Presentation

​We are pleased to announce that the 158th European Study Group with Industry (ESGI) will be held at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica, Barcelona on the 27th-31st January 2020.

ESGIs are week-long problem solving workshops which provide a unique opportunity for industrial scientists to work alongside academic mathematicians on problems of direct industrial relevance. The ESGIs first started in Oxford in 1968, there are now 5-7 meetings held annually in different European countries as well as many others throughout the world. They are an internationally recognised method of technology transfer between academic mathematicians and industry.

At the meeting in Barcelona we expect to work on 3-4 problems, employing the expertise of 20-30 academics. For any enquiries please contact a member of the organising committee listed below.

Further information on study groups in general (their format, benefits, goals etc) may be found at the European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry website: https://ecmiindmath.org/study-groups

Study Group Problems

Problem 1: Human towers or castells modelling – Coordinadora de Colles Castelleres de Catalunya (CCCC) – Abstract

One of the current projects of the CCCC involves the safety of the members of the pinya (the base of the tower) when a collapse occurs. In order to increase their protection, the Coordinadora is studying the possibility of implementing the use of a cervical protector for those castellers that are in the parts of the pinya where members of the castell are more likely to fall. The location of falls is not uniform and so the CCCC would like to have, for each type of castell, a “map” of the zones of the pinya where the castellers are more likely to fall and the intensity of this fall. This map would also allow them to know the minimum size of the pinya needed for building each type of castell in a safer way.

Problem 2: Can we predict the difficulty of our levels before playing them? – King – Abstract

King is a video game developer. We became famous after releasing the world-wide known Candy Crush Saga.​ At King, levels are at the core of our games. Finding the right balance in difficulty, though, is quite a challenge!

The problem we present here aims at helping our Level Designers estimate how hard a level will be before it reaches our players. We will provide a dataset with different level definitions from a real game, descriptions of how the ingredients interact with each other, and a target indicator that should be closely related to the level difficulty.

Now, is it possible for us to estimate this indicator given a brand new level?

Problem 3: Safe trajectory of a piece moved by a robot – F. EE Automation Engineering – Abstract

The company wants to control de motion of a robot which translates and rotates metal pieces. This motion may induce irreversible deformations on the metal piece which should be avoided. One of the goals is then to derive algorithms to detect large stresses on the pieces along given trajectories and to understand the suitable geometries for these motions.

Problem 4: Title and abstract to appear soon. – Frenos Sauleda. (Analysis of the manufacturing process of some mecanical motion inhibitors in the absence of potentially harmful chemical components). – Abstract

Organising Committee

Scientific com​mittee