Membership
Dr Yiannis Papadopoulos (coordinator), Dr Leonardo Bottaci, Dr Mike Brayshaw¸ Dr Darryl Davis, Dr Neil Gordon, Dr Neil Grey, Dr Chandra Kambhampati, Dr Tanko Ishaya, Dr Peter Robinson, Eur Ing Brian Tompsett and Dr Bing Wang.
Background and Summary
The group performs high quality, internationally recognised research in the area of distributed, reliable and intelligent control and cognitive systems, with a focus on safety-critical embedded and distributed information systems. We address a number of issues arising in the development and assessment of such systems by developing novel techniques and tools that aim to improve the quality and dependability of systems via advanced safety and reliability analysis, multi-criteria design optimisation, improved testing, enhanced security and assurance of data integrity. Our work in these areas is underpinned by basic and applied research in areas of system and software engineering (system and failure modelling, algorithms for safety and reliability analysis, automated testing). The work also builds on techniques for computational and machine intelligence such as genetic algorithms, neural networks, fuzzy systems and agent technologies. Our research develops through studying the use of these techniques in tackling problems in safety-critical embedded systems and networks such as those emerging in the transport, process and manufacturing industries, autonomous systems such as mobile robots, computer vision, medical applications and distributed systems and e-Services.
DRIS is currently being funded by the EPSRC, the European Commission, and a number of industrial partners which include Volvo, Jaguar-Landrover, Ricardo, Germanischer Lloyd and others. In the period since the last Research Assessment Exercise, the group has published over 130 fully refereed scientific papers in international conferences, book chapters and journals. A number of our publications have won distinctions in prestigious int’l conferences and journals (see thematic areas for details) while several papers have been the result of productive collaboration with industrial sponsors and users. More than 30 papers since 2001 have been co-authored by Volvo, DaimlerChrysler, Renault, Alcatel, Germanischer Lloyd and EADS Airbus. DRIS have an extensive range of collaborations with UK and Overseas Research Institutions. We actively participate in two International Technical Committees of IFAC and have organised several major International events including special tracks on “dependable systems” in the IFAC World Congress and the IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing.
The group currently has 20 research students. DRIS is structured and managed as three research subgroups or themes: Dependable Systems, Applied Internet Computing and Cognitive Systems.
DRIS Dependable Systems (Papadopoulos, Bottaci, Kambhampati, Brayshaw)
Highly dependable systems were traditionally confined to a few application areas mainly in the aviation, nuclear and process industries. However, the ability to implement cost effectively complex functions in software has expanded the need for such systems in many new areas that include automotive electronics and medical applications. The problems upon which the group is currently working include: the increasing infeasibility of performing accurate safety analysis on such systems, difficulties in achieving optimal trade-offs between reliability and cost during design, automated software test data generation and the difficulties in the detection, diagnosis and control of hazardous real-time failures. Our work in this thematic area is structured in four project clusters: automated safety and reliability analysis, Multi-criteria Optimisation, Automated Test Data Generation and Fault Tolerant Control.
Automated Safety and Reliability Analysis (Papadopoulos, Brayshaw)
The group is pioneering the development of a new method for automated safety and reliability analysis of computer-based systems known as Hierarchically Performed Hazard Origin and Propagation Studies (HiP-HOPS). Important contributions of HiP-HOPS include fast algorithms for automatic synthesis of system failure models such as fault trees and Failure Modes and Effects Analyses (FMEAs) as well as a radical extension of the fault tree notation with a temporal algebra that facilitate synthesis and analysis of temporal fault trees. Recent developments include linguistic concepts for representation and re-use of component failure patterns and new algorithms for on-line fault diagnosis applicable on state-charts and fault trees. This work has influenced int’l research in this area and received numerous awards which include distinction among best papers in SAFECOMP’99, SAFECOMP’02, COMPSAC’03 and a best paper award in INCOM’06. The work is currently being funded by an EPSRC CASE grant and develops with financial support from Volvo Cars and Jaguar Landrover. Recently, DRIS has been awarded a “Yorkshire Concept” fund for the development of a commercialisation strategy for dissemination and exploitation of this technology.
Multi-criteria Optimisation (Papadopoulos, Bottaci, Robinson)
The aim of this work is to provide decision support in the design of complex dependable systems by enabling optimisation of initial designs with respect to reliability, safety and cost. To achieve this aim, work on automated safety analysis has been combined with work on meta-heuristics such as genetic algorithms and multi-criteria optimisation in order to develop methods and tools that enable the automatic “evolution” of initial designs to improved equivalents that employ hardware & software fault tolerance to satisfy safety requirements with minimal costs. This work is highly innovative and leads both to theoretical contributions and useful industrial applications. Publications of initial results have received a distinction among best papers in COMPSAC’03, INCOM’04 and a nomination for the “Future of Automotive technology Award” in FISITA’04. Currently, this work is centrally positioned in SAFEDOR - the largest project on technological safety ever funded by the EU (53 partners, £15 million budget) where DRIS is the main technology provider in subprojects concerned with automated safety analysis and design optimisation.
Automatic Test Data Generation (Bottaci)
This work is directed at the application of program analysis and heuristic search techniques to the problem of automatically generating test data for the structural unit testing of software. Within this area, the common approach to the test data generation problem is to use a search process to refine a set of candidate test cases. During the search, candidate test cases are executed and evaluated on the basis of their contribution to the coverage of the test goals. A straightforward coverage instrumentation is often ineffective, however, because it cannot distinguish between candidate test cases that are "near misses" and those that are "distant misses". The important research problem is to develop effective methods to instrument the program under test in order that the execution data collected can be used to guide the search efficiently. Recent developments include a method for generating test data for programs that process string data. Prior to this work, only numeric test data had been generated efficiently. Other work has led to the development of numeric evaluation functions for Boolean expression that are informative and almost logically consistent. Prior to this work, ad hoc numeric evaluation functions were used and the logical negation operator could not be handled. These functions have been used to generate branch coverage data for programs that contain loops and flag variables without performing a program data flow analysis.
Fault Tolerant Control (Papadopoulos, Kambhampati, Davis)
Research in this area focuses on developing Agent-Based Fault Tolerant Control schemes for Networked Control Systems. We aim to develop an architecture of decentralised agents that can perform intelligent, cooperative, flexible monitoring and control of networks of embedded systems that exhibit complex and largely unpredictable failure behaviour. Such agents will be generic in nature and transposable across different applications with potential utility on monitoring, diagnostic and control systems in the transport, manufacturing, process, and power generation industries. Work involves bringing together work on Diagnosis and Fault Tolerance by Dr Papadopoulos with work in Neural Networks and Networked Embedded Systems by Dr Kambhampati and work by Dr Davis on Cognitive Architectures and Agents. This work is performed in collaboration with the Engineering department with which the group is participating in the European FP6 Grant – NeCST.
References for Dependable SystemsWalker M., Papadopoulos Y., 2006, PANDORA: The time of PAND gates, INCOM 2006, 12th IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing, France, 2006 (best paper award in track for dependable systems).
Bottaci, L & Alshraideh, M., 2006, “Search -based software test data generation for string data using program-specific search operators”, Software Testing Verification and Reliability 16 (3):175-203.
R.J. Patton C.Kambhampati, Alessandro Casavola, 2006, Fault-tolerance as a Key Requirement for the Control of Modern Systems – Plenary Paper at IFAC- SAFEPROCESS-2006 Beijing China
Papadopoulos Y., Grante C., 2005, Evolving car designs using model-based automated safety analysis and optimisation techniques, Journal of Systems and Software (among best papers in COMPSAC’03) ,Elsevier Science, 76(1):77-89.
Papadopoulos Y., 2003, Model-based system monitoring and diagnosis of failures using statecharts and fault trees, Reliability Engineering and System Safety (among best papers in SAFECOMP’02), 81:325-341.
Bottaci L, 2003, (EDs) Erick Cantu-Paz and James A. Foster July 12-16, Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2003) “Predicate Expression Cost Functions to Guide Evolutionary Search for Test Data” pp 2455-2464, Springer-Verlag Chicago, USA, ISBN: 3540406034
C.Kambhampati Rajasekharan, 2003, Multiple manipulator control from a human motor-control perspective IEEE Transactions Robotics and Automation, Vol 19, No 3433-4432.1 (2003)
DRIS Applied Distributed Information Systems (Gordon, Tompsett, Wang, Grey, Brayshaw, Ishaya)
Work in this theme involves the distribution of information technology systems to solve larger problems for users. These applications include education, such as through eLearning, or larger complex information systems through advanced databases. The risks to the public of such systems is also examined, through work on Trust, Security, Crime and Forensics.
Trust and Security (Tompsett, Ishaya)
The security of computer systems and how that risks the public when they are connected as part of an internet connected network information infrastructure is examined by several ongoing projects. In particular funding from the EPSRC “Think Crime” initiative has supported work on “Cyberprofiling”, or the application of Geographic and Criminal Profiling techniques to the internet. Other work is also conducted on characterising crime as perceived by internet users, and how evidence is obtained by forensic examination in order to prosecute those criminals.
Technology support for eLearning (Gordon, Tompsett, Ishaya)
eLearning is now well established and yet there are still many issues about effective use of technology in teaching support. Research within the group includes aspects of how to use technology to engage learners with their material, and in particular on aspects of teaching mathematics, formal methods and IT itself to students. Some of this work has been recognised by the award of a teaching fellowship. This research informed one of the sessions at the 2004 Grand Challenges in Computing event organised by the BCS and CHPC considering the direction of teaching and research in computer science over the next decade. Work on the use of technology in teaching of disabled students, and how the technology can be both an enabling and also a disabling factor is also being undertaken.
Databases (Wang)
Database technologies are widely used in different areas. However, to efficiently use databases, a powerful modelling language and tool is needed to structurally organise and present data. Current data-modelling support tools are designed for specific purposes. This makes it difficult for users to employ existing tools to model and define their application environments using their own methods. In this research area, we aim to investigate existing modelling languages and define a new general-purpose data modelling language which allows users to create objects and define semantics among objects on the basis of the needs of applications. In particular, we are studying the theoretical aspect of how to define universal object and relationship types which can be used to define real-world enterprise in an object-oriented way. We are also investigating and implementing the corresponding database interfaces for supporting this modelling language.
References for Applied Distributed Information Systems
Gordon N., 2006, Experiences of embedding Information Technology into discipline based teaching, Innovations in Teaching And Learning in Information and Computer Sciences, 4, pp 1-9, ISBN 1473-7507
Tompsett BC, Marshall AM, Semmens NC, 2005, "Cyberprofiling", Computer Network Forensics Workshop, IEEE Securecomm, Athens.
Marshall A.M. & Tompsett, B.C., 2005, Identity theft in an online world, "Computer Law and Security Report", Elsevier, 21:128-137.
Gordon N.A., Shaw R., 2005 The Polynomial degree of the Grassmannian* Designs, Codes and Cryptography (in print)
Wang B., 2004, A Semantic Approach for Web Indexing, Wang B and Brookes GR, The Sixth Asia Pacific Web Conference, 10 pages, April 14-17, 2004, Hangzhou, Springer-Verlag.
Wang B., 2004, Clustering Schemaless XML Documents, Shen Y and Wang B, International Conference on Ontologies, Databases and Applications of Semantics (ODBASE 2003), 15 pages, Nov 3-7, 2003, Sicily, Italy.
DRIS Cognitive Systems (Davis, Kambhampati)
The research into Cognitive Systems addresses both applied and theoretical issues, with the work in both areas informing the other. This has seen the development of intelligent systems, computational models of cognition and decision support tools. The applied work has been in medical and commercial domains. The theoretical work is being applied in simulation and robotics domains with some possible innovative applications.
Intelligent Diagnostic Tools (Kambhampati, Davis)
Expertise has been sought by the Hull-York Medical School (HYMS) for solving a variety of problems and also for the development of Intelligent Diagnostic Tools. This work has received recognition from the wider community, in that it has resulted in the countries from outside the EU establishing research links and the funding of research students here. Project domains include lymph node prediction in invasive breast cancer, data mining for risk assessment in cardiovascular medicine and colorectal cancer disease progression. In 2003, a paper by A Ramesh, C Kambhampati, et al entitled “Artificial Neural Networks accurately predicts lymph node metastasis in invasive breast cancer” was considered for the Moynihan prize and presented at the special Moynihan Session at the meeting of Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, Manchester, May 2003.
Cognitive Architectures (Davis)
This research addresses reactive, deliberative, and hybrid architectures for a-life and complete agents, building on earlier work on motivation and goal processing. This has lead to advances in the computational modelling of affect (motivation and emotion) using a variety of architectures. It involves the study of existing information processing systems, both natural and synthetic, and understanding their theoretical limitations. Research continues on the development of novel computational systems with investigations into learning, rational models for goal selection and the development of the architecture for robot control
References for Cognitive Systems
D.N.Davis (Editor), 2005, Visions of Mind, IDEA Group Inc.
Ramesh AN, Kambhampati C, Monson JRT, 2004, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, ANN ROY COLL SURG, 86(5):334-8.
Ramesh A, Kambhampati C, Beral D, 2004, Prediction of large bowel anastomotic leakage by artificial neural networks, DIS COLON RECTUM, 47(4):638-9.
D.N.Davis & S.C. Lewis, 2003, Computational Models of Emotion for Autonomy and Reasoning, Informatica 27(2):159-165.
D.N. Davis, 2001, Control States and Complete Agent Architectures, Computational Intelligence, 17(3).
Our research on Dependable Systems develops with the financial support
and technical collaboration of Volvo Cars.
