As SoftCPS targets cyber-physical systems, the research topics of the laboratory are transversal to a large set of application domains. Nevertheless, the laboratory activities are more focused on a few relevant application domains:

Smart Manufacturing

Smart manufacturing, although a broad concept, can be defined as real-time workflow application system in which all information is available when and where it is needed for optimizing the entire manufacturing process, from reactive to predictive approaches, and thus increasing its efficiency and efficacy. The development of such smart manufacturing environment depends on high performance middleware and IoT/Edge capabilities in an industrial context and demands a better integration between IoT/Edge and middleware software technologies.

Smart Cities and Communities

The work on software architecture provides an essential step towards the management of smart cities and communities, allowing to increase quality of life, whilst providing energy-efficient, circular societies, by enhancing the existent (or being deployed) IoT/Fog infrastructure with distributed monitoring capabilities, as well as management of heterogeneous workflows in the edge-cloud compute continuum.

Smart Mobility

Mobility, in particular in the automotive and railway industries, is increasingly dependent on smart systems being fully-connected, supporting both advanced driver assistance systems, which includes services such as navigation, remote diagnostics, and collision warning, and autonomous driving, which includes services such as automatic parking and autopilot. The software technologies are required to support stringent quality of service requirements at the edge, whilst still being able to provide cloud-supported advanced functionalities. 

Smart Health

Healthcare applications are becoming increasingly connected; in particular, the recent trend of telehealth, connecting IoT devices with the healthcare existent infrastructures, makes a challenge in the interoperability, reliability and privacy of data, and puts an increasing computation effort in the resource-constrained devices used. This needs to be addressed both with appropriate resource management approaches, as well as interoperability and data processing at the edge.