Seminar: Flexibility as an Essential Requirement for Real-Time Embedded Systems

Recent growing frameworks such as the loT, Ilot, Cloud/Fog/Edge computing, CPS, etc, have enabled new real-time applications, creating new challenges. From smart cities to health monitoring, intelligent transportation, autonomous vehicles, Industry 4.0, etc, all rely on complex services provided by complex distributed platforms. However, as opposed to classical real-time applications that were statically deployed at system boot time on known platforms, contemporary applications demand dynamic service management over dynamic platforms, while meeting all timing requirements. This is a significant challenge that requires operational flexibility from the node level to the network and system-wide levels.

In this talk we will track the evolution of flexibility in systems design, from manufacturing to embedded systems. We will discuss the implications of introducing operational flexibility, its architectural requirements and existing flexibility frameworks for real-time embedded systems. We will end with a look at some ongoing efforts in this directions.

Biography:

Luis Almeida graduated from the University of Aveiro in Portugal and is currently Full Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal, where he is the Director of the Doctoral Program on Electrical and Computer Engineering and coordinates the Distributed and Real-time Embedded Systems laboratory (DaRTES). He was the Editor-in-Chief of the Springer Real-Time Systems Journal between 2020-2026, and is currently an Associate Editor of the Elsevier Journal of Systems Architecture and Chair of EMSIG - the EDAA Special Interest Group on Embedded Systems. He was Vice-Director of the CISTER Research Center on Real-Time and Embedded Computing Systems (2018-2025) and Chair of TCRTS - the IEEE Technical Committee on Real-Time Systems (2020-2021). He was also Trustee of the RoboCup Federation from 2008 to 2016 and Vice-President from 2011 to 2013. He participated in numerous funded national and international research projects, and regularly participates in the organizing of scientific events in real-time communications for distributed industrial/embedded systems, for teams of cooperating agents and for the Internet-of-Things.