This UK-India consortium-based initiative has been established in direct response to a previous request from the British High Commission in India. The IU-ATC consortium has developed through a series of workshops supported by EPSRC and the British High Commission in India, commencing with a Technical Workshop in January/February 2006. The consortium comprises 8 research-leading universities in UK, 5 leading IITs, major industrial partners in UK and India (including companies such as BT, InfoSys, Wipro, Sasken, and Tejas), and a number of SMEs. The initiative aims to establish the first virtual India-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) in Next Generation Networks, Systems and Services, which will put in place the support infrastructure to facilitate, develop and enable the Digital Economy of both countries. This will be achieved through scientific investigation of the technical and functional requirements of Next Generation Networks through the promotion of industry collaboration with research-leading academic institutions and government departments as part of an initial 30 month Phase 1 of an overall 5-year joint programme between the UK and India. The current proposal builds on the existing and well formed consortium, which has already attracted EPSRC support (Travel Grant GR1, INTERACT 5 GR2), UKTI Grant, GOF, and most recently UKIERI-DST Research Award (S083). The explosive growth in advanced telecommunication networks and multimedia services in the last decade has offered exciting opportunities across a wide range of sectors, including communications, education, entertainment, and health. These opportunities have been successfully embraced within Europe and USA, and there is an increasing need to provide similar opportunities for the rapidly expanding economy of India. However, given India's special requirements, this cannot easily be achieved by transference of existing technical and engineering solutions, and a fundamental rethink is required to adapt or develop novel solutions and provide for research, innovation and wealth creation opportunities between UK and India. The IU-ATC initiative is focused on promotion of the Digital Economy, a priority identified under the recent government Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 . The Digital Economy aims to support research and skilled people to effect early adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by a variety of user sectors. Understanding and enabling the impact of information, better positions the UK and India to reap the economic and social benefits offered by emerging Telecommunications Engineering hardware and software together with fixed/wireless/mobile Broadband technologies for low cost sensor and user devices, and service delivery platforms. The challenges in exploiting the promise of the technological advances within NGNs, and achieving their potential performance, economic and social returns, require not only a thorough understanding of the lower layers of the communications networking stack but also a strong ability and interest in exploiting the core technologies for citizen-facing applications. This often implies an appreciation of business and government strategies in specific areas such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing and management and requires close collaboration between academia and industry to realise the full potential.

Investment in innovation and research in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is essential in order to foster social and economic inclusion, better public services, and improvements in the quality of life for citizens. The key purpose of our Network is to strengthen such investment in the area of Next Generation Telecommunications Networks in support of the Digital Economy. Such aspirations are pivotal for social inclusion and economic prosperity in both the UK and India. Within the UK, the situation is improving, but according to Ofcom's recent report on the Nations and Regions 2007, more work needs to be done to ensure that the benefits of the Digital Economy are accessible and affordable to all of its citizens. With a growing middle class that now numbers nearly 400 million people, India's electronics equipment consumption, estimated at $28.2 billion in 2005, is expected to reach $363 billion by 2015. Domestic production totalled $10.99 billion in 2005 and is projected at $155 billion in 2015, according to ISA estimates, thanks to such drivers as mobile phones, wireless equipment, set-tops and smart-card terminals. These developments, and the priorities of government to raise educational and business standards and address social and economic deprivation, are driving the pressure on the enabling communications and service providers to come up with cost-effective solutions that can be rolled out at scale in support of the digital economy in both countries.Within our proposed Network, we will address a number of themes that will contribute to the development and deployment of Next Generation Converged Networks. These themes build on the strengths of our Network Members and also provide the greatest opportunities for the consideration of Technology Demonstrators that will underpin the development of government policies and initiatives for both Rural and Urban Digital Economy programmes in both UK and India.For the past two years, under the invitation of EPSRC and the British High Commission in Delhi, Professor Parr has established a UK-India Advisory Group (see Letters of Support from British High Commission Personnel in India). This group has been formulating a development plan between the two nations, involving an agenda of activities within the context of Next Generation Networking; the purpose is to encourage the development of real and meaningful collaborations that will be internationally leading and economically relevant to both the UK and India. Overall, the intention is the establishment of a joint Indo-UK Virtual Centre of Excellence that will address the domain of Next Generation Networking for the benefit of both nations. The provision of core funding through this EPSRC INTERACT Programme is critical to the creation of our Network and to enable our plans to go forward on a sure footing for the future.

This UK-India consortium-based initiative has been established in direct response to a previous request from the British High Commission in India. The IU-ATC consortium has developed through a series of workshops supported by EPSRC and the British High Commission in India, commencing with a Technical Workshop in January/February 2006. The consortium comprises 8 research-leading universities in UK, 5 leading IITs, major industrial partners in UK and India (including companies such as BT, InfoSys, Wipro, Sasken, and Tejas), and a number of SMEs. The initiative aims to establish the first virtual India-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) in Next Generation Networks, Systems and Services, which will put in place the support infrastructure to facilitate, develop and enable the Digital Economy of both countries. This will be achieved through scientific investigation of the technical and functional requirements of Next Generation Networks through the promotion of industry collaboration with research-leading academic institutions and government departments as part of an initial 30 month Phase 1 of an overall 5-year joint programme between the UK and India. The current proposal builds on the existing and well formed consortium, which has already attracted EPSRC support (Travel Grant GR1, INTERACT 5 GR2), UKTI Grant, GOF, and most recently UKIERI-DST Research Award (S083). The explosive growth in advanced telecommunication networks and multimedia services in the last decade has offered exciting opportunities across a wide range of sectors, including communications, education, entertainment, and health. These opportunities have been successfully embraced within Europe and USA, and there is an increasing need to provide similar opportunities for the rapidly expanding economy of India. However, given India's special requirements, this cannot easily be achieved by transference of existing technical and engineering solutions, and a fundamental rethink is required to adapt or develop novel solutions and provide for research, innovation and wealth creation opportunities between UK and India. The IU-ATC initiative is focused on promotion of the Digital Economy, a priority identified under the recent government Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 . The Digital Economy aims to support research and skilled people to effect early adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by a variety of user sectors. Understanding and enabling the impact of information, better positions the UK and India to reap the economic and social benefits offered by emerging Telecommunications Engineering hardware and software together with fixed/wireless/mobile Broadband technologies for low cost sensor and user devices, and service delivery platforms. The challenges in exploiting the promise of the technological advances within NGNs, and achieving their potential performance, economic and social returns, require not only a thorough understanding of the lower layers of the communications networking stack but also a strong ability and interest in exploiting the core technologies for citizen-facing applications. This often implies an appreciation of business and government strategies in specific areas such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing and management and requires close collaboration between academia and industry to realise the full potential.

This UK-India consortium-based initiative has been established in direct response to a previous request from the British High Commission in India. The IU-ATC consortium has developed through a series of workshops supported by EPSRC and the British High Commission in India, commencing with a Technical Workshop in January/February 2006. The consortium comprises 8 research-leading universities in UK, 5 leading IITs, major industrial partners in UK and India (including companies such as BT, InfoSys, Wipro, Sasken, and Tejas), and a number of SMEs. The initiative aims to establish the first virtual India-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC) in Next Generation Networks, Systems and Services, which will put in place the support infrastructure to facilitate, develop and enable the Digital Economy of both countries. This will be achieved through scientific investigation of the technical and functional requirements of Next Generation Networks through the promotion of industry collaboration with research-leading academic institutions and government departments as part of an initial 30 month Phase 1 of an overall 5-year joint programme between the UK and India. The current proposal builds on the existing and well formed consortium, which has already attracted EPSRC support (Travel Grant GR1, INTERACT 5 GR2), UKTI Grant, GOF, and most recently UKIERI-DST Research Award (S083). The explosive growth in advanced telecommunication networks and multimedia services in the last decade has offered exciting opportunities across a wide range of sectors, including communications, education, entertainment, and health. These opportunities have been successfully embraced within Europe and USA, and there is an increasing need to provide similar opportunities for the rapidly expanding economy of India. However, given India's special requirements, this cannot easily be achieved by transference of existing technical and engineering solutions, and a fundamental rethink is required to adapt or develop novel solutions and provide for research, innovation and wealth creation opportunities between UK and India. The IU-ATC initiative is focused on promotion of the Digital Economy, a priority identified under the recent government Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 . The Digital Economy aims to support research and skilled people to effect early adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by a variety of user sectors. Understanding and enabling the impact of information, better positions the UK and India to reap the economic and social benefits offered by emerging Telecommunications Engineering hardware and software together with fixed/wireless/mobile Broadband technologies for low cost sensor and user devices, and service delivery platforms. The challenges in exploiting the promise of the technological advances within NGNs, and achieving their potential performance, economic and social returns, require not only a thorough understanding of the lower layers of the communications networking stack but also a strong ability and interest in exploiting the core technologies for citizen-facing applications. This often implies an appreciation of business and government strategies in specific areas such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing and management and requires close collaboration between academia and industry to realise the full potential.

In the next decade our economy and society will be revolutionised by ubiquitous Autonomous, Intelligent Machines and Systems, which can learn, adapt, take decisions and act independently of human control. They will work for us and beside us, assist us, and interact and communicate with us. The UK has the opportunity to become a world-leader in developing these technologies for sectors as diverse as energy, transport, environment, manufacturing and aerospace. This CDT directly addresses the present need to train future leaders capable of accelerating innovation in autonomy, and promoting it to some of the UK's largest sectors. This requirement can be met by cohorts of highly-trained individuals versed in the underpinning sciences of robotics, embedded systems, machine learning, wireless networks, control, computer vision, statistics & data analysis, design and verification. These disciplines are intimately related via the application and development of mathematical models and techniques implemented on computers to make predictions, take optimal decisions, perform inference and actions that are robust in the face of uncertainties at all levels. The synthesis of a range of disciplines is absolutely essential to train individuals in all aspects of autonomy, who will then be able to credibly communicate with large technical teams, and pioneer disruptive technologies into industrial labs. This CDT is focused on student training in algorithms, devices, and data feeds inherent to autonomous, intelligent machines & systems. To create and understand these complex systems, students need to be trained to program, embed and design software, to implement established and novel algorithms efficiently and correctly and to develop and apply models and decompositions which lie at the core of approaches to control, communicate, learn from, interpret and distil the large volumes of data endemic to autonomous systems. We believe that for a training centre to achieve its full potential in the AIMS area, it must recognise and respond to the synthesis of a number of component technologies. Students belonging to this CDT will be trained in both the fundamentals of autonomous systems engineering and the latest approaches and perspectives. The UK is faced with an increasing technology skills shortage, with a recent (2012) large-scale survey reporting that half of all key UK industries surveyed suffer from a worsening skills shortage (net.org.uk/news, June 2012). This is even more acute in high-tech industry and requires core investment in teaching highly-qualified cohorts. More specifically, the commercial potential of Autonomous Systems for the UK is tremendous, as demonstrated by the recent AAD KTN (Aerospace, Aviation & Defence Knowledge Transfer Network) study. Their research indicates "an untapped short term market value of circa £7bn per annum just for relatively low level autonomy products and services". Developing skills in designing and deploying autonomous systems will offer significant opportunities for growth to high priority sectors, as diverse as manufacturing, energy, smart buildings, intelligent transport systems, and defence. These sectors are in need of rapid change to reach targets of national importance, while still being able to compete in the global market. One of the main targets is the reduction of greenhouse gas emission (by 80% by 2050), which calls for energy-aware autonomous systems to become a cross-cutting technology in our society. Another driver of change is the growing and ageing population, which advocates the need for autonomous telecare, transport, efficient usage of public/private infrastructure, safety and security. Changing demographics, combined with strict emissions targets and budget cuts, raise unique challenges and opportunities for revolutionising key UK sectors.