Enhancing Undergraduate Research And Learning Methods On Real-Time Processes By Cooperating With Maritime Industries

Building embedded real-time systems of guaranteed quality, in a cost-effective manner, raises challenging scientific and technological problems. For several years at Aalesund University College (AAUC), there has been ongoing activity in the development of embedded real time systems in close cooperation with private technology developers from the local industry. Much of this work is related to the design and development of systems for process control and camera surveillance of industrial processes, with an emphasis placed on operations on board ships. The main purpose is to maintain and improve safety and efficiency in industrial and ship operations. A very effective way to meet this goal consists of developing distributed embedded real time systems that independently monitor different dedicated tasks and are integrated in a common ubiquitous network. In this context, bachelor students at AAUC are involved in several research projects that give them the possibility of working in an industrial prospective scenario and under the supervision of both their professors and company-employed engineers. Most often, these activities are also part of an innovative educational and research loop, in which the projects evaluated as having the greatest innovative potential are followed up with new prototypes and research activities. By adopting a pedagogical prospective, this paper introduces an overview of the most promising student projects and methods for including bachelor students in real-time process control research activities is presented. The pedagogical and technological bases of this work are first discussed, and afterwards an analysis is done regarding the importance of COTS (Commercial OffThe-Shelf) products and system integration. Software and communication protocols are discussed from a system integration point of view. Finally, the results and conclusions of this approach are presented. INTRODUCTION Aalesund University College (AAUC) is located in the region of Møre og Romsdal, Norway. A particular challenge for this region, which is interested in facilitating the growth of technology-based industries and business start-ups, is the conceptualisation and promotion of the linkages between the regional science base, reflected most heavily in the region’s universities but also in its non-academic research laboratories, and its industry base. AAUC has been working with remote autonomous embedded systems for process control and camera inspection purposes on board ships (Rekdalsbakken and Osen, 2012) over the past several years. Some of these projects have played a critical part in inspiring new concepts for more efficient and secure work operations on board ships and as such have been implemented in broader research programs in cooperation with the industry. Many of these projects have been realised as embedded systems on different hardware platforms. In this activity, modern sensors together with vision technology and wireless communication systems are combined into selfcontained systems independently performing important tasks in ship operations. Most of these systems originated in student projects from the “Real-Time Programming” course or from other courses in the Automation Engineering Program (Sanfilippo et al. in press) and in the students’ bachelor theses. A systematic evaluation and selection was done on these projects to pick out the most promising ideas and products with potential for further study. Follow-up work has been done on some concepts in the form of further development, done in steps of gradual improvement over time until their results could either be continued as industry projects or academic research programs. Therefore, some of these activities have initiated the development of industrial products or the publication of scientific papers.