MBE, iCentrum Managing Director, in the Supporting the Entire Economy session. Other speakers of that panel included: Julia Sutcliffe (Chief Technologist and Director Air Labs at BAE Systems), Nick Wright (Head of Manufacturing Industries, Digital Catapult), and Sophie Hallet-Jones (CEO of Protean Advanced). The event programme can be found here. https://uktechclustergroup.com/the-recovery-roadmap-summit/

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EPSRC UK-RAS Network Committee Meeting The Committee of the UK-RAS Network met during the 2020 UK Robotics Week (https://www.ukras.org/robotics-week/) to discuss, amongst other items on collaboration, partnerships and digital infrastructure, the activity ongoing at a National and International level on Robotics and Autonomous Systems this year that is showcased during the Robotics Week. This year the Covid-19 disruption has moved all activities online but this was a good opportunity to learn more about and celebrate the successes of the Network this past year (link to video: https://youtu.be/Uou_RHj8EvA) The UK-RAS Network committee wished everybody a Happy Robotics Week! (https://twitter.com/UKRobotics/status/1276806236709756930) The Network brings together the UK’s core academic capabilities in robotics innovation under national coordination and encourages academic and industry collaboration to accelerate the development and adoption of RAS.

The EPSRC UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) Network (https://www.ukras.org/) was established in March 2015 with the mission to provide academic leadership in RAS, expand collaboration with industry and integrate and coordinate activities at eight Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded RAS capital facilities, four Centres of Doctoral Training (CDTs) of which the CDT in Embedded Intelligence is one of them, and with 30 partner universities across the UK.

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Conference and Exposition of the American Society for Engineering Education The 126th edition of the Annual Conference and Exposition of the American Society for Engineering Education took place in Tampa, Florida from 16th to 19th June 2019.

We look forward to continuing discussing with our colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic ideas and initiatives to shape the PhD degree of the future.

The CDT-EI executive team was invited to attend and participate in the panel 'Non-traditional PhDs', a session dedicated to novel formulas and upcoming new ways of running PhDs, in particular with a strong industry-facing flavour. Other participants in the panel, moderated by Prof M Dyrenfurth, were academic leads of graduates programmes, were from Purdue U, John Hopkins U and Texas A&M U. The CDT-EI Executive Director Dr Carmen Torres-Sรกnchez

presented the Transition Zone ethos, which scaffolds the training component of the PhD done under the CDT-EI umbrella. The full paper can be found here:

https://www.asee.org/public/conferences/140/papers/27849/vie w As an academic-led industry-informed PhD programme, the colleagues in the States found interesting the emphasis we put on preparing industry-ready graduates and the 'T-shape' approach to a scholarly piece of research coupled with the exposure to other disciplines so the PhD researchers are conversant with other disciplines other than their PhD topic, including business.

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The 'Transition Zone' presented at the 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Experience Our paper entitled ‘A Doctorate That Works: Non-traditional Populations Served on Both Sides of the Atlantic’ was presented on the 25th June 2020 at the Online and Professional Graduate Programs session of this year’s ASEE Annual Conference and Exhibition. This paper is a collaboration between the EPSRC CDT in Embedded Intelligence and American universities such as Purdue University and Texas A&M University who offer PhD programmes tailored for students with an entrepreneurial spirit, eager to conduct industry-inspired projects with industrial collaborators, and with an impactful agenda in mind for the student’s PhD research. Details about this collaborative work can be found here: https://www.asee.org/public/conferences/172/papers/30121/view.%20 The paper will shortly be found here: https://www.asee.org/public/conferences/172/papers/30121/view

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Student Article: Hugo Bell supporting the fight against Covid-19 virus As part of the National response to the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic, I decided to take a temporary leave of absence from my PhD research to take up a role at the Alderley Park Lighthouse Lab COVID Testing Program, one of the three mega-labs part of the UK’s Track and Trace system. My role within the lab was primarily to handle and transfer potentially hazardous patient samples, into the elution plates. As this workstation could not be automated, like the other workstations, it became the major limiting step at the lab and therefore required the largest workforce in order to ensure every patient sample could be processed within or as close to the 24-hour turn around promised by the testing program.

Joining the testing program early on, when the lab was still in its very primitive stages of development, was extremely eye-opening in understanding the processes required to set up a high-throughput clinical lab, and what a career in such a setting could be for me. This high-throughput lab was designed to process up to ~25,000 patient samples, running approximately ~250 PCR plates, spread over a 3-shift rotation over a 24-hour period. As of the 13th of July (day I left) we had processed over 1 million samples, a figure I am immensely proud to know that I had contributed to. 29


Our Alumni

Ian Park

Nick Turner

Principal Engineer at MBDA

Joined Hitachi Information Control Systems Europe as Systems Engineer

“I joined Frazer-Nash and now MBDA to explore industrial applications of my academic and research expertise and skills. I enjoy past-pacing environments where I have to learn quickly and analyse lots of data to inform my decision”

“Being enrolled in the CDT-EI programme allowed me to be spotted by them. Embedded Intelligence is a hot topic and talent is short”

Rhys Comissiong

Jenny Lantair

Researcher in Adaptive Online Optimisation Loughborough University

Software Developer at Developing IT Ltd

“During my PhD studies in the CDT-EI I got involved in research projects that have given me the opportunity to expand my skill set and research at the interface with industry”

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“My skills as a Computer teacher and my experience at the Smart Systems Group are a great combination now that I am developing software with a purpose and to help other companies achieve their goals”


Publications Torres-Sanchez C., Norrito M., Wang J., Bell H., Zani L., Conway P.P., “Physico-chemical characterisation of Ti-Nb-Sn alloys surfaces and their osteogenic properties”, Surfaces & Coatings Technology Journal, DOI: 10.1016/j.surfcoat.2020.126439 Holt J.A, Blackwell S., Zani L., Torres-Sanchez C., “Comparison of elastic properties of low-density polymeric foams determined by ultrasonic wave propagation and quasi-static mechanical testing”, Materials Letters, Volume 263, 15 March 2020, 127243, DOI: 10.1016/j.matlet.2019.127243 Gu W, Zhao D, Mason B. A review of intelligent road preview methods for energy management of hybrid vehicles[J]. IFACPapersOnLine, 2019, 52(5): 654-660, DOI: 10.1016/j.ifacol.2019.09.104 Lantair, J. Towards Integrating Formal Verification of Autonomous Robots with Battery Prognostics and Health Management https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-30446-1_6 Zimmer, M, Al-Yacoub, A, Ferreira, P, Lohse, N (2020) Towards Human-Chatbot Interaction: A Virtual Assistant for the Rampup Process. In 3rd UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems Conference (UKRAS 2020), University of Lincoln (virtual), 17 Apr 2020. – ACCEPTED FOR PRESENTATION https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/Towards_human-chatbot_interaction_a_virtual_assistant_for_the_rampup_process/12091137 Foley, B, Ferreira, P, Zimmer, M (2020) Towards Gamification of the Ramp-up Process for Industry 4.0. In 3rd UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems Conference (UKRAS 2020), University of Lincoln (virtual), 17 Apr 2020. – ACCEPTED FOR PRESENTATION https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/Towards_gamification_of_the_ramp-up_process_for_Industry_4_0/12098079

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Publications Matthew Lee-Smith (2019) Designing Diverse Design Dogmas, Deliberately: Using aspects of Design on its practitioners to set the challenge of imagining alternative ways of designing., The Design Journal, 22:sup1, 2197-2201, DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2019.1595010 Matthew Lee-Smith, Tracy Ross, Martin Maguire, Fung Po Tso, Jeremy Morley, and Stefano Cavazzi. 2019. What Can We Expect from Navigating?: Exploring Navigation, Wearables and Data Through Critical Design Concepts. In Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion (DIS '19 Companion). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 237-244. DOI: 10.1145/3301019.3323889 Matthew Lee-Smith, Tracy Ross, Martin Maguire, Fung Po Tso, Jeremy Morley, and Stefano Cavazzi. 2019. The Data Hungry Home: Defining, Populating, Feeding, and Beyond. In Proceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium 2019 (HTTF 2019), November 19–20, 2019, Nottingham, United Kingdom. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 10 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3363384.3363390

Meng Q, Jiang L, Bangli L and Deng Y. Assembling Convolution Neural Networks for Automatic Viewing Transformation. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8827292&tag=1 Gu W, Zhao D, Mason B. Real-time modelling and parallel optimisation of a gasoline direct injection engine[C]//2019 American Control Conference (ACC). IEEE, 2019: 5544-5549, DOI: 10.23919/acc.2019.8814359

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Publications Smith, S., Knowles, J., and Mason, B., "A Bifurcation Analysis of an Open Loop Internal Combustion Engine," SAE Technical Paper 2019-01-0194, 2019, https://doi.org/10.4271/2019-01-0194. Y. Hamid, D. A. Hutt, D. C. Whalley, and R. Craddock, “Effect of Thin Film Interconnect Inelasticity on MEMS Pressure Sensor Hysteresis,” in Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Sensors and Electronic Instrumentation Advances (SEIA' 2019), Tenerife (Canary Islands), 25-27 September 2019, pp. 174–176 Pouchias A, Cunningham P, Stein J, Kazilas M. Development of a Flexible Dielectric Sensor for Flow Monitoring of Liquid Resin Infusion Process. https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/19/23/5292

Y. Hamid, D. A. Hutt, D. C. Whalley, and R. Craddock, “Packaging Effects on MEMS Pressure Sensor Hysteresis” in the proceedings of the 21st IEEE Electronics Packaging Technology Conference (EPTC), Singapore, 4-6 Decembre 2019, pp. 111– 115. van Lopik, K., Schnieder, M., Sharpe, R., Sinclair, M., Hinde, C., Conway, P., West, A., Maguire, M. (2020). Comparison of insight and handheld navigation devices toward supporting industry 4.0 supply chains: First and last mile deliveries at the human level. Applied Ergonomics, 82(August 2019), 102928. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2019.102928 Lantair, J .UAS Operators Safety and Reliability Survey : Emerging Technologies Towards the Certification of Autonomous UAS

Adole, Anthony. Edirisinghe, Eran. Li,Baihua, Bearchell. Chris (2020). “Investigation of Faster-RCNN Inception Resnet V2 on Offline Kanji Handwriting Characters”. https://www.engineeringvillage.com/share/document.url?mid=cpx_41064602174d6660ab0M767110178163190&database =cpx&view=abstract 33


Work with us

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General enquiries w w w. c d t - e i . o rg cdt-ei@lboro.ac.uk 01509 227 687

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

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