IEEE Systems Conference 2016 - Highlights
Overview
The 10th annual IEEE International Systems Conference (SysCon 2016) was held in Orlando,
USA which brought together 250 attendees from 30 countries. Attendees were diverse and
ranged from engineers and practitioners to academic and government representatives, all with a
shared common interest of systems engineering for complex systems. The conference
consisted of tutorial sessions and research paper presentations throughout the week related to
themes including Decision-Making, Cyber Security, Knowledge Management, Big Data,
Complex Systems, Modelling and Simulation.
The conference chair, Bob Rass from Raytheon opened the conference and presented the need
for research surrounding complex systems and engineering. He described the world as fast
becoming more complex by the day and the systems we must design, build, put in service and
maintain are ever increasing in complexity. He declared that the conference is all about the
exploration and exchange of information related to complex systems, to transfer knowledge to
enhance our jobs and functions.
Tutorial - Data Analytics by Paul Hershey (Raytheon)
Paul’s tutorial covered an overview of data analytics from his work and experience within
Raytheon. He presented an introduction to the topic of data analytics, before discussing several
use cases. He suggested that data analytics can be broadly divided into the following five areas:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Extract data
Logistics of data mgmt.
Agile principles of working
Interpretation
Visualisation
Paul also presented a view on the areas of skills for Data Scientists:
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Machine Learning
Programming Skills
Domain Knowledge
Statistical Modelling
Data Mining
The concept of “Agile Analytics” was described, whereby agile methods can be used to give a
value-driven approach to analytics. The need to have an overarching architecture was
promoted, based on the following drivers:
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Scalability
Performance
Availability
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Reliability
Manageability
Cost
Paul also recommended an influential book written by Martin Fowler entitled “Thinking about Big
Data”.
--Tutorial - Intelligent Control Architecture for Autonomous Vehicles by Dr Carlos C.
Insaurrable (Teeside University)
Carlos’ tutorial presented a comprehensive and detailed view on control architectures for
unmanned vehicles. The tutorial was based on the four architectural pillars for autonomy,
namely:
1. Robot Control Architecture
a. Hierarchical (deliberate)
b. Behavioural (reactive)
c. Hybrid (combination of deliberate and reactive)
2. Knowledge Representation
3. Agent Architecture
a. Reactive
b. Deliberate
c. Layered/Hybrid
d. Cognitive
4. Situation Awareness (OODA and APIE loops)
a. Decision-Making
b. Decision-Enforcing
Carlos provided many examples and provided a detailed view into the application of such
intelligent control architectures for autonomous vehicles.
--Presentation Highlights
Keynote - Model- and Component-Based Design of Cyber-Physical Systems by Janos
Sztipanovits (Inst. for Software Integrated Systems, Vanderbilt University)
The keynote speaker described the challenges and approaches to building a comprehensive
design automation tool suite for complex cyber-physical systems (CPS). He argued that cyberphysical systems is a new term for systems engineering, or is at least a branch of systems
engineering. He defined CPS as engineering systems where functionality emerges from the
networked interaction of physical and computational processes. He proposed the need for such
work when there are new industry-driven platforms for creating complex CPS emerging, such as
Internet of Things (IoT). He presented several examples of work related to DARPA and the use
of the CyPhyML modelling integration language.
There were 157 papers that were accepted for the conference of the 343 that were submitted
for peer review (60% acceptance rate). I presented the paper on ‘Route Networks within the Air
Transport System’ of a study undertaken on flight data using a network analysis approach. The
conference also provided an opportunity to network with researchers and practitioners in this
area. The remaining papers were also presented throughout the course of the conference, of
which there were some stand-out work related to my research and interests.
John Salmon’s work from Brigham Young University, showed the investigation into the optimal
locations of charging stations if New York Taxis were to shift to electric vehicles. The work of
gamification and game-based learning by the University of Alabama in Huntsville showed how
such approaches can be used within complex systems to teach (game-based learning) and to
incentivise through the use of game design elements. The presentation by Steven’s Inst. of
Technology on the use of interactive visualisation for decision-making for complex systems,
presented the appropriate situations for using interactive visualisations.
The latest in Systems Engineering knowledge was presented by Claus Nielsen from Cranfield
University, promoting the SEBOK (Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge) and the GRCSE
(Graduate Reference Curriculum for Systems Engineering) which are aimed to capture the
knowledge from systems engineering work for researchers and practitioners. Further
information on this and wider systems research can be found at www.bkcase.org.