Research environment of Computer science (RECS)
The 4th Industrial Revolution addresses world transformations of a kind that we never have seen before, where e.g., hardware- and software robots, will be capable of doing extraordinary tasks. Such tasks include possibilities for those to act on the basis of analysis of extremely large amounts of unstructured data, which e.g., may be collected from huge sets of things connected to the internet. The Research Environment of Computer Science at HKR (RECS), studies challenges from applying techniques in that context.
As a relatively new discipline, computer science is the study of computers and computation. Computer science areas include computer architecture, algorithms, programming languages, software engineering, computer networking, security, operating systems, databases, and artificial intelligence. RECS will focus on both research and development within the subject areas. Our main research areas include Machine Learning, Internet of things, Big Data and Artificial intelligence, Coding theory and Cryptography, Networking and Distributed Systems, Cyber Security, Computer Science for Sustainable Development, and e-Health. The environment will strive to establish collaboration and cooperation across disciplinary and organizational boundaries, within HKR, and at national as well as international levels.
Especially, current and former projects involve several of the focus points mentioned above, here including:
- Smart Maintenance. As we move further into the 4th Industrial Revolution, more advanced techniques are integrated for the manufacturing and production factories. The 4th Industrial Revolution does have an obvious role in sustainable development in large, and especially for the sustainable industry. The concept of the Black Factory addresses the autonomous industrial park, where robots for periods act independently of human involvement. Smart Maintenance relates here to the actions of finding patterns of anomalies to prevent costly process interruptions. Concepts of Big Data, and Machine Learning are here used to deal with massive amounts of data to predict the state of separate machines as well as an industrial plant as a whole.
- Water Quality Analyses. Drinking water quality is crucial for the society, and thus relates, not only to the 6th of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, but to several of those (such as the 3rd on good health, and the 11th on sustainable cities). It is therefore significantly important to study the drinking water quality, such as the amount of bacteria, at the drinking water treatment plants. Huge amounts of sample data is here collected to be analyzed by the use of Machine Learning algorithms, to be presented in usable ways at the daily operations of the water treatment plants.
- Internet of Things-support systems for parents with ADHD. ADHD, and Autism, or more correctly autism spectrum disorders, affects ability to deal with social interactions, communication and impaired imagination. This means that persons with autism struggle with behaving as other people expect them to in social settings as well as understanding what others mean, especially if metaphors are used in speech. It has been suggested that digital tools might be an aid for persons with ADHD and/or autism in their everyday life, and this project set out to understand how Internet of Things-technology specifically could be of help. Besides from suggesting and implementing example systems, this project has also communicated development with potential end-user groups, thus also clearly contributing to SDGs, such as, number 4 on good health and well-being, and number 16 on inclusive societies.
- Active Aging. A multi-disciplinary cooperation project, with researchers from food-science, design- and computer science that has been highly involved in the project "Active aging – individualized meal solutions for health and life quality among elderly". Here computer science has contributed with IT-infrastructures in distributed environments, with IoT-techniques, contributing to SDG 3, on zero hunger and nutrition aspects.