Research partners (description)

Universitat Polytechnica de Catalunya

UPC (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya) is a well-established technical institution in Spain. A wide variety of technical disciplines are offered, covering both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. People participating is the proposal, belong to the "AHA Team" (Advanced Hardware Architectures and Neural Networks), an official research group of the Department of Electronic Engineering. They have very good expertise on electronics (analogue and digital), electronic design, high level description and synthesis of systems, etc.

Since 1989 till now, the Staff participating in the proposal develops activities in the domain of Artificial Neural Networks, its implementation and their industrial applications.

Three main research activities can be identified:

Connectionist engineering. This is one of the main activities of the team, and consists of the use of neural, fuzzy and adaptive models for the resolution of practical and real problems (mainly, classification based problems, pattern discrimination, interpolation, ....).

Development and investigation on new architectures based on VLSI technologies for efficient implementation of the above models is a sub-activity. On the other hand, real efforts are devoted to the practical assessment of Artificial Neural Networks applications, trying to identify the best-adapted methodology (algorithm, architecture, database relationship). A main activity in this area has been the participation as a partner in the ELENA Project (Esprit contract 6891) during the 1992 - 1995 period. Actually, two Spanish funded projects are in progress in this domain (CICYT TIC96-0889 and CICYT TIC96-1195). The first one is related with the establishment of a neural methodology for real world problems. The second one is a technological project dealing with the design and implementation of a neuro-fuzzy architecture, using analogue and digital approaches.

Advanced architectures for microprocessors and information processing machines. The development of specialised architectures for microprocessors, and the considerations for the efficient use of these devices are current activities within the group. This activity can result in the design of specific VLSI architectures and subsystems when needed, or its eventual mapping on high performance FPGA devices.

High performance programmable architectures. Great efforts are actually devoted to the research and development of efficient programmable systems on chip (SOC). Special attention is paid to programmable analogue-digital systems for information processing (mixed systems). UPC has been one of the partners in the FIPSOC Project (Esprit contract 21625) during the 1996 - 1998 period. This project, with the name "Field Programmable System on chip" has obtained the first European mixed FPGA with an embedded microcontroller (FIPSOC device). The results of the project are now under evaluation, and debugging for their diffusion and industrial use. FIPSOC is one of the first devices in the market, exhibiting dynamic reconfiguration capabilities. This will be one of the fundamental activities of the group, including the reconsideration of the functionality and capabilities of the family of devices.

Some other activities are related with research and development done with some Spanish industrial partners: CLARITY for the application of the above capabilities to the classification and identification of coins in real time for vending machines applications, MIGUEL TORRES SA for the application of neural techniques (mainly, interpolation and prediction) to the control and monitoring of wine fermentation problems.

People from UPC group are very active in co-operation with the organisation of international events on topics related with the proposal: IWANN (International Work-Conference on Artificial and Natural Neural Networks) usually held in Spain, MIXDES (Mixed Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems) usually held in Poland , ESANN (European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks) yearly done in Belgium, ICES (International Conference on Evolvable Systems).


The responsible person is Professor Joan Cabestany.