Professor Seppo Kuikka
Automation is a critical competitive factor in the modern flexible and networked industrial production. A general goal in automation applications is on one hand to distribute intelligence to the controlled devices and on the other hand to integrate production management with the business processes of the company. Software development has become increasingly important in the development of automation systems and applications.
The Automation Software Engineering research group is focused on developing software applications for automation domain, by means of both teaching and research work. The teaching activities concentrate on development of object based real time systems, component programming and integration of automation and production information systems. The used research methods are the so called constructive approach of design science as well as adaptation and application of UML-based methods for automation industry. One interest in the implementation of research and development projects is automation domain specific design of software architectures, using design patterns and application frameworks. The other interest is development of component and service based solutions.
The focus of the group’s latest research projects has been on integration of production information systems and on demanding operation and maintenance, including abnormal situation handling. The research is concentrating on one hand on semantic web services and on the other hand on advisory systems. The former increase the degree of automation in production related decisions. The latter assist people in the decision making in production and automation design.
Publications of Automation Software research group