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2010 Conference Materials > Foreword

Proceedings of Fifth Annual Conference, 13 & 14 July 2010
Edinburgh International Conference Centre

Foreword

On behalf of the Board of the Systems Engineering for Autonomous Systems Defence Technology Centre (SEAS DTC), I should like to extend a warm welcome to all participants in this, our fifth annual technical conference.

We are now coming towards the conclusion of the second phase of three years of DTC operation, and are building on the successful research outcomes of the DTC to date through a programme of integration and demonstration of capabilities, leading towards exploitation. The objectives of this conference are to present the status of the research, to illustrate our integration work and further plans, to enable you to talk to the researchers and to help form relationships between the researchers, industry and MoD in order to support future exploitation of the research outputs.

The conference has a number of plenary sessions together with three parallel sessions which mirror the structure of the DTC's research programme, which has six research themes:

Stream A (in the Kilsyth room) covers the Sensor Exploitation and Communications & Control themes

Stream B (in the Moorfoot room) covers the Mission Planning & Decision-making and Systems Engineering Research themes

Stream C (in the Tinto room) covers the Algorithms & Architectures and Propulsion, Power Generation & Energy Management themes.

The plenary sessions in the Pentland Auditorium and Strathblane Hall will focus on our cross DTC integration and demonstration activities, particularly our three 'Systems Exemplar' programmes, whose progress and final aims will be highlighted.

We are again delighted to be sharing the conference venue and events with our colleagues from the EMRS DTC. Delegates are free to move between sessions in the two conferences.

Although the DTC's research work is mainly at low technology maturity level, we are always keen to pursue possible exploitation routes. We thus encourage you to use the conference to talk to the researchers to stimulate ideas for future research direction, and to consider how the fruits of their research might be exploited to the advantage of the UK.

We hope that you will enjoy the presentations and will also take the opportunity to attend the conference reception on the evening of the first day. Of course, we also hope that you enjoy your stay in historic Edinburgh.

Dr Bill Bardo, SEAS DTC Technical Director