Projects & Contracts

Current projects

CERTICAR

Cílem projektu je vyvinout, sestavit a demonstrovat platformu pro schvalování automatizovaných/autonomních vozidel (AV) do provozu. Další cíl je vyvinout prototypy dvou řídicích jednotek AV založených na algoritmech a komponentách, které budou validované na platformě. Tak bude v případě certifikace nové verze/varianty řídicí jednotky možno validovat pouze její nezbytnou část. Validace bude probíhat jak v (1) simulačním prostředí zahrnujícím model vozidla, řídicí jednotky, okolí, senzory, řidiče a další účastníky provozu, tak (2) na fyzickém vozidle ovládaném vyvinutou řídicí jednotkou. Cílem je také aktualizovat funkcionality této platformy a komponent řídicích jednotek, aby odrážely aktuální stav legislativy v oblasti AV, která se bude v nejbližších letech velmi dynamicky rozvíjet.

Partnerem ČVUT je TÜV SÜD.

Arrowhead tools

The Arrowhead Tools project aims for digitalization and automation solutions for the European industry, which will close the gaps that hinder the IT/OT integration by introducing new technologies in an open-source platform for the design and run-time engineering of IoT and System of Systems.Our (ČVUT) contribution to this ambitious goal will lie in developing planning algorithms for autonomous cars that will communicate via the Arrowhead framework. In addition to that, we will improve safety properties of the algorithms by applying formal verification techniques, provided by project partners, and by increasing time-determinism of code execution on modern heterogeneous MPSoC (multi-core CPU + GPU) computing platforms.

THERMAC

The THERMAC project aims to investigate, develop, and validate emerging thermal-aware software-based techniques that will reduce operating temperature of avionic computing platforms in small aircraft transports. The project specifically targets the integration of multi-core and GPU-based platforms in avionics from a thermal perspective. The expected impact of the improved thermal performance will improve dependability, computing performance, and will reduce size and weight of electronics due to relaxed dissipation requirements and the higher number of functionalities that can be integrated in the same computing platform.

HERCULES

(Horizon 2020)

HERCULES is our take on prestigious Horizon 2020 call. It aims to provide an industrial-level implementation of state-of-the-art real-time scheduling techniques, applying them to cutting-edge hardware platforms based on heterogeneous multi-core architecture. New applications are being proposed integrating more and more functionalities in the objects commonly used for our daily activities, imposing a number of additional requirements to embedded systems designers. Project HERCULES will provide the required infrastructure to obtain an order-of-magnitude improvement in the cost and power consumption of next generation real-time applications. It will develop an integrated framework to allow achieving predictable performance on top of cutting-edge heterogeneous commercial-of-the-shelf multi-core platforms, implementing real-time scheduling techniques and execution models recently proposed. The framework will be applied to e.g. to the innovative industrial use case: a pioneering autonomous driving system for the automotive domain.

FLOPP: The factory of the future 

(FLexible, Optimized and controllable Production Platforms)

Project no. CZ.01.1.02/0.0/0.0/15_019/0004688, co-financed by the European Union. In the factory of the future, manufactures will improve production by applying new design priciples, implementing digital technologies, and integrating processes across the value chain. Flexibility, quality, speed and safety will also be enhanced.

eRobot

(Technology for industrial robots integration into production systems based on Industry 4.0​)

Nowadays, robotic production lines are often developed in software tools such as Tecnomatix Process Simulate. Unfortunately, these tools have insufficient support for the energy optimization of the designed line. Therefore, the primary goal of this project is to create algorithms for the optimization of robotic production lines and integrate them into software tools used in industry. All tools developed in this project will be tested on robotic platforms formed in the laboratory environment and consequently on the real robotic cells in production.​

FOREST

(Flexible Scheduling and Optimization Algorithms for Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems)

The growing complexity of Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems creates new challenges for scientific practices. For example, the automotive domain is undergoing a ground-breaking transformation with its recent commitment to making the vision of autonomous driving a reality. A common aspect for all these functions is that they rely on the periodic communication of vast amounts of sensor data that need both, timely processing and efficient use of the communication network. We will concentrate on modern time-triggered (TT) protocols that are used in many safety-critical domains. TT scheduling is characterized by complete determinism, and is, hence, particularly easy to verify and have certified. However, the traditional TT paradigm offers limited flexibility: once the schedule is computed, it is not possible to modify it, for example in response to events that may have occurred during run-time or if the resource capacity has changed.

Completed projects

ADORES

(Adaptive Scheduling and Optimization Algorithms for Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems)

In this project we aim to study structure and properties of specific scheduling problems. In our work, the first step consist of proving computational complexity of the problem in order to determine suitable solution method. Understanding structural properties of our problem is important both for heuristical approaches and exact algorithms. In more specific details, the goal of this project is to obtain a better understanding of scheduling problems in order to facilitate the development of algorithms for the automated synthesis of provably correct systems. We will concentrate on the development of (1) scheduling algorithms for time-triggered networks on local layer while focusing on adaptivity and energy awareness, (2) combinatorial optimization algorithms for global layer while considering heterogeneous resources and allowing for an energy-aware execution of tasks, but still guaranteeing system-wide timing requirements, and (3) reservation framework integrating our algorithms with the ones developed by other authors and evaluating the algorithms in on-line execution.

(Security and Safety Modeling)

The SESAMO project addresses the root causes of problems arising with convergence of safety and security in embedded systems at architectural level, where subtle and poorly understood interactions between functional safety and security mechanisms impede system definition, development, certification, and accreditation procedures and standards. Intense market innovation is being held back by this root cause: the absence of a rigorous theoretical and practical understanding of safety and security feature interaction. The proposed solution is to develop a component-oriented design methodology based upon model-driven technology, jointly addressing safety and security aspects and their interrelation for networked embedded systems in multiple domains (e.g., avionics, transportation, industry control). (Taken from sesamo-project.eu)

ARTIST2

The central objective for the ArtistDesign European Network of Excellence on Embedded Systems Design was to build on existing structures and links forged in the FP6 Artist2 NoE, to become a virtual Center of Excellence in Embedded Systems Design. This was mainly achieved through tight integration between the central players of the European research community. These teams had already established a long-term vision for embedded systems in Europe, which advances the emergence of Embedded Systems as a mature discipline. Moreover, we participated in ARTIST as the only partner from Central-Eastern European region out of 35 partners in total.

OCERA

The objective of this project was the improvement of embedded distributed computing systems for applications with real-time constraints. The project outputs developed in our department are open source components such as LinCAN. LinCAN (Linux CAN driver) is used by several hi-tech companies developing embedded systems (OKI USA, Unicontrols CZ, Technologic Systems USA, Ingeneria Almudi ES, BFAD GmbH & Co.KG DE, Applied Biosystems AU, etc.). Other of the results of this project is ORTE - an open source implementation of Real-Time Publish-Subscribe (RTPS) communication protocol. RTPS is an application layer protocol targeted at real-time communication area, which is built on the top of standard UDP stack. Because it uses only the UDP protocol, it retains control of timing and reliability.

FRESCOR

The aim of the FRESCOR project was to develop a framework that integrates advanced flexible scheduling techniques directly into an embedded systems design methodology, covering all the levels involved in the implementation, from the OS primitives (focusing on Linux and its real-time extensions), through the middleware, up to the application level. For embedded systems developers the project provides the engineering solutions to manage timing requirements at a high level of abstraction, thus lowering the design and development costs, and speeding up the time to market. Our group addressed namely design and implementation of real-time communication protocols (based on Ethernet, CAN, WiFi, ZigBee) and scheduling on reconfigurable hardware architectures (Virtex IV, MPC).