Creating smart systems that link new sensors, communications technology and automated analysis to make quick intelligent decisions for safety and efficiency
Challenge
Engineers are fighting to find new techniques to grapple with every more data sets that suffer from a variety of problems, for example: too big to analyse with available resources using existing techniques; too sparse for normal inference methods to yield meaningful results; too messy in terms of formats, standards, and provenance to manage efficiently; or otherwise riddled with too much uncertainty. For instance, at one end of the spectrum, there may be doubt whether a particular instrument was calibrated correctly, while, at the other, there may be no reason to trust the veracity of a comment posted on social media. Engineers, business and government are crying out for solutions that can cut through the mess to highlight how best to gather data, identify what is relevant in data sets and provide reliable decision support.
Ambition
The mission aims to draw together developments on sensors, through communications, to analysis and interactive presentation at the human interface. It will rely on continued advances in sensor hardware, signal processing, communications protocols, hard analytics, and human-like computing. Ultimately, this will lead not only to useful component technologies, but a truly integrated approach to building smart systems that deliver assured levels of performance.
Activities
The activities include:
- Sensors research in many groups in the Electrical Engineering Division and across the University’s Cambridge Sensors Network
- MEMS sensors and energy harvesting for sensors in the Materials Engineering group
- Signal Processing and Communications group
- Communications group
- Distributed Information and Automation Laboratory
- Control group
- Computational and Biological Learning group
- Machine Intelligence Laboratory
- Biologically-inspired Robotics Laboratory
- Intelligent Interactive Systems Group
- Inclusive Design Group