Experimental Software Research and Prototyping

Sometimes it may not be appropriate for a company to expand its own development team with the specialist staff required to perform experimental software research. Albion Research can help by either conducting an entire research program, or by providing additional skills and experience to an in-house team.

Projects we have worked on in the past include:

• Fast Random Number Generation. The C library random number generator was too slow and had too short a period for a client's application. We investigated alternative algorithms and the use of hardware random number generators. We were able to identify and select a method which was nine times faster that the standard linear congruential method, easily met the client's requirement for a longer period, and was more suited to multi-threaded multi-processor use than a hardware alternative.
• Data Mining Techniques. A client lacked the in-house capability to research and develop a new data mining product. We researched and implemented a number of DM techniques and were able to identify a novel approach to data mining suited to the client's industry.
• Online Trading System. A client believed he had a novel idea for automated online stock trading. We designed a research program which would investigate the viability of this system while minimizing the client's technical and financial risks.

Other projects our staff have worked on include:

• Emitter Recognition. This project involved the design and development of an automated reasoning system for the identification of radar emitters for a classified military application.
• Automated Planning Techniques. An oil refinery "turnaround" costs about $1million/day. Careful planning is essential to minimize downtime and labor costs. This project exploited temporal reasoning to achieve a more robust turnaround plan.
• Fast Text Searching. This project involved investigation of a number of techniques for the rapid location of groups of keywords in vast bodies of text.
• Enemy Attack Planning. A study investigating automated reasoning in air defence was hampered by the time taken to produce a plausible threat scenario. This project developed software which would automate the creation of the enemy order of battle and attack plans.
• Prolog Benchmarking Study. This project developed a number of benchmarks for a proposed Prolog machine architecture to determine the machine's likely performance.

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Albion Research Ltd. is based in Ottawa, Canada. Please contact us for more information about our services.