Research

Department of Automation Science and Engineering (ASE) was founded at the beginning of 2008 by merging the Institute of Measurement and Information Technology and the Institute of Automation and Control. The research in the Department has been organized into several research areas and research groups focusing on the fundamental topics of automation science and technology. Our cooperating partners come from the companies of automation, information and communications technology, process and forest industries and biotechnological industry.

Research Areas

Systems thinking is our overall approach to analyze and optimize complicated, automated, and autonomous stochastic systems. The method can be utilized to design, operate, and maintain different systems to complete their assigned tasks with the optimized use of resources in a continuously evolving and partly unpredictable environment. Practical implementation of systems technology and operation requires multidisciplinary combination of our four research areas:

IT architectures for industrial control
Modeling and optimization of systems
Measurement and control
Micro sensors and actuators

Research Groups

The development and study of detailed research theories, methods and tools of the systems technology have been organized into several research groups shown below. More than 60 researchers and research assistants are working in the research groups and projects of ASE.

Automation and Information Networks
Automation Software
Micro- and Nanosystems
Process Automation
Measurement Information
Personal Positioning Algorithms
Sensor Technology and Biomeasurements
Image Based Measurements.

Application Areas

In order to include application domain knowledge as a component in the systems design, ASE has selected certain primary application areas. The areas selected are quite distinct from one another in order to support the generic research on theories and technologies, and in their integration. The selected application areas are:

Industrial processes
Systems for cell and tissue technology
Mobile autonomous machines.

Projects

All research in the Department is carried out in research projects. The projects have different volumes, time spans and financing structures. The research projects are mainly financed by TEKES, Academy of Finland, EU and companies. There are several projects in progress. Some of the most important previous projects are listed and introduced on separate pages.

Publications

The research results are published in refreed scientific journals, conference papers and master and doctoral theses.