Launch
of Centre for
Historical Research at UL
Dr. Deirdre Mc Mahon, Mary Immaculate College, Professor Michael Bentley and Professor Anthony Mc Elligott at the lecture of history held at Plassey House, University of Limerick.
The Centre for Historical Research was jointly launched last month at the University of Limerick by Professor Anthony McElligott, UL, and Dr Deirdre McMahon, Department of History, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. The inaugural lecture was delivered by the distinguished historian Professor Michael Bentley, University of St Andrews/Peterhouse, Cambridge, who spoke on "Trans-scripting the intellectual location of historiography". Professor Bentley, whose recently published book: 'Lord Salisbury's World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain', has received critical acclaim, and will be giving the Wiles Lectures at Queen's University, Belfast in the spring of 2003.
Speaking at the launch Professor Anthony McElligott said: "The purpose of the Centre is to promote and support historical research within the University of Limerick and in the Department of History at Mary Immaculate College. In recent years faculty in both institutions have published over a dozen books and numerous scholarly articles, achieving national and international recognition. Building upon existing contacts, the Centre will facilitate greater formal collaboration between researchers at Plassey Campus and Mary Immaculate, as it will between Limerick and research institutions abroad. Critically, the Centre will also provide the sort of intellectual environment that history postgraduates and university faculty need to remain at the cutting edge of research. Thus today's inaugural lecture by Professor Bentley also marks the beginning of a seminar series entitled: 'Scripting Histories' which has already attracted leading figures from the historical community to Limerick. Such research programmes will be ongoing, as too will be the various symposia and workshops currently being planned. By taking place under the aegis of the Centre for Historical Research, such activities achieve critical mass, as well as giving history a much sharper profile, and thereby establishing Limerick as a centre of excellence in the delivery of historical research and teaching, not just to the local community, but nationally and internationally."
UL Engineers make a significant contribution in Automotive Electronics
Researchers at the University of Limerick have attracted significant interest from media of late in relation to their work in the development of 'drive-by-wire' networks for cars at the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering .
Motorcars are no longer purely mechanical machines. Electronic equipment accounts for 30% of the value for some luxury cars. Most modern cars have more computing power on-board than that of the Apollo spacecraft, which put the first men on the moon. In Ireland we do not design or manufacture complete motor cars but we do have more than 6,000 people employed in the automotive components industry, with some 3,000 of these working in the automotive elect-ronics sector.
Most modern cars have more computing power on-board than that of the Apollo spacecraft, which put the first men on the moon . . .
At UL researchers are contributing to the development of computer networking solutions for cars. So why do we need a computer network in a car? Well consider an expensive car such as the Mercedes S-Class. This car has up to 60 computers on-board. These computers are invisible in the sense that they are contained in small boxes throughout the car and are used for various control purposes. Such computers are referred to as ECUs, or Electronic Control Units. Without some kind of computer network it would be difficult to connect all these control units together where information could be shared in an intelligent fashion. When we want to connect PCs (Personal Computers) together in a building we use a LAN (Local Area Network) and if we want to connect PCs across a wide geographical area we use a WAN (Wide Area Network). Now vehicle ECU devices are being connected together using car control networks such as Vehicle Area Networks (VAN) or the more popular Controller Area Networks (CAN).
Automotive engineers are now pushing this networking technology to support the emerging 'drive-by-wire' solutions. In computer games, the game controller (joy-stick) is connected to the console using a piece of wire. However, would you feel safe in a real aircraft if you thought that the pilot had a joystick in hand with a piece of wire connected to the rudder and the other control surfaces? Well - that is exactly how a modern airplane is controlled! This is called 'fly-by-wire' (FBW) where electrical signals are sent by wire from the joystick to the actuators, which move the control surfaces and control engine power etc. Most modern aircraft, such as the Boeing 777 or the Airbus A320 and A330 use 'fly-by-wire' schemes. Car manu-facturers now want to adapt this technology to control steering and braking. They refer to this general technology as 'drive-by-wire'.
. . . would you feel safe in a real aircraft if you thought that the pilot had a joystick in hand with a piece of wire connected to the rudder?
One application of 'drive-by-wire' is 'steer-by-wire' where the steering wheel is connected to the steering actuators using an electrical cable so there is no need for a physical steering column. This gives car manufacturers more scope to design the vehicle shape where more passenger space can be realised up front. Another application is 'brake-by-wire' where car network wiring connects the brake computer at each wheel to the brake pedal computer and braking is controlled by sending electrical messages across the 'brake-by-wire' network. It is expected that Audi will have a 'brake-by-wire'' car on the market in 2003 and already Delphi Automotive have a 'steer-by-wire solution' developed - and this will be available soon in other commercial vehicles.
The main challenge for the automotive researchers is to develop a safe solution for 'drive-by-wire'. Three years ago an international consortium was established under an ISO (International Standards Organisation) task force to see if 'drive-by-wire' capability could be retrofitted to the well established and trusted CAN (Control Area Network) standard. Participants include companies such as Bosch, Motorola, GM/Opel, Daimler/Chrysler and Mitsubishi.
The UL researchers, Gabriel Leen and Donal Heffernan, were founder members in this group and took responsibility for the computer modeling and the theoretical formal safety verification of the new protocol. In this project they applied new computer science methodologies to the automotive electronics problem and have broken new research ground in this area. Their work has been published in some recent peer-reviewed international research journals.
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Launch
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Introduction to University Programme
