From scientific instrument to industrial machine

Richard Doornbos started as a research fellow at ESI in September 2008. His interests centre on the exploration and reasoning about system architectures, system-level behavior modeling and multi-disciplinary system design. Studied Technical Physics at the University of Twente, where his thesis ‘Optical Characterization in Flow Cytometry: Optimization and Miniaturization’ resulted in a PhD degree in 1995. He accepted a post-doctorate position at the Laser Center of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, where he worked on optical spectroscopic techniques for characterizing cardiovascular tissues for diagnostic purposes. In 1998 he joined Philips Research, starting with a 2-year education in computational science. He continued investigating various complex systems in the consumer, ambient intelligence, and medical domains as a research scientist and system architect. These systems included: intelligent user interfaces, distribution of multimedia presentations, in-home resource management, broadband services, intelligent homes for elderly care, automatic recognition of human behavior and personal emergency response services, in particular fall detection. Sjir van Loo is a part-time research fellow at ESI since 2005. His current research interests are in systems architectures and systems engineering for sensor networks and system-of-systems in diverse application domains. He has given regular lectures on systems architecting and design in the ESI competence development programme. After graduating in physics at Eindhoven University of Technology in 1974, he first joined Philips in 1985 and then Philips Research Laboratories in 1992. He has over 30 years of experience in systems architecting and research and realization of complex software intensive cyber physical systems, often in multi-disciplinary settings, from one-off systems to high volume electronics. These include lighting control systems, sensor networks forassisted living applications, MRI machines, electron microscopes, video-on-demand servers, analogue and digital TVs, a Distributed Real-time Operating system, and data-acquisition and monitoring systems in high-energy physics. He was a co-founder of the Philips Systems Architecting training program, which he also managed from its launch in 1997 until 2007.

Foreword.- Acknowledgements.- Part I Introduction.- 1. The Endeavor.- Part II Architecture.- 2. Systems Architecture.- 3. Feasibility prototyping.- 4. Software architecture.- Part III Automation and control functions.- 5. Applications in automated microscopy.- 6. Focusing control.- 7. Positioning control.- Part IV Conclusion.- 8. Final words.- Appendix. Condor Project Publications.