Commentaries on LUCAS

Jerker Wilander,
Chaiman of the LUCAS Board

Jerker Wilander: LUCAS has evolved into a very profitable meeting place for industry and university research.

The industry associated to LUCAS creates products using advanced computerised real time systems, and many of them are world leaders in their respective areas. This leads to a demand on the researchers to be both specialists and generalists in order to be interesting to the industrial partners. This competence is created by the collaboration between the 3 research groups having expertise in areas ranging from software engineering, development tools to real time control.

A partnership like this also requires that the communication is bi-directional. The research problems have partly been brought in from industry, exemplified by the industrial robot research. The environment has given opportunities to the companies to meet, discuss and “benchmark” their methods and strategies for product development, which in its turn has helped research in software engineering methodologies to evolve.

The industry needs an academic partner, who has a long-term vision created by basic research and international research co-operation, coupled with an ability to collaborate on applied research with results that could be brought into industrialised products. It is also important that the academic partner is able to introduce novel ideas from the research community into industry - results that soon will become state of the art. LUCAS has during its existence been able to operate in all these ways with great success.

Dr. Sten Minör General Manager, SonyEricsson Mobile Communications AB, Member of the LUCAS Board

Sten Minör: Mobile phones is probably one of the most competitive areas you can think of today. Fierce competition between the major brands, world-wide distribution of a large number of phone models adapted to different markets, high demands from network operators, and very high volumes. At the same time a phone must appeal to the consumer. Attractive design and graphical user interfaces that are easy to understand and use despite increasingly complex functionality. Reliability is also a key to success. A mobile phone is a things you always carry and you must be sure that you always can rely on it.

To work in such a dynamic environment is exciting but it puts high demands on the development organization. Today software is the major part of the development of a mobile phone. Sony Ericsson has gone through the transition from a hardware company in the past to a software company facing all the challenges of developing increasingly large and complex software systems. Developing software on time, in a number of variants to different customers and markets, with innovative features and high quality is necessary to be able to launch successful mobile phones on the world market. The competence of our staff and the need to use state-of-the-art development methods are key factors.

LUCAS is an opportunity for us to stay competitive and develop world-class software. LUCAS applied research in real-time software technologies and software engineering methods and environments is highly relevant for Sony Ericsson. Short-term the cooperation with LUCAS has resulted in a number of co-operation projects in areas such as software architecture, agile development methods, configuration management and Java technology where LUCAS has brought the latest research to the table and Sony Ericsson has contributed with industrial experience. The informal exchange of knowledge and experience between LUCAS researchers and Sony Ericsson staff has been equally important as well as the information exchange between the LUCAS industrial partners.

Long term, by educating competent engineers, by being a green house for start-up software companies, and by vitalizing existing software companies, LUCAS is an important contribution to the growth of software-intensive business in the Öresund region.

Göran Arinder ABB Automation Technologies AB, Member of the LUCAS Board

Göran Arinder: Development centers in global companies have to have world class competence. This needs contacts with universities and highschools and other centers with similar technical competences. For practical purposes regional access gives clear advantages.

LUCAS provides the above advantages. The competence profiles of the lth departments make a good match to the development work at ABB malmö.
So far our participation in LUCAS has helped in giving us impulses for improvements both technical and in work processes. These contacts also help in understanding the technical roadmaps forward.

Besides participation in research work, LUCAS provides a variation of contacts e. g. informal discussions, seminars etc. The possibilities for close contacts give our development engineers motivation for competence development and using new ideas.
The networks created through LUCAS, also help us keeping in contact with other companies developing with similar technologies and methods.

Anders Ek, Telelogic, Member of the LUCAS Board

Anders Ek: Telelogic is acting in a very competitive environment, where information on the latest developments in software and systems engineering is vital. It is also depending on the engineers working in development labs and in various customer related functions. These individuals must be able to respond to the needs of our customers and the requirements from the marketplace with competent action. In short: Telelogic is depending on competent individuals with relevant knowledge and good problem-solving ability.

LUCAS provides essential support in this aspect: It provides a source of information and knowledge; from the actual reports, presentations and discussions emanating from ongoing projects, from the network of employees of the companies that are active in LUCAS , and in the minds of graduated engineers able to work in the sometimes very hectic environment of a software product development company for shorter or longer periods of time.

In addition, seen from the local viewpoint of southern Sweden, LUCAS gives the area a competitive edge that makes it easier to start and run businesses like Telelogic. This is shown not the least from the fact that Telelogic itself originally was started as a spin-off from one of the institutes that now form LUCAS.

Björn Wittenmark Vice Rector Lund University, Professor in Automatic Control, Member of the LUCAS Board

Björn Wittenmark: Today it is very important that different research areas cooperate to extend the borders of our knowledge. This is valid both for basic research and for applied research. The focus of the research within LUCAS is of very great importance for our society and for the development of software engeneering, computer engineering, and automatic control.

The involvement of industrial partners is crucial for the research performed within LUCAS. There are several reasons for this, first it is important that the university departments are highly familiar with the daily problems of industry, secondly the industry must be aware of the latest development in the research, and thirdly the transfer of graduate students and methods from academia to industry is a necessity for the growth of our industry.

LUCAS fits very well into the research strategy of lund university thanks to the multidiciplinary research, the industrial involvement, and that the the area of system analysis and complex system is one of the identified strong areas at lund institute of technology.

Prof. Karl-Erik Årzén, Department of Automatic Control, Member of the LUCAS Management Group

Prof. Karl-Erik Årzén: Computers and software are used in the implementation of all control systems. The research that we are doing on real-time and embedded control, domain-specific languages for control applications, and industrial robotics have strong connections to software technology, both with respect to programming language technology and software engineering. The collaboration within lucas is therefore very valuable for us. Although the control algorithm itself often is quite small and can be easily coded, the logic for initialization, mode-handling, and exception handling makes the implementation of also quite trivial control systems quite complex. For exampe, the climate control system in a modern car could easily require 20 000 lines of C code.

Also on a global scale the connections between control and computing are important. The number one recommendation in the recently presented final report of the Panel on Future Directions in Control, Dynamics, and Systems formed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) is that it is necessary to substantially increase research aimed at the integration of control, computer science, communications, and networking. This includes principles, methods and tools for modeling and control of high level, networked, distributed systems, and rigorous techniques for reliable and adaptable embedded real-time software. Real-time computing is an enabling technology for all applications of automatic control. The majority of the requirements on hard predictable real-time systems are caused by the fact that the real-time systems in most cases are used to implement control systems. Application areas include industrial automation systems for the process, manufacturing and power industry and embedded mechatronic systems, e.g., industrial robots, vehicular systems and aerospace systems. All of these are of vital interest to Swedish industry

Prof. Per Runeson Department of Communication Systems, Member of the LUCAS Management Group

Prof. Per Runeson: Software engineering covers many aspects in a broad range of topics - technical, organizational and behavioural. With our focus on empirical software engineering, industry environments are crucial to enable research, as the companies and their software engineering is the study object of the research. lucas and its active company network is an excellent environment for conducting empirical research, which is on the leading international research frontier.

We perform surveys across companies of different application domains and size, and thereby provide information across the lucas companies, enabling benchmarking for improvement. We perform case studies, which in depth observe one or a few companies, and thereby support the analysis of the current status and enable the introduction of new methods. We perform experiments in student environments and make initial evaluations of new techniques, for later introduction in the companies.

This industry-academia-interaction is an excellent innovation system, supporting the lucas companies to remain on the competetive edge, and at the same time driving the research frontier. It is a win-win situation!