Smart Spaces – Together with our partners we develop projects to create smart spaces including wireless sensor networks, embedded system modelling, autonomic and context aware service adaptation, simulation and design, large and interactive displays and integration with existing infrastructures such as the Internet of Things. Key challenges facing Smart Spaces include i) moving from individual devices to complex systems of systems that coordinate to exhibit autonomous behaviour, e.g., by migrating user state seamlessly across devices, ii) enabling rapid and dependable development and deployment of large-scale smart spaces that integrate with business services, and iii) transferring research results and prototype systems into the real-world.

 

 

 

 

Smart Energy Systems – We develop activities in the following areas: i) Green ICT, comprising energy and thermal management at several scales, energy-efficient software and telecommunication networks; ii) Smart Metering, focusing on Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMI) for electricity, gas and water; iii) Smart Power Grids, enabling an intelligent control of energy sources (e.g. renewable) and integration of electric vehicles; iv) Smart Grid Residential Services, developing tools and services to empower consumers by increasing the level of awareness with respect to energy consumption; v) Energy Efficient Buildings, involving the use of ICT to monitor energy consumption also leveraging on domotic systems, with special emphasis on retrofitting historical buildings.

Health & WellBeing – In this area our objective is to induce a healthier lifestyle by, e.g., supporting people in balancing stress and relaxation, promoting physical activity and interaction among themselves and professionals, etc. Furthermore, we will focus on leveraging the potential provided by ICT in an ageing society, starting with the topic of aging at home while targeting also (mobile) services enabling efficient health and social care. Beyond aging, the whole spectrum of fragile people (e.g., people suffering disabilities or specific pathologies) will be targeted. The approach is not merely technology-centred. Stakeholders will collaborate in the co-design of innovative products and services. The industrial partners will contribute to the action line with a business-oriented perspective, e.g., for tele-assistance, service-oriented architecture and intelligent systems and telecommunication and new services based on sensors. The research partners will provide expertise in user-centred design, adaptive interaction and interfaces, sensors and sensor networks , and personal health systems and data management.

 

 

Networking Solution for Future Media - We will be active in the field of analysis of multimedia (text, audio, 2D and 3D visual) as well as in the integration and processing of data coming from a range of additional sensors. Additionally we will look at innovative ways to search/index/retrieve multimedia data based on the concept of events that capture the personal context of a user and reflect the global level of semantic understanding. Moreover, we will develop a reliable and responsive distributed architecture for the dissemination of multimedia content.

   

Digital Cities –  Our objective is to develop, deploy, and experiment with scalable and sustainable solutions for cities and broader territories that exploit innovative ICT technologies to promote citizen participation and the delivery of innovative services addressing the needs of citizens, business, and public administration. More precisely, the activities that we will launch aim at improving the smartness and efficiency of the territory along three axes: i) The empowerment of citizens as key actors who are at the same time consumers, inventors and providers of the services in the territory; ii) Planning of strategies for the territory, by understanding territory dynamics and challenges via real time monitoring/analysis; iii) The massive provision of easily accessible, integrated services, covering in a more and more complete way all the different systems (organizations, people, infrastructures, devices, sensors, actuators, services, and so on) that contribute to a territory.

Intelligent Mobility & Transportation Systems – We will address major challenges such as road accident reduction and energy efficiency by embedding ICT-enabled “intelligence” in transport systems, both on-board and at the infrastructural level. The core idea is that ITS in Europe shall evolve in pan European interoperable and standardized ITS solutions, building on available results on the design and development of cooperative systems and taking advantage of evolving communication technologies. Local and distributed cooperative communication networks to exchange safety and mobility data are the core to bring “distributed intelligence” into the vehicles, traffic control centers and road infrastructure, which is the main challenge we intend to focus on. We envision new-generation ITSs as an integrated approach to safety function, travel planning, transport demand, traffic management, emergency management, road pricing, and the use of parking and public transport facilities. By networking road elements (vehicles, roadside units, service centers, tunnels), data gathered by in-vehicle and roadside sensors can be shared and processed in a distributed way, e.g., for early detection of dangers, efficient infrastructure management and operation, and provision of highly responsive mobility services to end-users.