Sixth six-monthly periodic report

Project start date and duration: 1. March, 2001 for 3 years +10 months

EU funding: 600 000 Euros

Project title: Technology and Science for the Information Society, Institute SZTAKI as a Centre of Excellence

Acronym: HUN-TING

Keywords: Computer Science & Control, Information & Communication Technology, Intelligent Automation

Name of the Co-ordinator: Dr. Géza Haidegger

Activity progress report

MTA SZTAKI was fulfilling its scientific tasks, basically, as much as possible, according to the submitted plans and to the accepted contract version. We invited, selected and hosted foreign research experts to work with our colleagues on various themes related to our activities. We had the chance to visit other institutions and deepen our co-operation with international scientific partners. We have been very active in international co-operation, and thanks to the prestigious title of Centre of Excellence, we had achieved nice results in research and in forming joint activities, preparing joint 6th Framework proposals, etc.

In this reporting period, ( period #6,) we had 10 professors/scientists, one in overlap/continuation with period #5 to work with us,

Patrick Goverts, Sandy Ferret, Miklos Santha, Arpad Harangozo, Costin Cosouis, Renaud Peter and

Christian Mönch, Daniel Dochev, Radioslav Pavlov and David Lopez Villarino as “returning fellows”

We have planned, organised, prepared and conducted several workshops and conferences. They were successful both for us, organisers, and also for all participants. The national and international appreciation of our Institute has been raised by these actions. We are proud to have organised them.

We participated at the EU-FP6-related information events in Budapest, mostly as delivering the presentations on the new features for the promotion of the 6^th Framework launch

During the 6^th period, one of our greatest actions was the organization of the World-Science Forum International Conference (8-10Nov) with 450 participants. This was, probably, the largest scientific international event in Hungary during 2003.

But we are proud also to have hosted the following further seminars and workshops:

An IST and Quality Management Forum Nov.13-14, with 60 participants,

Organized a Swedish delegation for promoting innovative SME-s to join FP6 Framework program, and organized the APART-2 GRIP event on Ráckeve 11-13 Nov. ,

All details are available on the web, and in the appendices.

www.sztaki.hu/conferences www.lpds.sztaki.hu www.sztaki.hu

According to the plans, our Laboratories utilised the previously purchased durable equipment (hardware and software) in order to meet the requirements of research co-operation envisaged.

Just to list some key areas briefly for the 2003-2004 year statistics:

7 significant science books were published by authors from our Institute, on Cellular Neural Networks, Visual Computing, Process Modelling and Model Analysis, Intelligent Control Systems, On Non-linear Systems with Varying Structures.

12 books have been edited by SZTAKI researchers, and the long list of publications is given in the attachment.

Out of this number, 57 papers were published in international journals, 69 in international co-operation. Almost 120 oral conference presentations were held. 7 new Ph.D. degrees were granted and 2 titles of Doctor of Academy were granted. 53 scientists had taken part in lecturing at university courses.

Almost 30 projects had been contracted and being worked on within the 5^th Framework Programme of the EU. List of EU 5^th Framework projects are listed below.

By the Launch of the 6^th Framework Programme, our Institute had a good start. We had submitted around 40 proposals till February 2004, and the plans are also very impressive, to keep up with this rate. Regarding the success rate of the 6^th Framework proposals, we are falling behind the previous figures, but still, can be proud to have contracted several ones rather soon. A full list of submitted and accepted proposals is available, but is not shown in public domain documents.

Our Institute, due to its devoted scientific area of Automation and Computer Sciences, has a special role and value: MTA SZTAKI is the Hungarian key institute in the ERCIM Society. (European Research Consortium for Information and Mathematics) (www.ercim.org). This membership in the consortium offers MTA SZTAKI the opportunity to find the best scientific partners in Europe, and through an active participation in the actions of ERCIM, MTA SZTAKI can better disseminate its scientific results, while opens the doors also to attract young scientists from abroad. This channel had proven to be very valuable to recruit the professors, scientists and Ph.D. fellows who promoted the lot of joint work and proposals we could develop.

The participation of the key researchers and of the directors of MTA SZTAKI within the Directors’ Meeting and the Executive Committee meetings plus at the Working Group meetings is very essential. Several of the CoE scientific progress results are related to the ERCIM actions. The director and the deputy director of MTA SZTAKI regularly take part in the ERCIM top-level meetings, and several key researchers are working in special ERCIM scientific working groups. Our ERCIM membership is providing a stable channel for scientific relations, for visiting European key institutions, and for inviting experts. In this segment, deputy director Prof. Monostori travelled to the ERCIM directors’ meeting to Luxemburg, 5-7 Nov.

The travels and visits from MTA SZTAKI to other European research entities are financed mostly from separate sources, and just a few are managed through the CoE programme. As it can be seen from the yearly reports, around 300 travels are managed yearly for the scientific cooperation among the European partners and our Institute.

During the past periods, we had the following visits to European partners, based on the CoE:

Dr. Ivanyos and Dr. Nagy and Dr. Freidl participated at the Barcelona conference as returning visitors, on 2004 Jan 7-11. (regarding WP 9).

We maintain our close cooperation through the OSACA Network of “Open systems in Controls”, with Stuttgart University, Germany. Though we had no direct exchange of scientists in this reporting time, we had met face-to-face at other international events, and kept on preparing a joint proposal on Open and real-time control systems. This time we paid our 250 EURO membership fee to the OSACA Group to maintain the operability of the group.

EUREKA cooperation within the FACTORY Umbrella; a cluster to generate successful NMP and IST–IMS proposals.

The work to launch further FP 6 proposals has continued. (Dairy, dependable DAIRY, IPMMAN) continued. We had a meeting in SupsiManno/ Switzerland- 2003 November. This time we also had a chance to formulate an intent to run virtual joint laboratory in the field of intelligent manufacturing.

Virtual laboratories are to be very essential for the future, and MTA SZTAKI is working on extending its present ties. The most developed Virtual Laboratory had been developed by the (WP6-7) Manufacturing Automation entities of MTA SZTAKI, built around the former cooperation with the Stuttgart Fraunhofer Institute (FhG IPA).

A continuous cooperation is maintained within this channel.

Further virtual Laboratory developments are underway with: several universities in France, UK, Germany, Austria, Rumania and Italy. We also initiated a closer cooperation framework with other Centres of Excellences, and by the end of the project, we will be pleased to report on many plans reached as success.