N EWSLETTER I SSUENR. 5, N OVEMBER 2014
NEWSLETTER
ISSUE NR. 5, NOVEMBER 2014
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.
Contents
Newsletter Editorial
Project Status
Madrid Navigator App
Madrid Navigator Services
Interest Group Invitation
Partner Profile (AT)
Electronic Version
Newsletter Archive
Project Facts
Events and Publications
PROJECT STATUS
The overall objective of the GAMBAS project is
the development of an innovative and
adaptive middleware to enable the privacypreserving and automated utilization of
behavior-driven
services
that
adapt
autonomously to the context of users.
EDITORIAL
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.
OBJECTIVES
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.
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).
PHASES
Conceptually, the GAMBAS project is divided
into three main phases:
1
NEWSLETTER
ISSUE NR. 5, NOVEMBER 2014
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.
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
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.
MADRID NAVIGATOR APP
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
Help us with the evaluation of the GAMBAS
middleware and try the Madrid Navigator
today. When you are done let us know what
you think. It is free!
2
NEWSLETTER
ISSUE NR. 5, NOVEMBER 2014
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.
MADRID NAVIGATOR SERVICES
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:
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.
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-bystep 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 realtime.
INTEREST GROUP INVITATION
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!
PARTNER PROFILE (AT)
Aristech GmbH is a leading supplier of
advanced software to allow seamless manmachine 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.
Reliable and proven components of highly
innovative speech recognition and speech
synthesizing kernels offer custom cost
effective business solutions in the speech
arena. In cooperation with the British
company Cereproc Aristech develops text-tospeech voices which are characterized by their
pleasant and non-artifial sound making them
3
NEWSLETTER
ISSUE NR. 5, NOVEMBER 2014
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 textto-speech and speech recognition quality.
PROJECT FACTS
MICHAEL MENDE
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.
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)
ELECTRONIC VERSION
Empresa Municipal de
Transportes de Madrid, S. A.
(Spain)
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.
NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE
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.
4
Duration:
36 months
Kickoff:
February 2012
Budget:
3.105.024 €
Funding:
2.194.000 €
Scheme:
EU FP7 STREP
NEWSLETTER
ISSUE NR. 5, NOVEMBER 2014
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”.
EVENTS AND PUBLICATIONS
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.
WORKSHOP – PERCITY 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
GAMBAS PROJECT MEETINGS
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 4th 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.
UPCOMING EVENT – POLIS 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 28th, 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
The tenth GAMBAS project meeting was
hosted by EMT in Madrid, Spain, on October
2nd and 3rd 2014. The focus for this meeting
was the initial testing of the application
prototype and the planning for the evaluation
of the middleware.
nference/
PUBLICATION – URB-IOT 20134
UPCOMING EVENT – PERCITY 2015
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”.
The GAMBAS consortium invites you to submit
your research to the upcoming GAMBAS
workshop at next year's 13th IEEE
International Conference on Pervasive
Computing and Communications (PerCom
2014) in St. Louis, USA on March 23-27, 2015.
The workshop will be titled 2nd International
IEEE Workshop on Pervasive Systems for
Smart Cities. More details on the workshop
including guidelines for submission can be
found at http://www.ubicitec.org/percity/
PUBLICATION – ITSC 2014
The 17th International IEEE Conference on
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC 2014)
was held from 8-11 October 2014 in Qingdao,
5
ISSUE NR. 5, NOVEMBER 2014
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.
Contents
Newsletter Editorial
Project Status
Madrid Navigator App
Madrid Navigator Services
Interest Group Invitation
Partner Profile (AT)
Electronic Version
Newsletter Archive
Project Facts
Events and Publications
PROJECT STATUS
The overall objective of the GAMBAS project is
the development of an innovative and
adaptive middleware to enable the privacypreserving and automated utilization of
behavior-driven
services
that
adapt
autonomously to the context of users.
EDITORIAL
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.
OBJECTIVES
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.
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).
PHASES
Conceptually, the GAMBAS project is divided
into three main phases:
1
NEWSLETTER
ISSUE NR. 5, NOVEMBER 2014
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.
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
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.
MADRID NAVIGATOR APP
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
Help us with the evaluation of the GAMBAS
middleware and try the Madrid Navigator
today. When you are done let us know what
you think. It is free!
2
NEWSLETTER
ISSUE NR. 5, NOVEMBER 2014
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.
MADRID NAVIGATOR SERVICES
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:
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.
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-bystep 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 realtime.
INTEREST GROUP INVITATION
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!
PARTNER PROFILE (AT)
Aristech GmbH is a leading supplier of
advanced software to allow seamless manmachine 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.
Reliable and proven components of highly
innovative speech recognition and speech
synthesizing kernels offer custom cost
effective business solutions in the speech
arena. In cooperation with the British
company Cereproc Aristech develops text-tospeech voices which are characterized by their
pleasant and non-artifial sound making them
3
NEWSLETTER
ISSUE NR. 5, NOVEMBER 2014
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 textto-speech and speech recognition quality.
PROJECT FACTS
MICHAEL MENDE
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.
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)
ELECTRONIC VERSION
Empresa Municipal de
Transportes de Madrid, S. A.
(Spain)
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.
NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE
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.
4
Duration:
36 months
Kickoff:
February 2012
Budget:
3.105.024 €
Funding:
2.194.000 €
Scheme:
EU FP7 STREP
NEWSLETTER
ISSUE NR. 5, NOVEMBER 2014
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”.
EVENTS AND PUBLICATIONS
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.
WORKSHOP – PERCITY 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
GAMBAS PROJECT MEETINGS
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 4th 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.
UPCOMING EVENT – POLIS 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 28th, 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
The tenth GAMBAS project meeting was
hosted by EMT in Madrid, Spain, on October
2nd and 3rd 2014. The focus for this meeting
was the initial testing of the application
prototype and the planning for the evaluation
of the middleware.
nference/
PUBLICATION – URB-IOT 20134
UPCOMING EVENT – PERCITY 2015
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”.
The GAMBAS consortium invites you to submit
your research to the upcoming GAMBAS
workshop at next year's 13th IEEE
International Conference on Pervasive
Computing and Communications (PerCom
2014) in St. Louis, USA on March 23-27, 2015.
The workshop will be titled 2nd International
IEEE Workshop on Pervasive Systems for
Smart Cities. More details on the workshop
including guidelines for submission can be
found at http://www.ubicitec.org/percity/
PUBLICATION – ITSC 2014
The 17th International IEEE Conference on
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC 2014)
was held from 8-11 October 2014 in Qingdao,
5