What is the similarity between electronic signs on highways and pilotless planes? The answer is: coordination. The signs should communicate with each other and the planes should too. Five problems of this type will be investigated in the project 'Control for coordination of distributed systems'(C4C). Directed by Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) researchers from various European countries join forces in this project, starting on Thursday 1 May 2008.
One of the problems is motivated by the traffic-jams in the Netherlands. Loops in the road surface of highways register the speed and the amount of traffic to inform the traffic department about bottlenecks. Researchers want to improve the cooperation of the systems behind the loops that are distributed along the highways. Traffic control can thereby provide drivers with more accurate and up to date information.
Unmanned submarine vehicles also profit from C4C research. In Portugal small submarines are used for environmental research. The underwater vehicles should communicate about their positions and their findings. Pilotless planes are used in Cyprus to serve a similar purpose. Another control for coordination research group investigates complex machines, like the copy machines made by Océ.
Such a combination of research projects is a unique European cooperation. CWI mathematician Jan H. van Schuppen is leader of this project group that exists of researchers from the Netherlands, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Portugal. They work at four companies (the end users) and eight academic institutes. The European Commission provides financial support through its Information and Communication Technologies Programme.
- Project website: http://www.c4c-project.eu
- The European Commission provides financial support through its Information and Communication Technologies Program (ICT), Objective ICT.2007-3.7, Networked Embedded and Control Systems (project number 223844).
