Kort nieuws

Softkinetic levert motor van TI’s gebaaraansturing

Pieter Edelman

11 January 2013

Texas Instruments gaat in zee met het Brusselse Softkinetic. Op de Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, die vandaag geopend wordt, toont het halfgeleiderbedrijf een platform voor 3D-gebaarherkenning gebaseerd op de Brusselse technologie. Dat moet gebaaraansturing mogelijk maken in allerhande consumentenproducten zoals tv‘s en pc‘s. Het platform bestaat uit een beeldsensor met de Brusselse Depthsense-technologie voor het meten van afstanden en uit de Iisu-middleware van Softkinetic.

Dankzij de nieuw aangekondigde samenwerking wordt de Brusselse technologie door maar liefst twee halfgeleidergiganten vertegenwoordigd op de CES: in het najaar ging ook Intel al een samenwerking aan en dit bedrijf demonstreert nu gebaaraansturing op zijn stand. Daarnaast wordt de technologie getoond door Arm en Omnivision.

Yes, Agile short cycles also work in high-tech development

Developing innovative high-tech equipment is a daunting challenge, especially for startups and scale-ups. Solid systems engineering and lots of organizing are required when working with partners from different fields of expertise (which is almost always the case). Generating new ideas and validating them in your next prototype can take a lot of time. And there is always the risk of drowning in specifications, procedures and organizational issues. But your engineers want to engineer! The solution? Do it Agile! Surprisingly, an Agile approach with short development cycles will also work in high-tech development. The key is taking smaller steps, dividing the components into really small functional units, which can be either software, programmable logic, electronics or mechanics. Next, project partners quickly build and develop these units in a parallel process or they can employ third parties such as prototyping services to do this. Finally, hardware and software units are integrated into a working prototype, ready to be tested. This way, the short cycles generate quick and frequent feedback on product feasibility. With an Agile approach to high-tech development, it becomes much easier to keep the focus on the technical development of the next prototype. It allows all partners to concentrate on building the best possible components. This talk will highlight the advantages of Agile high-tech development, using as an example real-life cases, such as the development of crucial components for a multi-beam scanning electron microscope.

Remco Jager is a project manager at Technolution Advance, a company that supports startups, scale-ups, and leading innovative manufacturers to bring advanced, innovative ideas to market quickly. Building upon 18 years of experience with the development of solutions for the semiconductor industry, Jager realizes cutting-edge innovations for a wide range of customers in high tech. He has a broad and detailed technical understanding and a talent for creating overview and shaping processes.

Reuse of Adapto warehouse storage solution in an airport platform - approach and challenges of architecture refactoring

Vanderlande is currently making a transition from engineering-to-order to configure-to-order by developing platforms (system of systems) for it’s market segments airports, warehousing and parcel. Several solutions have been developed in one specific platform that were later reused in the other platform resulting in a mixed, entangled system and IT architecture.

In this presentation we show the architectural complexity that emerges when a system within our warehousing platform, the Adapto storage solution, is reused in our airports platform. We will discuss the challenges we faced such as how to refactor and untangle the architecture. Will modern design patterns like Domain-Driven Design and MicroService architecture help us to develop material handling solutions that could easily be shared between our platforms?

Vanderlande is the global market leader for future-proof logistic process automation at airports. The company is also a leading supplier of process automation solutions for warehouses and in the parcel market. The company focuses on the optimisation of its customers’ business processes and competitive positions.

Gaston Weijenberg joined Vanderlande 28 year ago as a computer engineer, worked on several projects and was involved in the development of the Oslo Gardermoen Airport baggage handling system where he gained lot of insides on logistics and the controls systems.

In 2002 he became system architect for the baggage handling system of the new Heathrow Airport Terminal 5; he was involved in the conceptual design of the baggage system, the IT architecture of the controls system and its main software components. This architecture and these components were reused in several other systems, which were later consolidated as the airports platform, Vanderlande’s first platform.

He architected several extensions to the airports platform such as robotics solutions and multi-terminal functionality to maintain Vanderlande’s leading position in this market.

In 2017 he moved to the Technology department where he became member of a new team, Systems Architecture & Strategy, as senior strategic architect. The team focusses on innovative architectural patterns and methodologies that enable Vanderlande to deliver logistics solutions in a faster and more predictable way.

TROPOMI: from a kitchen table idea to a world-renowned atmospheric chemistry instrument

In his presentation Bryan de Goeij will focus on the early development phases of the TROPOMI instrument. The TROPOMI instrument was successfully launched on board of the Sentinel 5 Precursor satellite on 13 October 2017. Since its launch TROPOMI has delivered NO₂, CH₄, O₃, CO₂ and other trace gasses concentration maps with unprecedented spatial resolution of 7x7km². In this way new and unknown sources of greenhouse gasses were found and our insight in the climate change improved.
He will start by discussing the architecture phase, were the needs and wishes of the atmospheric scientist were identified and transformed into an opto-mechanical architecture. As part of this phase also a number of new technologies were identified and their development started.
Next Bryan will discuss the transformation of the program from the architecture phase into the next design and development phase. He will focus on the selection process of the new technologies that would continue in the next program phase and he will discuss the challenges in moving to a firm fixed price project.

Were appropriate Bryan will highlight the differences between the development process implemented in TROPOMI and the process as defined in the ESA ECSS (European Cooperation for Space Standardization) handbooks.

Before joining TNO Bryan de Goeij graduated at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the TU Delft, in the field of systems integration of spacecraft. At TNO he is now a senior systems engineer with a drive for developing cutting edge opto-mechatronical space systems and for spreading the systems engineering method to other fields within TNO.

His past responsibilities include the development of the Fine Sun Sensors that allow the ESA GAIA satellite to determine it orientation during its mission to chart a three-dimensional map of our Galaxy, the development optical instruments for atmospheric research and global climate monitoring (like TROPOMI) and the development of laser satellite communication systems for aircraft.

Presently he is involved in TNO program to develop small cost-efficient and recurring optical instruments for atmospheric research that fit on small cube satellites, adding additional constraints to the entire SE development process.
At the same time he is involved in the further industrialization and upscaling of hydrogen production facilities.

The engineering of the James Webb Space Telescope European Instruments: challenges, lessons learned and successes

Precision, sensitive, space-borne instrumentation developments are complex endeavours requiring both specific technical knowledge as well as a fine level of systems engineering (SE) processes definition and control. When faced with additional technical, organizational and operational constraints, the solution space shrinks while the SE effort needs to grow and become more creative to address the challenges that appear.
The JWST project fits clearly this definition. In this talk we will present some of the main challenges encountered in the design, testing and deployment of the European contribution to the JWST instrument suite, the Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). We will try to cover both engineering and organization elements and the lessons learned for aspects like: the limitations to design and test cryogenic instrumentation; the benefits and difficulties of working concurrently with industrial partners, research institutes, universities and different space agencies; and the constraints imposed by projects with lifetimes in excess of 10 years before even starting operations. Although JWST is probably an outlier in science space projects in terms of size and complexity, the return from experience, positive and negative, can be applied to future missions and projects with similar boundary conditions.

A Telecommunications Engineering by education, with a focus on optoelectronic systems, I worked as a Passive Photonic Specialist and as Optical System Designer in different companies before joining the European Space Agency in 2005. Since then I have developed my professional activity in Systems Engineering roles within the Science Projects department with a focus on the mission and payload aspects of space telescope missions in the visible, near and mid-infrared. I held the roles of Systems Engineer and Instrument Manager for the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) in the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) mission until integration in the spacecraft in 2012. From 2012 to 2018 I was the Mission Systems Engineer for the dark-matter Euclid mission and in 2018 I took my current position as Mission and Payload manager for the PLAnetary Transit and Oscillation (PLATO) project. In addition to these roles, I am active in the Systems Engineering area development in ESA, contributing to the definition of SE training programs and in the development of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) practices). I am a member of the Dutch chapter of INCOSE.

Systems Engineering Vision 2035

Recently a team of leaders from the worldwide systems community produced the Systems Engineering Vision 2035 with inputs from across industry, academia, and government for the International Council for System Engineering (Incose).

This vision is produced every 10 years and is intended to inspire and guide the strategic direction of systems engineering for the global systems community. It can be used to develop strategies to evolve the systems engineering capability of an enterprise or project. The vision can also be used to help direct investments and support collaborative efforts to advance the discipline and grow the skill base to meet current and future challenges related to systems development.

Harry van der Velde will present the 2035 version at Sysarch. After his presentation there will be ample time for discussion.

Harry van der Velde joined Shell almost 25 years ago as a process engineer. He started his career supporting offshore platforms in the central North Sea with his role as commissioning engineer of the Shearwater platform as a highlight. In 2001, he moved to Malaysia to work for Sarawak Shell Berhad where he was responsible for process engineering support for the upstream facilities that deliver gas to the Malaysia LNG facilities in Bintulu. He subsequently became lead systems engineer for the Gumusut Floating Production Systems in Kuala Lumpur ensuring an optimized and integrated design for topsides, hull and subsea systems. In 2007, he was seconded to ENI and worked in Atyrau, Kazakhstan as senior project engineer for the offshore facilities of the Kashagan EP project. He joined the Floating LNG team in 2010 as an Engineering Manager by working on Prelude, Abadi and Browse FLNG projects. The last four years he was in Shell Internal Audit as audit manager responsible for independent assurance of the Liquid Natural Gas, Gas to Liquids and New Energies portfolios. In 2021, he re-joined Shell Projects and Technology and is responsible for the implementation of Systems Engineering in capital projects and is global community lead for Engineering Management.

Harry will be the chairman of the Dutch Incose chapter from march 2023.

The coordinating role of model based systems engineering in setting up high-performance engineering systems

The demands on engineering environments are rapidly increasing. Digitization requires engineers to apply modeling techniques such that computers can optimally contribute to the engineering process. The information that must be exchanged with external parties will have to conform to various agreements. For example Digital Twinning requires continuous integration of engineering contributions.

To make system or product developments successful, Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) plays a coordinating role. Especially in setting up high-performance engineering systems we can no longer do without this kind of approach. This allows the system engineer to keep pace with the developments, but it also requires the system engineer to increasingly contribute to the orchestration of the engineering systems.

In this presentation Marc Hamilton will discuss the considerations we need to make in applying MBSE, how these developments affect the systems engineering discipline and what we can expect for the future.

Marc Hamilton works at Capgemini Engineering to further develop Engineering Automation. Marc has over twenty years of experience in automating engineering environments, especially for high-tech, software-intensive systems. The basis for this lies in human communication in these environments. By applying language technology in combination with available modeling techniques, the environments can actually be “model driven”, which offers many quantifiable and non-quantifiable advantages. In addition to the technological aspects, this also explicitly concerns the business economic and the organizational aspects of engineering.

In his role at the High Tech Systems Center (part of the Eindhoven Artificial Intelligence Systems Institute (EAISI) of the Eindhoven University of Technology) he is working on further developing research in the overarching area of digital engineering and education of systems engineering. With his involvement in the Centrum voor Ondergronds Bouwen (COB) he is bridging the evolutions on interoperability in the infra domain and the automation in the high tech sector.

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