Distributed Intelligent Systems and Controls: Research, Education, and Technology Laboratory
The DISCRETE Laboratory focuses on exploring fundamental issues
in distributed systems at the interface of manufacturing, controlling
and computer systems. The lab concentrates on primarily three areas
of research. They are IT - software, EE - hardware and OR - algorithms.
The lab has graduate students working on each of these research
areas.
The PRIDE - Parallel Reconfigurable Intelligent Decision Engine
is a collection of FPGAs - Field Programmable Gate Arrays that are
used to run algorithms at the hardware level, thus solving them
faster and at a reduced cost. The lab also has a server that can
also be used to solve the algorithms and there is also a network
of regular desktop machines that have been configured to work in
parallel to solve the algorithms. The cost comparison between these
different methods can be assessed. There is also a drive to incorporate
wireless networks and devices to help provide better solutions.
Different OR algorithms are being developed and tested in the DISCRETE
lab. Suppliers to Sensors (S2S) is an algorithm that was developed
and a software has developed to demonstrate it. There is also a
push to move to try to parallel the existing algorithms and efforts
are being made to test the effectiveness of these algorithms.
There is also a lot of work done in the field of software development.
There is work done in the areas of Enterprise Integration and business
process management.
The lab is also cooperating with other organizations and working
on projects. There is an ongoing project with the Harrisburg School
District. The project tries to help the teacher monitor the performance
of the students and develop quick solutions to their problems.
For more information, please visit the Discrete
Laboratory Website.