Intelligent Systems

Recent funded projects include:

EPIC (EU Platform for Intelligent Cities)

Staff are collaborating with 16 partners (including IBM Germany, Deloitte Consulting, AIDC European Centre for Excellence and the European Network of Living Labs) in this project. The project is creating an open, pan-European platform for a web-based infrastructure that will enable ‘smart cities’ to learn from one another and exchange practical working models in a real-life context.

The EPIC team understands that to be truly ‘smart’ a city must be able to easily access and leverage the benefits of citizen-driven and tested services as well as to anticipate and plan for powerful new innovations such as the Internet of Things (IOT).

The project innovatively combines cloud computing technology, IOT middleware, and semantic capabilities to create a flexible scalable pan-European Service Delivery Platform that can be used to plug and play pilot services which include a Smart Environment Service.

Staff in the research group have designed and built a flexible technical architecture that enables a range of unstructured data (including data from energy monitoring devices and control sensors) to be remotely collected and integrated to support intelligent analysis for the smart city.

Roving Robot Energy Monitors

This project was funded by the Royal Society and was undertaken in collaboration with Ferndale Primary School. UK schools account for 25% of public sector energy costs. This project explored the use of robotics to introduce pupils to the concept of energy consumption and develop skill in analysing and reducing energy consumption.

“We are very excited to be involved in a collaborative ECO project with Birmingham City University. The children are very enthusiastic at the thought of monitoring power usage at the school. The innovative way of building, controlling and interrogating robots to do this has made the children feel that they are at the forefront of research. The fact that they are working closely with the university staff has given the project a status above that of the everyday delivery of the primary curriculum and we expect the outcomes to reflect this in the children’s learning.” (Nigel Edge, Head Teacher at Ferndale Primary School).