N EWSLETTER I SSUENR. 5, N OVEMBER 2014

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E

DITORIAL

Welcome to the fifth issue of the GAMBAS newsletter, with which we would like to inform you about recent advances of the GAMBAS (Generic Adaptive Middleware for Behavior-driven Autonomous Services) European research project.

It has been a while since the last issue of the GAMBAS newsletter - in which we described the intermediate results of the project at the end of its second year. Consequently, there is a lot to report on. In particular, we have released our key demonstrator application publicly and we are participating in a number of upcoming events where you can meet us in person. As our partner profile in this edition of the newsletter, we present Aristech GmbH (AT) which is leading the sound and speech recognition activities of the GAMBAS project. The team at Aristech has extensive experience in the area of speech recognition to improve man-machine interaction.

In our events section, we invite you to join us at the Annual Polis Conference in Madrid which is hosted by EMT and we issue a call for papers for the upcoming 2nd_{International IEEE} Workshop on Pervasive Systems for Smart Cities which will be held in conjunction with PerCom 2015 in St. Louis (USA).

We hope you enjoy reading this issue and we invite you to provide suggestions for improving your GAMBAS experience via email to marcus.handte@uni-due.de.

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ROJECT

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TATUS

The overall objective of the GAMBAS project is the development of an innovative and adaptive middleware to enable the privacy-preserving and automated utilization of behavior-driven services that adapt autonomously to the context of users.

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BJECTIVES

To achieve this overall objective the GAMBAS project has the following scientific and technical sub goals:

1. Development of a generic middleware that encompasses:

 Models and infrastructures to support the interoperable representation and scalable processing of context.

 Frameworks and methods to support the generic yet resource-efficient multi-modal recognition of context.

 Protocols and tools to derive, generalize, and enforce user-specific privacy-policies.

 Techniques and concepts to optimize the interaction with behavior-driven services.

2. Validation of the middleware and its components using lab tests and a prototype application in the public transportation domain.

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HASES

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The first phase included the gathering requirements and use cases. Furthermore, it included the creation of the architecture and the first versions of the GAMBAS middleware specifications.

The second phase included the first implementation of the GAMBAS middleware as well as the development of a refined version of the underlying specifications.

Currently, the project is at the end of the third phase where the whole functionality of the GAMBAS middleware is used to realize an innovative application from the transport domain.

This application – the Madrid Navigator – is at the heart of this issue of the newsletter as it is currently deployed in the city of Madrid in order to gather real-world data to support the validation of the middleware.

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ADRID

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AVIGATOR

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PP

As of now the Madrid Navigator – one of the main results of the application development on top of the GAMBAS middleware – is freely available on the Google Play store.

Madrid Navigator enables users to navigate through the city of Madrid on foot or by using the public bus network. Madrid Navigator features a powerful step-by-step navigation that tells users which bus to take and where to leave.

The key features of Madrid Navigator include:

 Hybrid offline maps and offline search for places in Madrid

 Retrieval of bus timetables for all bus stops and all bus lines

 Computation of walking routes within the city of Madrid

 Computation of transit routes using the public bus network of Madrid

 Accurate step-by-step navigation for trips with optional audio feedback

 Retrieval of real-time in-bus location and route information

 Integration of incidents captured by the bus network operator

 Retrieval of nearby stops for arbitrary locations in the city

 Visualization of the public bus lines and stops

 Context-aware help to get new users started quickly

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ADRID

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AVIGATOR

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ERVICES

The Madrid Navigator provides an interesting service to its users but as it happens often with technology, the real magic takes place behind the scene. In order to supply the user interface with data, the GAMBAS consortium and Locoslab GmbH have built a number of GAMBAS-powered backend services. The capabilities of these services include:

 Map tile generation (based on OSM data): In order to drive the hybrid map included in the Navigator, a backend service is generating map tile images, which can then be downloaded and displayed when needed.

 Address resolution (geocoding and reverse geocoding): In order to search for relevant places, bus stops and street names, a backend service is supporting address to coordinate and coordinate to address translations.

 Transit routing (based on OSM and GTFS data): As basis for the advanced step-by-step navigation, a backend service is able to generate alternative transit routes for arbitrary points in the city. The routing algorithm is flexibly configurable and is able to process additional information coming from different data sources in order to optimize routes for a user.

 Crowd level and incident processing: As an example for information that can be considered during routing, two additional backend services capture incidents collected by the network operator and the crowd level inside the buses. To collect the later, the GAMBAS middleware is running inside a number of buses running in Madrid to capture the current number of passengers in real-time.

Although these services include different data types with vastly differing characteristics, with its data-oriented structure, the GAMBAS middleware is able to thoroughly support and integrate all of them.

To see the services in action, feel free to join our demonstration session at the upcoming Polis conference. For more details, refer to the events section in this newsletter.

I

NTEREST

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ROUP

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NVITATION

If you are interested in the GAMBAS project objectives and results, we want to encourage you to join the GAMBAS Interest Group at

http://www.gambas-ict.eu/sig.

All members of the GAMBAS Interest Group will be invited to project workshops and will also receive the electronic project newsletter. As a greater benefit, the members will have access to the publications of the project consortium. Register today! 

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ARTNER

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ROFILE

(AT)

Aristech GmbH is a leading supplier of advanced software to allow seamless man-machine interaction (MMI). Aristech solutions are based on a combination of Aristech’s own technology and key technology partnerships. Though itself a young company Aristech can rely on a team of speech technology experts with extensive experience in this area.

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hard to distinguish from a real human speaker. In the area of speech recognition Aristech has developed smart and highly innovative algorithms to improve the quality of today’s statistics based speech recognition engines by focusing on linguistics and semantics. Furthermore Aristech offers solutions to analyze completely free speech input and find semantic structures within it which allows a conversion from free speech into structured data. With these outstanding approaches to speech technology Aristech can claim a clear head start when it comes to text-to-speech and speech recognition quality.

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ICHAEL

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ENDE

Michael Mende can look back on more than 30 years of experience in speech technology. He was one of the first people to work on speech recognition in Germany and is still driven by his passion for this key future technology today, in his position as CEO of Aristech. As a computational linguist Michael is convinced that finding the right interaction between IT and linguistics will be the future way to go to set new standards in his field.



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LECTRONIC

V

ERSION

An electronic version of this newsletter can be found on the GAMBAS website at

http://www.gambas-ict.eu/download. Access to the electronic version is free of charge. 

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EWSLETTER

A

RCHIVE

The GAMBAS website also provides access to the archived versions of this newsletter. If you are interested in receiving the next issue of the newsletter via email, just sign up for the Interest Group so we can forward them to you at http://www.gambas-ict.eu/sig.

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ROJECT

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ACTS

Acronym: GAMBAS

Title: Generic Adaptive Middleware for Behavior-driven Autonomous Services

Coordinator: Pedro José Marrón

Institution: Universität Duisburg-Essen

Email: pjmarron@uni-due.de

Consortium: Universität Duisburg-Essen (Germany)

ETRA Investigación y Desarrollo (Spain)

National University of Ireland,

Galway (Ireland)

The Open University

(United Kingdom)

Aristech GmbH (Germany)

Empresa Municipal de

Transportes de Madrid, S. A.

(Spain)

Duration: 36 months

Kickoff: February 2012

Budget: 3.105.024 €

Funding: 2.194.000 €

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E

VENTS AND

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UBLICATIONS

In the following, we would like to highlight a number of past and upcoming events and we would like to give you an overview over related publications created by members of the GAMBAS consortium.

GAMBAS

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ROJECT

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EETINGS

During the last months two more project meeting have been held by the consortium.

The ninth GAMBAS project meeting, hosted by NUIG, was held on June 3rd_{and 4}th_{2014 in} Galway, Ireland. During the meeting, upcoming deliverables were prepared but the focus was on the planning for the development of the second prototype application.

The tenth GAMBAS project meeting was hosted by EMT in Madrid, Spain, on October 2nd_{and 3}rd_{2014. The focus for this meeting} was the initial testing of the application prototype and the planning for the evaluation of the middleware.

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UBLICATION

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The first International Conference on IoT in Urban Space (Urb-IoT 2014) took place from 27–28 October 2014 in Rome, Italy. During the conference, members of the GAMBAS consortium presented their paper titled “Micro-navigation for urban bus passengers: using the Internet of Things to improve the public transport experience”.

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UBLICATION

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ITSC

2014

The 17th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC 2014) was held from 8-11 October 2014 in Qingdao,

China. During the conference, the members of the GAMBAS consortium were presenting their work on prediction titled “Catch me if you can: predicting mobility patterns of public transport users”.

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ORKSHOP

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ER

C

ITY

2014

Organized by members of the GAMBAS consortium, the 1st_{IEEE Workshop on} Pervasive Systems for Smart Cities was held on March 24th_{2014 in Budapest, Hungary. The} workshop featured an interesting technical program as well as a keynote from Manuel Serrano. More details can be found at

http://www.ubicitec.org/percity/2014

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PCOMING

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VENT

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OLIS

2014

The GAMBAS consortium invites you to join the upcoming GAMBAS demonstration at the annual Polis conference. This year’s Polis conference takes place in Madrid on November 27th_{and 28}th_{, 2014. During Polis,} we will demonstrate the Madrid Navigator application and the associated services. For more information on the Polis conference visit

http://www.polisnetwork.eu/events2/polisco nference/

N EWSLETTER I SSUENR. 5, N OVEMBER 2014

Contents

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DITORIAL

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