CHORUS Deliverable 4.5: Report of the 3rd CHORUS Conference

The third and last CHORUS conference on Multimedia Search Engines took place from the 26th to the 27th of May 2009 in Brussels, Belgium. About 100 participants from 15 European countries, the US, Japan and Australia learned about the latest developments in the domain. An exhibition of 13 stands presented 16 research projects currently ongoing around the world

CHORUS Deliverable 3.4: Vision Document

The goal of the CHORUS Vision Document is to create a high level vision on audio-visual search engines in order to give guidance to the future R&D work in this area and to highlight trends and challenges in this domain. The vision of CHORUS is strongly connected to the CHORUS Roadmap Document (D2.3). A concise document integrating the outcomes of the two deliverables will be prepared for the end of the project (NEM Summit)

THE EMERGING MARKET OF INFOMOBILITY SERVICES

In this article the current market situation in the field of infomobility services is described. An outlook on developments that can be expected in the near future is also provided. The collected data and outcomes are related to a market study which was carried out during the first half of the IMAGE project phase (IST-2000-30047) by evaluating market reports of well known research institutes and various Internet sources. The survey was restricted to tourism and travel related infomobility services.

Mobile/wireless systems for infomobility services, based on intelligent agents technology

Summarization: Mobility services is a key area for mobile systems, as de facto the user is not travelling and not near any stationary info-point. Still, current info-mobility applications on mobile systems (such as PDAs and mobile phones) are very limited due both to insufficient technological capabilities and lack of appropriate user friendly interfaces. The technological barriers have been now overcome through GPRS and UMTS technologies, but still the available space in mobile equipment screens is not enough for efficient presentation of complex route maps and much info. IMAGE project (IST-2000-30047), co-funded by the EU and encompassing 16 partners from 5 European countries, aims at developing an intelligent and georeferenced info-mobility services, that can provide to the user the info he/she wants at the time he/she needs and according to his/her preferences. Thus, tourist and transport services (route guidance and navigation to museums, hotels restaurants, etc.) are offered through PDAs and mobile phones (using GPRS and GPS for user location). To be able to offer in real time and in a user friendly way these services, the service provider needs to understand in detail the user needs and monitor the service provision. Thus, a set of Intelligent Agents is developed, such as an Educator Agent, that monitors user actions and selfbuilds his/her profile, an Event Handling Agent that supports the user if the service is disrupted at any point (i.e. cancellation of service of connection bus, etc.). The relevant Agents family is analysed within the paper. In addition, a number of georeferenced, mobile and wireless infomobility services are realized (namely geocoding, mapping and routing web services), that support modular and personalized use cases. A typical use case of IMAGE system is presented, as well as, the web services supporting such use cases. The paper explains the concept of the system, briefly presents its architecture and focuses on its user-friendly interface and the mobile units it supports.Presented on

Integrated, interoperable and multimodal location-based ITS services

Summarization: Existing infomobility services are only local, incomplete and offered by varying user interfaces and service delivery platforms. IM@GINE IT R&D project, co-funded by the European Commission, aims to develop one and single access point, through which the end user can obtain location-based, intermodal transport information (static and dynamic), mapping and routing, navigation and other related services everywhere in Europe, anytime, taking into account personal preferences of the user. Thus, IM@GINE IT targets the facilitation of seamless travel in Europe.Presented on