Smart Systems
We make industry smarter
Sensors are ubiquitous in today’s industrial environments and can provide a wealth of information to assist decision making. For example, temperature sensors can check whether a storage room is too warm or whether a machine running too hot. Moisture sensors can tell a farmer whether the soil needs to be watered. At IRIS we are leveraging the potential of these sources of information to build truly “smartsystems”.
Smartsystems bring together sensor readings, process logic and control, and modelling. Based on predictive and adaptive learning, they are capable of describing and analysing the given situation and taking smart actions based on the available data. Applications for smartsystems are manifold and they are increasingly used in a large number of sectors such as transportation, home automation, healthcare, energy and environment, safety and security, logistics, ICT, and manufacturing.
Smartsystems typically combine several interacting components and functions:
- Sensors and data acquisition
- Command and control units
- Communication technology
- Software
The integration of many and diverse components based on very different technologies and materials into one working system poses a major challenge. To be successful, the research, design and manufacturing of such smartsystems must bring together specialised technological know-how, skilled labour, design tools and equipment from various disciplines of science and technology.
IRIS interdisciplinary smartsystems group possesses the know-how, resources and experience to carry out the full system design and engineering, including electronic design and assembly, firmware and software development, electrical harnesses and interconnections, mechanical design for enclosure and prototype integration. A focus lies on researching and developing new process monitoring and control applications based on wireless sensor networks.
Services
- Rapid prototyping and production of prototype systems
- Consulting on system integration and component selection
- Development and deployment of production-ready and standards-compliant smartsystems
- Design and development of custom user-friendly and platform-independent user interfaces
Areas of expertise
- Wireless sensor networks
- Custom network protocol design and implementation
- Simulation software development
- PCB layout design and assembly
- Programmable logic devices (FPGA/CPLD) design and programming
- Analogue and digital signal processing (DSP)
- Sensors and data acquisition
- Signal conditioning: temperature, compensation, filtering, compression, digitalization, etc.
- Programming of embedded microcontroller and microprocessor systems
- Mechanical enclosure design and building
- Software and hardware integration testing
- Structural and component failure analysis through Finite Elements Modelling (FEM)
