N EWSLETTER I SSUENR. 1, J UNE 2012

(1)

E

DITORIAL

Welcome to the first issue of the GAMBAS newsletter. In each of the upcoming issues we would like to inform you about recent advances of the GAMBAS (Generic Adaptive Middleware for Behavior-driven Autonomous Services) European research project. In addition, we would like to guide your awareness to interesting upcoming events

that are related to the project’s objectives.

Finally, in each issue, we will provide a detailed description of one of the partners that form the GAMBAS consortium.

Since this is the first issue of this newsletter, we first provide an overview of the GAMBAS project including its objectives and approach. At the time of writing, the consortium has finished the requirements elicitation and has developed the initial use case specification. Currently, the members of the consortium have started to work on the design of the high-level architecture which is scheduled to complete in about two months. As our partner profile, we present the Networked Embedded Systems group at the Universität Duisburg-Essen which coordinates the GAMBAS research project. In our events section, we

report back from this year’s International

Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications and we look ahead to the upcoming annual Conference on Intelligent Environments.

As a special entry for this issue, we invite you to the first scientific GAMBAS workshop which

will be held at this year’s IOT-week in Venice, Italy. During the workshop, the consortium presents the results of the requirements and use case analysis and attendees will get the chance to provide immediate feedback at an early stage of the project. So join us in Venice and provide us with your esteemed opinion.

Furthermore, we would like to invite you to our first industrial workshop which is organized by ETRA I+D in collaboration with the Official Organization of Telecommuni-cation Engineers of Valencia. The workshop will cover recent projects in the area of the Internet of Things and Smart Cities.

We hope you enjoy reading this issue. Feel free to provide suggestions for improving your experience to [email protected].

P

ROJECT

O

VERVIEW

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.

M

OTIVATION AND

O

BJECTIVES

(2)

GAMBAS is geared

towards providing a

truly integrated

solution, thereby

closing a significant

gap between today’s

systems and the

vision of ubiquitous

computing.

In contrast, ubiquitous computing envisions services providing distraction-free support. To realize this vision, services themselves must adapt to the

user’s situation,

behavior and intents at runtime. This requires services to gather and process the user's context.

Internet-connected objects provide a promising basis for determining user context in an automated manner on a large scale. The vision of ubiquitous computing, however, extends beyond the boundaries of a single service as it envisions seamless support for everyday tasks. To close the resulting gaps, the GAMBAS project has the following scientific and technical objectives:

1. Development of a generic adaptive middleware for behavior-driven autonomous services 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.

A

PPROACH

GAMBAS is geared towards providing a truly integrated solution, thereby closing a

significant gap between today’s systems and the vision of ubiquitous computing. Towards this end, the primary result of the project is the realization of a Generic Adaptive Middleware, i.e. a set of application-independent services, to support the development and utilization of Behavior-driven Autonomous Services.

(3)

The realization of this middleware requires the development and integration of a flexible context recognition framework that is able to capture the context of users (e.g. location, activity, plans, intents), an interoperable data model to represent context information, a scalable data processing infrastructure to query and aggregate context information and to integrate context into services, a suite of

security protocols to enforce the user’s

privacy when sharing context information and last but not least, a recommendation system to largely automate the discovery and selection of relevant services available to the user. In addition, it requires tools to simplify the configuration of privacy policies which

ensures that the user’s privacy expectations

are met to improve the user experience and to increase user acceptance.

As a consequence, the implementation of this middleware by the GAMBAS consortium will result in substantial innovations in the research areas of context recognition, data modeling and processing, data privacy and human computer interaction. In addition, the implementation will require the use and integration of existing research results in the area of communication support for ubiquitous computing scenarios.

To reach this ambitious goal with the available resources, the GAMBAS project will base its work on the concept of hierarchically organized Internet-connected objects that has been initially the focus of two previous European projects (Embedded WiSeNts, EMMA – FP6) and is currently adapted to ubiquitous computing scenarios by the PECES FP7 project with the collaboration of some of the GAMBAS consortium members. By actively leveraging the results of previous projects, it will be possible within GAMBAS to:

1. Have a decisive impact in the design and development of solutions to the challenges given above despite the limited duration of the project.

2. Use its available resources optimally, thus

avoiding “reinventing the wheel” by

design.

3. Minimize the technological risks by building upon well-proven methods and technologies, and thus, maximizing the achievability of the GAMBAS goals.

Furthermore, in order to validate the results in a realistic environment, the GAMBAS consortium will develop a prototype application that builds upon the concepts and mechanisms provided by the middleware and the associated tools. In particular, the GAMBAS prototype application will be developed for the public transportation domain for the following reasons:

1. Public transportation is a truly ubiquitous domain in which almost everybody is immersed in at certain times, e.g. daily commute from/to work, business trips, vacation and leisure, etc.

2. Public transportation is a complex domain that exhibits all of the challenges described above.

3. Technological solutions can be shown easily through simulation or constrained real settings.

4. Robust working solutions have the potential to make a significant and high impact.

L

ONG

-

TERM

I

MPACT

(4)

dissemination activities performed by the members of the consortium.

I

NTEREST

G

ROUP

I

NVITATION

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

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

of the GAMBAS Interest Group will be invited to the project workshops via email and will also receive the current and following versions of the electronic project newsletter. As a greater benefit, the members will have access to the publications of the project consortium.

So if you are interested in our project do not hesitate and contact us through our website or register for the GAMBAS Interest Group, today. 

P

ARTNER

P

ROFILE

(UDE)

The Networked Embedded Systems (NES) group was founded in 2009 with the change in position of Prof. Pedro José Marrón, the head of the group, from the Universität Bonn to the Universität Duisburg-Essen. Scientists at NES have worked on research and development projects for government agencies, associations and industry. Examples of European projects, where current members of NES have worked on, are the Embedded WiSeNts coordination action, AWARE and EMMA. The overall objective of Embedded WiSeNts was to formulate a roadmap for wireless sensor networks and cooperating embedded systems. The members of NES were directly responsible for the development of the roadmap, interaction with the industry and dissemination activities related to the coordination. The goal of AWARE was to combine the capabilities of UAVs, robots,

cameras and sensor networks to fight the spread of fire.

Currently, NES is participating as a founding member in the projects PECES and NOBEL, both of them funded by the EC. Furthermore, the NES group is coordinating PLANET and CONET. PLANET is an Integrated Project dealing with efficient deployment of sensor networks. CONET is the Cooperating Objects Network of Excellence, composed of 11 universities and 5 major companies as founding members, whose main goal is the establishment of a strong community in the area of Cooperating Objects capable of conducting the research needed to achieve the vision of Ubiquitous Computing.

P

EDRO

J

OSÉ

M

ARRÓN

Prof. Dr. Pedro José Marrón received his bachelor and master's degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1996 and 1998. At the end of 1999, he moved to the University of Freiburg in Germany to work on his Ph.D., which he received with honors in 2001. From 2003 until 2007, he worked at the University of Stuttgart as a senior researcher, leading the mobile data management and sensor network group. In 2007, he left Stuttgart to become a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bonn, where he led the sensor networks and pervasive computing group. In 2009 he left Bonn to become a full Professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He is currently

head of the “Networked Embedded Systems

Group” (NES). He has published over 80

(5)

sensor networks and pervasive computing. He is a member of the ACM and GI.

M

ARCUS

H

ANDTE

Dr. Marcus Handte received his master’s

degree in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002 and his Diplom in Software Engineering from the University of Stuttgart in 2003. From August 2007 to October 2009 he was working as a full-time researcher at Fraunhofer IAIS, since then he is working at the University of Duisburg-Essen. In 2009 he received a PhD in computer science from the University of Stuttgart. During his PhD he was working in the Peer-to-Peer Pervasive Computing (3PC) project which was funded by the German Research Foundation and Daimler-Chrysler Research. The goal of the 3PC project was the development of a comprehensive middleware solution for spontaneously networked ubiquitous systems. His research interests are Pervasive Computing, adaptive and self-configuring systems and trustworthy context recognition. He is a member of the ACM and the GI.

E

LKE

S

CHULTE

-L

IPPERN

Elke Schulte-Lippern is leading the project administration office in the Networked Embedded System Group (NES) headed by Prof. Marrón at the Universität Duisburg-Essen since October 2009. From July 2008 to September 2009 she established the secretariat of Prof. Marrón at the University Bonn including all administrative functions, managing of the budget resources, arranging meetings and cooperating in CONET.

W

ORKSHOP

I

NVITATIONS

We would like to invite you to our first scientific and our first industrial workshop. Both workshops will take place in June 2012.

The scientific workshop will be collocated with the Internet of Things (IoT) Week. The workshop is titled IoT Everything Linked: From the Sensors to the Cloud and will take place on Thursday, 21st of June 2012, from 9.00h to 17.00h in Venice, Italy. Together with the European projects OpenIoT, PLANET and Smart-Santander, the GAMBAS consortium will give different presentations about the architecture, use cases and pilot sites as well as the technical and scientific status in the Internet of Things domain with regard to the specific projects.

To participate in the workshop, it is necessary to register for the Internet of Things Week 2012. The IoT Week provides you with insights into recent IoT developments and allows you to meet IoT experts from all over the world. It

is a “platform for exchanging the latest news on research topics and revealing political and

societal insights on the field of IoT”. More details including the preliminary workshop agenda can be found at:

http://www.gambas-ict.eu/dissemination/iot-week-2012

The industrial workshop will take place in Valencia, Spain. The workshop is titled Internet of Things and Smart Cities and it is organized by ETRA I+D in collaboration with the Official Organization of Telecommuni-cation Engineers of Valencia.

To register for this interesting workshop, send an email including your full name to

[email protected]. Since the maximum number of attendees is limited, register today to reserve your place. More details including the preliminary workshop agenda can be found at:

(6)

P

ROJECT

F

ACTS

Acronym:

GAMBAS

Title:

Generic Adaptive Middleware for Behavior-driven Autonomous Services

Coordinator:

Pedro José Marrón

Institution:

Universität Duisburg-Essen

Email:

[email protected]

Consortium:

Universität Duisburg-Essen

(Germany)

ETRA Investigación y Desarollo (Spain)

National University of Ireland, Galway (Ireland)

The Open University (United Kingdom)

SpeechConcept GmbH & Co. KG (Germany)

Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid, S. A.

(Spain)

Duration:

36 months

Kickoff:

February 2012

Budget:

3.105.024 €

Funding:

2.194.000 €

Scheme:

EU FP7 STREP

E

VENTS AND

P

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

P

ROJECT

M

EETINGS

The GAMBAS project started officially on the 1st of February 2012. The project consists of 6 partners from 4 different European countries and will last for 36 months.

The GAMBAS kickoff meeting, hosted by the Universität Duisburg-Essen, was held on the 21st of February in Duisburg, Germany. The goal was to discuss the ongoing work for the first 4 months of the project. This included the formal specification of the middleware requirements and a detailed analysis of the use cases.

The second GAMBAS project meeting, hosted by ETRA I+D, was held on the 3rd and 4th of May in Valencia, Spain. The discussion was centered on the project requirements as well as the use case analysis. Furthermore, the consortium started to collect the initial thoughts on the overall system architecture.

P

ER

C

OM

2012

D

EMONSTRATION

On the 20th of March 2012, members of the GAMBAS consortium presented a paper at this

year’s International Conference on Pervasive

Computing and Communication (PerCom). PerCom provides “a high profile, leading edge forum for researchers, engineers, and practitioners to present state-of-the-art research in the respective fields of pervasive

computing and communications. “

During the conference, members of the GAMBAS consortium presented a paper titled

“Enabling Energy-Efficient Context

Recognition with Configuration Folding” as well as a demonstration titled “Configuration

(7)

Context Recognition”. The access to the

presentation and the poser associated with the demonstration is possible through our dissemination page, if you are a member of the GAMBAS Interest Group.

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

IE’12

P

RESENTATION

The GAMBAS consortium invites you to join

this year’s International Conference on

Intelligent Environments (IE'12). IE'12 provides

“a multidisciplinary collaborative forum for

researchers and practitioners to present theoretical and practical results of Intelligent

Environments work.“ The conference takes

place in Guanajuato, Mexico between June 26th and June 28th, 2012.

During the conference members of the GAMBAS consortium will be presenting a

paper titled “An Approach for Secure Role

N EWSLETTER I SSUENR. 1, J UNE 2012

Contents

E

DITORIAL

P

ROJECT

O

VERVIEW

M

O

A

L

-

I

I

NTEREST

G

ROUP

I

NVITATION

P

ARTNER

P

ROFILE

(UDE)

P

J

M

M

H

E

S

-L

W

ORKSHOP

I

NVITATIONS

P

ROJECT

F

ACTS

Acronym:

Title:

Coordinator:

Institution:

Email:

Consortium:

Duration:

Kickoff:

Budget:

Funding:

Scheme:

E

VENTS AND

P

UBLICATIONS

GAMBAS

P

M

P

C

2012

D

IE’12

P