RUNES
Reconfigurable Ubiquitous Networked Embedded Systems

The Steering Committee and Bob Squirrell the chairman of PROFIBUS UK have granted the RUNES project with PROFIBUS Group membership. PROFIBUS is the world leader in fieldbus technology with about a million installations, incorporating over 12.5 million nodes. Fieldbuses are industrial networking systems developed to replace centralised parallel wiring and prevailing analog signal transmission. PROFIBUS is mainly used at the field level with interfacing capabilities to the sensor/actuator level as well as upwards to the production and enterprise levels. PROFIBUS is suitable for both fast, time-critical applications and complex communication tasks.

As a PROFIBUS Group member RUNES will have access to all specifications, application guidelines and case studies. At the same time, RUNES will have the opportunity to engage various leading experts who are members of the PROFIBUS Forum in discussions related to the research issues and validate results within an industrial perspective. This is particularly important as the technology roadmapping activity of RUNES is now underway and a number of application scenarios currently under development are dealing with industrial control and monitoring. In this latter context, the applicability of wireless networks has not been flawless, despite the fact that in general they are characterised by fast deployment and cost effectiveness. The requirements for reliability, adaptability, and scalability outweigh speed.

Given that PROFIBUS is a truly international standard, the membership offers a mechanism for the application scenarios to be validated in a world-wide industrial context. The members of PROFIBUS Forum have a creative role to play, not just benefiting from fast access to project results, but being actively encouraged to input ideas and to comment on the work under development.

We are looking forward to extending our collaboration with PROFIBUS and its member companies. RUNES will be represented with a paper in the PROFIBUS International Conference 2005 which will be taking place during 21-22 June 2005.