Embedded systems

In the era of computers, the number of electronic systems keeps growing with procesors that are increasingly more powerful and more capable. At the same time, we want simpler systems to operate, lower consumption and more reliability. That is why embedded systems are becoming essential in our life.

Embedded systems are small processors with strong requirements of reliability and deterministic execution times that are used to control the behavior of many devices. They are used when the device is small, the energy availability is low and the processing requirements are small. These systems use high quality software, which makes them interesting from a technical perspective.

Communications

Since the days of radio and television, communications have shaped the relationships between people. The arrival of intelligent domotics and robotics to our homes demand a new type of communication between machines that is safe, flexible and efficient, capable to connect databases from various origins. Ontologies and automatic ontology processing standards are under development to facilitate connectivity between independent databases andto offer a personalized service to each person. Robot-to-robot communications will led to the next transformation in factories, where computers and robots take a customer's custom order and design, prepare the materials and manufactures the goods precisely fitted to the need of each person.

Multiagent systems

An intelligent system is an indivisible unit. But if we delve into the intricate workings of an intelligent system, we only see an amalgam of simple information-processing mechanisms interconnected with seemingly chaotic pathways.

Multi-agent systems researches the emergent behaviours in decentralized chaotic systems. In other words, we can study how complex and intentional behaviours appear from the interaction of simple information mechanisms.

Intelligent control

Controllers are used in industrial processes to keep manufacturing variables under controlled limits. Airplanes, nuclear power plants, food processing industry and even a simple heater are examples of systems that operate with controllers. The greater the complexity of an industrial process, the more sophisticated controllers are needed, making more and more difficult to design them.

The more intelligent a controller is, the better it will adapt to unknown events. Research in intelligent control focuses on making machines more autonomous by automatic modeling of unknown problems and finding satisfactory solutions for those models.