- DCSC

For research in an engineering subject, industrial contacts are essential. At the same time, cooperation with industry may sometimes be felt as problematic regarding formalities and long time commitments. This presentation describes a format for cooperation between industry and academia: The "competence center". It is a format that is supported by the Swedish funding agency VINNOVA, and is built up as a coalition between several companies and research groups. It is constructed as a long term commitment, 10 years, and is jointly funded by VINNOVA, the university and the companies. In this presentation we focus on one center: ISIS (Information systems for Industrial Control and Supervision).

ISIS works with various problems of industrial relevance relating to control, sensor fusion and diagnosis. Most of the work is carried out by graduate students so the scientific quality in the projects is as important as the industrial relevance.

In the presentation, the organisational and formal aspects of the center will be described, as well as our experiences of this form of industrial cooperation. Some of the scientific and industrial results in the sensor fusion area will also be presented.