Jose Ramon Casar Corredera

Critical factors for success in university–industry research projects

This study provides insight into the reality of university-industry technology transfer through the assessment of some of the most influential factors for success or failure in research contracts. This widespread mechanism of technology transfer is examined in the light of exhaustive information and experience gathered from thirty interviews with qualified university researchers. The interviewees, who have been directly involved in collaborative projects with industry partners, have deeply described both sound and unsatisfactory cooperation cases, in order to explore which relevant circumstances have led to success or failure. The analysis drives to conclude that there are some features (beyond technological ones) related to the corporate partner’s strategic and functional characteristics, which come to be decisive for success. For example, company’s real interest and involvement during the technology transfer process, its capacity to assimilate new knowledge and a confident attitude towards the university research group are identified to be key elements for attaining an effective technology transfer. In this contribution, the importance of these aspects is contextualized and summarized in a model for successful technology transfer.This study provides insight into the reality of university–industry technology transfer through the assessment of some of the most influential factors for success or failure in research contracts. This widespread mechanism of technology transfer is examined in the light of exhaustive information and experience gathered from 30 interviews with qualified university researchers. The interviewees, who have been directly involved in collaborative projects with industry partners, have deeply described both sound and unsatisfactory cooperation cases, in order to explore which relevant circumstances have led to success or failure. The analysis drives to conclude that there are some features (beyond technological ones) related to the corporate partners strategic and functional characteristics, which come to be decisive for success. For example, companys real interest and involvement during the technology transfer process, its capacity to assimilate new knowledge and a confident attitude towards the university research group are identified to be key elements for attaining an effective technology transfer. In this contribution, the importance of these aspects is contextualised and summarised in a model for successful technology transfer.

Application of evolution strategies to the design of tracking filters with a large number of specifications

This paper describes the application of evolution strategies to the design of interacting multiple model (IMM) tracking filters in order to fulfill a large table of performance specifications. These specifications define the desired filter performance in a thorough set of selected test scenarios, for different figures of merit and input conditions, imposing hundreds of performance goals. The design problem is stated as a numeric search in the filter parameters space to attain all specifications or at least minimize, in a compromise, the excess over some specifications as much as possible, applying global optimization techniques coming from evolutionary computation field. Besides, a new methodology is proposed to integrate specifications in a fitness function able to effectively guide the search to suitable solutions. The method has been applied to the design of an IMM tracker for a real-world civil air traffic control application: the accomplishment of specifications defined for the future European ARTAS system.

A 4D trajectory negotiation protocol for Arrival and Approach sequencing

Future 4D TBO will require effective air- ground data link communication and negotiation protocols. This issue is especially critical in Arrival and Approach flight phase due to the variability of conditions into a short space-time environment where multiple aircraft simultaneously converge. Besides, several subtasks are closely related with effective air-ground negotiation protocols for 4D TBO in Terminal Areas: predicting accurate arrivals 4D trajectories, performing well established 4D trajectory formats for an effective interoperability between airborne and ground systems, designing efficient real-time aircraft arrival sequencer and scheduler algorithms, etc. In this paper we propose a 4D Trajectory Air- Ground Negotiation Protocol for Arrival and Approach Sequencing. The Negotiation Protocol has been implemented in an ad hoc multi-agent platform. Based on this proposal we summarize other relevant information that should be incorporated into the 4D trajectory information.

Airport based bias estimation of surface movement radars

In this proposal, a real time bias estimation system for an airport surveillance data fusion system is presented. This bias estimation system is divided in two main parts. The first part estimates SMR bias terms, taking advantage of the knowledge of the airport map, which is useful because aircraft usually follow the axis of airport taxiways. The other part makes use of SMR corrected measures, which can be assumed to be unbiased. Using them, bias estimators for other important surface surveillance sensors are defined. These estimators are based on processing differences of measurement taken from each sensor and from the SMR. As simulation results show, if the sensor error models are precise enough, both estimations converge to the real bias values, and therefore unbiased measures may be obtained. These unbiased measurements should be provided to the fusion system, in order to enhance tracking performance. These estimation processes do not represent an important computer load increase for the data fusion system. The performance improvement in tracking is also presented.