Building Safety Into Robots, Cars, Planes And Medical Equipment

Daily Science Journal (Feb. 2, 2008) — A revolutionary new technology developed by engineers at the University of Leicester after over 12 years research promises to make safety a sure thing in equipment as diverse as cars, aircraft and medical equipment.

TE Systems: Left to right: Devaraj Ayavoo, John Gordon, Anjali Das at the driving simulator and Michael Pont. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Leicester)

The new patented technology invented by the researchers has led to the development of a new product family called "RapidiTTy". A company -- TTE Systems Ltd - has been spun out from the University of Leicester to develop and market this product.

TTE Systems Ltd aims to transform the way engineers develop systems which contain "embedded processors". Aircraft, cars, medical equipment and industrial robots are all examples of modern systems which contain such processors. Many of these embedded systems are safety related.

The company believes its new technology can make all the difference between life and death in some scenarios.

Dr. Devaraj Ayavoo, Technical Manager, TTE Systems Ltd, said: "If you are surfing the Web and it takes a few seconds longer than normal to access a particular page, this won't usually matter at all. However, if you put your foot on the brakes in your car, you can't afford to wait -- you need to be sure that the brakes will work immediately. At TTE Systems, our job is to ensure that complex embedded systems always work correctly."

Dr. Michael Pont, CEO of TTE Systems Ltd and Head of the Embedded Systems Laboratory at the University of Leicester, added: "Clearly there are many systems currently in use that are perfectly safe.

"However what is not easy at present is making systems safe and proving that they are safe. Our technology makes it easier to develop systems with predictable behaviour - a key requirement for safe systems.

"In an industry that is geared at developing new systems very quickly, the development of predicable systems has often been ignored and it is in this area that we have specialised.

"Our work involves what are known as "time triggered" -- or TT - designs. The goal with this technology can be stated very simply: In a TT design, we know in advance exactly what the embedded system will be doing at every moment of time during its execution.

"This is a highly innovative approach to system development.

"Our techniques can be applied in a very wide range of systems - even where safety is not a key requirement. For example, in many consumer appliances -- like washing machines, dishwashers, even DVD players -- customers would welcome improved reliability."

TTE Systems Ltd, created with support from the Lachesis Fund (the University Challenge Fund for the East Midlands), has launched the first products in the RapidiTTy family. The RapidiTTy family provides a complete, cost-effective, suite of software tools which support the rapid development and testing of a wide range of reliable embedded systems. The RapidiTTy tools build on a solid technical foundation ("time-triggered architectures"). These were developed in the Embedded Systems Laboratory at the University of Leicester over a period of more than 12 years. Staff in the Laboratory have an international reputation for their work in this area. To date, seven patent applications have been filed in connection with this new technology.

Dr Pont said there was real potential for the systems developed at Leicester to make an international impact: "Our tools make it very easy to incorporate our technology in "standard" development processes.

"Using time-triggered technology allows us to create low-cost tools which facilitate the rapid development of reliable embedded systems. Our goal is to make reliability a cornerstone of mainstream development tools."

Dr. Ayavoo added: "The design of embedded systems is often an extremely complicated process. Our users have been amazed how easy RapidiTTy is to use."

The ESDL is a newly-created lab which is funded by EMDA and hosted by the University of Leicester in New Walk, Leicester.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Leicester.

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Integrated Receiver For High Frequency Applications On A Tiny Chip

Daily Science Journal (Dec. 31, 2007) — Researchers at Chalmers University in Sweden have succeeded in combining a receiver for high frequencies with an antenna on a small chip.

The receiver is just a few square millimetre and is suitable for new safety systems, image sensors, and radio communication for high bitrates. The receiver is an electronic circuit including antenna, low noise amplifier, and frequency converter monolithically integrated on gallium arsenide.

"This is a breakthrough in our research. Our result opens the possibility to manufacture systems for very high frequencies within the so called 'THZ-electronics' area, to a relatively low cost. In the next phase of this project even more functions can be integrated on the same chip", according to Herbert Zirath, professor at the department of Microwave Electronics.

This circuit can be used, for instance, in radiometer systems in future safety systems looking for concealed weapons without personal intrusive search. Other applications for this circuit are imaging sensors that can look through darkness, smoke or fog. This is an important safety function for vehicles such as cars and aircrafts.

"Thanks to this technology, we now have the possibility of integrating imaging sensors by using circuits of a few square millimetre which is much smaller that the present technology at a lower cost. For automotive applications such as cars, aircrafts and satellites, the size and weight is of utmost importance. The present systems consist of many pieces and demands several cubic decimetres volume", says Herbert Zirath.

The new circuit is designed to work at the frequency of 220 gigahertz, but this is not an upper limit. According to professor Zirath, the technology can be used up to and above 300GHz in a near future.

The technology is also interesting for wireless data communication because, due to the very high bandwidth, data rate well above 10 Gbit/s is possible to realize in future radio links. Together with Omnisys Instruments in Gothenburg, we are also implementing receivers for future earth observation satellites for environmental studies and weather forecasts at frequencies 118 and 183 GHz, using the same technology.

This work is the results of a co-operation between Chalmers, Saab Microwave Systems, Omnisys Instruments AB, FOI, The Fraunhofer Institute IAF in Freiburg and FGAN, Germany, within the project "nanoComp".

Adapted from materials provided by Chalmers University.

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