. . "TOPAS - Trust Oriented Platform for Advanced Security" . "

Mobile and embedded devices, like cell phones, PDAs or simple network routers, have become powerful little multifunctional machines, providing features previously only available on much more powerful personal computers. This enables the owners to use these devices for more and more purposes. Many of these purposes have high security requirements: electronic banking, stock trading or VPN connections are some examples. In the future, such devices will be part of an “internet of things”, communicating with things near by, mutually authenticating each other, gaining access and allowing access to status information and controlling these things. TOPAS works on providing the necessary framework for creating trusted – or trustworthy – personal devices, devices that are as familiar to their users as their mobile phones are and that can be used in security-relevant or sensitive application scenarios. Trusted means that the software that is active on that device is known to be legitimate, unaltered (e.g. free of malware like worms or viruses), and behaves as expected. The major objective of this project is the development of a framework of Mobile Trusted Platforms that can be used on a variety of mobile and embedded systems, cost-effectively providing trusted computing technologies to these platforms, irrespective of the security features of the underlying system.

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Ticketing and payment, as well as DRM, are the key applications for the use of trusted computing technology.These three applications alone are very security sensitive as security breaches have immediate monetary effects. Additionally, the stakeholders of these applications are not the handset manufactures but the service providers. This means that they will at some point in time force handset manufactures to add trusted computing technology to their devices

"@en . "2007-03-01"^^ . "2009-09-30"^^ . . . "TRADE - Trustworthy adaptive quality balancing through temporal decoupling" . "

Online-auctioning of high-volume securities is one of the application domains with the highest security and dependability requirements. One of the problems with current solutions is that clients of the auctioning system typically deliver a vast number of bids in the very last seconds of an auction phase. Outages due to excessive load, security attacks, node, or link failures may result in significant financial losses for the auctioneer, not even to mention the immeasurable damage of customer confidence.
\r\nThe solution approach of TRADE is based on the general concept of temporal decoupling: By relaxing the requirements for timeliness, the system properties for security and dependability can adaptively be optimized. In order to actually achieve the temporal decoupling, the client has to be provided with a facility for secure, accurate, and tamper-proof timestamps. For this purpose, smart cards with clocks will be used as secure client within the untrusted client computer and deploy a secure clock synchronization protocol.
\r\nThe major research contributions of TRADE are well focused around three significant innovations: First, to provide a secure client within a given timeframe by focusing on the optimal software partitioning between smart card and untrusted operating system. Second, to provide for secure time synchronization between a server and a smart card. Third, to provide for adaptive run-time balancing of performance, security, and dependability, in order to foster the true potential of the integration of dependability and security concepts.
\r\nThere is currently no tool in the market which provides the high security and dependability standards this project aims to achieve – with the addition of an easy installation process. Consequently, based on the outcome of this project, IRIAN will aim at achieving a significant market share due to being the technological leader in this market, thereby exemplifying the new solution architecture for the whole sector.

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"@en . "2008-02-01"^^ . "2010-12-31"^^ . . . "TRUDIE - Trust Relationships in Underground IT Economies" . "

In recent years, we have witnessed a dramatic change in the goals and modes of operation of hackers. Monetary gains associated with Internet fraud caused a shift from "hacking for fun" to "hacking for profit." This shift has been leveraged and supported by more traditional crime organizations, which eventually realized the potential of the Internet for their endeavors. The integration of sophisticated computer attacks with well-established fraud mechanisms devised by organized crime has resulted in an underground economy that trades compromised hosts, personal information, and services in a way similar to other legitimate economies. This expanding underground economy makes it possible to significantly increase the scale of the frauds carried out on the Internet and allows criminals to reach millions of potential victims. Also, criminals are taking full advantage of sophisticated mechanisms, such as the service bots used on IRC channels to automatically verify stolen credit card numbers, the use of e-casinos to launder money, and the use of fast networks to create attack-resilient services.

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Recent research has mostly focused on the visible aspects of the underground economy, such as botnets, spam, and phishing. However, little has been done to understand this economy as a whole, to analyze and model its characteristics, and identify possible roles and their interconnection. We believe that it is necessary to develop a holistic approach to the study and analysis of the underground economy that includes all aspects of the criminal process. Only by clearly identifying the different roles among the phases of a criminal endeavor, the actors involved, and the service infrastructure necessary for its execution, is it possible to create effective countermeasures to these criminal activities.

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The goal of this project is to develop novel techniques and tools to analyze the underground economy and obtain a comprehensive picture of the complete criminal process. To do this, we will create models of the underground market, its actors, the processes and interactions between actors, and the underlying infrastructure. We then propose techniques that can help to effectively disrupt parts of the criminal process and, therefore, support the fight against computer crime.

"@en . "2009-10-01"^^ . "2012-03-31"^^ . . . "TSC Triple Space Computing" . "

Modern IT-systems are mostly designed as modular, component-based architectures wherein the distinct components communicate for achieving the overall system functionality, i.e. they exchange data as well as control information. At this point in time, mostly message-based technologies are applied for software component communication. Although existing messaging technologies are elaborated, they impose severe restrictions in terms reliability, security, scalability, fault tolerance and recovery which are handled on top of the message layer; moreover, the massage-based communication is not compatible with highly successful publication-based design principles of the Web: information is persistently published and read.
\r\nTSC aims at developing Triple Space Computing as a new communication and coordination framework for Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services. Intelligent mechanisms that reason with semantic descriptions of Web services on Web scale need a solid basement in terms of the underlying communication technologies. Here, Triple Space Computing which inherits the publication-based communication model from the Tuple Space computing paradigm and extends it with semantics will play an important role. Instead of sending messages back and forth among participants, TSC enabled applications will exchange information by writing and reading RDF triples in a shared space.
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\r\nTSC is a research-oriented project developing an innovative framework and the core technologies for Triple Space Computing as a new middleware infrastructure for software components and services. Special attention is given to the support for the Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services. In particular, the Web Service Execution Environment (WSMX), a reference implementation of an architecture to execute Semantic Web Services, is augmented with Triple Spaces. The resulting prototype and conceptual system will not only target the obvious markets for future service systems like Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Business-to-Business (B2B), but also areas like eHealth or ubiquitous computing in general.

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"@en . "2005-01-01"^^ . "2007-08-31"^^ . . . "TT Ethernet - Time-Triggered Ethernet" . "

TT-Ethernet ist ein Gemeinschaftsprojekt der TTTech Computertechnik AG und dem Institut für Technische Informatik der Technischen Universität Wien. Das Ziel des TT-Ethernet-Projektes ist die Entwicklung eines zeitgesteuerten, auf Ethernet basierenden, Netzwerkes mit vorhersagbaren zeitlichen Verhalten und strikter Fehlerisolation. Die Anwendungen finden sich in sicherheitskritischen Kontrollsystemen im Auto- Flug- und Bahnbereich und im Bereich von Multimedia-Applikationen. TTEthernet ist voll kompatibel zum aktuellen IEEE-802.3 Ethernet Standard und unterstützt den gleichzeitigen Betrieb von klassischen  Ethernet und TT-Ethernet Geräten im selben Netzwerk. Die Nachrichten werden dabei in zwei Klassen eingeteilt, die klassischen ereignisgesteuerten (event-triggered – ET) Nachrichten und die hochprioritären zeitgesteuerten (time-triggered – TT) Nachrichten. TT-Nachrichten werden vom eigens entwickelten Ethernet-Switch vorrangig behandelt, und mit einer, zum Entwicklungszeitpunkt bekannten, konstanten Verzögerung mit minimaler Abweichung weitergeleitet. Wird zum selben Zeitpunkt eine ET-Nachricht übertragen, so wird diese abgebrochen. TT-Nachrichten können dann zur Synchronisation der lokalen Zeitbasen dienen, wobei so eine hohe Qualität erreicht wird, was wiederum den Aufbau einer globalen Zeitbasis ermöglicht. Basierend auf dieser globalen Zeit ist es möglich, einen Plan für die Übertragung der TT-Nachrichten aufzustellen. Dies kann statisch zum Entwicklungszeitpunkt, oder dynamisch während der Laufzeit geschehen. Im Verlauf des TT-Ethernet Projektes wurden prototypische Implementierungen eines TT-Ethernet Switches und eines TTEthernet Kommunikationskontrollers erstellt. Mit einem System gebaut aus den entwickelten Geräten wurden Experimente durchgeführt. Dabei wurde eine Nachrichtenlatenz von 4,32 μs mit einem Jitter von 80 ns gemessen, und eine Präzision der Uhren von 350 ns erreicht. Wenn die zeitgesteuerte Technologie in den Bereich der auf Ethernet basierenden Hochgeschwindigkeitsnetzwerke Einzug hält, ist eine bedeutende Erweiterung des Marktes für zeitgesteuerte Systeme im Bereich der Kontrollsysteme zu erwarten, ebenso wie ein weiteres Eindringen in den Markt für Multimedia- Applikationen. Die Erkenntnisse dieses Forschungsprojekts sind die technologische Plattform für die nächste Generation von zeitgesteuerten Systemen.

"@en . "2004-03-01"^^ . "2006-12-31"^^ . . . "TT-Soc - Time-Triggered System-on-a-Chip Architecture" . "

It is the objective of the proposed research project to lay the foundation for a next-generation embedded system architecture that provides a predictable integrated execution environment for the component-based design of many different types of embedded applications (e.g., automotive, avionics, consumer electronics). This project is inspired by the research priorities that have been identified in the ARTEMIS Strategic Research Agenda and is based on the long-standing experience of TU Vienna and TTTech in the field of time-triggered technology in general and on the Integrated Project DECOS funded by the European Union under FP7 in particular. At the core of this project is the design and development of a research prototype of a time-triggered Network on Chip (NoC), implemented in an FPGA, for the predictable interconnection of heterogeneous components. A component can be a self-contained computer, including system and application software, an FPGA, or a custom hardware unit. By providing a single standardized interface to all types of components for the exchange of messages, the architecture supports the component-based design of large applications, enables massive reuse of components, and provides the framework for the implementation of fault-handling by reconfiguration and triple-modular redundancy. The time-triggered NoC will offer inherent fault isolation to support the seamless integration of independently developed components, possibly with different criticality levels. By dividing the complete SoC into physically separated components that interact exclusively by the timely exchange of messages on the time-triggered NoC, we achieve fault isolation for both computational and communication resources. The embedded system architecture also incorporates integrated diagnostic services and security mechanisms. Furthermore, mechanisms for integrated resource management support dynamically changing resource requirements (e.g., different operational modes of an application), fault-tolerance, and a power-aware system behavior.

"@en . "2007-03-01"^^ . "2009-05-31"^^ . . . "UAd - Understanding Advertising" . "

Advertising is a huge market. Each year 70 billion Euro are spent only in the European Union. Analysis of advertising sector is a task of media monitoring companies, which is currently mainly performed manually. Recently performed research projects have contributed to automate parts of the workflow, however, technologies are concentrating on multi-modal low level analysis and fusion of those results. Semantic knowledge, e.g. driven by domain specific media monitoring ontologies, has not been considered so far. Systems for highly automated trend analysis, identification of new business areas, product / company analysis are currently not available. On the other hand media monitoring companies and market research institutes would greatly benefit from such tools in order to ease their work and make results faster available.
\r\nWe will perform research into a semantic media analysis framework (SEMAF) capable of taking as input low level feature metadata received from visual analysis of advertisements and public knowledge (i.e. company website info, stock market info, etc.). SEMAF will be a generic framework of modules with open interfaces which can be tailored easily by instantiation to specific domains of customer queries – e.g. trends for advertising expenditure in automotive sector as domain. Within the UAd application area specific ontologies and rules will be developed and applied together with the public knowledge in order to relate and homogenize information from heterogeneous sources and generate an answer to the user query.
\r\nMain challenges and at the same time innovations will be to take context information into consideration - such as ontologies, rules, public knowledge and low level feature results - next to a dynamic adaptation of the knowledge model represented by the UAd ontologies by application of the rules. Furthermore a major challenge will be also to take user feedback into account. Application areas of UAd will be not only restricted to advertising market but results can be applied to media monitoring in general. I.e. the generic SEMAF framework could be utilized for analysis of political campaigns, market research, social studies and so on. It is a project target to keep the framework as open as possible so that new instances on specific application areas can be made with as little effort as possible.
\r\nThe project results enable the industrial partner HS-Art digital service GmbH to provide a future generation of technical solutions to the targeted media-monitoring market. HS-Art is with its current product portfolio successfully entering the niche-market of (semi-)automatic commercial analysis in multimedia contents. Although the products have been warmly welcomed in the market they are still quite a low-level solution in terms of semantic context. Thus the next generation of methodologies needs to be developed in the next few years to provide a continuously improved set of solutions to the media-monitoring market.

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"@en . "2007-01-01"^^ . "2008-12-31"^^ . . . "UNITAG - Universal UHF RFID Tag based on System-Level Modeling and Optimization" . "

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technologies, and especially the UHF (Ultra High Frequency) sector within represent a rapidly growing market. The Class-1, Generation-2 standard developed by the organisation EPCglobal comprised of industry leaders and organisations focused on creating global standards for the Electronic Product Code™ (EPC) targets this market by establishing the basis for passive, long-range, extremely low-cost Tags.

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The functionality of those Tags is basically reduced to providing a unique identifier (UID) to any reader which transmits a query request defined in the standard. State-of-the-art Tags are capable of operating in a range of several meters depending on the application the Tag is serving. Enhancing the read range and reducing the number of hard-to-read or non-readable Tags is one of the most challenging design criteria for these Tags.

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The proposed project UNITAG suggests a novel design methodology which bundles the requirements on the UHF RFID Tag at the system-level and develops the Tag in a top-down design process. We are convinced that this design methodology will bring an enhancement in Tag performance by eliminating the need to adapt to existing, possibly suboptimal solutions.

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Our design methodology will enable a system-level simulation and optimization by employing a behavioral modeling of the Tag’s building blocks taking account of the strong interoperation between those blocks. We plan to implement the Tag concepts obtained by the system-level description in prototype Tags, hence verifying the idea of the developed design methodology.

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The consortium of UNITAG consists of IGTE of the Graz University of Technology, an academic partner outstanding in the field of numerical simulation and of NXP Semiconductors Austria GmbH Styria as commercial partner, a global player in RFID Tag development

"@en . "2009-01-01"^^ . "2011-12-31"^^ . . . "Video Quality Analysis" . "

Automatic and efficient quality analysis of audiovisual content has become a crucial step before storing the material for later use. While most approaches in this area are only dealing with low level signal analysis, the goal of this project is to go far beyond state-ofthe- art procedures. On the basis of novel as well as proven computer vision methods, we will attempt to incorporate high level knowledge in the analysis step, thus achieving significant better and faster results than current methods, comparable in their reliability with a human operator. In particular the vdQA project will carry out research in the following areas:

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    \r\n
  • Improvement of optical flow field methodologies to deal with multi-frame information
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  • Application of novel segmentation methods in order to enable semantic quality analysis.
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  • Knowledge assisted artefact assessment and classification.
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  • Novel methods for fast and robust detection of difficult impairments like unsteadiness, flicker, freeze frames, test patterns and lost frames.
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  • Research into methodologies that are particularly well suited for implementations taking advantage of GPU hardware.
    • \r\n
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The grand challenge in the end is the combination of robustness, speed and integration of human knowledge. The research and industrial partners have dedicated roles in the work programme to achieve those goals. The industrial partners have excellent knowledge of the market and will provide user requirements as well as extensive test material. The academic partners will do research in their respective fields, namely development of basic algorithms for optical flow, tracking, segmentation, classification and usage of GPUs as well as algorithms for content based quality analysis and semantic technologies to represent knowledge. Towards the project end the industrial partners will evaluate and test the developments together with pilot end users.

"@en . "2008-04-01"^^ . "2010-03-31"^^ . . . "VENDOR - Video Engine Design Methodology Rules" . "

The rapid increase of the integration density on chips drives the fast expansion of complex applications. In modern SoC designs, increased complexities are handled by designing ICs comprising of several IP-modules, where each module fulfills a single task within the overall functionality of the IC resulting in different functionalities implemented individually. Although this design methodology allows fast implementation of complex SoC, the major disadvantage is that this design methodology is not optimal in terms of costs, as resources between the individual modules are unused.
\r\nThis is especially true for implementations, which can not be implemented into single IPs, due to a lack of processing power, as is reality for video processing implementations. Many consumer products in future product implementations will consist all of these video processing functionalities which include video decoding, video encoding, image processing, and 2D/3D graphic acceleration tasks. Since video processing is the by far the most computing intensive part in actual and future multimedia consumer applications, optimizations should focus on this part.
\r\nHowever, using the actual design methodologies, synergies between the separate video processing IPs of a video processing platform are kept unused, although it is obvious that they do exist. Within described project, we will establish a new design methodology, which takes advantages of such synergies, resulting in a considerable cost advantage, due to optimized die size resulting in lower power dissipation, which makes this design methodology particularly ideal for mobile applications. Examples will outline the major benefits this new design methodology creates compared to today’s state of the art solutions for video processing.
\r\nFinding synergies, partitioning the system to a set of IPs by investigating the whole video processing system, and evaluating whether the architecture mapping task has been successful will play a major role to establish the described straight forward design methodology, which emphasizes on a core size and power optimized implementation. The consortium members helps us cover all expertise required in the project - this variety of expertise is the motivation and drive behind this project as it helps us to see the “bigger picture” of video processing, as is needed when optimizing the whole system.

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The sales of mobile consumer electronics reached a record-high USD 125.7 billion in 2005. The future growth in the electronics industry will be driven by a predominant increasing influence of the mobile consumer market. A characteristic of this market is the strong tendency to grow with the short-term trends - the demand for trendy gadgets can create sudden amazing market opportunities. The semiconductor industry will therefore have to introduce programmable platform solutions which can be easily and affordably modified by software. The engineers involved in designing such products will face the challenging task to design multi-functional, high performance and low cost System-on-Chip (SoC) designs. Additional to these daunting tasks, engineers will be racing against time to design these SoC products and this within limited budget. In future the valuable market for the proposed project will be the next generations of multi-talented smart media devices which driven by the cost factor will demand greater integration and thereby consolidate the three camps (cell phones, game consoles and portal media players) over time. These markets will supply more than 1.3 billion units in 2010. Today already 25% of the cell phones are actually equipped with mp3 music players and the growth-rate is 91% for this add-on in comparison to last year. Assuming that 50 % of the overall shipment of smart mobile devices will come with video and TV capability by 2010, the amazing growth rates will create a market of about USD 3.5 billion generated through the video portion only. For these markets, the industry will have to face dynamical changes, and since the customer requirements will change, the market will be determined by flexibility, time to market and low costs. The one who can balance these factors best will edge to the market leader. The proposed project will address these challenges and the results will take us to a very promising position.

"@en . "2006-08-01"^^ . "2009-07-31"^^ . . . "VHD (very high data rates) - High Speed Air-Interface and IC Architecture for Contactless Smartcards and NFC" . "

The project VHD breaks the actual limitations of contactless smartcard and NFC (Near Field Communication) applications in terms of low transaction time. Therefore radically innovative transceiver concepts on the one hand side as well as new IC architectures on card and reader side will be investigated, opening up an enormous new variety of next generation applications - epassports with a variety of biometric data, e-health cards or multimedia applications for NFC will be enabled.

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The aim of a 10 times reduced transaction time leads to a variety of challenges and necessary solutions which are far beyond the actual state of the art technology. Thus a full system approach, which includes integrated transceive structures as well as new card and reader architectures, is chosen. The main focus of research is therefore dedicated on analog transceiver concepts, integrated digital signal processing needs as well as card and reader architecture under the constraints of ultralow power and low die-size. Besides the technical feasibility and integration on silicon, it is aim to drive standardization forward which is indispensable for a successful product development for future markets.

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The following technological challenges describe the proposed VHD solution:

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  1. Integrated design of transceiver structures for a 10 times faster transmission rate,
  2. break through ultra low power signal processing concepts running on a passive smart card,
  3. completely new card-IC architectures allowing to handle the processed data,
  4. innovative reader architectures with corresponding signal processing,
  5. dedicated protocol architecture on all layers
    6. \r\n
"@en . "2008-12-01"^^ . "2011-11-30"^^ . . . "VIBE-LESS Vibration cancelling by lightweight networked Smart Structures" . "

The fierce competition and dynamic changes due to global market forces put industrial engineers under tremendous pressure to overcome existing technical barriers, e.g. annoying noise caused by vibrations of lightweight constructions, like vehicle chassis in the automotive industry. Mechanical breakdowns due to resonant vibrations of safety-critical engineering structures or insufficient product quality caused by undesireable vibrations during the production porocess are either hazardous or detrimental problems that have to be solved!

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New radical innovations are therefore indispensable to companies wishing to maintain a sustainable level of competitiveness and innovation. Such a radical innovation ist the so-called smart structure technology. This revolutionary fusion of information technology and construction engineering breaks up existing limits of classical mechanics. A structure will be no longer determined only by ist mechanical design. The goal of the project is to develop a technology that allows the physical behaviour of a structure tob e arbitrarily modified and reconfigured by means of embedded software technology. Embedded sensor networks measure the disturbance, e.g. vibrations. An advanced, dependable distributed control network generates the appropriate responses to cancel out the disturbance by feeding the actuator network appropriately, e.g. by generating adequate anti-vibrations.

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Advanced smart structures will not only improve the durability and endurance of components due to decreased dynamaic loading, but also drastically reduce structure-borne noise in a broad frequency range of interest. Beyond their impact on vibration and noise reduction, smart structure technology will fort he first time allow for a concurrent lightweight design that enables the efficient use of natural resources in the product inself. With the upcoming demand for highly efficient, emission-less lightweight structures and increased standards for any type of emission, new smart material systems are needed for both, highly damped and controllable as well as light, but durable structures for any type of high-tech application.
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"@en . "2006-01-01"^^ . "2008-06-30"^^ . . . "VIENA - Visual Enterprise Network Analytics" . "

Collaboration is the way work gets done in organisations. Therefore networks of different types, functions and compositions have become an inevitable precondition of organisational performance in the modern corporate world. However, these networks are not static, but changing over time. Organisational analysts such as consultants, enterprise analysts, and strategic and human resource managers are seeking for appropriate tools and methods supporting the information discovery processes of these dynamic networks and the underlying data. In particular, interactive visual and analytic methods to explore the dynamic properties of underlying structures are required to provide empirically grounded decision support for organisational analysts. To meet these demands the proposed project "Visual Enterprise Network Analytics" (VIENA) takes on the method of Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) whose potential for applied use in enterprises is well known.

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To unlock this potential also to non-domain experts two associated fields of research are leveraged: namely Visual Analytics and Usability Engineering. A constant focus on usability will assure the development of a user-centred software prototype and an intuitive GUI, while the Visual Analytics components will allow the radically new interactive exploration of dynamic network data sets and the retrieval of relevant information. VIENA facilitates the (semi-)automatic analysis of teams and organisations over different periods of time. The heterogeneous dynamical data and information sets which get structured, semantically annotated, and visualised by DNA methods get additionally processed using innovative Visual Analytics methods. The aimed integration of selected research prototypes into the industrial partnerís business software environment will allow real-user testing and assessments from the application and utility point of view.

"@en . "2009-02-01"^^ . "2012-01-31"^^ . . . "VILMA - High Resolution Mapping and Visualization of Linear Structures" . "

VILMA is a framework for the mapping and visualization of linear structures such as roads,railway lines, traffic tunnels, water tunnels, airport runways, channels, and pipelines. Itunifies a moving data acquisition platform with on-line visualization to keep dataacquisition costs and duration low. It incorporates a processing chain for high-resolution surface mapping to cope with future quality standards in surveying and quality engineering. And it emphasizes on the interactive visualization to allow efficient access to the mapping results, managing data of different epochs. VILMA consists of a dynamic vision – sensor setup (e.g. digital cameras, laser scan, thermal imaging), aiming at a geo-referenced data acquisition speed of 1 km / hour in minimum and a mapping resolution of better than 1 mm specifically at on-line selected regions of interest such as cracks or water ingress in tunnels. During data acquisition, onsite visualisation is a major development issue to efficiently guide the operator and immediately assess data usability and quality. The different sensor data is co-registered, geo-referenced, and integrated into a hierarchical surface representation for efficient access to layers of different resolution, thematic content, stage of data processing, and spatial as well as temporal information such as data acquisition time, deformation dynamics, or construction progress. Visualization issues cover the user-friendly real-time random 2D access to surface layers, and a typical set of 3D visualization functions that fulfils the operational and quality needs of the construction and maintenance site. To demonstrate the sustainable VILMA application potential some highly relevant quality management and cost aspects are addressed such as crack detection and evaluation, requirements from geology, and frequent monitoring. The system is scalable in terms of sensor setup, processing complexity and visualization hardware performance. The integration of external sensor data like handheld camera images, the practicability of each system component, assessed by the user, and the awareness to up-to-date 2D & 3D visualization developments are important development drivers. VILMA integrates challenging aspects of vision sensor design, 3D reconstruction, recognition, and visualization. The proposing partners unify application awareness, longterm experience in the related scientific topics and proven success of recent joint developments.

"@en . "2008-04-01"^^ . "2010-09-30"^^ . . . "VirTex - virtual prototyping in automotive fabric design" . "

Interior design is a major selling-point in the automotive industry: materials have to provide high durability while delivering outstanding visual appeal and tactile properties to survive on the market.
\r\nIn conventional automotive textile design, a lot of design cycles are necessary to construct a sample which finally finds its way into production. For all of these design iterations, a physical sample has to be woven or knitted by the textile contractor to show the cockpit designer how the textile surfaces in the planned car could look.
\r\nProducing such a sample means acquiring the necessary yarn – usually in quantities of a few hundred meters – thread it into the loom or knitting machine, programming and adjusting the machine, and producing a few meters of material, from which only a swatch of maybe 30 by 30 centimeter is shown to the designer. Most of these swatches will be immediately discarded.

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This process is wasteful and time consuming, but in the end indispensable: only by touching and manipulating the material can the final decision be made. But for most of the intermediate steps, where colors are selected, different thread patterns are evaluated and the fabric structure is designed, a high-quality visual simulation would be sufficient to reduce the number of samples from a few hundreds to thirty to fifty.
\r\nModern graphics hardware in combination with virtual reality techniques allows us to not only produce visually compelling simulations of textile swatches, but also simulate a complete automotive cockpit, outfitted with a textile still in its early planning stages. Such visualizations are going to be displayed on three-dimensional projections, complete with realistic lighting and shadowing, and can be navigated in real-time and shown in different lighting situations like day or night, direct sunlight or clouded skies.
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\r\nThe goal of this project is to drive this virtual construction and real-time visual simulation of textile materials and designs to its perfection.

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"@en . "2007-02-01"^^ . "2010-01-31"^^ . . . "VM-GPU - Variational Methods on the GPU for Industrial Problems" . "

The industrial machine vision market has seen a steady growth over the last decade. Despite of this growth only a small fraction of the potential tasks have yet been tackled. Hence, there is a huge potential for further applications. Industry has just started to realize the beneficial aspects of machine vision and now more and more visual tasks that were previously performed manually are taken over by machine vision.
\r\nIn particular, in the last decade we have witnessed that variational methods have successfully coped with challenging computer vision problems. These methods are mathematically well founded and offer robust solutions for difficult task such as segmentation, image registration and 3D reconstruction. The basic idea of variational methods is to design an appropriate energy function whose minimum represents the desired solution of the problem. The minimization of the energy function is done in an iterative manner which is, paradoxically, also the main drawback of these methods. The iterations take too long for a real-time solution.
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\r\nIn computer graphics, efficient hardware implementations have a long tradition. Recently, there has been a tremendous growth in graphics hardware performance. Together with a powerful bus system between the graphics processing unit (GPU) and the dedicated video memory, state-of-the-art graphics cards achieve an impressive performance of 520 billion floating point operations per second (GFlops). In addition, several recent advances make
\r\nGPUs particularly attractive for general purpose computations and computer vision in particular.
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\r\nThe goal of VM-GPU is to exploit the potential of variational methods by implementing them on modern graphics hardware and thereby to make these methods accessible for industrial problems. In particular, we will tackle problem like texture defect detection and 3D reconstruction in industrial settings.

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"@en . "2007-04-01"^^ . "2010-02-28"^^ . . . "WCMS - Wireless Cargo Monitoring System" . "

The wireless container monitoring and tracking application is a very challenging application, because of the harsh operating environment and the unavailability of any main electric power supply system. A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) will be proposed, that consists of many small and low-cost network elements powered by energy scavenging techniques. While WSNs communicate locally to accomplish the distributed task of collecting environmental data, other wireless technologies such as GSM as well as GPS receivers are required to connect WSNs to the global Internet from where information regarding position of sensors is retrieved and the sensed values transmitted.
\r\nThe fact that even most advanced GSM and GPS modules consume considerable amounts of power (mWatt average to Watt peak) and the requirement of maintenance-free operation, disqualifies the use of standard battery packs. To solve the energy problem, energy scavenging techniques are proposed for all embedded wireless sensor modules within a container. Different types of energy scavenging systems may be needed for the different sensor nodes and will be researched during the project.
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\r\nAn important aspect of this project is the continuous measurement and logging of 3-D acceleration data and other sensors during transportation to ensure the quality of transport.
\r\n
\r\nIn order to achieve this goal, state-of-the-art has to be extended significantly, because designing such a heterogeneous, self-powered sensing and tracking application requires new approaches in all aspects relevant to the system design. From communication protocols to wakeup strategies down to the sensor and embedded hardware, a reduction of energy consumption to very low levels would enable the deployment of large maintenance-free networks. The goal of this project is to develop a demonstrator that RailCargo Austria will be able to successfully test in a real container transport across the country.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2007-04-01"^^ . "0000-00-00"^^ . . . "SECURE 2.0 - Securing the Information Sharing on Web 2.0" . "

Web 2.0 has changed the technological landscape the Internet computing world today. The shift from traditional web which is also known as Web 1.0 is forced by the growing need for more efficient information sharing, collaboration and business processes. This technological transition to Web 2.0 paradigm also brings in new security and privacy concerns into existence which should protect the whole Rich Internet Application (RIA) components. Web 2.0 security concerns are divided into two basic categories namely: Physical security and Semantic security. The first category aims to cover issues such as secure and trustworthy data exchange. This group of security concerns can benefit from existing methodologies of web 1.0 to handle the security and trust issues. The semantic security concerns on the other hand, handle the information sharing in a higher level by exploiting the Semantic Web technologies in order to describe the shared knowledge in a computer- processable way. As a result the shared information can be combined with personal/organizational policies to protect the information in a collaborative environment like Web 2.0. 

\r\n

This project aims at providing reusable foundation components for information sharing that can be applied to existing RIAs vertically. To achieve this goal, challenges such as policy storage and integration, semi-automatic information annotation, semantic pattern matching, and integration of user profile should be addressed.  The proposed components will be also applied to Mindmeister product (a Web 2.0 mind mapping tool) of our project partner to ease the information sharing and reuse as a proof of concept.

"@en . "2009-02-01"^^ . "2011-01-31"^^ . . . "SEMAMO - Semantic Marketing Monitoring" . "

The objective of SEMAMO is to make use of the increasingly growing information available at Web-based sales and marketing channels for market research, using semi automatic analyses and semantic domain models, where the domain model guides the statistical processing flow and the statistical results feed back to the domain model - enabling learning of the system. With such an intelligent integration (needing also research in the respective disciplines) SEMAMO delivers a business analysis tools far beyond current state of the art. The assumption is that the Web may serve as a “picture” of the reality and that the respective online channels map market developments in terms of product descriptions, distribution, promotions, and price developments; and this accurately and in a timely manner. SEMAMO aims at building a technological framework that allows the automatic capturing of market information and the semi-automatic analysis of these data for market research and benchmarking. To automate this process, online data harvesting, semantic domain modeling, and semantically guided (i.e., domain specific) analysis and reporting technologies are integrated. This framework will be tested in the area of tourism, but can be easily transfered to other sector due to the underlying domain model. More specifically, SEMAMO aims at

\r\n
  1. building a metadata model that captures the required semantics to enable the interpretation of the market data according to application needs;
  2. sampling of data from Web sources: this will include the learning of properties of the data sources (such as data change frequency) in order to guide the samplig process as well as to update the domain model, making the entire system adaptive;
  3. developing an ontology-driven strategy for cleansing of data; and
  4. developing semantic annotation and analysis methods for product as well as market data.
    5. \r\n
"@en . "2008-02-01"^^ . "2010-02-28"^^ . . . "SemBiz - Semantic Business Process Management for Flexible Dynamic Value Chains" . "2006-09-01"^^ . "2008-08-31"^^ . . . "SemBiz Semantic Business Process Management for flexible dynamic value chains" . "

Das Projekt SemBiz will die Lücke zwischen Geschäftsprozessen und deren technischer Umsetzung im Business-Process-Management (BPM) schließen. Das wird durch semantische Beschreibungen der Geschäftsprozesse und entsprechenden Tool Support umgesetzt. Aktuelle BPM-Technologien konzentrieren sich hauptsächlich auf technische Aspekte, um IT-unterstützte Geschäftsprozesse auszuführen, wobei sie außer Acht lassen, dass BPMTechniken die Umsetzung von Geschäftsprozessen eigentlich eine Ebene höher, nämlich auf der Ebene der Geschäftsprozesse selbst, realisieren sollten. Das Ergebnis ist ein vermehrter Bedarf an menschlichem Einsatz, um zwischen Businessprozessen und Technik zu „vermitteln“, was die Vorteile dieser Technologien erheblich einschränkt. Es ist unser Ziel, eine umfassende semantische Beschreibung, mit deren Hilfe Geschäftsprozess auf Business- Ebene umgesetzt werden können, und die dazugehörige Unterstützung für die automatische technische Umsetzung zu entwickeln.

\r\n

 

\r\nAls Ansatz dient das Konzept für Semantic Web Services, Web Service Modeling Ontology WSMO, auf dessen Basis wir ein umfangreiches Rahmenwerk für semantische Beschreibungen für Geschäftsprozesse entwickeln werden. Dieses Rahmenwerk wird BPM-Funktionalitäten auf der Geschäftsprozessebene durch rückschluss-basierte Techniken, die mit semantischen Beschreibungen arbeiten, unterstützen. Kernfunktion dieses Werkzeuges ist die Suche nach „business process spaces“, nach Geschäftsprozessen für spezielle Zielsetzungen und das Erstellen von Geschäftsprozesses aus bereits existierenden Prozess-Fragmenten sein. Diese Funktionen werden in eine prototypische Tool Suite integriert, mit deren Hilfe sie in Geschäftsprozessen der Telekommunikationsbranche getestet und evaluiert werden. Zusammenfassend gesagt, wird das Projekt SemBiz den innovativen Ansatz liefern, um das Business Process Management (BPM) weg von der IT-Ebene und hin zur Geschäftsprozessebene zu führen."@en . "2006-01-01"^^ . "2007-07-31"^^ . . . "SemCrypt Semantic-based Encrypted XML Document Processing" . "

Outsourcing IT services to external Service Providers is an emerging and growing market which represents a popular alternative to maintaining services in-house. By specializing on particular services, Service Providers can increase the quality and decrease the costs of their services. An important IT service is providing and administrating a data store in which individuals or companies can file documents and then query and update these documents without having to worry about, e.g., IT infrastructure, availability of data stores or back-ups. When storing sensitive data at such an external data store, the so-called Storage Provider needs to ensure that neither intruders nor its own staff can access the data. Currently, service level agreements represent the only possibility to ultimately guarantee data privacy in this storage model. The data owner thus needs to trust the Storage Provider with respect to fulfilling the contract and not misusing the data.

\r\n

Project SemCrypt - Querying and Updating of Encrypted XML, which is a joint project of University of Linz, EC3 and EC3 Networks GmbH, explores techniques to build a secure external data store which allows for efficient querying and updating of the stored documents. SemCrypt protects data from unauthorized access at the Storage Provider by only storing encrypted documents. Encryption and decryption are not performed at the external data store, but within a trusted domain of the data owner. In order to query and update the encrypted documents, SemCrypt makes use of the properties of XML, which is the required data format of the documents. XML documents do not only contain data but also information about the data structure. To process queries and updates, new techniques have been developed which utilize these structural semantics and combine them with special access structures. These techniques enable the direct access to encrypted data without having to perform a time-consuming decryption of the whole data store.
\r\nThe developed techniques allow for adapting SemCrypt to diverse application scenarios. Individuals can store private documents at external data stores. Companies can outsource their data stores and share sensitive documents, e.g., with regard to eGovernment, eFinance or Human Resource Management applications. When different people access the same documents, additional techniques are necessary to guarantee that each person can only access the document fragments for which he or she is entitled. Developing and integrating corresponding techniques is an integral part of the project.
\r\n
\r\nBy providing secure data stores in different application scenarios, SemCrypt will increase the popularity of outsourcing data stores to external Storage Providers. In particular, small and medium-sized businesses will profit from outsourcing the cost and resource-intensive administration of data stores without putting the privacy of their data at risk.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2005-01-01"^^ . "2007-06-30"^^ . . . "SemDAV - Semantic Enhancement of the DAV Protocol and New Paradigms for the Organisation of Unstructured Content" . "

Today, the organization of and human interaction with digital data assets is heavily influenced by hierarchical file systems. However, steadily increasing volumes of data require new paradigms for data organization. In order to support people who work with digital information, these approaches should more closely parallel how the human brain stores and retrieves information.
\r\nThe goal of the SemDAV project is to research basic technologies that enable the creation of systems for semantically-enabled information management. SemDAV will
\r\nextend the well-known WebDAV protocol and provides a platform- and implementation-independent method for exchanging content and associated semantic metadata. Instead of storing mere information (i.e. simple attributes) about
\r\ndigital objects, systems based on this new protocol will be able to process descriptive knowledge about such objects. These semantic systems are able to handle complex typed attributes, multi-dimensional classification schemes, and in particular relationships between data, time, location, users, and applications -knowledge which places digital objects in an intelligent context.
\r\n
\r\nAt the same time the protocol is being specified, two prototypes will also be implemented: On the server side, a reference implementation will demonstrate
\r\nthe feasibility of our approach. Therein, we will implement intelligent methods for the extraction of metadata from various sources, ncluding searching and browsing behaviour, content-based analysis, and manual annotations by users and applications. On the client side, we will develop a user interface which demonstrates efficient methods of representing the collected content and metadata, and assists the user in navigating and searching the data inventory more efficiently and intuitively. In a long-term perspective, products based on SemDAV may replace storage systems for unstructured content, such as shared file servers or personal home directories.
\r\n
\r\nSemDAV will explore new ways for users and applications to interact with files, and may serve as a key enabling technology for intelligent data management.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2006-11-01"^^ . "2008-10-31"^^ . . . "SEMPRE - Semantically Aware Profiling for Recommenders" . "

The amount of digital information is constantly increasing, and search engines are still the means for accessing this information. However, recommender systems are at their best way to become a remedy to this unsatisfying situation.
\r\n
\r\nConsumers as well as knowledge workers in increasingly competitive work environments, confronted with more and more diversified product lines and knowledge sources, are seeking for more efficient ways to retrieve and select information. To meet this demand it has become clear to providers in e- and m-commerce that future businesses have to grow beyond existing search engines in tailoring services to specific target audiences, and that the high quality which is required from recommendations to be successful in the long run can only be achieved through incorporating and successively increasing the semantic awareness of recommender systems.
\r\n
\r\nCurrent recommender technology, however, suffers from two major shortcomings. They require a huge amount of expertise and handcrafting for modelling an application domain, and they rely in their recommendations on the behaviour and opinions of those users active in the system. This is a poor resource compared to the abundance of information out there in the internet.
\r\n
\r\nWith the project SEMPRE, we aim at developing semantic technology for exploiting the rich and dynamic resource of factual information and human opinions available on the internet. This will be achieved through an iterative, adaptive semantics-driven process where existing profiles and domain ontologies are used as seed knowledge to access further information on the web, and where data extracted from the web are employed to extend and refine the domain ontologies and profiles applied in recommendation.
\r\n
\r\nTo achieve our goal we bring together research from

\r\n

(i) recommender technology,
\r\n(ii) web-based document, text and opinion mining including amongst others methods and techniques from information retrieval, information extraction and question-answering, and (iii) semantic technologies such as those employed in ontology creation, ontology adaptation and the exploitation of ontologies for information mining from web documents.

\r\n

From a technological point of view SEMPRE aims at providing a generic solution. Rather than being a monolithic system, SEMPRE will be devised as a platform for the semantic integration of (small) specialised services, plug-in tools leading to different results under different contexts and conditions. For proof of concept, the proposed methods are applied to the domain of music recommendation. In particular, existing real world data from the music recommendation domain are used as seed knowledge to extract further information from the web.
\r\n
\r\nIn developing fundamental techniques and a generic framework for personalized recommendation, SEMPRE leads the path to a variety of more effective recommender services suitable in different domains ranging from applications in m- and e-commerce to personalized knowledge access in large organizations. Thus, SEMPRE answers the demand of ALL industries for recommender service innovations leading to empowered employees and consumers alike.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2006-11-01"^^ . "2009-03-31"^^ . . . "SemWay -Semantics for Navigation Systems" . "

The SemWay project searches answers to the question how the process of human wayfinding can be supported by semantic extensions to navigation systems. These semantic extensions should allow for an improved interaction between navigating persons and their surrounding spatial environment. In SemWay basic methodologies for building such navigation systems are elaborated and a proof-of-concept prototype is developed.
\r\n
\r\nThe question of wayfinding is central to human beings. The underlying process of human wayfinding in different spatial situations and surroundings has been analysed in a number of scientific studies. Technical progress in the field of positioning as well as in the field of mobile information systems has created the market for mobile personal navigation solutions. The missing glue for a new generation of mobile navigation systems is the ability to use descriptions of the spatial surroundings for generating meaningful wayfinding instructions and to adapt wayfinding instructions to the spatial cognition of users. In the SemWay project the goal is to develop the prototype of a completely new type of mobile navigation system, which will be able to interpret semantic descriptions of spatial surroundings along pre-defined ways. From these semantic descriptions meaningful wayfinding instructions can be generated. The wayfinding instructions based on findings in the field of spatial cognition and human wayfinding should help people to improve their process of wayfinding and their interaction with the surrounding environment. Three key research questions have been identified:
\r\n
\r\nThe first question aims at a specification how the goal-directed process of human wayfinding in well-defined spatial situations can be structured and formally described. The result will be a model allowing to formally describe human wayfinding tasks and their correlation to spatial objects in the surrounding environment of the way.
\r\nThe second question focuses on the semantic description of wayfinding tasks as well as relevant spatial objects identified in answering the first question. The research question is how wayfinding-relevant spatial objects can be semantically described in order to associate common-sense spatial knowledge as well as target-group specific knowledge with them.
\r\nThe third question bridges the gap between the formal models developed and the actual support which can be given by a semantically enriched navigation system. A proof-of-concept prototype will answer the question how navigation systems can make use of semantically rich descriptions of the surrounding environment in order to provide meaningful instructions for wayfinders.
\r\n
\r\nThe expected project results are considered as building blocks for the development of future mobile navigation solutions for leisure activities. The project ensures an outstanding role in the extensively growing market for mobile navigation solutions for the participating research institutes and companies.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2006-10-01"^^ . "2010-06-30"^^ . . . "SenAv Sense and Avoid" . "

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

Autonomous vehicles are becoming of increasing interest as they allow the replacement of human drivers in many critical situations, while offering advantages in terms of agility, consumption and speed. Airborne vehicles are especially interesting in buildings and landscapes etc. with an efficiency and accuracy which cannot be reached by comparable earth-based solutions.

\r\n

However, a substantial problem fort he diffusion of such vehicles are the inherent dangers associated with obstacles and risky situations as well as a lack of ability to react accordingly as a human driver would. To overcome these problems, several approaches can be taken, among them the choice of components which limit the failure probability as well as the possible damage incurred or produced by a component failure or a wrong operation.

\r\n

While these steps are indeed important, they do not really solve the problem. Our project proposal aims to tackle this problem by a specific design, which is based on an embedded control system using information from different sensing systems to redesign adaptively the trajectory to avoid such situations from the very beginning.

\r\nThis implies a parallel design of three key elements:\r\n
  • Hardware design (integration of high speed processors and microelectronics and a miniaturised system)
  • Sensing (image acquisition and processing to recognize obstacles) and estimation (determining the actual position and asset oft he vehicle through several sensors)
  • Control and avoiding (robust tracking as well as adaptive on line re-design of the trajectories to avoid both infeasible target and risky objects).
    • \r\n
\r\n

Accordingly, the scientific work will be performed by three research institutes (two from Mechatronics and one from Computer science as well as a start up company).

"@en . "2006-04-01"^^ . "2008-07-31"^^ . . . "SENSE Semantic Engineering Support Environment" . "

Produktentwicklungsprozesse finden in einem immer komplexeren Umfeld statt. Die Komplexität industrieller Produkte nimmt stetig zu. Während zum Beispiel Autos vor zehn Jahren noch hauptsächlich aus mechanischen Teilen bestanden, halten heute immer mehr technische Neuerungen Einzug, wie z.B. in der Unterhaltungselektronik. Kunden erwarten zudem immer mehr Möglichkeiten, Produkte individuell zu gestalten. Gleichzeitig fordert der Markt immer kürzere Innovationszyklen und niedrigere Preise bei gleich bleibender Qualität.
\r\nObwohl ausreichend Werkzeuge zur Unterstützung der Produktentwicklung in all ihren Details zu Verfügung stehen, fehlt es an geeigneten Werkzeugen zur Unterstützung der Zusammenarbeit parallel arbeitender geographisch getrennter Teams. Das SEnSE Projekt hat als Ziel, ein neuartiges Softwaresystem auf Basis semantischer Technologien zu erstellen, das speziell auf diese Form der Zusammenarbeit zugeschnitten ist. Im Rahmen des Projekts wird die Brücke zwischen semantischen Informationssystemen und flexibler Prozessunterstützung geschlossen. Als Basis dienen neueste Entwicklungen im Bereich Semantic Web und Ontologien, Triple-Space-based Computing und Multiagentensystemen. Die in SEnSE entwickelte Technologie ermöglicht die Realisierung innovativer Anwendungskonzepte für IT-basierte Zusammenarbeit. Diese werden in Zukunft qualitativ bessere Unterstützung für verteilte Teams von Wissensarbeitern bieten.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2006-01-01"^^ . "2008-03-31"^^ . . . "SEPIAS Self Properties in Autonomous Systems" . "

The Self Properties in Autonomous Systems project (SEPIAS) focuses on the development process of mobile systems which comprises hardware and software. The goal is to provide tools and techniques for enabling mobile systems to react to unexpected changes in the environment and internal faults in an intelligent way such that they can still fulfil their tasks.
\r\nBecause of limited possibilities for human intervention and even interaction during operation autonomous systems need to solve problems and unexpected situations by their own. As a consequence, the autonomous system has to have knowledge about the surrounding environment, its task, its capabilities and its internal state. Moreover, the system has to be able to reason about all this information and if necessary to draw conclusions which can trigger adaptations in its structure and behavior. For instance a mobile device may slow down its data transfer speed if it is aware that its solar cells deliver less power because of bad weather conditions.
\r\nFor the capabilities of reflection and self-healing the required knowledge has to be accessible by the system which imposes changes to the traditional system development process. The goal of the traditional process is the development of hardware and software of a system for a specific task. Although malfunctions are considered partially within the process, the resulting system has no explicit knowledge about itself. To overcome this situation, there has to be a knowledge acquisition phase during the development process which integrates smoothly into a traditional development process. In order to automate the knowledge acquisition, the developed tools have to have an understanding of the semantics of the purpose and the design of the system. For the purpose of knowledge representation and reasoning, this project uses the techniques that are used in model-based reasoning. They have to be adapted and smoothly integrated in the traditional developing process. An additional requirement is the available computational power of autonomous systems since reflection has to be performed during operation. Hence, the algorithms and knowledge representation have to be adapted to perform well under given computational restrictions.
\r\nDuring the SEPIAS project the current development process will be analyzed and suggestions for modifications including rules for integrating knowledge representation will be given. A runtime system with the desired capabilities will be developed. The whole proposed methodology together with the runtime system will be tested in a machine-to-machine (M2M) application. The technology demonstrator is a M2M terminal which is attached to freight containers and which tracks and transmit the global position to a central service. Such applications gain more and more attention in the field of fleet management.
\r\nThe proposed solution of SEPIAS will lead to the reduction of service and maintenance costs, the optimization of service personnel activities and the reduction of downtime while increasing the robustness. Hence, products that are developed using SEPIAS technology will gain advantages over competing products.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2006-01-01"^^ . "2008-03-31"^^ . . . "SER Steuergerätetaugliches Echtzeit Reifenmodel" . "

The objective of the project is the development of a tire model, designed to run in real-time on an embedded automotive control unit in order to enable tire force based vehicle dynamic control for all driving situations. Standard tire models for simulations published in books and scientific papers like Magic Formula, HSRI-Model or Brush-Models are very complex. They are based on physical models describing the properties of the tire and are very accurate with appropriate parameters. In real-time systems, they can not be used because of their computational complexity and their long list of unknown parameters. Other tire models implemented in vehicle stability systems (ESP, DSC, VDC,...) have a low computational effort and a limited number of parameters, however, they are designed to operate only in critical driving conditions where fast and robust performance is more important than accuracy. Therefore, a tire model is sought for which will satisfy both the requirements of low computational effort and high accuracy, in order to work with high performance in a wide range of driving conditions. The concept of a drive-by-wire vehicle demands such a comprehensive and accurate yet compact model. Due to the safety relevant nature of the application a fault-detection and diagnosis system has to be implemented. Thus, the following research goals can be defined:

\r\n
  1. Evaluation of existing tire models regarding their use in an embedded system
  2. Finding a suitable structure for an adaptive yet compact tire model
  3. Development of a stable and robust parameter estimation algorithm
  4. Analysis and simulation of robustness concerning parameter variations
  5. Implementation of a fault detection and diagnosis system
  6. Protection of intellectual property by patents
    7. \r\n
\r\n \r\nBecause steps 2 and 3 are closely connected they can be seen as an iterative process."@en . "2006-01-01"^^ . "2008-03-31"^^ . . . "Service-Detective - Finding Web Services by Combining Web Principles and Semantics" . "

The Web is moving from a collection of static documents to a collection of services. Web Services are today accepted as a common standard for realizing service interchanges in a business to business context. Furthermore they are widely seen as the most promising technology to enable interoperability within service-oriented architectures (SOA). Current SOA solutions are mainly restricted to intraorganizational environments, and are not yet widely deployed in external settings. The discovery of Web Services is essential for creating and utilizing dynamically created applications. Current technologies provide means to describe services on a syntactical level, thus providing only limited automation support. For efficient service discovery, a good characterization of functional and nonfunctional properties is though essential. The FIT-IT project RW² (Reasoning With Web Services) has emphasized the role of semantics in service discovery and has focused on how to build and reason over formal semantic service descriptions. Semantic descriptions increase the accuracy of service discovery, however the availability of semantic service description respectively their creation constitutes a severe bottleneck. The availability of trained experts and the costs involved do not allow current approaches to scale up with the existing number of services in the Web. The Service-Detective project will take existing semantic description methodologies and focus on how they can be combined with Web principles in order to scale in a Web context. The aim of the Service-Detective project is to make Web Services available to potential consumers in a similar way as static Web documents are made available to users by current state-of-the-art search engines. The project will deliver a search engine that will crawl the Web for services and that will thus not be limited to explicitly published services. The crawler will identify Web Service descriptions and gather related information about the services. All available information will be analyzed and added to a cohesive semantic model. On top of this semantic model reasoners can perform inferences in order to provide meaningful ranking and clustering of information. In particular Service-Detective will focus on integrating dynamic aspects of the service requesters and on building meaningful clusters of services. Service-Detective aims at exploiting both the structure and the semantics of Web Service descriptions in order to find a balance between complex semantic query languages and keyword based approaches.

"@en . "2009-04-01"^^ . "2011-09-30"^^ . . . "SIMBA - Simulation-Based Requirements Testing of Power Aware SOC's" . "

The aim of this project is the extension of the current design methodology for Systems-on-Chip towards a tight integration of system requirements during the concept, design and verification with a focus on power aware systems. The work will consist of two major parts. One objective is the establishment of a linkage between system tools handling system level requirements and tools handling the system implementation at a device level (on chip). The second objective is the extension of a gate level based power estimation tool to a Rapid Hierarchical Energy Investigation Modeling System that operates at different levels of abstraction. This power tool will use case based reasoning and will be linked to various gate and System level simulators.

\r\n

The design methodology to be developed will allow consideration of different types of requirements emanating from the target application and defined at a system level (functional and non-functional). The main objective is to map and link the system requirements to test requirements and ultimately test specifications. The mapping focuses on the translation of system requirements to descriptions suitable for chip level development. The linkage process assigns one ore more simulation setups to one or more requirement descriptions. Standardized and common used description languages as e.g. UML for requirement or SystemC for test case descriptions will be used on different levels of system abstraction.The final outcome of the project is a new dedicated (in terms of used languages and tools) and automated mapping of system requirements considering state of the art design tools for System-On-Chip Design and requirements engineering. With the new Rapid Hierarchical Energy Investigation Modeling System the investigation of requirements in the area of power will be possible throughout all stages within the SoC design flow.

\r\n

The work planned within the entire project will significantly add to the experience and knowledge of all contributing partners for the next years in the areas of embedded system design with an emphasis on power awareness in RFID applications. These are all large and expanding areas of research and application in microelectronics. Besides the new research positions (2 PhD's in Graz and 2 in Dublin) that will be created, the project will also further assist and enhance Austria’s skills, advanced position and strength in the wide field of embedded systems, particularly in the field of higher-class RFID applications. To face the global market challenge it is essential for the partners – two academic research institutes and one SME - to continuously improve their technical know-how and engineering skills to establish and maintain a distinctive competitive edge and expertise.

\r\n

As one of the targets of the entire FIT-IT SoC call reflects to mixed analog-digital systems and RF systems the methodology will specifically address the development of higher-class RFID Tags that are as follows:

\r\n

- Semi-Passive tags with extended features (integral power source, integrated sensing circuit) - Active tags (battery, energy harvesting) with extended features (tag-to-tag communication, active  communication, ad-hoc networking capabilities)

"@en . "2006-08-01"^^ . "2009-12-31"^^ . . . "SMART VIDENTE - Subsurface Mobile Augmented Reality Technology for Outdoor Infrastructure Workers" . "

SMART VIDENTE focuses on research on the next-generation field information system for utility companies, providing mobile workforces with capabilities for on-site inspection and planning, data capture and as-built surveying. For achieving this aim, handheld Augmented Reality technology is used for on-site modification and surveying of geometric and semantic attributes of geospatial 3D models on the userís handheld device.

\r\n

The project aims at providing a fully functional handheld Augmented Reality device for utility workers. To achieve this goal, we require a software solution that can visualize registered three-dimensional underground models in real time. Registration in 3D requires being able to perform accurate global localization and posing tracking in real time without relying on unrealistic assumptions concerning prior scene knowledge. We will address this issue through fusion of vision, inertial and GPS sensors. Visualization requires the rendering of complex 3D models of underground infrastructure in a way that is easily comprehensible and useful to the mobile worker. This requires visualization techniques for geometric as well as non-geometric information from the geo-database, in particular of hidden objects through so-called ìX-ray visionî. These visualization techniques need to be adaptive to scene complexity and environmental conditions.

\r\n

The three-dimensional geometry to be shown is not available per default, but must be extracted from a conventional database system and interpreted on-the-fly as a 3D visualization using procedural modeling techniques. We want to support annotation and even surveying tasks in the field, so the system must also allow to write information back to the geo-database. Finally, we will work with three large Austrian infrastructure companies to assess the usability of our solutions.

"@en . "2009-03-01"^^ . "2011-02-28"^^ . . . "SNAP Secure NFC Applications" . "

Die Ausgabe von Papiergutscheinen ist ein beliebtes Mittel zum Akquirieren von Neukunden und deren Daten. Kosten entstehen für den Herausgeber von Gutscheinen nicht nur durch Herstellen, Versenden und sog. „Giveaways“, sondern vor allem auch durch die aufwändige Verarbeitung der Daten, bis sie in elektronischer Form vorliegen. „Virtuelle Gutscheine“ in elektronischer Form (mCoupons für Mobile Coupons) können diese Kosten drastisch reduzieren. Das Projekt SNAP hat das Ziel ein System von virtuellen Gutscheinen zu entwickeln, welche gegen Fälschung und Weitergabe geschützt sind. Im Gegensatz zu papier-basierten Gutscheinen benötigen elektronische Gutscheine Schutzmaßnahmen gegen automatisierte und verteilte Angriffe. Grundlage des neuen Systems ist der neue Kommunikationsstandard NFC (Near Field Communication), welcher schon in naher Zukunft zur Standardausstattung von „Handy & Co“ gehören wird. Billige RFID-Tags, an denen man sich Gutscheine mittels Berührung mit dem Handy abholen kann, können in Zeitschriften oder Papier von Plakaten integriert werden. Diese Tags funktionieren ohne eigene Stromversorgung und sollten in großer Stückzahl sehr billig herstellbar sein (weniger als 10 cent pro Stück). Zum Schutz gegen Fälschungen müssen diese Tags kryptografische Algorithmen berechnen. Zur Ausgabe eines Gutscheines bringt der Teilnehmer sein Handy nah genug an das RFID-Tag, der Gutschein wird übertragen und am Handy gespeichert. Beim Einlösen des Gutscheins hält der Teilnehmer sein Handy nahe genug an ein Kassenterminal, um den Gutschein abzugeben.
\r\nSNAP umfasst die Entwicklung von neuen RFID-Tags mit Krypto-Funktionalität sowie den Entwurf und die Implementierung von sicheren Kommunikationsprotokollen zwischen Handy und Tag sowie Handy und Kassenterminal. Weiters wird ein neues Konzept zum energiesparenden Detektieren von NFC-Kommunikationspartnern entwickelt (Neighborhood Detector).

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2006-02-01"^^ . "2008-04-30"^^ . . . "SNOPS - Sensor Network Optimizations by Power Simulation" . "

Though significant research and development efforts have been spent on Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology during the last years, broad commercialization is still missing and the market just slowly adopts WSN technology. One key factor that prevents these markets of high economic and socio-economic relevance to take off is the demanded but yet not reached energetic autonomy of sensor nodes and networks. The present state is still unsatisfactory for many potential application fields such as industrial control, environmental monitoring, health&fitness, sensing, controlling and diagnostics in automotive and aeronautic vehicle environments, guidance&control systems in automatic manufacturing environments and container and item tracking. This innovation project addresses novel power and energy optimization techniques for Wireless Sensor Networks, which target to reach reasonable maintenance-free lifecycles of low-cost sensor nodes by utilizing optimization potential at component and methodological level. The objective of this innovation project, which is in line and tightly coupled to research activities on European level, is to investigate and develop

\r\n
  • a novel and comprehensive design methodology to enable the architectural designspace exploration of heterogeneous SoCs and SiPs in terms of power and energy. This includes the definition, the virtual prototyping and the analysis of such systems that combine analogue, mixedsignal and RF hardware with intellectual property (IP) blocks, programmable architectures and embedded firmware/software.
    • \r\n
\r\n
  • ultra low power and reconfigurable building blocks to leverage advanced power management techniques for efficient resource activation within SoCs. The energy efficiency of a sensor node will be increased by prolonging deep-sleep or powerdown phases of those SoC subsystems, which significantly contribute to power consumption. Finally, our goal is to demonstrate the improvements by means of a
    • \r\n
\r\nWSN-node prototype in a novel automotive Wireless Sensor Network scenario"@en . "2008-04-01"^^ . "2010-09-30"^^ . . . "socPod - System-on-Chip for Portable Audio" . "

Portable audio products get increasingly more complex and a growing number of functionality is required to be integrated using up as little space as possible. Besides audio and video quality the power consumption is a major criterion, since thesedevices are required to run without mains supply as long as possible. To face these challenges it is required to increase the integration density and combine all functional blocks within a single package. Solutions like system-in-package (SiP) or system-on-chip (SoC) enable to combine analog and digital circuitry. Using SoC the choice of the semiconductor technology is determined by the requirements of the digital block.

\r\n

For an efficient realization it is crucial to use technologies with a small feature size. Using these modern technologies the power consumption can be reduced significantly, but it has the side-effect that analog circuit design gets more complicated. Therefore analog-to-digital converters (ADC) and digital-to-analog converters (DAC) are required that can be implemented robust and efficiently even on technologies that are optimized for digital circuitry.
\r\n
\r\nDelta-Sigma converters make use of a combination of analog and digital signal-processing where the advantages of efficient digital signal processing is used to reduce the requirements on the analog blocks. Optimization of these converters on system and circuit level as well as the investigation of new topologies will contribute to the next generation of power-optimized converters.

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\r\n 

"@en . "2006-08-01"^^ . "2009-09-30"^^ . . . "SoftRoC: Software Radio on Chip" . "

Driven by strong upgrade sales and consumer demand for multifunctional mobile devices the worldwide market for mobile phones is constantly increasing. As a consequence highly integrated electronics are significant to supply the needed functions of upcoming applications. Facing the situation that mobile phones are dominated by digital circuits and produced in very large volumes the call for an added design effort is needed to realise the circuit in pure CMOS technology. This forces IC suppliers to increase efforts in research and development in SoC solutions.

\r\n

The overall objective of SoftRoc is to develop key components for the next generations of mobile phones, aiming for a high degree of integration in CMOS technology. This will result in communication devices able to interact with a multitude of RF enabled systems. Communication over a range of frequencies, varying data rates, bandwidths and modulation schemes will become available within a single chip. The focus of SoftRoc will be on a reconfigurable radio front end, controlled digitally by the baseband processor. Key building blocks such as All-Digital Phase-Locked-Loops, novel sampling receiver architectures, filters, ADC’s and low-noise amplifiers will be realised in Very Deep Sub Micron (VDSM) CMOS, specifically targeting the 65nm node. The testing of this first silicon will be integrated into a second design iteration where the target is to tape out a demonstrator suitable for integration into a SoC. The resulting implementation will be able to cope with a multitude of standards for communication.
\r\n
\r\nFor the realisation of such a flexible RF architecture the simple duplication of the RF modules, each dedicated for a single wireless standard, will be unfeasible due to the very large area these modules require. To overcome this problem, SoftRoc has defined a reconfigurable receiver architecture based on the software defined radio concept which moves as much as possible of the signal processing to the digital domain. Furthermore, novel ways to convert the analog RF signal to its digital baseband equivalent are targeted within SoftRoc. To accomplish this, different low-noise/low-power building blocks have to be developed considering the low supply voltage of VDSM CMOS. The specifications of the building blocks have already been defined and first test chips were produced. The collected findings during the measurement and testing phase have already resulted in new simulations of the building blocks. In the next phase we are going to develop them according to the requirements for less space, very low voltages and overcoming of possible crosstalk problems.

"@en . "2005-07-01"^^ . "2007-06-30"^^ . . . "SPARC Semantic Phonetic automatic ReConstruction of dictations" . "

The goal of this project is to lay the foundation for a radical improvement in the quality of automated transcription of dictations by making explicit use of semantic knowledge. Current systems aim at a literal transcription of the dictation; however, even experienced authors are not able to formulate their words in the exact form required for the written document, due to the inherent differences between spoken and written language. This is effect is even more pronounced for authors with little dictating experience. As a result, utterances must be expanded, restructured or reformulated to achieve the desired written form. Trained typists routinely perform this task. To fully exploit the potential of speech technology dictation systems must perform in a similar way, i.e. systems have to move away from simply producing written drafts to producing documents conforming to the formal and informal requirements of written text.
\r\nCurrently, what are not available are error-free literal transcriptions of the original dictations. Exactly such literal transcriptions are needed though, to automatically teach the system the recurrent reformulations that are made to provide a text close to the intended final document. Moreover, large corpora of literal transcriptions can be used as training data, to decrease the word error rate of speech recognition itself. Therefore, new methods will be developed for the automatic reconstruction of literal transcriptions on the basis of an automatic semantic annotation of draft transcriptions and final documents. Document pairs will be aligned to identify chunks of text that display differences. Using the semantic annotation these chunks will be measured for semantic “similarity” as well as for phonetic/acoustic similarity.
\r\n
\r\nIncorporating explicit semantic knowledge will dramatically improve the quality of speech recognition technology for the professional document creation market. The benefits of this new technology for end users are twofold: a significantly decreased error rate and thus less need for corrections, and intelligent assistance with structuring and formatting of documents, which allows the users to fully focus on the content.
\r\n
\r\nThis project is also paving the way for future fruitful co-operation between the renowned Austrian research institutes ÖFAI and SPSC and their industry partner Philips Speech Recognition Systems, GmbH (PSRS), eventually leading to a research cluster in the area of Speech Recognition and Semantic Speech Interpretation. The project plays an important part in continuing advancement of Vienna’s position as an international centre for state-of-the-art research and development in speech processing.

"@en . "2005-01-01"^^ . "2006-12-31"^^ . . . "SPECTACLES Autonomous Wearable Displays" . "

SPECTACLES verfolgt einen frameworkbasierten Entwicklungsansatz für eingebettete Multimediasysteme die in Gebrauchsgegenstände integriert werden können. Die spezielle Herausforderung liegt in der wahlfreien Assemblierung („Baukastensystem“) von Sensorik (Accelerometer, Vitalkontext, Umweltsensoren), tandardisierten Kommunkationssystemen (GSM, WiFi, BT, ZigBee) und optischer Durchsichttechnologien (Seethrough Systems) bei gleichzeitiger softwaretechnischer Integration („Komponententechnologie“).
\r\nDie zugrundegelegte Softwarearchitektur ermöglicht die Konfiguration des Systems zur Laufzeit und die flexible Kommunikation und Synchronisation einzelner Systemkomponenten über einen effizienten Koordinationsmechanismus, Der als eine Erweiterung des Tuple-Space-Konzepts für eingebettete Kontrollsysteme entwickelt wurde. Die installierten Subsysteme tauschen sich über diesen Mechanismus über ihre Zustände aus, stellen Anforderungen an Hardwarerebausteine, die zur Optimierung des Stromverbrauchs nur bei Bedarf über Ressourcengraphen aktiviert werden, und kommunizieren über einen standardisierten Mechanismus über unterschiedliche Protokolle mit der Aussenwelt. Der Einsatz einer miniaturisierten ARM-Plattform mit embedded Linux (PXA271 Core-Modul mit Kernel 2.6.17.1) und einer mächtigen graph-orientierten Entwicklungsumgebung (OpenEmbedded) ermöglicht die Unterstützung unterschiedlichster Medien und Protokolle, so können nahtlos HTML-formatierter Content, Bilder, Video (z.B. MPEG4, H.263, Life-Streams von Handy-Diensten) dargestellt werden, oder mobil generierte Inhalte wie SMS und MMS. Die Integration eines miniaturisierten Kameramoduls ermöglicht die Analyse visueller Eindrücke. Eine Komponente für ein markerbasiertes Augmented-Reality System nimmt das primäre Sichtfeld des Benutzers auf und wertet es nach optischen Markern (ähnlich Barcodes) durchsucht. Diese identifizieren Objekte eindeutig und geben Aufschluss über deren Lage, wodurch geometrisch korrekt mit dem Objekt verbundene Information aus dem Internet abgerufen und angezeigt wird. Zur Interaktion mit der Brille – es ist im Normalfall keine Tastatur verfügbar – wurde eine alternative Interaktionsmöglichkeit entwickelt: Mittels Erkennung von Kopfbewegungen (über accelerometerbasierte Gestenerkennung) wurde eine Eingabemöglichkeit ohne externe Hilfsmittel realisiert – ein einfaches Kopfnicken oder Schütteln ermöglicht spontane Reaktionen, ein weiterführendes Gestenalphabet ermöglichen die komplexere Interaktion. Das zur Anzeige notwendige Subsystem, bestehend aus Mikrodisplay und Optik-Elementen war eine interdisziplinäre Herausforderung, die durch einen innovativen Lösungsansatz auf allen Ebenen (Optik, Elektronik, Software- Ansteuerung) gemeistert wurde.

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\r\n 

"@en . "2005-02-01"^^ . "2008-05-31"^^ . . . "STEACS Systematic Test of Embedded Automotive Communications Systems" . "

Automotive electronic systems like brake-by-wire and steer-by-wire will enable a boost of advanced and improved driving functionality due to inter-operation of current stand-alone applications. The challenges related to the development of suitable network architectures are currently subject of intensive research.
\r\nThe aim of the project STEACS is to address the arising problems for the system integration of these applications: (1) the inter-operation of the distributed nodes tremendously increases the complexity of these systems (2) the use of these systems in safety-critical domains imposes the need for highly accurate testing and diagnosis strategies. Within the project, special focus is set on the communication subsystem − the core component of these highly interactive distributed systems.
\r\n
\r\nA central innovation of the project − the development of a novel integrated methodology for systematic test and diagnosis − enables an efficient and profound analysis of bus and communication-system properties that will facilitate future by-wire systems.
\r\n
\r\nThe STEACS project focuses on the FlexRay protocol that is presently established by leading automotive and electronic manufacturers and suppliers. Within this FlexRay consortium, DECOMSYS GmbH is among the foremost driving developers for software and prototyping hardware.
\r\n
\r\nResults of the project include a detailed layer-model for the test and diagnosis of the communication subsystem as well as concepts and a prototype implementation for bus-monitoring, replay and fault injection of FlexRay based distributed systems. In fact, the proposed diagnosis and testing methodology for systematic tests provides a solid basis to analyze and verify future by-wire systems in respect to communication properties. Future products based on this methodology will give OEMs and automotive suppliers the necessary tools to identify possible problems and to ensure the correct behavior of the communication subsystem. Thus, the results of the STEACS project bear a high potential to enhance the future product portfolio of DECOMSYS towards test and diagnosis tools

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2003-09-01"^^ . "2005-09-30"^^ . . . "SWITCHED - Switched Power Amplifiers for Energy Efficient Wireless Base Stations" . "

Power amplifiers (PAs) represent the most expensive and „power hungry“ components in radio base stations for mobile communications. Operating with 3G communication standards the PA efficiency is typically 15–25%. Therefore a 100W-PA consumes up to 700W from the mains. This requires additional effort for cooling, reducing the overall efficiency even further. Nowadays the energy operating cost tops the cost of the investment for setting up a base station. Hence, the efficiency of PAs is of outmost importance both for the operator and the developer of radio base stations.
\r\n
\r\nIn the SWITCHED project different transmit architectures are investigated, which could allow significant improvement of the efficiency of PAs. We focus our research on pulsed operated amplifiers. „Switched Mode“ PAs (SM-PAs) achieve high efficiency for phase modulated signals. To enable efficient operation of SM-PAs with digital modulation, a suitable architecture and driving circuitry needs to be found. Also the PA itself needs to be optimized for pulsed operation.
\r\n
\r\nInfineon is a manufacturer of power transistors for PAs and has acquired a lot of experience on RF-transmit-circuits and architectures. Infineon Villach has developed SM-PAs for audio and xDSL applications. The Microwave Engineering Group at the Vienna University of Technology’s Institute of Electrical Measurements and Circuit Design has excellent know-how on high-efficiency PAs. In the last three years the group strengthened the fields of measurement, design, and characterization of PAs further in addition to including system-level aspects like linearization concepts. The Microwave Engineering Group owns state-of-the-art measurement equipment for PA research and design for frequencies up to 50GHz.

\r\n

Recent standards for mobile communications show a dramatic increase in data rate. Due to the higher bandwidth usage, also more output power is required. With the success of this project the power dissipation in radio base stations will be significantly reduced, allowing a cost efficient operation of the infrastructure for mobile digital communications with high data rates. Only then, deployment of the next generation mobile communication devices with high data rates is possible at high volume and low cost

"@en . "2007-01-01"^^ . "2009-03-31"^^ . . . "SynUTC - Extremely Accurate Clock Synchronisation in Distributed Systems" . "

Distributed intelligent systems with nodes being interconnected using standard Ethernet are gaining increasing relevance within industrial control and measurement systems. Especially for timing critical application highly accurate and most likely fault tolerant time synchronisation is a compulsory requirement. To this end, every node may be equipped with additional hardware, however, due to costs and to cope with availability issues existing network infrastructure has to be utilized. Within SynUTC the underlying technology has been developed together with a close-to-production type evaluation system allowing proving synchronization accuracies within several nanoseconds, regardless of the actual network load. To every node a dedicated network interface card (based on PC-104+) has been added, which contains all necessary modules such as: A high resolution lock (96 bit) running a frequencies of above 200 MHz in conjunction with a module drawing a time stamp while a dedicated packet is sent or received respectively and inserts it into the packet.

\r\n

The 100 Mb/s Ethernet standard specifies a star-type connection structure, whereas every node is connected via one or more network components to its neighbour(s). These network components limit the achievable accuracy significantly, because the time it takes to forward any packet is varying and heavily dependent on the network load. Within the scope of SynUTC an extension to a network component has been developed, which measures the forwarding time and inserts it into the respective packet.

\r\n

During the work on SynUTC the IEEE released a new time synchronisation standard (1588) defining a protocol (PTP (precision time protocol) for distributing highly accurate time information within a network. Consequently SynUTC has been adapted to comply with the new standard; however, it offers several additional benefits like extremely high accuracy fault tolerance. Furthermore a trade mark SYN1588® has been established. These extensions have been introduced into the version 2.0 of the IEEE-1588 standard.

"@en . "2002-09-01"^^ . "2004-03-31"^^ . . . "Te-DES Systematische Testfallgenerierung für sicherheitskritische verteilte eingebettete Echtzeit-Systeme für unterschiedl. Sicherheitsstufen nach SIL" . "

Current software testing practice for embedded systems is based on a labor-intensive manual process, which is often error-prone. Especially in the area of safety-relevant applications, failures can cause injuries or even endanger lives. For this reason, a systematic method for automated testing is absolutely needed.
\r\n
\r\nSafety standardsusually define the guidelines for the quality of safety-relevant systems. The introduced testing framework is orientated to IEC 61508, which is widely accepted in the automotive domain.
\r\n
\r\nThe textually specified requirements and the formal model of the System-Under-Test (SUT) form the basis of the testing framework. In order to automate the test case generation the requirements need to be formalized manually. The formal model can be created manually or even extracted automatically from the program code.

\r\n

First the correctness of the model with regard to the requirements is formally verified, then test cases are generated. The resulting test cases are applied to the SUT. A test oracle provides the information on the success or failure of the test cases and measures the test quality by means of coverage metrics.
\r\n
\r\nThe test cases are generated by using model checking. A model checker is able to verify whether a formal model satisfies a formally specified requirement. If a violation is detected, a counter-example is computed, which can be used as a test case. Starting with the “correct” formal requirements, the requirements are mutated systematically in order to create test cases out of the mutants. Alternatively, mutation can be applied to the model.
\r\n
\r\nSo far executable prototypes for the automated
\r\n- model extraction from the C-source code
\r\n- test case generation
\r\n- test case application, evaluation and documentation (test oracle)
\r\nhave been created.
\r\n
\r\nThe main challenge of the introduced testing framework is the state space explosion for complex systems. In order to solve this problem the integration of abstraction techniques will be considered in future work.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2005-02-01"^^ . "2007-05-31"^^ . . . "RoWaFlowSim - Simulations of liquid film flows with free surface on rotating silicon wafers" . "

SEZ AG develops and manufactures single-wafer wet-processing solutions for the global semiconductor industry. Their core technology is based on spin processing tools, which allow the introduction of specific cleaning, etching and stripping chemicals onto the semiconductor substrates (typically wafers). Numerous development issues, concerning the mechanics of fluids in motion, arise throughout the further progression of this technology.

\r\n

Therefore, CFD simulations have become an important tool to improve the understanding of processes and to optimize and advance the current technologies available. The first subproject is related to the dynamics of the liquid motion on a rotating substrate. This includes phenomena, such as liquid film formation on a dry surface, wave propagation on the film, formation of hydraulic jumps, liquid impact and splashing on the substrate surface, as well as the detachment of liquid portions from the edge of the rotating disk. A design and computational tool for simulating the flow of liquid etching and cleaning media on the surface of rotating wafer disks will be developed. Due to the high complexity of the considered liquid flow with a free surface on the disk, numerical investigations and simulations require separate treatment of the various phenomena. The scientific partner for this subproject is the Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer (ISW) of Graz University of Technology (Prof. Brenn and Prof. Steiner).

\r\n

The second subproject is related to the transport of near-wall particles within the  viscous sublayer of a laminar or turbulent boundary layer. Understanding of the initiation of particle motion will be developed through modelling and simulation and will cover particle adhesion and detachment from a substrate. This will lead to minimum drag and lift forces required to remove specifically nanoparticulate contaminants from a substrate. In addition it is expected, that it will be possible to make predictions regarding the average velocity of the particle after motion has set it. Based on the generated understanding larger scale flows will be engineered based on their underlying physical mechanisms. The goal is to be able to enhance the selectivity between removal of particulate contaminants and damage of nearly equally sized nanostructures. The scientific partner for this subproject is the Institute of Fluid
\r\nMechanics and Heat Transfer (ISW) of TU Wien (Prof. Kuhlmann).

\r\n

Implementation of the results will be done together with ICE Strömungsforschung GmbH.

"@en . "2009-01-01"^^ . "2011-12-31"^^ . . . "RW2 Reasoning With Web Services" . "

Integration of heterogeneous applications remains one of the unresolved challenges of current IT solutions. This problem, usually referred to as Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), is a big challenge not only in terms of its scientific difficulty, but also in terms of its economic impact.

\r\n

In this context, Web services are the most promising technology to enable interoperability among heterogeneous applications. However, current technologies only describe syntactical aspects of Web Services, providing a very limited automation support for the integration task. The human user has to be kept in the loop and most of the interactions between communicating parties have to be hard-coded. As a result, scalability as well as economy of Web Services remains limited.

\r\n

Semantic Web technologies are applied to Web services with the aim of increasing the automation of a number of tasks, significantly. The RW² project follows the direction of research that describes Web Services based upon the Web Service Modeling Ontology (WSMO), which has recently emerged as major initiative in the area. The framework allows the automatic location of Web Services that fulfill certain needs.
\r\n
\r\nRW² tackles the problem of how to support the user in defining such descriptions for Web services and requests (goals). Furthermore, an inference engine for efficient reasoning with the formal descriptions tailored to the needs of Semantic Web services is under development. As a result, the project will enhance the automation of the service discovery task using the theoretical basis and the prototypes developed.

\r\n

 

"@en . "2005-01-01"^^ . "2007-06-30"^^ . . . "SAMBA: SoC for Advanced Multimedia Broadband Access" . "

In order to measure up to the development of shorter time-to-market cycles on the one hand and technical requirements of more complex SoC designs on the other, a new architectural approach is needed. This new approach not only enables design-reuse and early error detection but also offers a surface- and cost optimized solution. It is therefore imperative to conduct projects in a time span of as short as six months from initial specification to the final and correct implementation; regardless of the complexity of design problems. Approaches such as Multi DSP architectures or FPGA solutions do offer the required flexibility, but they are not optimal when it comes to performance and costs per piece. For this reason they are hardly ever applied in the mass market of consumer electronics.
\r\n
\r\nSAMBA is designed to meet up to the market requirements for a cost-optimized programmable multi-standard solution. Because of constantly rising initial production costs there is also a demand for growing sales figures for a Return on Investment.
\r\n
\r\nSAMBA combines the different technical requirements, which will allow scalability of the processing power, programmability and an optimal weighting of hardware- and software-based designs in order to find an optimal balance between fixed-wired and freely-programmable modules. The SAMBA core works on a high-grade parallel and scalable VLIW processor architecture that was developed by ON DEMAND Microelectronics and which should be optimized for special processing operations. It has to be guaranteed that internally- developed hardware modules as well as IPs made by other manufacturers can be seamlessly integrated into the platform and the simulation environment.
\r\n
\r\nWith the platform SAMBA a generally valid method should be established within this project so that such hardware/software requirements can be simulated. The suitability of this method is indicated by a multimode receiver for the highly contrarily-working standards DVB-T and ATSC. With SAMBA fixed-wired single-standard solutions as well as flexible software-programmable multi-standard solutions for low-cost and high-end SoC should be conceptualized and developed.

\r\n

The previous works on the project look very promising, and initial simulation results are already at hand. The project strongly benefits from our two project partners TU Vienna and the Technical College Carinthia. With their know-how and experience they have, especially during the specification period, set the foundation for a successful project. The funds have been gratefully provided by the promotion program FIT-IT. The lead manager ON DEMAND Microelectronics is confident to offer future competitive solutions based on the results of the project

"@en . "2005-08-01"^^ . "2007-07-31"^^ . . . "SANDY -Synchronised Access Networks for Distributed real-time sYstems" . "

The goal of the project "Synchronised Access Networks for Distributed real-time sYstems" (SANDY) was the development of an IP overlay architecture that offers deterministic low delay guarantees for real-time traffic flows. The work is motivated by the need to enable an IP networking solution for the coupling of embedded systems operating under real-time networking constraints.

\r\n

The main focus of the SANDY project was on the analysis and development of scalable resource allocation algorithms. The efficiency of resource usage is a central aspect in time-triggered transmission systems using resource reservations.

\r\n

The probability that a new resource request can be accomodated during the runtime of the network was investigated by means of mathematical analysis and simulation models. The models showed that a standard resource allocation algorithm leads to a very low resource efficiency. In the course of the project advanced allocation schemes were developed and it could be shown that by employing these new schemes, a significant improvement in resource efficiency can be achieved.

\r\n

The project developed and evaluated a proof-of-concept prototype which implements all major components of the SANDY architecture. The primary demonstrator of the prototype is a tele-haptic application as such an application has very strict requirements on delay and jitter.

\r\n

The haptic device employed has a gripper that can be moved in the 3-dimensional space. The device is attached to a node that hosts the haptic application. It periodically reads the position of the device's gripper and sends the data via the SANDY network service to a remote control application. The controller computes the forces that have to be applied at the haptic device and immediately sends back the force data. After this data is received at the haptic application it is applied to the device.

"@en . "2003-07-01"^^ . "2005-12-31"^^ . . . "SARIT - Service Austria: Research and Industry Training" . "2008-07-01"^^ . "2009-12-31"^^ . . . "SCG Semantic Culture Guide" . "

A tremendous amount of relevant information on culture is available on the internet – but where do you really find what you are interested in?

\r\n

It is almost impossible to describe or define culture. This is in turn a basic problem in marketing cultural events. It is all the more difficult for those interested in culture to search specifically for cultural offers and content on the WWW. The S.I.M. Publishing House has put together a consortium from the industrial, cultural and scientific sectors in order to solve this problem.
\r\nThe “Semantic Culture Guide (SCG)” project should research and analyse the Austrian cultural scene, and prepare it for the internet of the next generation (semantic web) by December 2008. The vision of the SCG project is to lead Austria into the information world of the 21st century as a land of cultural heritage and tourism. The aim is to draw a “map” of Austrian cultural life using the possibilities offered by semantic technologies. In the future SCG will provide both those working and those interested in the cultural sector with a tool that opens up a comprehensive and integrated picture of Austria’s cultural landscape.
\r\n
\r\nToday information on culture is scattered all over the internet: Organisers put their programme on their homepage, and information is sent to journalists and editors, who publish advertisements, critiques and reports that finally end up in an archive. This also includes educational institutions, libraries, biographies, pictures, catalogues, timetables/chronologies or sheet music... People interested in culture look at all this information to inform themselves. But more often than not they get lost in this unstructured web. Thus, internet users – and above all tourists – cannot keep track of the current cultural life in Austria by means of the existing technologies. The SCG project should bridge this gap and produce up-to-date information that is semantically prepared and qualitatively integrated.
\r\n
\r\nAnd what source of information can you really trust?
\r\n
\r\nToo little attention has been paid on the internet to the factor of “trust” up to now. “Trust” has so far mainly been reduced to the areas of data encryption or digital signatures. The Semantic Culture Guide would like to research the integration of “trust” into an information system on the basis of the highly heterogenous cultural sector, in which “trust” is a fundamentally bigger economic factor than in other sectors. This is why experts from the fields of IT, culture and research as well as artists and organisers of cultural events take part in order to develop an ontology for the cultural sector. This forms the basis of SCG so that the searches of tourists and those interested in culture end up with a “trustworthy” result

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\r\n 

"@en . "2006-01-01"^^ . "2009-03-31"^^ . . . "SDG - Smart Data Grain" . "

Having object related data directly embedded into respective objects provides tremendous improvements in terms of availability, pedigree control, data management, tracking and tracing, production-, sale- and maintenance control, etc. Today so called RFID labels are used to achieve such improvements in certain applications. From the electrical point of view those RFID labels consist of a single chip which is connected to an external antenna where the connection technology and the antenna are contributing reasonable extra product cost and reliability risk. To make those improvements available and economically viable for many more applications and object categories, in a new generation object related data shall be stored on just a chip which also incorporates the necessary antenna to receive operating power and to receive and transmit data.

\r\n

In that case the whole RFID device is just as big as a small grain and does not need any further components and processing. For several applications Smart Data Grains could easily be embedded into paper used for documents or tickets or special paper used for passports, banknotes or vignettes to provide e.g. pedigree information which easily can be verified by owners and authorities. In some cases a high amount of data needs to be stored and transmitted in a reasonable transaction time. Therefore and due to the usage of an integrated antenna, completely new embedded transaction technologies need to be investigated, which allow data rates several decades higher than used today and which allow the integration of the antenna into tiny chips (Smart Data Grains). The same technology could be used for inter-chip communication without the need of any galvanic connection (bonding) for the communication signals. In future applications we expect that those embedded Smart Data Grains will support additional functionalities like physical parameter monitoring of objects and its ambience like temperature, pressure, humidity etc. which will become very attractive for additional new applications like e.g. home automation, safety surveillance, medical monitoring, food and pharmaceutical logistics, etc.

"@en . "2009-01-01"^^ . "2010-12-31"^^ . . . "SECoverer - Finding Security Vulnerabilities in Web Applications" . "

Web applications have become an important part of today's economic and social life. Unfortunately, these applications are often written by developers who focus on features, operate under stringent time pressure, and have little knowledge of secure programming.
\r\n
\r\nAs a result, the number and severance of web application vulnerabilities is rising significantly. Only a few tools exist to help programmers and security analyst find web application vulnerabilities. These tools either perform black-box fuzz testing (by exposing the application to a series of malformed inputs) or white-box source code analysis (by statically checking the program for bugs) . Unfortunately, these testing tools can only detect a limited set of vulnerability classes. For example, while simple SQL injection vulnerabilities and XSS flaws are often covered, the systems cannot identify more complex logic errors (such as improper authentication or business logic flaws). Also, the tools scale poorly to large code bases and raise many false positives. As a result, most code is still audited manually, if at all. In this project, we propose to develop an analysis platform for web applications.
\r\n
\r\nThe goal is to use static source code analysis to find vulnerabilities, but to make the detection system “work in practice”. That is, we aim to develop a system that covers a large range of web application flaws, including hard-to-detect bugs such as logic errors. The analysis needs to be precise and efficient, scaling to large programs while raising only a very small amount of false positives. Tools that can detect different classes of vulnerabilities will be integrated as modules into a common analysis framework. This framework supports analysts and programmers by intuitively displaying the identified bugs, providing support for source code management and annotation, and allowing to suppress confirmed false positives

"@en . "2008-04-01"^^ . "2010-09-30"^^ . . . "3D-Interactive Navigation, Simulation and Illustration of Diverse Edifices" . "

The management of edifices and buildings of large public transport infrastructures requires up to date information about the current status of a building, the way it is used by people and how certain modifications would affect the whole infrastructure management. Interactive navigation, simulation and visualization in three dimensions can greatly facilitate providing such information. The overall objective of 3D-INSIDE is to combine novel techniques of visual computing into a prototype for the 3D visualization, navigation and pedestrian simulation within the indoor environment of public transport infrastructures. The consortium of 3D-INSIDE proposes to

\r\n

(1) develop techniques for automatically and rapidly obtaining 3D models of the interior of an infrastructure;

\r\n

(2) develop realistic simulations of not yet well-understood pedestrian walking behaviour within transport infrastructures, by incorporating real video-based pedestrian data obtained by advanced algorithms for vision-based people detection and tracking;

\r\n

(3) integrate both the results from vision-based modelling and pedestrian simulation into an efficient 3D viewer application. 3D-INSIDE will enable to establish several links between visual computing disciplines. The image-based 3D reconstruction of an indoor environment will allow determining a priori camera positions and fields of view for measuring pedestrian trajectories, and will allow incorporating context knowledge into pedestrian detection, resulting in reduced computational complexity and more reliable trajectories.
\r\nUntil the year 2011 more than 10 major Austrian railway stations will be remodelled or newly built, moving investments of over a billion Euro in total. 70% of the industrial partners' (Austrian Federal Railways) revenues are made at the 28 most frequented train stations. An easily updated 3D overview of the buildings and a better understanding of the motion behaviour of the passengers will simplify the maintenance and management of these stations and make it possible to offer improved services to the more than 360.000 customers daily. To understand and model the behaviour of 45% of the daily clients and to be able to visualize it for business partners and infrastructure managers alike will be an important marketing tool. The methods developed within this project can also be sold to other European infrastructure operators, airports, and shopping centres.

"@en . "2007-04-01"^^ . "2009-06-30"^^ . . . "Advanced Barrier-free Browser Accessibility" . "

ABBA develops methodologies for understanding Web pages and Web applications to repackage their structure, content, and interaction methods to make them accessible for disabled persons. In particular, the system enriches the blind or partially sighted user’s web experience and enables them to find information more efficiently. A web page is represented in a formal multi-axial semantic model; the different axes offer means to reason on the document by topological, structural, layout, functional, interactional, content, genre and saliency properties. As well as the conventional methods of navigating the output, the user is presented with a wide variety of additional semantic information, enabling them to skip to the relevant part of the web site. This information comprises:
\r\n• Layout Semantics: Techniques from the document understanding community will be used to recognize the structure, topology and layout.
\r\n• Content Semantics: Processes a sighted user often uses, such as skim-reading techniques to find relevant content, will be made available for blind and partially sighted users.
\r\n• Interaction Semantics: Techniques for understanding complex Web 2.0 interaction
\r\nsemantics and widgets will be developed and interaction means offered to disabled users.
\r\nAdditionally, these techniques capture the genre and design patterns used, which allows us to understand the typical tasks and user intentions that are possible on particular web pages (e.g. buying an item). Furthermore, within the project scope, a prototype implementing the developed techniques and offering sample output formats will be implemented.

"@en . "2009-02-01"^^ . "2011-01-31"^^ . . . "acTvSM - advanced cryptographic Trusted Virtual Security Module" . "

Trusted Computing is an evolving concept, which tries to enhance the security of existing platforms against software-based attacks. Although the number of applications is still rather limited in practice, major vendors now ship hardware that implements Trusted Computing concepts. Prominently, the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) provides facilities for secure measurement and attestations of the software executing on a platform. In addition its hardware-backed key storage capabilities allow increased protection against malicious activities. The related field of hardware-supported virtualization has seen a recent renaissance in the commodity PC and server market.

\r\n

This was due its potential to efficiently utilize and share server hardware and to simplify maintenance. A relatively new approach is to employ hardware virtualization to isolate security critical code and to use trusted computing to create a trusted execution environment. This combination of virtualization and trusted computing enables new solutions that so far have been restricted to expensive special purpose security architectures, such as hardware security modules. A major and sometimes the only possible point of attack for malicious entities are the external interfaces of a security component. Therefore it is imperative to protect them. Based on the encouraging results of formal protocol analysis, new classes of attacks have been discovered in the APIs of security modules. New techniques and approaches to API design are needed.

\r\n

The creation of a trusted software security module is an ideally suited example for research in the only recently emerging field of analysis of security APIs. We propose an amalgam of the powerful isolation provided by virtualization techniques, with the security enhancing capabilities of trusted computing, and the provable security of formal analysis and verification to develop a software security module that hopefully achieves a new security level unprecedented by pure software solutions.

"@en . "2009-04-01"^^ . "2011-03-31"^^ . . . "Advanced Simulation-based Design Methods for Pump Turbines" . "

ADOPT aims at achieving a major step forward in the process of designing and developing blades for hydroelectric turbines at the industrial partner HYDRO, in particular for the classof pump turbines. Based on the novel paradigm of isogeometric analysis, which has recently been established by USbased researchers (Tom Hughes and his group), we plan to achieve a seamless integration of Computer Aided Design and Numerical Simulation for the design process of pump turbines. The project has four main scientific and technological goals.

\r\n

1. We will enhance the CAD model for pump turbines. This is needed in order to improve the link between the design tool for turbine blades (which is currently based on a streamline representation) and the general-purpose CAD system, which is needed for downstream processing. The CAD model of blades for pump turbines will be made ready for using the isogeometric method.
\r\n2. We will provide isogeometric meshing of water passage and static components.
\r\n3. We will develop an isogeometric CFD simulation based on the incompressible Euler equations. This technique is to be adapted to the special case of pump turbines. By simultaneously extracting gradient information with respect to the design parameters we will prepare the optimization step.
\r\n4. Based on the previous results we will establish an automatic optimization loop for the geometric design of pump turbine blades and energy efficiency, thereby replacing the manual design loop. If successful, the project will lead to a significant improvement of the technological basis of the design process for pump turbines. Simulation methods that exactly represent engineering shapes and that vastly simplify the mesh generation by eliminating the necessity to communicate with the CAD description hold great promise.

\r\n

While the idea of bridging the gap between Computer Aided Design and Numerical
\r\nAnalysis can be traced back to the early days of Computer-Aided Engineering, it is only recently that it gained significant momentum by the introduction of the method of isogeometric analysis. We take up this idea and demonstrate its potential for the design process of pump turbines.

"@en . "2008-09-01"^^ . "2011-08-31"^^ . . . "ModelCVS ProgGen : Transformation Techniques for effective Code Generation" . "

In the project ModelCVS we investigated the optimal reverse engineering techniques and the techniques for the effective use of generated metamodel instances for system transformation (code generation) based on mapping techniques from the research area of semantic systems.  The missing part was the way how to deal with system heterogenities in model transformation and first of all how to deal with changes of paradigm especially in the transformation of the procedural language environments into object oriented ones. This R&D project aims at solving this problem. The result will successively applied to the Tool ProgGen (Member of ModelCVS by APG technology).

"@en . "2008-01-01"^^ . "2012-01-01"^^ . . . "AHUMARI - Augmented based Human Robot Interaction" . "

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) gain increasing importance in robotics, for training operators and for rapid and intuitive programming of applications. In state of the art robotics, augmentation primarily focuses on information and commands that are straight forward to interpret by the operator and the machine controller, such as coordinate-frames, robot paths, rigid motion commands or objects. The idea of AHUMARI is different as it targets AR/VR training and programming approaches for systems with own machine intelligence, e.g. robots with own autonomy, scene interpretation and automated planning in incomplete known environments.

\r\n

Specific is that AR must allow the operator to immerse into processes of high complexity and autonomy! The goal of this project is to improve the visual feedback by using AR technology, which allows the operator to interact with a robot that plans its own tasks in an unstructured environment. The confluence of user interaction and embedded automated process planning which is able to adapt to its dynamic environment allows a user to immerse into the process on a high level - without bothering with robot specific programming knowledge. The project’s main innovations will be the development of pioneering technologies, methods and engineering approaches for incorporating and transferring expert knowledge intuitively and visualizing knowledge for robot programming and the analysis and detection of process relevant visual features related to a robot process. Within the project, the developed technology will be applied and evaluated on specific scenarios typical in production and services incorporating both augmentation of robot process relevant knowledge and intuitive user interaction either by metaphors in the augmented scene or by manually guiding a robot.

"@en . "2008-04-01"^^ . "2010-03-31"^^ . . . "AllRight Know it all and know it right: High Quality Knowledge Mining in the Web" . "

Our economy creates an impressively huge, rapidly changing offer of goods and services. Customers who have learned to use the Internet efficiently and who own sufficient technical knowledge are able to take advantage of this offer. However, the average user is overwhelmed and confused by this unmanageable number of offers which leads to wrong decisions, waste of time, and frustration. Therefore, knowledge-based systems are deployed to assist the customers when selecting products and services and to simplify decision processes in a complex and fast moving world. Because of the rapid changes in our environment the efficient acquisition and maintenance of knowledge bases is a key problem to be solved in order to apply semantic systems. Only the solution of this problem will allow a broad application of knowledge-based systems.

\r\n

The goal of AllRight is to exploit the information available on the Web such that knowledge acquisition and maintenance can be highly automated. Typically this information on the Web is stored in semi-structured documents containing tables, lists, and natural language descriptions. Therefore, the task of automatic knowledge acquisition is to transform this semi-structured information into structured descriptions of concepts which can be processed by a reasoning system. Based on a general description of a concept (e.g. the definition of a digital camera) AllRight will automatically discover instances of this concept (e.g. all digital cameras of all manufacturers), their specifications, and relations to other instances (e.g. compatible accessories). Since the quality of a knowledge-based system is tightly linked to the quality of the knowledge base, AllRight aims at the highest possible recall as well as precision (both at least more than 90%). In order to achieve this goal we developed new techniques in the areas of Web Mining, Information Extraction, as well as Machine Learning and extended them by statistical methods.
\r\n
\r\nIn addition, this knowledge mining framework is highly adaptable to different domains such that the effort for acquiring a new knowledge base is kept low. By means of a prototypical realisation of the developed concepts and an evaluation for various product domains we showed the appropriateness of our approach. On the basis of the results of the AllRight project a major step towards an automatic knowledge acquisition was achieved. This enables an increased profitable application of knowledge-based systems. For example we expect an extension of the market for knowledge-based customer advisory systems.

"@en . "2005-01-01"^^ . "2007-11-30"^^ . . . "AMOR - Adaptable Model Versioning" . "2009-02-01"^^ . "2011-01-31"^^ . . . "APAFA - Automated Photogrammetric Aerial Feature Analysis" . "

The systematic creation of models of the real world to support the locational awareness on the Internet can be achieved if previously required massive manual labor gets replaced by automated procedures. A particular challenge exists in the automation of the extraction of the 4 classical map features buildings, circulation spaces (e.g. road networks), vegetation and water bodies, as well as their interaction. Decennia of research have been unable to automate the extraction of these features from classical aerial photography towards an economically viable result. However, we believe that we can succeed in the proposed project to develop automated procedures to create feature data for three reasons.

\r\n

First is the recent advent of digital aerial sensors producing highly redundant digital large format aerial photography. Redundancy will be obtained by using high forward and side overlaps, say at 80% and 60%, so that every point in the terrain is imaged at least 10 times, and any algorithm can rely on multiple analysis results that then can either reinforce or cancel one another.

\r\n

Second, the geometric redundancy gets augmented by a radiometric redundancy using 4 spectral bands, adding an infrared band to the classical red, green and blue color channels.

\r\n

Third, we will combine the classical "object reconstruction" approach available from stereo procedures, by new recognition methods. While classically a "car" on a street may have been seen via a "point cloud" and would have to get recognized simply by a representation of local height anomaly on an otherwise flat reference surface, recognition includes the use of stored images of cars in a data base to actually recognize a car as a human would do when inspecting an aerial image.

"@en . "2007-04-01"^^ . "2010-09-30"^^ . . . "ARDES - Adc foR DEep Submicron technologies" . "

The ARDES project will develop an analog to digital converter in cron CMOS suitable for communications SiPs and SoCs. The target is the VDSL2 standard with requirements of a 2-30MHz bandwidth with 11-13 bit resolution. These requirements means that the ADC can be employed in most wired and wireless solutions with few modifications. The low supply voltages means that direct voltage to digital conversions are extremely difficult and costly. The ARDES project will therefore explore different architectures where the analog to digital conversion is achieved in the time domain. This significantly reduces that analog circuitry and takes advantage of the high frequencies that can be reached in the newest CMOS technologies. The main technical problem lies in achieving the required resolution at a reasonable sampling frequency. Two approaches will be explored in ARDES: The first is time to digital conversion using multibit synchronous sampling of a delay line combined with advanced interpolation. The second uses oversampling and noise shaping in an architecture similar to a continuous time Sigma Delta modulator but with only comparator. The most promising architecture will be implemented in 65 nm CMOS for characterisation and optimisation. Work will also be done to extend the findings down to the 32 nm node for evaluating the potential over several generations. Infineon Austria will lead the work, responsible for analog design and implementation. FH Kärnten will contribute with its experience in characterisation and digital design for SoCs. Carlos III University brings its expertise in time domain converters, assisting in the design and evaluation of higher level architectures.

"@en . "2008-01-01"^^ . "2010-04-30"^^ . . . "ART (Authentication for Long-range RFID Technology)" . "

ART beschäftigte sich mit dem Einsatz von RFID-Tags („radio frequency identification tags“) in Anwendungen, die Datensicherheit und größere Reichweite erfordern. RFID-Tags kommunizieren über eine drahtlose Verbindung mit dem Lesegerät. Die Tags sind rein passiv, d.h. die Energie zum Betrieb der Schaltung wird aus dem elektromagnetischen Feld des Lesegeräts entnommen. In ART wurden Tag-Prototypen entwickelt, die starke Verschlüsselung unter den gegebenen Anforderungen (geringster Energieverbrauch, minimale Siliziumfläche etc.) gewährleisten. Die Möglichkeit, solche Algorithmen auf Tags bearbeiten zu können, bietet die Grundlage für sicheren Datenverkehr zwischen Lesegerät und Tag. Krypto-Tags werden die Fähigkeit haben, sich eindeutig beim Lesegerät zu authentifizieren. Weiters wurde innerhalb des Projektes ART versucht, unter voller Ausnützung des Potentials des RF-Kanals, die Reichweite zwischen Tags und Lesegerät zu erhöhen. Die Resultate decken alle Bereiche des Gesamtprojektes ab. Es wurden Tests mit Antennen und Lesegeräten durchgeführt, um deren Reichweite zu erhöhen. Maßgebliche Verbesserungen der Lesereichweite wurden durch Neuentwicklungen der analogen Empfängerkomponenten erzielt. Die Entwicklung der Tag-Prototypen wurde mit erfolgreichen Tests abgeschlossen. Auf Systemebene wurde ein Java-Modell entwickelt, um Auswirkungen verschiedener Systemparameter auf das RFID-System als Ganzes effizient simulieren und testen zu können. Eine für den RFID-Einsatz spezialisierte Hardware-Implementierung des Verschlüsselungsalgorithmus ES wurde entwickelt und mithilfe der Prototypen-Tags erfolgreich getestet. Standardisierte Protokolle zur Kommunikation zwischen Tags und Lesegerät wurden erweitert, um sichere symmetrische Authentifizierung zwischen Tag und Lesegerät durchzuführen.

\r\n

RFID-Systeme sind seit über einem Jahrzehnt im Einsatz. Anhand den Angaben von VDC hat der Sektor RFID im Jahr 2002 globale Gesamteinnahmen von US$ 965 Mio. erreicht. Das erwartete Wachstum für diesen Markt ist mit 23% für die nächsten Jahre angegeben. Typische Anwendungsgebiete für sichere RFID-Tags liegen in den Bereichen Transport/Logistik, Gesundheit, Lebensmittel usw.

"@en . "2003-09-01"^^ . "2005-11-30"^^ . . . "ARTEUS - Attack Resistance and Tolerance Enabling Universal Security" . "

During the last ten years, the advances in information technology (IT) have significantly changed our society. A very important and continuously growing group of IT applications are those applications that involve high financial values, personal information or other critical data. This is for example the case in payment transactions, e-government, healthcare, secure communication, and trustworthy computing. These applications are all very critical and need to be secured in order to prevent fraud. Only a high level of security makes these IT systems trustworthy and enables widespread use. In recent times a special group of physical attacks against the implementation of embedded systems, socalled fault attacks, pose a serious threat to secure embedded systems. The basic idea of these attacks is to induce faults in a system by physically stressing it during sensitive operations. Maliciously induced faults can bypass security checks.

\r\n

In the context of cryptographic operations the faulty output of the device can be exploited to directly determine the secret key that is used by the system. The methods to induce faults become increasingly sophisticated and cheaper. Therefore, it is necessary to develop embedded systems that are tamper-resistant against fault attacks.

\r\n

Tamperresistance in this context means that the system detects induced faults and enters a safe state in order to not reveal any secret information.
\r\nThe goal of the proposed research effort is threefold:

\r\n

• Firstly, fault models for low-cost attacks and the propagation effects of faults in embedded systems will be investigated by practical experiments. When developing countermeasures it is important to have a methodology to make a statement on their effectiveness in a real system.
\r\n• The development of a methodological approach to assess the security of an embedded system subject to fault attacks will be the second research target of this proposal.
\r\n• Thirdly, the final goal of the project is the development of efficient countermeasures for embedded systems. Thereby efficient means that the countermeasures are applicable in energy and area constrained embedded secure systems.

"@en . "2008-02-01"^^ . "2010-01-31"^^ . . . "ASKI Autarchic Ski" . "

Ziel des Projekts ASKI ist die Entwicklung eines innovativen integrierten Frameworks zur Modellierung der Energie- und Kommunikationsflüsse in vernetzten Embedded Systems  auf einem Ski. Der Prototyp sollte folgende Kategorien von Funktionen zur Verfügung stellen: Datenerfassung (Sensorik), Datenspeicherung (z.B. On-Board Flash Speicher), Datenkommunikation (über verschiedene Protokolle, z.B. Dynastream ANT Protokoll), und Datenauswertung (off-line). Die technischen Herausforderungen des Projektes bestehen einerseits in der Erzeugung von ausreichenden Mengen an Energie, um den Prototypen autark versorgen zu können, andererseits in der Minimierung des Energiebedarfs der genannten Basisfunktionalitäten des Prototypen.

\r\n

Zur autarken Energieversorgung wurden von Salzburg Research verschiedene physikalische Phänomene auf ihre Nutzbarkeit beim Skifahren untersucht. Nach einer Recherche- Phase wurden folgende Energiegewinnungsmethoden als aussichtsreich
\r\nbewertet und in den Prototypen mit eingebaut:

\r\n

• Energiegewinnung mit Piezo-Elementen
\r\n• Induktive Energiegewinnung
\r\n• Energiegewinnung mit Solarelementen

\r\n

Für diese drei Methoden wurden Schaltungen zur Verwertung der Energie (inkl. Gleichrichtung und Spannungsanpassung für Low-Power-Prozessoren) angefertigt und getestet. Von Atomic wurden die energieerzeugenden Elemente und die Schaltungen in Testskier integriert, um damit praktische Experimente (Labor- und Feldversuche) durchführen zu können. Im Bereich der Sensortechnologien erfolgte eine Beschränkung
\r\nauf passive Sensoren (ohne eigenen Energiebedarf). Im Bereich der  Kommunikationstechnologien führte Salzburg Research zunächst eine State-of-the-Art Recherche über Energieverbrauchsmodelle durch. Daraus konnten die Prozessmodelle
\r\nabgeleitet werden, die nun in das einheitliche Modellierungs-Framework integriert werden. In den praktischen Experimenten mit dem Prototypen werden Messungen durchgeführt,
\r\nmit deren Ergebnissen das Gesamtmodell validiert wird. Mit der Hilfe dieses integrierten Modells kann schliesslich Atomic die verschiedenen Funktionalitäten auf ihre Realisierbarkeit in praktischen Produkten prüfen, und damit die Möglichkeiten
\r\nder Weiterentwicklung des Prototypen in Richtung Produktumsetzung evaluieren.

"@en . "2005-03-01"^^ . "2007-05-31"^^ . . . "AtoMat - Atomistic Approaches towards Materials Design" . "

The goal of the project is to provide a reliable and efficient computational tool for materials scientists and engineers to examine and model their systems of interest. Based on an accurate quantum-mechanical computer code, algorithms for the determination of the dynamical and thermo-elastic properties as well as the energetics of solids are developed, coded, and tested by selected users from industry and academia.
\r\n
\r\nWithin this framework, the already existing ab-initio code exciting will be used as the basis and extended towards properties and features which are highly relevant for the professional development and design of materials. The exciting code is based on density-functional theory which is the standard approach in computational materials science. It relies on a quantum-mechanical description, which allows to determine the fundamental physical properties of materials with high precision. In its present version, exciting can provide physical properties like the density distribution for a given atomic configuration, the corresponding total energy, lattice vibrations, magnetic and electronic properties, as well as chemical and optical properties. This represents an excellent starting point for the implementation of several new features which are relevant for the design of materials from the industrial point of view. The new features will be tested in terms of model systems which are relevant for application.
\r\n
\r\nThe project comprises different levels of developments, covering the range from the fundamental quantum-mechanical theory to the computational mathematics part, and further to the application to selected systems including tools for the analysis of the results.
\r\n 

"@en . "2008-10-01"^^ . "2011-09-30"^^ . . . "AUTOVISTA - Advanced Unsupervised Monitoring and Visualization of Complex Scenarios" . "

Advanced Unsupervised Monitoring and Visualization of Complex Scenarios
\r\nThe trend in video surveillance is an ever increasing number of (digital) cameras for surveying complex scenarios (e.g. crowds). Currently available video surveillance systems cannot cope with this increased complexity, the detection rates are too low and the systems are not reliable enough. This hinders the broad use of automatic surveillance systems. AUTOVISTA proposes to use modern visual computing technologies to advance the state-of-the-art of video surveillance considerably. In order to cope with the increasing number of cameras, AUTOVISTA will

\r\n

1. use novel on-line learning techniques to increase the detection rate and decrease the false alarm rate, while the camera adapts in an unsupervised manner to the surveyed scene. Besides an increased performance, this has the additional advantage that the installation and maintenance effort will be substantially decreased;
\r\n2. exploit novel visualization and interaction techniques to support the human operator. Furthermore two complementary visualization modes are proposed, blending smoothly between these allows the operator to maintain coherence.

\r\n


\r\nThese techniques will enable a single operator to cope simultaneously with a large amount of cameras. AUTOVISTA will tackle the problem of increased people densities and highly cluttered scenes in a novel manner. Instead of relying on single person detection and tracking (which is not feasible for high people density scenarios), methods will be investigated to handle the crowd as a whole. AUTOVISTA will derive spatio-temporal crowd statistics, describe normal crowd behavior and use this for unusual event detection.

"@en . "2007-04-01"^^ . "2009-09-30"^^ . . . "AVALON Acquisition and Validation of Ontologies: An Adaptive Service Architecture for Testing Semantic Hypotheses" . "

Bei der Verarbeitung von Daten ist man heutzutage immer mehr von automatischen Systemen abhängig, die aus dem vorhandenen Wissensbestand die gewünschten Informationen und Beziehungen zwischen Informationseinheiten extrahieren können. Die Qualität der erzielten Ergebnisse lässt in der Regel zu wünschen übrig, weil Informationssysteme meist nur die Daten getrennt von der sie umgebenden Realität betrachten. An diesem Punkt setzt das Projekt AVALON an, welches eine Überprüfung von automatisch extrahierten Informationen mit in der realen Welt verfügbaren Indikatoren und formalen, semantischen Hypothesen durchführt. Durch diese Regelschleife wird der Prozess der automatischen Informationsgewinnung qualitativ verbessert, und die Möglichkeit geschaffen, gesicherte Information mittels formaler Methoden zu beschreiben.

\r\n

Im Rahmen von AVALON werden neuartige Wissensakquisitionsdienste entwickelt, die interne und externe Unternehmensressourcen semantisch anreichern, um nachfolgende Analysen und Anwendungen auf dieser Datenbasis zu verbessern bzw. zu ermöglichen. Kernpunkt des Projektes ist die semi-automatische Erweiterung und Überprüfung von Ontologien. Semantische Hypothesen bringen die Konzepte, die in eine Wissensbasis eingebunden sind, mit Indikatoren der realen Welt in Verbindung. Über die Auswertung der Indikatoren überprüft AVALON die formulierten semantischen Hypothesen, und erlaubt dadurch die Bestätigung von bereits existierenden oder die Erzeugung neuer Konzepte. Für die Überprüfung der Hypothesen wird...

\r\n

(i) Wissen semi-automatisch aus heterogenen, unstrukturierten Datenquellen extrahiert, (ii) semantische Beziehungen innerhalb der Wissensbasis identifiziert, und
\r\n(iii) das gewonnene Wissen anhand von Indikatoren der realen Welt überprüft.

\r\n

Um den Nutzen und das Innovationspotential dieser Technik in der Praxis zu demonstrieren, werden zwei konkrete Anwendungsfälle im Rahmen des Projektes umgesetzt. Dabei geht es einerseits um die Erzeugung und Überprüfung von Hypothesen im Bereich der Personalentwicklung, welche einen besseren Abgleich zwischen Stellenbeschreibungen und Mitarbeiterkompetenzen ermöglichen. Der zweite Anwendungsfall beschäftigt sich mit dem Bereich der Trendanalyse, in welchem AVALON seine Fähigkeit zum Entdecken von innovativen Tendenzen in verschiedenen Branchen durch Analyse von Web-Ressourcen demonstrieren wird.

"@en . "2006-01-01"^^ . "2008-03-31"^^ . . . "BeAware! - Lost in Time, Space, and Meaning or How to Gain Awareness in Large-Scale Control Systems" . "2009-02-01"^^ . "2011-04-30"^^ . . . "BEYOND - Beyond Serial CMOS Links" . "

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

Advances in signal processing and IC technology have led to a dramatic increase in the performance of Systems on Chip. The core speed for today's ICs is many times faster than the speed of peripheral busses. As a consequence the availability of adequate interfaces is becoming an important factor. Peripheral interfaces require a careful analysis of the cost versus performance tradeoffs. The electronic industry, especially the PC and server industry, is undergoing a significant technology transition with the traditional parallel data busses being replaced by serial high-speed interconnects like SATA, PCI Express, Fibre Channel, HyperTransport or InfiniBand. There is a heavy demand on aggressive innovation by researching in the fields of these novel serial interfaces, which will offer the benefit of highest speed, smallest footprint, lowest cost, and complexity reduction in Systems on Chip (SoC) and Systems in Package (SiP). The overall objective of the project BEYOND is to develop a highly innovative technology and design platform for high-speed and short range data bus systems. The main goal is to develop a universal PHY prototype as the basis for future high-speed serial interfaces, because all of the high-speed technologies mentioned above are based on very similar components. The project “BEYOND” aims to influence the upcoming standards for future serial interfaces by active contribution within standardization committees.

\r\n

The project deals with many aspects of high frequency design, system co-design, manufacturability including environmental testing, reliability testing and cost of manufacture of each of the processing route developed. The expected performance limitations as crosstalk, interference, skew, loss, skin effect, jitter, power supply noise etc. have to be considered during design and also testing phase. High performance analogue and mixed signal modules will be designed and demonstrated using SoC technology with enhanced functionality optimised for high frequency and high-speed integrated circuit solutions. The project results will lay the cornerstone for future embedded PHY solutions above 8 Gbit/sec for the next six to eight years. The challenge is to develop a multi-standard serial interface macro for high-speed performance at minimum power and costs. Furthermore the interface should be able to deal with low-cost and low quality backplane hardware and transmission channels.

"@en . "2006-10-01"^^ . "2009-09-30"^^ . . . "BSopt - Business Semantics on top of Process Technology" . "

The BSopt project will deliver an integrated methodology for inter-organizational systems spanning from business models over business process models to their execution in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Integrating business processes into a SOA is certainly a hot topic. However, most current approaches are limited to the technical process aspects, disregarding the economic drivers of the information society. In contrary, BSopt will consider the formalization of the semantics of new business models due to faster changing business environments, their support by appropriate business processes and their implementation in flexible architectures. We will incorporate state-of-the-art approaches to describe business models, business process models and deployment artifacts in SOAs. However, we will go beyond the state-of-the-art by connecting the dots between these approaches allowing for a semi-automatic mapping between them. This will result in an integrated methodology spanning over all layers that is based on a meta model incorporating the semantics of the assimilated approaches. Furthermore, we demonstrate the customization of the BSopt approach by integrating a domain (= industry) specific ontology by means of the print media industry. A critical point in reaching user acceptance is tool support for the BSopt methodology. Following advanced software engineering concepts, we will implement the integrated BSopt approach as a software factory based on a so-called domain specific language (DSL). For this purpose we have to use a metamodeling tool, that allows us to specify the BSopt meta model within this tool. Furthermore, the software factory will guide a modeler in a wizard-driven style through the BSopt methodology requiring not as much modeling know-how as in traditional modeling languages such as UML. The meta-modeling tools being used in BSopt are the Microsoft DSL tools for Visual Studio and ADONIS. The goal of a software factory-based approach is creating high quality code in shorter time. Code created by the BSopt tools are deployment artifacts (BPEL, WSDL, XAML,etc..) to be consumed by existing software environments – in our case the Oracle SOA Suite and the Microsoft Workflow Foundation. The BSopt approach will be validated by case studies in the print media industry.

"@en . "2007-11-01"^^ . "2010-03-31"^^ . . . "CITYFIT - High-Quality Urban Reconstructions by Fitting Shape Grammars to Images and derived Textured Point Clouds" . "

The generation of realistic 3D models of whole cities has become a vibrant and highly competitive market through the recent activities of, most notably, Goggle Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth. While the first generation of these systems only delivered high-quality zoomable images of the ground, the current trend is heavily geared towards 3D – that is, users can access three-dimensional height-fields of the terrain, and even 3D models of individual buildings. Simple building models, basically extruded polygons with different types of roofs, can be generated today from aerial images completely automatically. This is a solved problem. Far from solved, however, is the problem of generating automatically detailed buildings with façades. Input data for this problem are registered range maps obtained by stereo matching and sequences of highly overlapping thus redundant images (taken from a car driving in the road) where each pixel has not only a color but also a depth, a z-value. Although range maps can be directly rendered in principle, the data size is huge and, more importantly, the pixels have no semantics: A priori there is no difference between a pixel on the floor, on the wall, or on a door. But these shape semantics are required by all downstream applications using the city model.

\r\n

Shape grammars, on the other hand, have recently become (again) a popular method in research for representing 3D buildings. Their great advantage is that they allow to parameterize buildings, which can be used for populating virtual cities with believable architectural buildings, e.g., for 3D games.

\r\n

The goal of the CITYFIT project is, given highly redundant input imagery and range maps from an arbitrary building in Graz, to synthesize a shape grammar that, when evaluated, creates a clean, CAD-quality reconstruction of that building that fits the original data very closely and makes the semantics of all major architectural features explicit. These shape semantics can even be transferred back to inform the original data, so each of these “semantically enriched” data points can tell whether it belongs to ground, wall, or door.

"@en . "2008-04-01"^^ . "2011-03-31"^^ . . . "CLIC - Closed Loop Integration of Cognition, Communication and Control" . "

The objective of the CLIC (Closed-Loop Integration of Cognition, Communication and Control) project is to integrate real-time image analysis, adaptive motion control, and synchronous communication between the imaging and control subsystems. Even though advancements are intended in each area, the main innovation of this project lies in their combination, which may result in improved functionality (e.g. better and more efficient control functions), safety (e.g. faster and more appropriate system responses to changes in the environment), and energy efficiency (e.g. optimized trajectory planning).

\r\n

It is envisioned that closed-loop integration of image analysis and embedded motion control in a dynamically changing environment may be significantly enhanced by tight synchronization: The visual analysis of the behaviour of the dynamic environment, realized by a set of distributed synchronized smart cameras, provides the input for adaptive motion control, while knowledge of the controlled object’s position and movements may facilitate more exact and faster image analysis. Thereby, the determinism of time-triggered real-time communication among the subsystems supports more exact prediction of position and dynamics of the environment.

\r\n

The CLIC project will develop and evaluate the subject matter on the conceptual level as well as by experimental investigation: a model crane that can lift and transport objects will be used as test-bed. Equipped with a set of synchronized smart cameras that observe the environment of the crane and provide an additional input to the nonlinear controller, this experimental platform will allow evaluating and testing the quality and efficiency of the proposed methodology. Since the test-bed utilizes mostly readily available and inexpensive components (camera sensors, sensors and motors on the crane, Ethernet-based communication), the results will argue for a wide applicability of the technology even in cost-sensitive markets.

\r\n

In order to achieve a good quality of control, the dead-time of the control loop (i.e., the accumulated latencies of the distributed scene analysis, the communication service and the control-algorithm execution) must be minimized; a design methodology to optimize the quality of control as perceived by the end user will be applied. Furthermore new techniques to improve the robustness of the overall system in the presence of transient failures of the computational units will be applied: by incorporating on-line error-detection, state estimation, and fast dynamic restart the effect of transient outages of a computational unit on the performance of the control loop will be minimized. This CLIC project therefore demonstrates model-based design of advanced control concepts for integrated adaptive embedded real-time control, matching the special focus areas of the next ICT call: Cognition, Communication and Control is a main theme in the EU IST Work-Programme 2009-2010 in Objective ICT-2009.2.1-d, where Integrated Projects (IP) on this topic are envisaged. It is expected that the experiences and results of CLIC will provide the basis for an extensive EU Project Proposal with Austrian leadership on this topic in 2010.

"@en . "2009-01-01"^^ . "2010-12-31"^^ . . . "COFCOM: CoDesign Flow for Communication ICs Packaging Solutions" . "

System-in-Package technology is an emerging and enabling technology for extremely compact three-dimensional Multi-chip packaging needed for future communication ICs. Current solutions contain one or more IC chips (wire bonded or flip chip) plus other components that are traditionally found on the system mother board such as passive components (Discrete passive, Integrated passive networks, Passives embedded or patterned in the system substrate) or other typical components integrated at the system level (PCB, SAW/BAW filters, EMC shields, pre-packaged ICs, connectors, lenses, antennas, mechanical parts).

\r\n

Key element of the COFCOM project is the possibility to model and analyse interference holistically between different building blocks. Three major trends govern future leading-edge chip packaging processes: Tight coupling, design for manufacturability, Increasing abstraction levels. Major technology issues are: signal integrity, power distribution, and signal crosstalk.

\r\n

The project creates the ability to merge wireline communication ICs and components within a package assembly and to provide test technologies with the possibility to create highly integrated products with optimised cost, size and performance. The project will deliver a novel System-in-Package CoDesign Flow framework for the integration of highly modular and flexible electronic communication systems. Experience gained and achieved results will be first applied to future xDSL product lines. The SiP handling and optimisation technology will migrate into and have strongly positive economic consequences as reapplication on all of the Infineon’s existing packaging lines.

"@en . "2005-07-01"^^ . "2007-06-30"^^ . . . "Test Project - BITTE NICHT LÖSCHEN!!!" . "

Help us improve Wikipedia by supporting it financially.
\r\nCandidates are currently being accepted for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees Election. Become a candidate.
\r\n    [Hide]
\r\n[Help us with translations!]
\r\nSemantic Web
\r\nFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
\r\nJump to: navigation, search
\r\n    It has been suggested that Semantic publishing be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)
\r\nW3C's Semantic Web logo
\r\n
\r\nThe Semantic Web is an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.[1][2] It derives from World Wide Web Consortium director Sir Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange.[3]
\r\n
\r\nAt its core, the semantic web comprises a set of design principles,[4] collaborative working groups, and a variety of enabling technologies. Some elements of the semantic web are expressed as prospective future possibilities that are yet to be implemented or realized.[2] Other elements of the semantic web are expressed in formal specifications.[5] Some of these include Resource Description Framework (RDF), a variety of data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML, N3, Turtle, N-Triples), and notations such as RDF Schema (RDFS) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL), all of which are intended to provide a formal description of concepts, terms, and relationships within a given knowledge domain.
\r\nContents
\r\n[hide]
\r\n
\r\n    * 1 Purpose
\r\n    * 2 Relationship to the hypertext web
\r\n          o 2.1 Limitations of HTML
\r\n          o 2.2 Semantic Web solutions
\r\n    * 3 Relationship to object oriented programming
\r\n    * 4 Skeptical reactions
\r\n          o 4.1 Practical feasibility
\r\n          o 4.2 An unrealized idea
\r\n          o 4.3 Censorship and privacy
\r\n          o 4.4 Doubling output formats
\r\n          o 4.5 Need
\r\n    * 5 Components
\r\n    * 6 Projects
\r\n          o 6.1 DBpedia
\r\n          o 6.2 FOAF
\r\n          o 6.3 SIOC
\r\n          o 6.4 Open GUID
\r\n          o 6.5 SIMILE
\r\n          o 6.6 NextBio
\r\n          o 6.7 Linking Open Data
\r\n          o 6.8 Insemtives
\r\n    * 7 Services
\r\n          o 7.1 Notification Services
\r\n          o 7.2 Semantic Web Ping Service
\r\n          o 7.3 Piggy Bank
\r\n    * 8 See also
\r\n    * 9 References
\r\n    * 10 Further reading
\r\n    * 11 External links
\r\n          o 11.1 Semantic Web software and demonstrations
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Purpose
\r\n
\r\nHumans are capable of using the Web to carry out tasks such as finding the Finnish word for "monkey", reserving a library book, and searching for a low price for a DVD. However, a computer cannot accomplish the same tasks without human direction because web pages are designed to be read by people, not machines. The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing, and combining information on the web.
\r\n
\r\nTim Berners-Lee originally expressed the vision of the semantic web as follows:[6]
\r\n
\r\n    I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.
\r\n
\r\n    – Tim Berners-Lee, 1999
\r\n
\r\nSemantic publishing will benefit greatly from the semantic web. In particular, the semantic web is expected to revolutionize scientific publishing, such as real-time publishing and sharing of experimental data on the Internet. This simple but radical idea is now being explored by W3C HCLS group's Scientific Publishing Task Force.
\r\n
\r\nTim Berners-Lee has described the semantic web as a component of 'Web 3.0'. [7]
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\r\n    People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think maybe when you've got an overlay of scalable vector graphics - everything rippling and folding and looking misty - on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you'll have access to an unbelievable data resource."
\r\n
\r\n    – Tim Berners-Lee, 2006
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Relationship to the hypertext web
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Limitations of HTML
\r\n
\r\nMany files on a typical computer can be loosely divided into documents and data. Documents like mail messages, reports, and brochures are read by humans. Data, like calendars, addressbooks, playlists, and spreadsheets are presented using an application program which lets them be viewed, searched and combined in many ways.
\r\n
\r\nCurrently, the World Wide Web is based mainly on documents written in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), a markup convention that is used for coding a body of text interspersed with multimedia objects such as images and interactive forms. Metadata tags, for example
\r\n
\r\n<meta name="keywords" content="computing, computer studies, computer">
\r\n<meta name="description" content="Cheap widgets for sale">
\r\n<meta name="author" content="John Doe">
\r\n
\r\nprovide a method by which computers can categorise the content of web pages.
\r\n
\r\nWith HTML and a tool to render it (perhaps web browser software, perhaps another user agent), one can create and present a page that lists items for sale. The HTML of this catalog page can make simple, document-level assertions such as "this document's title is 'Widget Superstore'", but there is no capability within the HTML itself to assert unambiguously that, for example, item number X586172 is an Acme Gizmo with a retail price of €199, or that it is a consumer product. Rather, HTML can only say that the span of text "X586172" is something that should be positioned near "Acme Gizmo" and "€ 199", etc. There is no way to say "this is a catalog" or even to establish that "Acme Gizmo" is a kind of title or that "€ 199" is a price. There is also no way to express that these pieces of information are bound together in describing a discrete item, distinct from other items perhaps listed on the page.
\r\n
\r\nSemantic HTML refers to the traditional HTML practice of markup following intention, rather than specifying layout details directly. For example, the use of <em> denoting "emphasis" rather than <i>, which specifies italics. Layout details are left up to the browser, in combination with Cascading Style Sheets. But this practice falls short of specifying the semantics of objects such as items for sale or prices.
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\r\nMicroformats represent unofficial attempts to extend HTML syntax to create machine-readable semantic markup about objects such as retail stores and items for sale.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Semantic Web solutions
\r\n
\r\nThe Semantic Web takes the solution further. It involves publishing in languages specifically designed for data: Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and Extensible Markup Language (XML). HTML describes documents and the links between them. RDF, OWL, and XML, by contrast, can describe arbitrary things such as people, meetings, or airplane parts. Tim Berners-Lee calls the resulting network of Linked Data the Giant Global Graph, in contrast to the HTML-based World Wide Web.
\r\n
\r\nThese technologies are combined in order to provide descriptions that supplement or replace the content of Web documents. Thus, content may manifest as descriptive data stored in Web-accessible databases, or as markup within documents (particularly, in Extensible HTML (XHTML) interspersed with XML, or, more often, purely in XML, with layout or rendering cues stored separately). The machine-readable descriptions enable content managers to add meaning to the content, i.e. to describe the structure of the knowledge we have about that content. In this way, a machine can process knowledge itself, instead of text, using processes similar to human deductive reasoning and inference, thereby obtaining more meaningful results and helping computers to perform automated information gathering and research.
\r\n
\r\nAn example of a tag that would be used in a non-semantic web page:
\r\n
\r\n<item>cat</item>
\r\n
\r\nEncoding similar information in a semantic web page might look like this:
\r\n
\r\n<item rdf:about="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Cat">Cat</item>
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Relationship to object oriented programming
\r\n
\r\nA number of authors highlight the similarities which the Semantic Web shares with object-oriented programming (OOP).[8][9] Both the semantic web and object-oriented programming have classes with attributes and the concept of instances or objects. Linked Data uses Dereferenceable Uniform Resource Identifiers in a manner similar to the common programming concept of pointers or "object identifiers" in OOP. Dereferenceable URIs can thus be used to access "data by reference". The Unified Modeling Language is designed to communicate about object-oriented systems, and can thus be used for both object-oriented programming and semantic web development.
\r\n
\r\nWhen the web was first being created in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was done using object-oriented programming languages[citation needed] such as Objective-C, Smalltalk and CORBA. In the mid-1990s this development practice was furthered with the announcement of the Enterprise Objects Framework, Portable Distributed Objects and WebObjects all by NeXT, in addition to the Component Object Model released by Microsoft. XML was then released in 1998, and RDF a year after in 1999.
\r\n
\r\nSimilarity to object oriented programming also came from two other routes: the first was the development of the very knowledge-centric "Hyperdocument" systems by Douglas Engelbart[10], and the second comes from the usage and development of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol.[11][clarification needed]
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Skeptical reactions
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Practical feasibility
\r\n
\r\nCritics (e.g. Which Semantic Web?) question the basic feasibility of a complete or even partial fulfillment of the semantic web. Cory Doctorow's critique ("metacrap") is from the perspective of human behavior and personal preferences. For example, people lie: they may include spurious metadata into Web pages in an attempt to mislead Semantic Web engines that naively assume the metadata's veracity. This phenomenon was well-known with metatags that fooled the AltaVista ranking algorithm into elevating the ranking of certain Web pages: the Google indexing engine specifically looks for such attempts at manipulation. Peter Gärdenfors and Timo Honkela point out that logic-based semantic web technologies cover only a fraction of the relevant phenomena related to semantics [12] [13].
\r\n
\r\nWhere semantic web technologies have found a greater degree of practical adoption, it has tended to be among core specialized communities and organizations for intra-company projects.[14] The practical constraints toward adoption have appeared less challenging where domain and scope is more limited than that of the general public and the World-Wide Web.[14]
\r\n
\r\n[edit] An unrealized idea
\r\n
\r\nThe original 2001 Scientific American article by Berners-Lee described an expected evolution of the existing Web to a Semantic Web.[15] Such an evolution has yet to occur. Indeed, a more recent article from Berners-Lee and colleagues stated that: "This simple idea, however, remains largely unrealized."[16]
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Censorship and privacy
\r\n
\r\nEnthusiasm about the semantic web could be tempered by concerns regarding censorship and privacy. For instance, text-analyzing techniques can now be easily bypassed by using other words, metaphors for instance, or by using images in place of words. An advanced implementation of the semantic web would make it much easier for governments to control the viewing and creation of online information, as this information would be much easier for an automated content-blocking machine to understand. In addition, the issue has also been raised that, with the use of FOAF files and geo location meta-data, there would be very little anonymity associated with the authorship of articles on things such as a personal blog.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Doubling output formats
\r\n
\r\nAnother criticism of the semantic web is that it would be much more time-consuming to create and publish content because there would need to be two formats for one piece of data: one for human viewing and one for machines. However, many web applications in development are addressing this issue by creating a machine-readable format upon the publishing of data or the request of a machine for such data. The development of microformats has been one reaction to this kind of criticism.
\r\n
\r\nSpecifications such as eRDF and RDFa allow arbitrary RDF data to be embedded in HTML pages. The GRDDL (Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Language) mechanism allows existing material (including microformats) to be automatically interpreted as RDF, so publishers only need to use a single format, such as HTML.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Need
\r\n
\r\nThe idea of a 'semantic web' necessarily coming from some marking code other than simple HTML is built on the assumption that it is not possible for a machine to appropriately interpret code based on nothing but the order relationships of letters and words. If this is not true, then it may be possible to build a 'semantic web' on HTML alone, making a specially built 'semantic web' coding system unnecessary.
\r\n
\r\nThere are latent dynamic network models that can, under certain conditions, be 'trained' to appropriately 'learn' meaning based on order data, in the process 'learning' relationships with order (a kind of rudimentary working grammar). See for example latent semantic analysis
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Components
\r\nThe Semantic Web Stack.
\r\n
\r\nThe semantic web comprises the standards and tools of XML, XML Schema, RDF, RDF Schema and OWL that are organized in the Semantic Web Stack. The OWL Web Ontology Language Overview describes the function and relationship of each of these components of the semantic web:
\r\n
\r\n    * XML provides an elemental syntax for content structure within documents, yet associates no semantics with the meaning of the content contained within.
\r\n    * XML Schema is a language for providing and restricting the structure and content of elements contained within XML documents.
\r\n    * RDF is a simple language for expressing data models, which refer to objects ("resources") and their relationships. An RDF-based model can be represented in XML syntax.
\r\n    * RDF Schema is a vocabulary for describing properties and classes of RDF-based resources, with semantics for generalized-hierarchies of such properties and classes.
\r\n    * OWL adds more vocabulary for describing properties and classes: among others, relations between classes (e.g. disjointness), cardinality (e.g. "exactly one"), equality, richer typing of properties, characteristics of properties (e.g. symmetry), and enumerated classes.
\r\n    * SPARQL is a protocol and query language for semantic web data sources.
\r\n
\r\nCurrent ongoing standardizations include:
\r\n
\r\n    * Rule Interchange Format (RIF) as the Rule Layer of the Semantic Web Stack
\r\n
\r\nThe intent is to enhance the usability and usefulness of the Web and its interconnected resources through:
\r\n
\r\n    * Servers which expose existing data systems using the RDF and SPARQL standards. Many converters to RDF exist from different applications. Relational databases are an important source. The semantic web server attaches to the existing system without affecting its operation.
\r\n    * Documents "marked up" with semantic information (an extension of the HTML <meta> tags used in today's Web pages to supply information for Web search engines using web crawlers). This could be machine-understandable information about the human-understandable content of the document (such as the creator, title, description, etc., of the document) or it could be purely metadata representing a set of facts (such as resources and services elsewhere in the site). (Note that anything that can be identified with a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) can be described, so the semantic web can reason about animals, people, places, ideas, etc.) Semantic markup is often generated automatically, rather than manually.
\r\n    * Common metadata vocabularies (ontologies) and maps between vocabularies that allow document creators to know how to mark up their documents so that agents can use the information in the supplied metadata (so that Author in the sense of 'the Author of the page' won't be confused with Author in the sense of a book that is the subject of a book review).
\r\n    * Automated agents to perform tasks for users of the semantic web using this data
\r\n    * Web-based services (often with agents of their own) to supply information specifically to agents (for example, a Trust service that an agent could ask if some online store has a history of poor service or spamming)
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Projects
\r\n
\r\nThis section provides some example projects and tools, but is very incomplete. The choice of projects is somewhat arbitrary but may serve illustrative purposes. It is also remarkable that in this early stage of the development of semantic web technology, it is already possible to compile a list of hundreds of components that in one way or another can be used in building or extending semantic webs.[17]
\r\n
\r\n[edit] DBpedia
\r\n
\r\nDBpedia is an effort to publish structured data extracted from Wikipedia: the data is published in RDF and made available on the Web for use under the GNU Free Documentation License, thus allowing Semantic Web agents to provide inferencing and advanced querying over the Wikipedia-derived dataset and facilitating interlinking, re-use and extension in other data-sources.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] FOAF
\r\n
\r\nA popular application of the semantic web is Friend of a Friend (or FoaF), which describes relationships among people and other agents in terms of RDF.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] SIOC
\r\n
\r\nThe SIOC Project - Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities provides a vocabulary of terms and relationships that model web data spaces. Examples of such data spaces include, among others: discussion forums, weblogs, blogrolls / feed subscriptions, mailing lists, shared bookmarks, image galleries.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Open GUID
\r\n
\r\nAimed at providing context for the Semantic Web, Open GUID[18] maintains a global Identifier repository for use in the linked web. Domain-specific Ontologies and content publishers establish identity relationships with Open GUIDs.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] SIMILE
\r\n
\r\nSemantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments
\r\n
\r\nSIMILE is a joint project, conducted by the MIT Libraries and MIT CSAIL, which seeks to enhance interoperability among digital assets, schemata/vocabularies/ontologies, meta data, and services.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] NextBio
\r\n
\r\nA database consolidating high-throughput life sciences experimental data tagged and connected via biomedical ontologies. Nextbio is accessible via a search engine interface. Researchers can contribute their findings for incorporation to the database. The database currently supports gene or protein expression data and is steadily expanding to support other biological data types.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Linking Open Data
\r\n
\r\nin the Linking Open Data project, as of Sept 2008
\r\nClass linkages within the Linking Open Data datasets
\r\n
\r\nThe Linking Open Data project is a community-led effort to create openly accessible, and interlinked, RDF Data on the Web. The data in question takes the form of RDF Data Sets drawn from a broad collection of data sources. There is a focus on the Linked Data style of publishing RDF on the Web. See #Triplify for a small plugin to expose data from your Web application as Linked Data.
\r\n
\r\nThe project is one of several sponsored by the W3C's Semantic Web Education & Outreach Interest Group (SWEO).
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Insemtives
\r\n
\r\nInsemtives is a European Seventh Framework Program (FP7) -funded project with the objective to bridge the gap between human and computational intelligence for the semantic content authoring.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Services
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Notification Services
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Semantic Web Ping Service
\r\n
\r\nThe Semantic Web Ping Service is a notification service for the semantic web that tracks the creation and modification of RDF based data sources on the Web. It provides Web Services for loosely coupled monitoring of RDF data. In addition, it provides a breakdown of RDF data sources tracked by vocabulary that includes: SIOC, FOAF, DOAP, RDFS, and OWL.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Piggy Bank
\r\n
\r\nAnother freely downloadable tool is the Piggy Bank plug-in to Firefox. Piggy Bank works by extracting or translating web scripts into RDF information and storing this information on the user’s computer. This information can then be retrieved independently of the original context and used in other contexts, for example by using Google Maps to display information. Piggy Bank works with a new service, Semantic Bank, which combines the idea of tagging information with the new web languages. Piggy Bank was developed by the Simile Project, which also provides RDFizers, tools that can be used to translate specific types of information, for example weather reports for US zip codes, into RDF. Efforts like these could ease a potentially troublesome transition between the web of today and its semantic successor.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] See also
\r\nWikipedia Books     Wikipedia:Books has a book on: Semantic Web
\r\n
\r\n    * Agris: International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology
\r\n    * Entity-attribute-value model
\r\n    * Linked Data Web
\r\n    * List of emerging technologies
\r\n    * Semantic advertising
\r\n    * Semantic Sensor Web
\r\n    * Semantic Web Services
\r\n    * Social Semantic Web
\r\n    * Swoogle
\r\n    * Website Parse Template
\r\n    * Wikipedia:Semantic MediaWiki
\r\n
\r\n[edit] References
\r\n
\r\n   1. ^ Berners-Lee, Tim; James Hendler and Ora Lassila (May 17, 2001). "The Semantic Web". Scientific American Magazine. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web&print=true. Retrieved on 2008-03-26.
\r\n   2. ^ a b "W3C Semantic Web Frequently Asked Questions". W3C. http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/SW-FAQ. Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
\r\n   3. ^ Herman, Ivan (2008-03-07). "Semantic Web Activity Statement". W3C. http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Activity.html. Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
\r\n   4. ^ "Design Issues". W3C. http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/. Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
\r\n   5. ^ Herman, Ivan (2008-03-12). "W3C Semantic Web Activity". W3C. http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/. Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
\r\n   6. ^ Berners-Lee, Tim; Fischetti, Mark (1999). Weaving the Web. HarperSanFrancisco. chapter 12. ISBN 9780062515872.
\r\n   7. ^ Victoria Shannon (2006-06-26). "A 'more revolutionary' Web". International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/23/business/web.php. Retrieved on 2006-05-24.
\r\n   8. ^ Knublauch, Holger; Oberle, Daniel; Tetlow, Phil; Evan (2006-03-09). "A Semantic Web Primer for Object-Oriented Software Developers". W3C. http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/SE/ODSD/. Retrieved on 2008-07-30.
\r\n   9. ^ Connolly, Daniel (2002-08-13). "An Evaluation of the World Wide Web with respect to Engelbart's Requirements". W3C. http://www.w3.org/Architecture/NOTE-ioh-arch. Retrieved on 2008-07-30.
\r\n  10. ^ Engelbart, Douglas (1990). "Knowledge-Domain Interoperability and an Open Hyperdocument System". Bootstrap Institute. http://www.bootstrap.org/augdocs/augment-132082.htm. Retrieved on 2008-07-30.
\r\n  11. ^ Connolly, Dan. "From the editor... WebApps". W3C. http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/9703-web-apps-essay.html. Retrieved on 2008-07-30.
\r\n  12. ^ Gärdenfors, Peter (2004), "How to make the Semantic Web more semantic", Formal Ontology in Information Systems: proceedings of the third international conference (FOIS-2004) (IOS Press): p. 17-34
\r\n  13. ^ Timo Honkela, Ville Könönen, Tiina Lindh-Knuutila and Mari-Sanna Paukkeri (2008), "Simulating processes of concept formation and communication", Journal of Economic Methodology, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a903999101
\r\n  14. ^ a b Ivan Herman (2007). "State of the Semantic Web". Semantic Days 2007. http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/0424-Stavanger-IH/Slides.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-07-26.
\r\n  15. ^ Berners-Lee, Tim (2001-05-01). "The Semantic Web". Scientific American. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00048144-10D2-1C70-84A9809EC588EF21. Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
\r\n  16. ^ Nigel Shadbolt, Wendy Hall, Tim Berners-Lee (2006). "The Semantic Web Revisited". IEEE Intelligent Systems. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12614/1/Semantic_Web_Revisted.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-04-13.
\r\n  17. ^ See, for instance: Bergman, Michael K.. "Sweet Tools". AI3; Adaptive Information, Adaptive Innovation, Adaptive Infrastructure. http://www.mkbergman.com/?page_id=325. Retrieved on 2009-01-05.
\r\n  18. ^ "Open GUID". OpenGUID.net. http://openguid.net/. Retrieved on 2008-10-19.
\r\n
\r\n    This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (July 2008)
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Further reading
\r\n
\r\n    * Grigoris Antoniou, Frank van Harmelen (2008-03-31). A Semantic Web Primer, 2nd Edition. The MIT Press. ISBN 0262012421. http://www.amazon.com/Semantic-Primer-Cooperative-Information-Systems/dp/0262012421/.
\r\n    * Dean Allemang, James Hendler (2008-05-09). Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist: Effective Modeling in RDFS and OWL. Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN 9780123735560. http://www.amazon.com/Semantic-Web-Working-Ontologist-Effective/dp/0123735564/.
\r\n    * John Davies (2006-07-11). Semantic Web Technologies: Trends and Research in Ontology-based Systems. Wiley. ISBN 0470025964. http://www.amazon.com/Semantic-Web-Technologies-Research-Ontology-based/dp/0470025964/.
\r\n    * Pascal Hitzler, Markus Krötzsch, Sebastian Rudolph (2009-08-25). Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies. CRCPress. ISBN 142009050X. http://www.semantic-web-book.org.
\r\n    * Thomas B. Passin (2004-03-01). Explorer's Guide to the Semantic Web. Manning Publications. ISBN 1932394206. http://www.amazon.com/Explorers-Guide-Semantic-Thomas-Passin/dp/1932394206/.
\r\n    * Liyang Yu (2007-06-14). Introduction to Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services. CRC Press. ISBN 1584889330. http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Semantic-Web-Services/dp/1584889330/.
\r\n    * Jeffrey T. Pollock (2009-03-23). Semantic Web For Dummies. For Dummies. ISBN 0470396792. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470396792.
\r\n
\r\n[edit] External links
\r\nSearch Wikimedia Commons     Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Semantic Web
\r\n
\r\n    * W3C Semantic Web Activity
\r\n    * Semantic Web Interest Group IRC channel
\r\n    * semanticweb.org the Semantic Web community wiki, including descriptions of many related tools, events, and ontologies
\r\n    * The Semantic Web: An Introduction
\r\n    * Shiyong Lu, Ming Dong, and Farshad Fotouhi, “The Semantic Web: Opportunities and Challenges for Next-Generation Web Applications”, Information Research, Special Issue on the Semantic Web, 7(4), 2002.
\r\n    * Semantic Web in c#
\r\n    * Introduction to Ontologies and Semantic Web
\r\n    * GoPubMed: bringing Pubmed and the semantic web together
\r\n    * Semantic Web Video Lectures
\r\n    * Corporate Semantic Web – Research group focused on adoption of Semantic Web technologies in enterprises
\r\n    * Insemtives – EU FP7 Research project focused on incentivising users to contribute semantic content
\r\n
\r\n[edit] Semantic Web software and demonstrations
\r\n
\r\n    * Human Computation Video Luis Von Ahn presents innovative techniques to incorporate RDF info into a database of images, video or other group of data.
\r\n    * SWED portal provided by WordPressHelp
\r\n    * Semantic Systems Biology
\r\n    * Semantic Search engine provided by Inbenta
\r\n    * Semandeks an approach for generating semantic content through social input
\r\n    * Maven Semantic Healthcare Database
\r\n
\r\n[hide]
\r\nv • d • e
\r\nSemantic Web
\r\nBackground    
\r\nWorld Wide Web  · Internet  · Databases  · Semantic networks  · Ontologies
\r\nSub-topics    
\r\nLinked Data  · Data Web  · Hyperdata  · Dereferenceable URIs  · Rule bases  · Data Spaces
\r\nApplications    
\r\nSemantic wiki · Semantic publishing · Semantic search · Semantic advertising · Semantic reasoner · Semantic matching · Semantic mapper · Semantic broker · Semantic analytics · Semantic service oriented architecture
\r\nRelated Topics    
\r\nFolksonomy  · Library 2.0 · Web 2.0  · Open Database Connectivity  · References  · Information architecture  · Knowledge management  · Collective intelligence  · Topic Maps  · Mindmapping  · Metadata · Geotagging · Description logic
\r\nStandards    
\r\nSyntax & Supporting Technologies : RDF (Notation 3  · Turtle  · N-Triples)  · SPARQL  · URI  · HTTP  · XML
\r\n
\r\nSchemas, Ontologies & Rules : RDFS  · OWL  · Rule Interchange Format  · Semantic Web Rule Language
\r\n
\r\nSemantic Annotation : RDFa  · eRDF  · GRDDL  · Microformats
\r\n
\r\nCommon Vocabularies : FOAF  · SIOC  · Dublin Core  · SKOS
\r\nOthers: Plain Old Semantic HTML
\r\nPeople    
\r\nTim Berners-Lee  · James Hendler  · Ora Lassila  · Nigel Shadbolt  · Wendy Hall
\r\nKey Semantic
\r\nWeb Organizations    
\r\nW3C  · WSRI  · MIT  · OpenLink Software  · Talis Group  · ClearForest  · University of Southampton  · DERI
\r\nRetrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web"
\r\nCategories: Semantic Web | Buzzwords | Web services
\r\nHidden categories: Articles to be merged from October 2008 | All articles to be merged | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from August 2008 | All pages needing cleanup | Wikipedia articles needing clarification from November 2008 | Articles lacking in-text citations from July 2008
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\r\n 

"@en . "0000-00-00"^^ . "0000-00-00"^^ . . . "COMPASS Component Based Automotive System Software" . "

Component Based Automotive System Software

\r\n

Today’s vehicle networks are transforming automotive components, once the domain of mechanical or hydraulic systems, into truly distributed electronic systems. Replacing rigid mechanical components with dynamically configurable electronic elements triggers an almost organic, system wide level of integration. As a result, the cost of advanced systems should plummet.

\r\n

Sophisticated features such as chassis control and smart sensors, now confined to luxury vehicles, will likely become mainstream. All these functionalities translate into higher performance, reliability and maintainability requirements for future automotive systems. Suitable solutions must be developed under stringent cost constraints and provide the modularity to allow the interchangeable use of components from different vendors.

\r\n

The aim of the project COMPASS is to address these problems by the use of a component based design. The project sets a special focus on the communication subsystem as the core component and most important enabler of these highly interactive distributed systems.

\r\n

Starting with a profound analysis of recent industrial and scientific projects a system infrastructure for the hardware/software interface of the communication subsystem will be elaborated. Hereby the AUTOSAR initiative, a joint effort of major automotive companies, tier 1 suppliers, and tool vendors to standardize automotive system software and tooling is of particular interest. Within COMPASS the AUTOSAR system software stack will be refactored according to the component-based paradigm in order to increase the system software stack’s scalability and to reduce the memory footprint. A prototype implementation of relevant components in hardware and software, respectively, will serve as a show-case for further application developments.

\r\n

To assess the properties of the system infrastructure, an automotive benchmark suite based on new metrics is specified, implemented, and applied. Based on the concept of component connectors, interaction and composition standards for components will be set up and approved in order to assist a flexible hardware/software allocation based upon otherwise contradictory non-functional requirements. This will be complemented by a middleware support optimised for resource constrained environments. A design guidebook will further provide OEMs and automotive suppliers with best practice use-cases for the optimization and development of future products based on this methodology

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2005-09-01"^^ . "2007-12-31"^^ . . . "CONNECTOME-GPU - GPU-Based Petascale Visual Computing for Analysis of Neural Circuitry" . "

The objective of the proposed project is to develop a scalable visual computing system for visualization and segmentation of petascale neural circuitry, to enable interactive analysis and provide the basic framework for later development of automatic analysis. The involved data sets are volumes of extremely high resolution that are created by electron microscopy, resulting in multiple to hundreds of terabytes per volume. The ultimate goal is to determine the detailed connections of the contained brain circuits, which is a fundamental unsolved problem in neuroscience. Understanding this neural circuitry will enable brain scientists to confirm or refute existing models, develop new ones, and come closer to an understanding of how the brain works. This is the largest-scale visual computing problem of which we are aware, approximately five orders of magnitude beyond current state of the art. The Harvard Center for Brain Science (CBS) has been able to achieve very promising early results, but a major obstacle going forward is handling the enormous size of the acquired data sets. The Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) at Harvard is tasked with developing software and hardware solutions for this problem, and will partner with VRVis and Microsoft to develop a scalable client-server solution employing a GPU (graphics processing unit) cluster for both visualization and computation.

\r\n

The system will build on scalable multi-resolution approaches throughout and exploit the parallel processing power of GPUs, which are an extremely powerful and affordable platform for high-quality volume rendering, especially using raycasting, and general purpose scientific computations. The developed visual computing system will allow scalable volume rendering and semi-automatic segmentation of volumes in the hundreds of terabyte range with interactive feedback. It will also be applicable to a variety of other large data problems, such as visual computing for astrophysics, other kinds of biomedical data, and large time-dependent volume data.

"@en . "2008-03-01"^^ . "2009-08-31"^^ . . . "Copper Interconnect Fabrication Technology - CIFT" . "

 

\r\n

The demand for faster and more powerful computer chips triggered the design of smaller devices with higher interconnect complexity, currently comprising 8-11 metal layers used to connect transistors into circuits and SoC (systems on chips).

\r\n

At the dawn of the 21st century, the interconnect technology was revolutionized to produce a chip which uses copper wires, rather than the traditional aluminium interconnects. Within the chip’s top layers, copper is the preferred material because of its lower electrical resistance. This leads to improved power distribution and device performance throughout the chip.

\r\n

However, the copper technology requires the introduction of new fabrication methods including complex deposition processes, special diffusion barrier layers and low-k dielectrics, which hosts integration and reliability challenges. State of the art aqueous bath copper plating techniques are facing major difficulties with the ongoing shrinkage of semiconductor devices.

\r\n

For the first time ever in semiconductor processing, the “Copper Interconnect Fabrication Technology” (CIFT) project researches electroplating copper from liquid ammonia with direct plating on barrier layers. Within the project, the electrochemistry of copper in liquid ammonia and other non-aqueous solvents is evaluated. The unique physical and chemical properties of liquid ammonia offer a plating technique for copper layers with ultra high quality. Based on this knowledge, novel techniques for electro less and electro-plating copper on structured semiconductor wafers will be applied. Subsequently, the design of a copper plating cell capable of processing 300 mm wafers paves the way for a new copper interconnect fabrication technology. Taking advantage of intelligent modelling software tools, the chamber design reflects the need for a uniform copper deposition over the whole surface, improved material characteristics and a cost-saving and environmentally friendly process.

\r\n

This promising technology opens the path to a completely new production process for copper interconnects used within current and future System on Chip (SoC) and connecting heterogeneous (Multi-Chip) assemblies.

"@en . "2007-01-01"^^ . "2009-06-30"^^ . . . "CRYPTA - Cryptographic Protected Tags for new RFID Applications" . "

RFID technology is treated as one of the main enabler for the future Internet of Things. RFID systems consist of tags, readers and a backend system. The tags basically provide their ID to any reader that is querying the tags. Additional functionality like authentication or secure communication of tags or readers is not considered in the existing standards. We are confident that profound security measures for RFID systems will not only enable a variety of new RFID applications, but also contribute to solve the currently ongoing privacy discussion concerning current RFID technology.

\r\n

Within CRYPTA we will build a future RFID application prototype extended by state-of-the-art security functionality (proof-of-origin) and build a fully-functional cryptographic enabled tag prototype chip for this purpose. In order to embed additional modules (crypto) into passive RFID tags, we will design a new flexible tag architecture considering all sub-components. With this generic architecture it shall be easy to integrate new functionality into tags and to reduce the time-to-market for future RFID tags.

\r\n

One of the most ambitious goals of CRYPTA is the design of an asymmetric cryptographic module (ECDSA) suitable for passive RFID tags. This cryptographic module will be integrated in the developed tag architecture to build the tag prototype. The prototype should be the first passive RFID tag ever produced that supports a standardized asymmetric cryptographic signature algorithm (ECDSA). The prototype tags will be used in the application prototype to show the applicability of our developments.       

"@en . "2009-02-01"^^ . "2011-03-31"^^ . . . "CTS Comprehensive Transponder System" . "

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Radio-Frequency-Identification (RFID) Systems consist of Transponders (so called smart labels) and the Transaction Station (readers). They permit contactless reading and writing between the units in order to identify, track and trace the objects to which the Transponders are applied. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

Nowadays Identification Systems are working on different standards and technologies – each offering advantages and disadvantages. The frequency oft the RF carrier used to transmit energy and to send and receive data via the contactless link between Transponder and Transaction Station ist he distinquishing parameter. Our goal ist o research fort he first time the technical basis for a „Comprehensive Transponder System (CTS)“ which can be operated at several frequency domains simultaneously. Scientific advances well above current state oft he art is needed for

\r\n

a)      The concepts for multilingual RFID Transponder systems

\r\n

b)      Multi-frequency interoperable antenna solutions, or

\r\n

c)       Solving and impedance match challenges

\r\n

We have to electronically-funnel more than four antenna leads into a single IC input pair. CTS will pave the way for a globally fitting communication system able to exchange data all over the world. An ultra low power RFID prototype with a „Multi-Standard Communication Unit“ working at both 13.56 MHz-HF and 868/915 MHz-UHF is foreseen in the project.

"@en . "2006-01-01"^^ . "2008-03-31"^^ . . . "DARTS: Distributed Algorithms for Robust Tick Synchronization" . "

Distributed Algorithms for Robust Tick Synchronization

\r\n


\r\nFuture chip technologies are predicted to exhibit higher susceptibility to radiation, leading to an increased rate of bit-flips (“single event upsets”). This also applies for the clock, whose design has become cumbersome in the face of high clock rates anyway. Consequently approaches for tolerating such transient faults are sought.

\r\n

The DARTS project is dedicated to elaborating a fault-tolerant alternative to the conventional clocking scheme of VLSI-chips, systems-on-chip and other hardware systems. In the traditional approach a single oscillator is employed whose output is distributed throughout the whole system by means of a carefully balanced clock network. Clearly, a fault in this central oscillator or in the clock distribution network causes the whole system to fail. As opposed to this, clocking in DARTS is based on a set of local clock generators that supply several functional regions of the chip individually, thus confining the effect of a fault. In contrast to the classical „Globally-Asynchronous Locally-Synchronous“ (GALS)-approach DARTS does not rely on uncorrelated oscillators as local clock generators but instead employs instances of a distributed algorithm for the fault-tolerant generation of synchronized local clocks. This approach has proven useful in the distributed systems community for decades, however, in context with relatively coarse-grained temporal resolution. The innovation of DARTS consists in the adaptation of such algorithms for the purpose of clocking a VLSI chip. To this end the originally software-based algorithms must be mapped to hardware. Figuring out an efficient mapping that still does not violate the assumptions underlying the formal proofs is a very challenging task.

\r\n

The researchers at TU Vienna provide the required expertise on distributed algorithms as well as on self-clocking circuit design, while Austrian Aerospace contributes its experiences in the development of space electronics.

\r\n

The principal project objective is the development of an ASIC implementing the DARTS algorithm. Experimental measurements on this ASIC shall provide a basis for further optimizations. Austrian Aerospace expects the approach to feature increased robustness of the clock distribution network for next-generation space borne applications, which are exposed to a much higher radiation intensity that causes problems even with current chip technologies.
\r\n 

"@en . "2005-10-01"^^ . "2009-06-30"^^ . . . "DEOS DVD Embedded Optical System" . "

The SiGe based devices as implemented in austriamicrosystems leading edge 0.35µm SiGe BiCMOS process offer the possibility to realize advanced embedded optical systems by integrating photodetectors for a wide spectral range (400nm to 850nm). This spectral range especially covers future applications of Digital Versatile Disk (DVD) with ultraviolet light, being called Blu-Ray disk (405nm). For compatibility reasons with today’s DVD using 650nm and CD-ROM using 780nm and to further increase the volumes of mass production with LAN applications using 850nm, the photodetectors will cover this wide spectral range. For Blu-Ray, DVD and CD-ROM the same photodetector has to be usable. This means that the bandwidth and the quantum efficiency of the same photodetector have both to be large for 405nm, 650nm and 780nm. Innovative SiGe photodiodes, advanced SiGe phototransistors, PIN as well as finger photodiodes are investigated and their properties are verified by measurements. Process modules for the photodetectors will be developed and implemented in the 0.35µm SiGe BiCMOS process to achieve by far the best optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC) technology, which will exceed the bandwidth of currently available OEIC technologies by a factor of three. The SiGe technology available at austriamicrosystems offers excellent low-noise and high-speed performance for the integration of OEICs. New circuit concepts of low-noise, high-transimpedance gain and high-bandwidth OEICs for Blu-Ray disk will be investigated. Capacitive-coupled voltage divider feedback in the amplifier will be extended with respect to variable transimpedance gain aiming to record low noise, low power, low chip area and low offset OEICs. The achievement of all four properties sets the scientific challenge together with controller tunable sensitivity. Furthermore new circuit concepts exploiting the phototransistor will be examined. All together, process modules and circuits will be developed for an optical DVD embedded system.
\r\n 

"@en . "2006-03-01"^^ . "2009-11-30"^^ . . . "DigTx - Digital Transmit" . "

The DigTx project will explore new circuits and architectures enabling a single chip implementation of radio transceivers capable of a dramatically reduced power consumption compared to the state-of-theart. Today, the bottle neck for SoC integration is the power amplifier, which suffers from process technology limits when implemented in nanometer CMOS technology. Therefore we focus on the transmit chain of such transceivers and especially on the power amplifier.

\r\n

A mobile WLAN transmitter prototype will be designed showing proof of concept with an average power efficiency of more than 30%, well above todayís benchmark of 15%. Enabler for such a performance in nanometer CMOS technologies (65nm or 40nm) is the combination of several disciplines of IC engineering. Advanced circuit design and layout will be employed to operate the power amplifier at supply voltages above the core supply voltage. On-chip and/or in-package power combining will be utilized to achieve high output powers by using several PAs in cascade. Efficiency targets will be
\r\nachieved by dynamically turning on/off the power amplifiers as required by the instantaneous transmit power.

\r\n

Finally digital calibration and pre-distortion will be employed to achieve the necessary linearity targets, Efficient implementation of such techniques in terminal applications are enabled by SoC integration and the use of modern CMOS technologies.

"@en . "2009-01-01"^^ . "2010-12-31"^^ . . . "DisCo - Visual DIScovery and COmmunication of complex time patterns in non regularly gathered multigranular and multivariate data" . "

Visual DIScovery and COmmunication of complex time patterns in non regularly gathered multigranular and multivariate data

\r\n

The capabilities to generate and collect data and information have seen an explosive growth and overwhelm traditional methods of data analysis such as spreadsheets, ad-hoc queries, or simple visualizations. Exploring trends, patterns, and relationships are particularly important when dealing with large amounts of data. The human perceptual system is highly sophisticated and specifically suited to spot visual patterns. For this reason, visualization is successfully applied in aiding these tasks. But facing the huge volumes of data to be analysed today, applying purely visual techniques only is often not sufficient.
\r\n
\r\nTime is an important data dimension that is common across many application domains. However, support for the analysis of time-oriented data and information is weak. The dimension time has distinct characteristics that dramatically increase its complexity and require specialised methods in order to support proper analysis and visualisation. Especially, the problems imposed by the combination of multiple, heterogeneous data sources in real world scenarios push current techniques to their limits.
\r\n
\r\nTo fill these gaps, we aim to develop novel Visual Analytics methods to visually as well as computationally analyse multivariate, time-oriented data and information to discover new and unexpected trends, patterns, and relationships. The main goals of the intertwined visual and analytical methods are to ensure high usability and good control of the integrated mining techniques by applying intuitive visualizations and visual interfaces.

\r\n

The tasks of developing the visual and analytical methods are carried out by the Department of Information- and Knowledge Engineering. The Department of Knowledge- and Communication Management is responsible for the aspects of usability and applicability of the developed methods. XIMES GmbH brings in know-how regarding time intelligence and shift scheduling as well as real-world problems and access to potential users.

"@en . "2007-03-01"^^ . "2010-02-28"^^ . . . "dragonCAM - A System for Synthesizing Video from Still Images" . "

The goal of this project is to build a system, which is able to create a continuous tracking shot from separate already filmed fragments. These fragments do not cover the whole range of the camera movement in the final video, so synthetic sequences have to be generated, which seamlessly fit between the end of one and the start of the next fragment.

\r\n

The following specific example illustrates the intended application of the system: one wants to take a shot, in which the camera glides from above the roofs of a city, down towards a building, through a window, and continues inside the apartment into a room, finishing with a close-up of the main character. A shot with a crane, starting over the city and moving close to the window can be realized, as can a shot moving through the apartment using a steadycam or dolly. But the sequence through the window has to be computer generated to connect the two different sequences taken by different cameras. Our proposed solution uses additional still images, taken in between the fragments. These images do not have to lie on the final camera path. By using the video fragments and still images, a partial reconstruction of the scene is generated, which allows free virtual camera movements in the area covered by the images. A coarse real-time preview will be used on  the set, to determine if the video fragments and still images contain enough data to  synthesize the missing video sequences. Off-line processing in post production will generate the final shot, with a maximum of leeway for corrections of the camera movements. The format of the resulting, merged video should be broadcast-quality highdefinition, which requires much higher resolution and image-quality than broadcast PAL or DVD targeted applications.

"@en . "2008-04-01"^^ . "2010-09-30"^^ . . . "DynamOnt Methodology for Dynamic Ontology Creation" . "

Collaboration of distributed knowledge communities is a rapidly increasing application field, e.g. international enterprises, scientific research teams, e-learning communities. For efficient collaboration the common understanding of information is a decisive factor. A systematic approach to gain this common understanding is the dynamic creation of ontologies, leading to a more efficient use of shared information resources.

\r\n

For the time beeing, the creation of high-quality ontologies is a very time consuming and expensive task. Therefore, such ontologies are available only for few thematic fields. What is still missing is a methodology supported by tools, which would enable domain experts (who are not ontology building experts) to create ontologies on the fly, yet based on sound principles, created in short time. "Dynamic" means that these ontologies can be extended and refined over time, possibly by other non-IT experts, can evolve to become more axiomatised, and can be personalised and localised by individuals or groups without losing touch with the community's preferred interpretation.

\r\n

At present, none of the above requirements are sufficiently supported by methodologies and tools. This leads to many poorly analysed “ontologies” being published on the Web. This is likely to become a trust problem and an economic hurdle for the "semantic" Web.

\r\n

In order to overcome the current bottlenecks, the project DynamOnt develops a methodological framework (see the overview of the process model) and a workbench for dynamic generation and maintenance of ontologies. The framework will include the gradual axiomisation process leading from existing lexico-terminological resources to formalised models by integrating foundational ontologies such as DOLCE. Furthermore the project aligns the work done in ontologies and object oriented modelling with related work in terminology and lexical semantics (e.g. the WordNet project). This alignment will lead to a reflection of semantic richness compared to the high complexity of knowledge resources. Another important result of the project will be a study of language-specific dependencies for modelling issues, especially for the German language.
\r\n 

"@en . "2005-01-01"^^ . "2007-06-30"^^ . . . "DYONIPOS Dynamic Ontology based Integrated Process Optimisation" . "

The DYONIPOS mission is to develop context sensitive, intelligent, and agile semantic technologies which provide the basis for significant productivity improvement in knowledge intensive organizations. Agile semantic technologies will enable the uniform handling of structured as well as unstructured business process parts and data, supporting two crucial roles a knowledge worker has to fill in a business process oriented environment: Support for process executers in the efficient, standardized but still flexible execution of business processes and support for process engineers in the definition of such standardized processes based on existing work practice.

\r\n

The process-oriented goal of DYONIPOS is to resolve the dilemma of flexibility for knowledge workers versus organizational needs for standardization and control by supporting the grass roots development and evolution of workflows from ad hoc processes without relinquishing the needed organizational control. Ad hoc processes provide the link between the business process executer and the business process engineer. They consist of defined in- and outputs, but leave the way to accomplish the defined outputs up to the knowledge worker and her specific context. For analysing ad hoc workflows and for deriving the current context of a knowledge worker, interactions between the knowledge worker and his/her digital work environment will be recorded, analysed and semantically enriched.

\r\n

The technology-oriented goal of DYONIPOS is to develop sophisticated agile semantic technologies which have the power to deal with the multitude of technological challenges involved in the handling of ad hoc processes. The task of process executors will be supported by intelligent proposals of succeeding processes, intelligent information delivery and contextual information extraction facilities based on her/his current context.

\r\n

The tasks for process engineers will be supported in semantic analysis and visualisation methods for ad hoc process analysis and the automatic optimization of ad hoc processes based on new optimization algorithms. DYONIPOS will develop new technology suitable to cope with dynamic and agile organizational environments while still allowing a high level of standardisation and control.

"@en . "2006-03-01"^^ . "2008-02-29"^^ . . . "e-HOME - Context-Aware and Distributed Embedded System for Assistive Home Technology" . "

The e-HOME project will carry out R&D activities for an assistive home system which can prolong the time of independent living for elderly people. It consists of an intelligent and adaptive network of wireless sensors for activity monitoring which is connected to a context-aware central embedded system. By learning and adapting to the behaviour patterns of the users it will allow to detect abnormal or dangerous situations and emeging medical conditions. Early results in behaviour monitoring with distributed sensors proved the viability of the approach. Targeted research into specific technological areas and usercentred testing of prototypes will provide the solutions necessary for the practical application in home-monitoring. The scope of research to be carried out includes (among others) the real-time and parallel use of heterogeneous sensor technologies, sensor data fusion, synchronization for precise location by TDOA (Time Difference of Arrival), finding the optimum between pre-processing of sensor data before transmission and available bandwidth, the integration of energy sources like photovoltaic cells and kinematic energy and power-management for long operating periods, the reliability of an adaptive, selflearning system fed by highly non-deterministic data, the proper inference-drawing and the design of a multimodal user-interface suitable for elderly persons. e-HOME will be based on wireless low-power short-range networks (unproblematic installation and spontaneous network-configuration). Sensor units will have to be simple and inexpensive (e.g. movement detection, temperature, illumination, acceleration, sound level). The sensor signals will be collected and fused by an embedded central-unit. By using adaptive pattern recognition algorithms, the central unit will be able to detect deviations from the inhabitant’s normal activity patterns and will be able to automatically call for assistance or raise an alarm via its connection to a public telecommunication network.

\r\n

After successfull field trials with five e-Home prototype system installed at private homes of 11 older persons the project was finished officially in September 2010. Some results are to be found here: http://www.is.tuwien.ac.at/ehome/eHomeResults_en.html

"@en . "2008-03-01"^^ . "2010-08-31"^^ . . . "Embedded Position Determinaton and Security in Wireless Fidelity Networks" . "

Embedded Position Determination and Security in Wireless Fidelity Networks

\r\n

The goal of ε-WiFi (Embedded Position Determination and Security in Wireless Fidelity Networks) is to detect the position of nodes in a wireless LAN network and thereby enhancing security and safety in WiFi networks. Typical applications for this are location-based access rights for office networks and wireless industrial applications. In the latter case, safety for the operation of industrial machines can only be guaranteed by the restriction that a machine may only be operated by wireless control if the command is issued from within a defined area (e.g., a crane may only be operated from a position with direct sight to the load rather than from outside the production building).

\r\n

The overall vision of the proposed project is to accurately determine the position of a sender as a basis for new techniques for access control and system security. The ε-WiFi security architecture will offer services such as spatial access policies, VLANs or Internet connections defining precise spatial coverage.

\r\n

The proposed solution foresees using one Access Point (AP) located at distinct positions within the area of interest. The actual position calculation will be done for the three-dimensional case by evaluating the received signals at the Access Points. High-accuracy clock synchronization needed to measure therefore delays, which will be reached by hardware time stamping. Although the techniques will be based on principles well known from Ethernet, significant adaptations have to be introduced to cope with the challenges of the wireless environment, in particular with multi-path transmissions. The particular technical challenges of the project are given by the fact that the required synchronization accuracy for the measurements has to be well below 10ns to ensure a reasonable spatial resolution of the position of a client node

"@en . "2007-04-01"^^ . "2010-12-31"^^ . . . "AIgoesPLM" . "0000-00-00"^^ . "0000-00-00"^^ . . . "εCEDAC: Evolution Control Environment for Distributed Automation Components" . "

 

\r\n

Evolution Control Environment for Distributed Automation Components

\r\n

 Adaptive Manufacturing is identified by the European High-Level Group (ManuFuture2004 – supported by the European Commission) as one of four major drivers of industrial technologies in ‘Manufacturing 2020’. New technologies for efficient engineering of safe, fault-tolerant and downtimeless systems and their adaptations are preconditions for this vision of future manufacturing. Without such solutions, engineering adaptations of the Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) will by far exceed the costs of engineering the initial system and the reuse of equipment becomes inefficient. Therefore, cost efficient engineering of controlled evolution of systems and its safe and fault-tolerant realisation, free of costly downtimes, will become an important economic factor. The strongest industrial demand for controlled system evolution is identified for applications that require guaranteed safe and stabile operation for economical, dependability or Quality of Service (QoS) reasons, while the market and the environment are highly volatile.
\r\n
\r\nεCEDAC aims at delivering the radical innovations necessary for model driven, component based development of safe, downtimeless, distributed embedded control and for fault-tolerant, controlled evolution of IACS during their adaptation. Furthermore, εCEDAC significantly increase engineering efficiency and reuse in component-based IACS. It simplifies the transition from device-centred towards application-centred engineering of both control and evolution-control applications. Based on existing Control Modelling Languages (CMLs like Simulink or IEC 61499) εCEDAC introduces εCML, a new Evolution Control Modelling Language as a main innovation. εCML allows to model both process-control AND evolution-control applications in a similar way. Therefore it satisfies the preferences of domain experts in the IACS sector, who are rather application experts than programming experts. The second essential innovation of this project is a novel hardware capability model for a new calculus featuring a detailed vector of actually available computing resources in a system.
\r\n
\r\nThese two main innovations allow to provide an integrated engineering support for εCML and deliver the prerequisite for verification and validation of control execution AND evolution execution regarding time, computing space and value. Thus system evolution will be safe and fault-tolerant.

"@en . "2005-05-01"^^ . "2007-07-31"^^ . . . "ECO-SENSOR - Energy Harvesting for Mobile Eco-Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks" . "

The project ECO-SENSOR breaks up the critical dependency of remote wireless sensor networks from traditional battery technology which cannot keep up with the increased performance of embedded computing systems. Hence, a radically innovative base technology for next-generation energy-autonomous wireless sensor networks will be developed, which is imperative for reliable process control and condition monitoring in future mobile agricultural farming machines as well as in other industrial domains. Based on the concepts of retrieving electrical energy from vibrating machinery and enabling ultralow power wireless transmission of arbitrary sensor information, the design of this embedded modular base unit opens a variety of technological challenges going far beyond state-of-the-art. In fact, a fully integrated mechatronic approach is chosen to capture the interrelations between information technology, electronics and mechanical components, to be able to significantly optimize the resulting ECO-SENSOR technology with respect to its applications.

\r\n

Following technological challenges highlight the proposed ECO-SENSOR solution:

\r\n

 1. Embedded design of completely self-powered, i.e. energy-autonomous wireless sensor networks that do not require conventional replaceable, ecologically critical power supplies,
\r\n2. self-sensing: extracting sensor information from the energy harvesting unit itself,
\r\n3. low-power energy conversion technology from mechanical vibration energy into electrical,
\r\n4. innovative design of optimization algorithms for optimal sensor placement to secure 100% sensor dependability during machine operation,
\r\n5. dedicated protocol solutions for wireless sensor networks ensuring real-time capability and ultra-low power operation and
\r\n6. sophisticated embedded hardware solutions which are capable of selectively controlling and shutting down their different building blocks for enhancing energy efficiency.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2008-03-01"^^ . "2010-02-28"^^ . . . "embeddedCMMI: CMMI adapted to embedded software development" . "2005-04-01"^^ . "2006-07-31"^^ . . . "EmbSAW (Integrated interrogation unit for SAW-based sensor devices)" . "2003-09-01"^^ . "2005-08-31"^^ . . . "EVis - Autonomous Traffic Monitoring by Embedded Vision" . "

The world will witness a tremendous increase in the number of vehicles in the near future. Future traffic monitoring systems will therefore play an important role to improve the throughput and safety of roads. Current monitoring systems capture (usually vision-based) traffic data from a large sensory network; however, they require continuous human supervision which is extremely expensive.
\r\n
\r\nIn the EVis research project we investigate the scientific and technological foundations for future autonomous traffic monitoring systems. Autonomy is achieved by a novel combination of three approaches: First, vision-based detection and classification methods are augmented by self-learning and scene adaptation mechanisms which will significantly reduce the effort of manual configuration. Second, visual data is fused with data from other sensors such as radar, infrared or inductive loop sensors. Sensor fusion helps to improve the robustness and confidence, to extend the spatial and temporal coverage as well as to reduce the ambiguity and uncertainty of the processed sensor data. Finally, the developed vision and fusion methods are implemented on a distributed embedded platform which makes them wider applicable and supports real-time operation.
\r\n
\r\nThe technological output of the EVis project allows customers to take advantage of traffic management solutions that are easier to install, easier to operate and maintain, have a higher level of robustness. Furthermore, this technology enables multi-task operations in a single system capable of traffic monitoring, vehicle identification and classification, incident detection, traffic rule enforcement, and observation of (critical) drivers’ behavior.
\r\n
\r\nThe industrial partner EFKON is a globally acting company and expects EU, Middle East, North America, and Asia as primary markets for this technology. The midterm market potential is predicted as significantly over 100 million Euros.

\r\n

 

\r\n

 

"@en . "2007-04-01"^^ . "2010-04-30"^^ . . . "FRONTICS - Communication Framework for Networked Automation and Control Systems" . "

Emerging industrial embedded automation and measurement systems are composed out of strongly intervening but physically separated subsystems. They cooperate tightly together to perform control and measurement tasks. Such systems range from  ensorguided cooperating robots, automatic guided vehicles for logistic systems, to coordinated real-time measurement tasks and agile automation systems. Subcomponents of such systems share multiple distributed control and measurement loops each of which may have diverse timing and localisation. In parallel sporadic events are conveyed with vanishing jitter across the same network infrastructure. The requirements for communication have an important impact to the overall system behaviour and therefore they must be considered together with control and measurement tasks. An integrative approach for the whole system engineering is still missing. Therefore FRONTICS aims at automatic configuration of heterogeneous and hybrid real-time communication networks. It develops a real-time communication infrastructure for distributed automation, control and measurement systems – which is required for a real breakthrough of networked and embedded automation systems. The project’s main innovations will be the development of pioneering technologies, methods and engineering approaches for implementing and operating the described class of networked and embedded automation systems. Project results will allow cost-efficient building and configuring of these new strongly intervening automation and measurement equipment. Within the project FRONTICS, the developed embedded configuration technology will be applied and validated on laser tracker guided closely cooperating high precision antenna positioning systems for the measurement of the radiation/emission characteristics of antennas for aerospace applications.

"@en . "2008-05-01"^^ . "2010-04-30"^^ . . . "GALILEO client - Paving the way for embedded Galileo based mobile solutions" . "

 

\r\n

In the field of “Location Based Services” for “Personal Navigation” more and more application will be seen in the future. The Galileo positioning system is a new satellite navigation system, to be set into function by the European Union in 2009. The goal of the project “Galileo Client” is to research and develop embedded receiver technologies for assisted GALILEO/GPS location based services for mobile embedded systems. The target of “assisted GPS/Galileo” is to improve the GPS/Galileo wireless receiver performance by providing the navigation data from a service provider, for example over the mobile telephone system. A major scientific challenge is the combination and coexistence of current mobile communication techniques (GSM, UMTS, etc.) and Galileo/GPS by researching new digital PLL technologies, which builds the major part within the project “Galileo client”. Infineon Villach represents the competence center in the field of digital PLL. We need highly innovative approaches for new and programmable digital PLL systems to provide the new key-features for the upcoming assisted Galileo/GPS mobile embedded systems. The three academic partners, Technische Universität Graz – Institut für Elektronik (IFE), Technische Universität Wien - Institut für Elektrische Mess- und Schaltungstechnik, Technische Universität Graz – Institut für Signalverarbeitung und Sprachkommunikation, will provide concepts, models and design for some of the critical building block for the transmitter and receiver paths.

\r\n

Galileo faces a market characterized by a huge number of opportunities. The market for global positioning systems and location based services is enormously growing. According to current studies, the Assisted Galileo/GPS solutions will get ahead of the GPS devices in the next ten years. A huge number of sectors will profit from the solutions offered: transport, social services, justice system and customs services, public works, search and secure systems and leisure.

"@en . "2007-03-01"^^ . "2010-02-28"^^ . . . "GAMEWORLD - Procedural Worlds for Games" . "

The aim of the GAMEWORLD project is to procedurally generate cities, villages and other game environments mainly to be used in tomorrow’s video games.
\r\n
\r\nTypically, 3D game and virtual environments are created using off-the-shelf software like Autodesk Maya or MAX. While these tools allow professional artists to produce very high-quality models, this task is becoming more and more labour intensive and time consuming, and therewith expensive, as the detail expected from virtual worlds is continuously increasing. This is one of the most important problems in game development, so that finding suitable automatic modelling techniques has become somewhat of a holy grail of the game industry.
\r\n
\r\nIn the Gameworld project, we aim to facilitate and automate the process of generating interactive 3D models, while still giving the designer a high level of control over the visual and architectural style of the created models. We will go beyond modelling building facades, and cover more general objects, including street networks and green spaces, urban furniture, indoor environments, and semantic gameplay annotations.

\r\n

In order to achieve this goal, we will use sophisticated procedural design grammars, precursors to which have already been developed at the Vienna University of Technology and the Arizona State University. We expect this approach to lead to tools that can be applied in production environments, significantly reducing the effort required to create interactive worlds. Potential application areas of this technology are not limited to video games, but include any field using virtual environments.
\r\nThe project team combines scientific and industrial experience in an ideal way. The academic partners have already been cooperating on research into procedural modelling techniques previously. Sproing is Austria’s leading video and computer game development studio, and will bring its long standing experience and knowledge about the needs of the game development industry to the table.
\r\n 

"@en . "2007-09-01"^^ . "2010-08-31"^^ . . . "GENOPTIKUM - Visual Data Mining for Genetic Data" . "

GENOPTIKUM is an interactive data exploration system for the “visualization of” and “navigation in” molecular and clinical data in the field of personalized medicine. GENOPTIKUM addresses the essential but to date unsolved problem of how to identify connections between genetic variants and their corresponding diseases or the response to certain drugs and treatments, respectively. It is, therefore, necessary to connect gene data and clinical data in order to categorise specific subgroups of patients with certain disease features. The huge amount of data provided by molecular analytical methods (genetic polymorphisms, gene expression data, proteomics) can only be analysed by applying statistical methods and bioinformatics. However, even standard methods of statistics and bioinformatics fail when the data are inhomogeneous – as is the case with clinical data – and when data structures are obscured by noise and dominant patterns.

\r\n

GENOPTIKUM makes the structure of the data spaces visible by using innovative methods of visualization based on multiple high resolution displays in combination with data projection technologies. GENOPTIKUM is based on fundamental results in the fields of visualization of information and multimodal user interfaces which enable an interactive navigation and structuring of both molecular and clinical data. Through a close link between several input channels, which are simultaneously active, and by immediate visualization of the steps of the analysis, the expert is provided with a tool for the interactive exploration of complex data spaces. As input parameter for analysis algorithms GENOPTIKUM makes use of the human visual capacity to grasp complex patterns to reveal hidden structures and correlations in large data spaces.

"@en . "2007-08-01"^^ . "2010-04-30"^^ . . . "GRANDESCA - Generating RANDom values for Encryption in the presence of Side Channel and other Attacks" . "

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

Today many applications in information security rely on cryptographic primitives (like en-/decryption, signature generation and verification, keyed and unkeyed hashing etc.) to secure transactions, processes and protocols. Thus trust in such applications shall be increased. Although there are no  proofs for most of the basic assumptions we try to create evidence for trust in systems secured by means of cryptography. Such evidence has been given for many systems with cryptographic primitives tob e secure enough in a cryptographic sense, first by choosing appropriate parameters (block & key sizes) to prevent brute force attacks. In a second step the algorithms themselves were investigated to show evidence for at least some appropriate „effective key length“.

\r\n

 The goal of the project GRANDESCA is to develop a prototype showing finally resistance to SCA making use of random numbers generated in a robust, well manufacturable way. It had been shown in recent years that improper implementation of such evidently trustworthy cryptographic primitives potentially opens another group of doors for attackers, so calles side channels, and thus has to be subject to serious concerns when talking about trustworthiness of systems in the real world. Side channels are data dependent variations in measurable physical units like execution timing, power consumption or electromagnetic radiation on the one hand, and logical / numerical differences between correct and faulty results of disturbed processing on the other hand, and have been threatening trust in implemented applications. These attacks, have been investigated thoroughly to develop countermeasures trying to close those doors for the attackers again. Nevertheless it has recently been shown, that in real world implementations even combinations of those countermeasures seem to have problems and further investigations are necessary. So nowadays random numbers have not only become the basic material for key value, but also for the masking. If all the implemented countermeasures against SCA will work and be shown to be “water-proof” in theory and praxis, then the attackers will focus an the thing that claims to make the implementation secure – the key material and the engine that produces such – the Random Number Generator (RNG) . In the last years less investigations have been focusing on RNGs than on the overall SCA-topic. The project GRANDESCA will meet this strategic direction, thus raising the security and trustworthiness of IT-Systems.

"@en . "2007-02-01"^^ . "2009-01-31"^^ . . . "GreenDSL - Global Resource and Energy Efficiency for Next-Generation DSL" . "

The GreenDSL project team will create a novel systematic framework for joint algorithmic and hardware optimization to reduce energy consumption in Telecommunication Embedded Systems. Within the scope of this project the application for this approach will be ADSL2/2+, VDSL2 and future xDSL systems, but it can be easily applied for other Telecommunication transceiver systems as well. Current DSL systems are designed for maximum performance, i.e., maximum power at full bandwidth, constantly active over the whole transmission time. Energy consumption of such systems is by no means adapted to the amount of useful information that is transmitted in a particular time interval. The existing standards for ADSL2/2+ and VDSL2 either do not offer low-power modes, or those modes are not applicable in their current form due to stability problems in the cable network. Current initiatives to reduce energy consumption in broadband telecommunication equipment only address the absolute power consumption per channel for a limited number of operating modes.

\r\n

GreenDSL will not only go one step but several steps further and minimize energy consumption by considering not only the physical layer, but all transportation layers. GreenDSL will explore the available redundancy in the signal generation in the two fundamental dimensions of energy usage, namely frequency (power spectral densities) and time. New Digital and Analog Frontend and Line Driver designs will benefit from these investigations and provide the necessary scalability and flexibility to power-efficiently handle dynamically changing signals in both, bandwidth and signal power. GreenDSL will not only propose new low-power modes for DSL, but also extensions to the existing standards to overcome the main weakness of current DSL systems, its sensitivity to time-varying crosstalk inside the cable bundle. With cross-layer optimizations all the way from the top to the bottom, from the Network Controller to the Line Driver, GreenDSL will approach the ultimate goal to achieve energy consumption that naturally scales to the users’ data and to the rate at which it is transmitted.

\r\n

The framework of this project will include C/C++ and Matlab toolboxes for algorithm design and verification, system and sub-system simulations platforms in time and frequency domain based on Matlab, SystemC and Simulink, as well as CMOS design tools for digital and mixed-signal IC integration. The efficiency of standard-compliant methods for reducing energy consumption will be demonstrated with the help of a VDSL2 test bed which provides several VDSL2 connections coexisting in the same cable bundle with varying loop topology.

"@en . "2009-01-01"^^ . "2011-03-31"^^ . . . "GRISINO Grid Semantics and Intelligent Objects" . "

In the future, more and more human activities will become at least partly, "virtualised" which means they will take place with support of the World Wide Web.

\r\n

The GRISINO research project combines "Grid computing", "semantic web services" and "intelligent objects" in order to create an example of the future, enhanced infrastructure of the World Wide Web. The ultimate aim of that infrastructure is to enable software services to search for complex pieces of knowledge and to re-arrange such knowledge in ways which are then suitable for direct use by humans.

\r\n

The scientific aim of GRISINO is to combine three leading edge technologies

\r\n
  • Semantic Web Services as the future standard for the declaration of web-based semantic processes.
  • Knowledge content objects to combine knowledge-based computing with content engineering.
  • Grid Computing as a novel, high-performance infrastructure for a future environment of ubiquitous computing services.
    • \r\n
\r\n

The technologies will be combined by jointly developing a test bed for experimentation with complex processes and complex objects (e.g. semantically annotated multimedia business objects). There are three fundamental research questions associated with the experimental test bed:

\r\n
  1. Context sensitivity of complex processes: how can services "understand" knowledge based content in order to support "intelligent processes"?
  2. Semantic service awareness of complex objects: how can knowledge based content objects be specified in order to support the web services e.g. when a content object enters a new usage environment?
  3. Integrated grid-enabled semantic web services and objects infrastructure: how can object-aware semantic web services and semantic-web service-aware "intelligent" objects be integrated into a common GRID computing infrastructure?
    4. \r\n
\r\n

The major result of the project will be an experimental software prototype which will demonstrate how this infrastructure should be designed and how it will improve collaboration amongst people and machines over the World Wide Web. The project has secured the backing of the Austrian Ministry for Education, Science and Culture who will provide a test case in the cultural sector. GRISINO is proof that Austrian research in Information Technology is at the leading edge of international scientific efforts. All partners are well established players in the European Framework Programmes and in competitive national research tracks.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2006-03-01"^^ . "2008-09-30"^^ . . . "HomeUWB (Ultra Wideband Mixed CMOS Technologies for Wireless Home Networks Beyond UMTS)" . "

• What is Ultra-Wide Band (UWB)?

\r\n

The term “Ultra-Wide Band” (UWB) refers to a new form of wireless data transmission formerly only used by the military. UWB works by sending short radio pulses over a very wide frequency spectrum using a very low transmission power. Compared to the currently available devices equipped with Wireless LAN (WLAN, IEEE Standards 802.11a/b/g, “Wi-Fi”), UWB is expected to increase the maximal data rate from 54 Mbit/s up to 1000 Mbit/s. The range of ultra wideband is, however, shorter than that of the
\r\nexisting solutions: instead of a range of 100 m (and more), UWB is aimed at distances of up to 10m. The high data rate will in the future enable the wireless transmission of high definition television images, for example from a DVD player to a video projector. A further application of UWB is the wireless connection of peripherals to a PC (“Wireless-USB interface”) with data-rates of up to 480 Mbit/s.

\r\n

• Fit-IT Project “Home-UWB”

\r\n

The project focuses on the evaluation of the technical feasibility of a UWB module. Integration of such a system into a silicon chip poses technical challenges for the project, while at the same time keeping competitive cost and low power consumption. Due to its complexity, this goal can only be reached in close cooperation of research and industry. Therefore, within the scope of the project, Infineon Technologies AG and the Vienna University of Technology have initiated a cooperation to be able to take advantage of the
\r\nalready existing know-how in an optimal way.

\r\n

• Results so far

\r\n

The first phase of the project mainly dealt with the evaluation of possible concepts for an ultra wideband system. So far the missing consensus in the UWB standardisation board on the basic type of transmission (e.g. coding and modulation) has presented a problem. A potential concept of an integrated chip was developed for the currently favoured option (Multi-band OFDM).

\r\n

During the second phase of the project, the focus of the activities was on the development of integrated circuit topologies to be able to verify the feasibility of the required modules. Based on the module concepts, appropriate test circuits were developed and produced. A module developed at Vienna University of Technology is a comparator with a sampling rate of up to 2GS/s with integrated circuits for verifying the test equipment. Moreover, a comparator with sampling rates of 3GS/s has already been
\r\noptimised with the help of simulations. Infineon Technologies AG has developed a novel frequency synthesizer. The target frequency range (3-7 GHz) was already reached with the first prototype module, verifying that it is possible to fulfil the extreme requirements of a frequency settling time shorter than 10ns. These test circuits have paved the way for the development of a production chipset for ultra wideband systems.

"@en . "2003-07-01"^^ . "2005-06-30"^^ . . . "IDIOM - Information Diffusion across Interactive Online Media" . "

Recent advances in collaborative Web technology are governed by strong network effects and the harnessing of collective intelligence through customer-self service and algorithmic data management. As a result, information spreads rapidly across Web sites, blogs, Wiki applications, and direct communication channels between members of online communities who utilize these services. The IDIOM project (http://kmi.tugraz.at/idiom) will support and investigate electronic interactivity by means of a service-oriented architecture. This architecture includes ontology-based tools to build and maintain contextualized information spaces, a framework for analyzing content diffusion and interaction patterns within these spaces, and interface technology that enables users to switch between semantic and geospatial topologies. IDIOM introduces Knowledge Planets as a radically new interface metaphor that leverages the new generation of geo-browsing platforms such as NASA World Wind and Google Earth as a front-end for its portfolio of semantic services.
\r\n
\r\nLinguists define "Idiom" as an expression whose meaning is different from the literal meanings of its component words. Similarly, the study of information diffusion promises insights that cannot be inferred from individual network elements. Despite growing research interest, the “Web 2.0” is still dominated by prototypes and mash-ups. At the same time, media monitoring and corporate knowledge management projects often lack analytical frameworks, focus on one particular medium, or neglect the dual role of users as consumers and producers of information. IDIOM will address these gaps to reveal fundamental mechanisms of information diffusion across media with distinct interactive characteristics, providing a set of generic services to analyze the production and consumption of electronic content simultaneously.The innovative use of geospatial technology and its tight integration with semantic services represent key success factors of IDIOM

"@en . "2006-11-01"^^ . "2009-04-30"^^ . . . "Integrated Radar Systems in LTCC" . "

The objective of the described project is the development and compact integration of ultra wide bandwidth Silicon Germanium semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) by means of low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) techniques in a ìsystem in packageî (SIP)-like manner for miniaturized automotive radar sensors in the 76-81 GHz frequency band. The proposal specifically addresses the call´s focus on Sensorik zur Anbindung aktueller und zukünftiger SoCs und SiPs. Due to the miniaturization and
\r\nintegration, a very cost-effective solution can be obtained, which nonetheless offers the capability of operating with several broadband antennas. This enables the application of novel signal processing algorithms like digital beamforming or space-time adaptive processing to enhance the performance in terms of angle accuracy, resolution and azimuth field of view. The vision of a radar based 360 degree surveillance system of the carís environment will necessitate extremely small, low-power sensor nodes,
\r\nto allow integration into the car-body and make the sensors itself ìinvisibleî. Clearly, the design of the 79 GHz multi-channel transceiver IC alone is a challenge on its own, which can only be successfully tackled by fully relying on the existing design know-how for 77 GHz building blocks gathered at DICE.

\r\n

However, to really make the whole system performance adequate for this vision the integration of the antennas and the LTCC substrate material have to be taken jointly into account.
\r\nThe proposed research project will address the following issues:

\r\n
    \r\n
  1. Specifications for highly integrated radar frontend ICs enabling multiple beam/antenna configurations.
    2. \r\n
  2. Development of RF-ICs fabricated in Silicon-Germanium (SiGe:C) technology aimed at multiple beam/antenna configurations for radar sensors capable of operating in the 76-81 GHz frequency range.
    3. \r\n
  3. Simulation and development of wideband antenna structures using LTCC.
    4. \r\n
  4. Integration of RF-SoCs together with up to four wideband antennas (76-81 GHz) on LTCC.
    5. \r\n
"@en . "2008-10-01"^^ . "2010-09-30"^^ . . . "iTire - Intelligent Tire" . "

Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) have become an important safety feature in modern vehicles. Some countries already introduced new legislation which enforces the use of TPMS. Today the electronic direct Tire Pressure Modules are mounted on the rims of the wheels. They are powered by small batteries and transmit pressure data to the vehicle via an RF link. In future much more information such as tire temperature, contact area, vertical load and slip angle shall be captured by tire monitoring systems and furthermore lifecycle management and identification shall be supported. Therefore, the TPMS modules have to be mounted directly at the inner-liner of on the tires instead of rims. This introduces big challenges in terms of miniaturisation, weight reduction and enhancement of functionalities of the new future Intelligent Tire Modules. Bulky components like battery or crystal need to be substituted by alternative realisation concepts. Research activities are ongoing to investigate generation of electric power out of the mechanical acceleration energy of the rotating wheel. Bulk Acoustic Wave (BAW) devices are evaluated as potential replacement for the crystal. Nevertheless, there remains still a lot of open questions: How to operate the System when the vehicle stands still? What is the best frequency for BAW integration and data transmission through the tire into the vehicle’s control unit? Is it possible to power the intelligent tire modules via an RF signal and how can this be achieved without introducing additional components and costs for the car manufacturer? Which is the optimum antenna geometry in terms of efficiency, robustness and miniaturisation? How can the type of the tire, its life history and its position on the vehicle be identified and detected? Those questions will be addressed in the proposed project by competent and renown project partners in the field of radio frequency technologies, antenna theory and integrated circuit design and vehicle dynamic testing. Outcome of the project shall be Intelligent Tire Prototype Modules which clearly demonstrate feasibility of Tire mounted modules with extended functionalities to significantly further improve safety of operation of vehicles at the point where we are confronted with the strongest and most critical mechanical interaction between vehicle and environment.

"@en . "2008-04-01"^^ . "2010-03-31"^^ . . . "M-CFD - Meteodisciplinary Computational Fluid Dynamics" . "

In computational fluid dynamics (CFD), currently two fields of applications are established:

\r\n
  • technical applications: e.g. in vehicles, aerospace, machinery, plants.
  • meteorological weather simulations: forecasting and nowcasting, climate.
    • \r\n
\r\n

Both fields are based on principles of computational fluid dynamics. However, they differ significantly in mathematical and physical parameters. Due to the nonlinear iterative solution procedure, significantly different analysis algorithms are used to obtain convergent solutions for both problems.

\r\n

The project aims at developing an interdisciplinary approach for modelling and simulation of numerical fluid dynamics of local environmental flows and winds. Typical examples for such simulations are: simulation of extreme weather situations in alpine terrains for local load determination of buildings, simulation of sand and snow drifts including erosion and depositions, pollution particle drift (dust, soot) and accumulation at sensible settlement areas or natural environments.

\r\n

The major solutions that have to be provided are combinations of technical and meteorological principles. Some of the basic mathematical and physical problems which must be addressed are: high spread of length scale and of time scale, highly complex boundary conditions and interaction of physical parameters of flow phases, lack of suitable models for particle erosion and deposition, feedback of depositions to flow changes and large scale turbulence models.

\r\n

The numerical developments will include online coupling to weather stations and to a continuously operating Austrian weather model. The project shall demonstrate the feasibility of the simulation approach by an example of a mountain ridge of about 20-30 km2. The model includes large length at geological scales, localisation zones as well as details like buildings or cornices.

"@en . "2008-10-01"^^ . "2011-09-30"^^ . . . "M2RX - Mobile Multicast Receiver" . "

Feature-rich mobile handsets are the utmost market desire. The M2RX project will boost and extent the functionality of future mobile equipment by providing SoC concepts and solutions for upcoming broadcast and multicast services (e.g. TV, distance learning, civil protection, ...) and combining them with existing systems (UMTS, GPRS, GSM, etc.).

\r\n

To meet this challenging goal novel circuit and system concepts need to be created by using advanced semiconductor technologies. They shall enable new applications in the area of mobile communication. Thus, low cost, low features size and energy efficiency are of utmost importance to enable future products for the mass market. This will enable a number of new mobile applications in the portable, battery-operated, energy efficient, low cost and mobile digital environment.

\r\n

Enabling broadcast or multi cast technology, allows much more information flow to the end user than point-to-point connections such as GSM or UMTS. Frequency bands can be used, which are not occupied by mobile standards so far. By compromising the personalized information content with the information throughput, the number of new base stations won´t increase in such a fast way. Thus, lowering cost as well as improving the environmental care aspect is a positive side effect of the M2RX project.

"@en . "2008-02-01"^^ . "2010-01-31"^^ . . . "MAGNIFICENT - Multifaceted Analysis of News Articles for Intelligent User- and Context-Sensitive Presentation" . "2009-03-01"^^ . "2011-02-28"^^ . . . "MEDVIS 3D - Blood Flow Simulation in Intracranial Aneurysms" . "

The various forms of vascular diseases are complex in their origins and their manifestations. In order to diagnose, prevent and treat such diseases detailed knowledge of blood flow is essential. Vessels respond to stimuli and adapt to changes in blood flow and blood pressure.

\r\n

Hemodynamic (blood flow mechanic) factors are strongly correlated with the localization of atheriosclerotic plaque. Atheriosclerosis is primarily responsible for strokes, heart attacks and aneurysms, which are among the most frequent causes of death in western countries. In many cases the time of reaction is an important factor in the treatment of these diseases and is crucial for the convalescence of the patient. A decision support tool for the physician can therefore play a major role for recovery. An easy-to-use software tool should be developed aiming to provide simulation results of human blood flow through a virtual vascular system.

\r\n

Since every patient's vessel geometry is unique it is inevitable to have this geometry
\r\nreconstructed for each human being separately. Based on modern medical imaging data an automated reconstruction and visualization library will be created as first step. Moreover, the gained geometry information will be fed into a computer simulation together with blood and tissue parameters building up a virtual model of the patient's vascular system. Starting with measured blood velocity a simulation procedure will iterate and calculate pressure and vessel deformation of the whole system for discrete time steps. Results have to be visualized in 3D after the process.

"@en . "2009-01-01"^^ . "2010-12-31"^^ . . . "MESACTIF: Modular Embedded System for ACTive Intelligent Fixtures" . "

Was passiert, wenn klassischer Maschinenbau und Komponenten revolutionärer
\r\nInformationstechnologie zu einem modularen Werkstück-Positioniersystem
\r\nvereint werden? Man kann den gegensätzlichen Anforderungen entsprechen und hohe Dynamik, hohe Kräfte und höchste Präzision erzielen!

\r\n

Das Ergebnis dieses Projekts ist ein hochdynamisches, mechatronisches Werkstück-Positioniersystem. Die Basis bilden, neben der verteilten Regelung, piezoelektrische Hochleistungs-Aktuatoren, die Bearbeitungsfehler im sub-μm-Bereich ausgleichen und prozessbedingte Vibrationen bei üblichen Bearbeitungskräften kompensieren. Auf diese Weise lassen sich nun komplexe Konturen fertigen und dabei die Genauigkeit der Maschine um den Faktor 10 erhöhen.

\r\n

Auf Seiten der Aktuatorik werden neue Kombinationen von Regelungskonzepten gemeinsam mit innovativen Ansätzen im Bereich der Aktuator- Lagerung entwickelt. Schließlich musste das Projektteam PROFACTOR Produktionsforschungs GmbH gemeinsam mit den Firmenpartnern Anton Anger GmbH und M-Tech GmbH den extremen Anforderungen an Präzision und Dynamik bei gleichzeitig hohen Bearbeitungskräften Rechnung tragen. Auch der Designprozess gestaltete sich anspruchvoll, um alle technischen Aspekte zu integrieren: Wenn eine Konstruktion sehr leicht ausgelegt ist wie in diesem Fall, dann verformt sie sich in sich selbst. Genau das darf aber nicht sein, noch dazu, wenn man auf Mikrometer genau positionieren
\r\nmuss.
\r\nDer Prototyp ist gegenwärtig ein 190x190x90 mm3 großer Bauteil, der seine informationstechnischen, aktuatorischen und sensorischen Komponenten auf kleinstem Bauraum integriert hat. Dennoch ist es möglich in sechs Freiheitsgraden zu positionieren. In Summe sind 16 kleine Piezoaktuatoren auf engstem Raum enthalten. Das Ergebnis aus dem Projekt MESACTIF wird Herstellern von Werkzeugmaschinen mittel- und langfristig neue Märkte eröffnen: Fertigung neuer, innovativer Teile mit höchster Präzision und gleichzeitig hohem Durchsatz.

"@en . "2003-01-01"^^ . "2004-12-31"^^ . . . "Metadesigner - Meta-Design Builder: A framework for the definition of end-user interfaces for product mass-customization" . "

In recent years firms have realised that including customers in the design process strengthens customer relationships and provides additional value. Computer controlled production facilities are available and capable of supporting mass-customisation. Consumers are becoming more and more comfortable with online shopping. Rendering technologies have reached the quality levels of photography. What is missing is the content. Rapid prototyping is the major new trend in manufacturing technology. Novel methods for 3D printing permit the greatest freedom in shape design. Various materials, such as paper, plaster, plastic, and even metal can be printed in 3D, and cost efficiency is improving drastically. CNC machines for casting, molding, machining and drawing are standard today.

\r\n

The revolutionary innovation of CNC machines is that (in principle) they allow varying the tool parameters with every single produced item. While manufacturing technology is jumping ahead, end-user interface technology is lacking behind. Many products are not customized today because of the cost of providing an easy-to-use end user interface, basically a customized, web-based 3D modelling toolkit. A number of projects exist in the area of mass-customisation but almost all are based on the concept of only swapping pre-defined parts. Three dimensional shape customisation integrated in online shops is offered at this stage only by Fluidforms and its very few competitors. The possible ways a product can be modified is defined by a meta-design. At this point a meta-design requires in depth knowledge of various technologies, mathematics and programming. To enable the navigation of a meta-design or the configuration of a product, not only the product domain, but also manufacturing technology, web technology, 3D programming and rendering must be mastered. 

\r\n

The goal of the META-DESIGNER project is to develop an enabling technology for creative minds with knowledge of consumer psychology, of design and market trends. It will let them create meta-designs and present them in optimal ways, online, without the need to deal with intricate technical aspects. The GML technology developed at TU Graz is ideally suited as a technical basis for this. Mass customization is of strategic relevance for the European manufacturing industry. Austria in particular can not compete with low-wage countries in the area of mass production ñ it can sustain only with highly sophisticated, custom-tailored consumer products. Product customization was pioneered in high-value domains such as the automotive industry or PCs (Dell). It is now finding its ways into the mainstream market, and shoes (Nike ID), coffee cups, T-shirts, can be customized online fulfilling the apparently overwhelming desire to purchase a unique product. The potential, however, is much more far-reaching. Sooner or later, virtually all industrial products will be subject to customization ñ mobile phones, jewelry, coffee machines, front doors, bricks, furniture, facades, picture frames, standard lamps, and even garden gnomes and many more.

\r\n

META-DESIGNER technology will allow companies to realize good-looking, easy to use end-user interfaces for customizing any such product. The interface will assert that only producible items are designed, and still leave unprecedented creative freedom to the customer. The META-DESIGNER project will reduce time to market and enable automated high quality product presentation all integrated in standard e-commerce platforms.  META-DESIGNER will make it easy to sell first, produce later, for less costs and charge more for it.

"@en . "2009-03-01"^^ . "2012-02-28"^^ . . . "MICROSENSE - Adaptive 3D Sensing in Industrial Micro Inspection" . "2009-05-01"^^ . "2012-04-30"^^ . . . "MIMOSA - Multi Non-Linear Structural Condition Modelling and Assessment" . "

Our entire infrastructure is aging. Assessment on its function is most important for their management. The traditional approach, namely visual inspections and subjective assessment, has not changed for a long time. On the other hand new knowledge from European research projects became available to VCE. This offers the opportunity to create an entirely new approach to modelling simulation and assessment of our infrastructure using sophisticated mathematical solutions and simulation routines.

\r\n

Since the collapse of the Reichsbrücke in Vienna on 1st of August 1976 Central Europe has been leading world wide in bridge assessment. VCE has a large share in this field and is acknowledged as one of the world leaders in dynamic structural health monitoring. After the collapse of the Mississippi Bridge on 1st of August 2007 it became obvious that it is high time for a next generation of high-tech computer based systems to support the managers of our infrastructure which are confronted with shrinking budgets.

\r\n

MIMOSA is determined to develop the necessary models to allow online updating of the multi non linear behaviour of our infrastructure. The product will be a Modelling and Simulation Tool Box able to provide the managers of the infrastructure with all necessary information to carry out their job and to optimize the economic side of this exercise.

\r\n

Download:
\r\nmimosa - overview.pdf
\r\nANNEX-1_2009-06-30_Current Practice.pdf
\r\nANNEX-3_Technical Summary_ModSim.pdf

"@en . "2009-01-01"^^ . "2011-12-31"^^ . . . "MISTRAL Measurable intelligent and secure semantic extraction and retrieval of multimedia data" . "

Multimedia data has a rich and complex structure in terms of inter- and intra-document references and can be an extremely valuable source of information. However, this potential is severely limited until and unless effective methods for semantic extraction and semantic-based cross-media exploration and retrieval can be devised. Within this context, the MISTRAL project focuses on new research in the field of “multi-modal meeting recordings”. The project aims at smart semi-automatic solutions for semantic annotation and enrichment of multi-modal data from meeting recordings and meeting-related documents. At present, face-to-face and virtual meetings increasingly take place in business processes. Managers and knowledge workers spend up to 80% of their working time in meetings for distinct purposes, e.g. decision making, problem solving, learning and training, reaching a common understanding, or exploration of new ideas. The economic potential of MISTRAL lies in the large financial and human efforts which companies often invest to manage meeting information.
\r\nFrom the technological point of view, meetings can be recorded using different modalities. Usually, cameras and microphones are applied for this purpose, but also other specialised modalities are conceivable, such as device-usage or click-behaviour recorders. Still, all relevant information remains hidden or beyond users’ reach into those distinct multi-modal streams. Thus, in order to efficiently and contextually manage the knowledge addressed and generated in meetings, the MISTRAL system enables semantic processing, enrichment and integration of multi-modal data. The software framework is based on a flexible, service-based architecture composed of specialised units and methods for uni-modal semantic information extraction, multi-modal merging and enrichment as well as semantic-based cross-media exploration and retrieval employing concepts at different semantic levels. In addition, MISTRAL provides an annotation tool for tagging multi-modal streams, sets of annotated test data and an open benchmarking platform.

\r\n

The MISTRAL system makes possible different access possibilities and covers various information needs for meeting recordings from low- to high-level semantics. Some examples: Video unit (identification and tracking of persons): who left the meeting room and for how long? Audio unit (voice activity detection and gender estimation): how many women attended the meeting? Multi-modal merging and enrichment: which topics have been addressed during one or more meetings by a specific person? Or, has there been a dialogue regarding a specific topic? And finally, cross-media exploration and retrieval: MISTRAL provides a specialised search service and distinct visualisations in order to access and explore the semantic spaces of meeting recordings.

"@en . "2005-01-01"^^ . "2006-12-31"^^ . . . "MixSVM - Mixed-Precision Support Vector Machine Classification on FPGAs" . "

Support vector machines (SVMs) are a set of related supervised learning methods allowing construction of maximum margin classifiers. SVMs have proven to be highly efficient in a wide range of applications and there is rising interest in implementing SVMs on embedded computing platforms. Specifically programmable logic has proven to be a viable implementation platform as its inherent parallelism can be well exploited by SVM implementations. This proposal deals with the implementation of the SVM classification component (in contrast to the learning component) on FPGAs.
\nCurrently, selection of support-vectors (learning) and implementation of the classification process are typically considered as two separate tasks. As these tasks have conflicting primary optimization goals (maximum distance classifiers vs. efficient implementation), the result is usually suboptimal from the respective other point of view. Current practice is to quantize support vectors to minimize implementation cost. This is, however, a highly non-linear operation and hinders development of learning techniques which include hardware implementation cost into their minimization function.

\n

We aim at providing a near-optimal implementation of SVM classification for the widest range of SVMs possible (number of support vectors, value range, kernel) with minimal support-vector quantization. We believe that this can be achieved by exploiting the support-vectors' sparsity structure, varying bitwidths and the fact that its values remain constant. Rather than limiting the support vectors to a single bitwidth, we group them into classes of similar bitwidth and provide specialized processing elements. Specialization of the processing elements includes selection of the most efficient number representation for a given bitwidth and kernel (fixed-point, floating-point, logarithmic) The result will be a custom-tailored mixed-precision implementation for a given set of support-vectors. We will implement a tool which generates VHDL for a given set of support vectors and will extensively scan the solution space with the goal to derive performance models for SVM implementations which can be used to guide future implementation-cost aware SVM learning.

"@en . "2009-02-01"^^ . "2012-01-31"^^ . . . "MLFS - Multilayer Freeform Structures" . "

The implementation of freeform shapes in architecture is an area which encompasses great challenges in engineering as well as novel design ideas, and which consequently has high public exposure. However, the geometric basics of doubly curved surfaces realized as steel/glass constructions with planar faces remained largely unexplored. Planar quadrilateral faces and truly freeform geometries seemed mutually exclusive. Only recently the high potential of optimized mesh geometries has been realized: the aim of the present research project is the computation and interactive design of meshes with specific properties relevant for the construction process. They are not only capable of realizing the entire spectrum of freeform shapes, but at the same time provide the basis for a multi-layer support structure with planar faces and optimized joints without geometric torsion. This ambitious aim will be achieved by a cooperation of a critical mass of researchers in academia together with a key player in industry. We will work on meshes with planar faces and face/face and edge/edge offset properties, on mesh parallelism, on subdivision methods for interactive design, on the problem of segmenting a surface into an optimized mesh, on mathematical optimization procedures for meshes, and on unconventional patterns like hexagonal meshes. Only in some of these areas partial solutions are available by now. Fundamental research provides the basis for a successful implementation of optimization, visualization and design techniques, which is a basic necessity for applicability of results. If incorporated into an engineering software environment which includes e.g. statics and structural analysis, geometry takes an active role in the overall design cycle of architecture.

"@en . "2007-03-01"^^ . "2010-06-30"^^ . . . "MMADC Multi-Mode Sigma-Delta Analog-to-Digital Converters for 3rd-Generation Mobile Phones" . "

\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

Multi-Mode Sigma-Delta Analog-to-Digital Converters for 3rd Generation Mobile Phones

\r\n The new generation of mobile communication requires parallel operation of, or at least, fast switching between different mobile phone standards like GSM, UMTS and W-CDMA. While this leads to a drastic increase in complexity of the mobile terminal, it must not result in additional space (size of mobile equipment) or power dissipation (talk and standby times). These parameters are even expected to further improve. \r\n

Design and production of today's cellular phones is feasible only through system level integration and the availability of advanced manufacturing technologies. Modern cellular phones consist of three major integrated circuits (ICs) – the RF component, which amplifies the received antenna signal, the baseband and audio IC, which demodulates the amplified antenna signal and converts it into speech, audio, or data signals, and the power management IC, generating and managing all power sources required by the cellular phone. A key component in the receiver data-path is the analog to digital converter (ADC), which converts the analog signal arriving from the antenna to a digital signal, which is much better suited for the subsequent processing. While this ADC is often placed in the baseband and audio IC, this project benefits from the advantages of the ADC integration into the power management IC, like a fabrication technology better suited for analog design and a better choice of supply voltages.  

\r\n

In the course of MMADC a configurable ADC for GSM and UMTS mode was developed and key components fabricated on a testchip. The ADC consists of a sigma-delta modulator and a decimation processor. Both elements allow fast switching between contradictory technical specifications of mobile phone standards, like high resolution and low bandwidth for GSM and high bandwidth and low resolution for UMTS. With this approach, chip area (production costs) and power consumption can be reduced considerably compared to parallel integration of ADCs for both standards.

\r\n

MMADC is a cooperation between the School of Electronics at Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (FH-Technikum Kärnten), the Institute of Electronics at Graz University of Technology and austriamicrosystems AG as industrial partner. Research activities of both academic partners in the fields of multi-rate filter processors (Carinthia University of Applied Sciences) as well as system modelling and analog design (TU-Graz) have been intensified with the support of the industrial partner.   \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\r\n

 

\r\n

 

"@en . "2004-03-01"^^ . "2006-02-28"^^ . . . "MobiSem - Mobile Semantics: Offline Availability of RDF Repositories" . "

More and more applications are based on Semantic Web technology and use RDF as its data infrastructure. Also, the desire for mobility is significantly increasing, and often there are situations where no network connectivity is found, thus data in the form of RDF must be made available offline. This leads to the following research questions which will be addressed in the course of the proposed project:

\r\n

• How can large RDF datasets be replicated and synchronized with minimum effort of
\r\ntime and transfer capacity under the consideration of conflicts caused by parallel
\r\nupdates?
\r\n• How can subsets of large RDF datasets be chosen for offline availability under the restrictions imposed by the caching system, including storage capacity, transfer
\r\nbandwidth, and time restrictions?
\r\n• How can user interfaces be designed so that users not familiar with the details of
\r\nSemantic Web technology can interact with such replication systems?

\r\n

We propose an extension to the existing infrastructure of Semantic Web applications,
\r\nwhich are mainly based on RDF stores and SPARQL endpoints. We aim to interpose
\r\ncomponents that analyze various information sources of semantic applications (including ontologies, queries, and expressed user interest) and use this for selection of parts of the RDF data bases, which are then made available offline using a proxy SPARQL endpoint. Also, we aim to develop user interfaces for such a system: It is necessary to select graphs for offline availability, and also to resolve conflicts that cannot be resolved automatically. For these tasks, we plan to design and implement interfaces that can be used by nonexpert users.

"@en . "2008-03-01"^^ . "2010-08-31"^^ . . . "MoDECS (Model-based Development of distributed Embedded control Systems)" . "

Bei sicherheitskritischer Software, wie zum Beispiel Flugzeugsteuerungen, Motor-management oder Bremsassistenten, ist das Zeitverhalten ein wesentlicher Faktor für die korrekte Funktion. Es genügt hier nicht alleine, dass Berechnungen richtige Ergebnisse liefern, sondern die Werte müssen zusätzlich zum richtigen Zeitpunkt zur Verfügung stehen. Wenn die Software schließlich noch auf mehrere Prozessoren verteilt ist, wird diese Aufgabenstellung für Entwickler schwer lösbar. Heutige Ansätze erlauben außerdem nur, dass die Software für bestimmte Plattformen – also bestimmte Prozessoren, Kommunikationsnetze und Betriebssysteme – entwickelt wird. Ändern sich diese, ist die Software meist aufwändig zu ändern und zu testen.

\r\n

Im Projekt MoDECS wurde eine deskriptive Notation zur Beschreibung des Zeitverhaltens entwickelt, die sogenannte Timing Definition Language, TDL, und es konnte anhand praxisrelevanter Aufgabenstellungen gezeigt werden, dass die Konzepte nutzbringend anwendbar sind. Ein Compiler generiert ausführbaren Code aus einem TDL-Modul. Die TDL basiert auf einer Zeit-Abstraktion, die im Rahmen des Giotto-Projektes an der Universität
\r\nvon Kalifornien, Berkeley (Prof. Henzinger) vorgeschlagen wurde: Anstatt wie bisher die tatsächliche Ausführungszeit einer Softwarefunktion auf einer bestimmten Plattform zu betrachten, wird das Zeitverhalten mittels LET (Logical Execution Time) beschrieben. LET ermöglicht erstmals, dass das Verhalten von Echtzeitsoftware unabhängig von einer Plattform beschrieben wird.

\r\n

Ein wichtiger Eingangsparameter für die automatisierte Code-Erzeugung aus TDL-Modulen ist die WCET (Worst Case Execution Time). In diesem Forschungsfeld wurde auf die Erfahrungen der Real-Time Systems Gruppe der TU Wien (ao. Prof. Peter Puschner) zurückgegriffen. Die Herausforderung in diesem Projektteil war, eine WCET-Analyse durchzuführen, ohne dass die Entwickler den Code um Hinweise auf dessen Zeitverhalten ergänzen müssen

"@en . "2003-07-01"^^ . "2005-08-31"^^ . . . "ModelCVS: A Semantic Infrastructure for Model-based Tool Integration" . "

With the rise of model-driven software development, more and more development tasks are being performed on models. A rich variety of modeling tools is available supporting different tasks, such as model creation, model simulation, model checking, and code generation. Seamless exchange of models among different modeling tools increasingly becomes a crucial prerequisite for effective software development processes. Due to lack of interoperability, however, it is often difficult to use tools in combination, thus the potential of model-driven software development cannot be fully utilized – unless we find some scalable way of integration.

\r\n

We are aiming at providing a semantic infrastructure for model-based tool integration, enabling to facilitate any tool appropriate for the modeling task at hand. The key innovations provided are a set of scalable architectural model integration patterns supported by a high-level metamodel integration language, thus going beyond existing low-level model transformation approaches. Ontology-based metamodel integration considerably lowers the manual effort required for tool integration, enabling a novel synergic use of technologies from the model engineering and ontology engineering domains. An open knowledge base for tool integration captures essential knowledge about modeling languages and tools in terms of ontologies, fostering reuse within and beyond the scope of this project.

\r\n

These innovations will be realized within the ModelCVS prototype and case study. The core of the system will be based on a versioning system such as CVS, thus providing a loosely-coupled and well-proofed integration architecture. Transparent transformation of models between different tools’ languages and exchange formats, as well as versioning capabilities exploiting the rich syntax and semantics of models represent the key functionalities of ModelCVS. In this way, ModelCVS will serve as both, a research vehicle and testbed for exploring applications of semantic technologies in model-based tool integration and a prototype for a succeeding industrial product.

"@en . "2006-01-01"^^ . "2007-12-31"^^ . . . "MultiACCESS Multi Service Access Node Development Platform" . "

The numerical simulation of entire printed circuit boards (PCB) with the aid of the finite element method (FEM) or the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method is not feasible by currently available computer resources (size of memory and clock rate) of personal computers. Accurate investigations have shown that individual components (i.e. crosstalk of microstrips or a nonlinear transformer) represent a big challenge in numerical simulations. On the other hand the requirements in the design of PCBs (higher clock rates, higher circuit densities, multilayered boards, etc.) increase continuously. The aim of the project MultiACCESS was to facilitate a sufficiently accurate simulation of the essential electromagnetic properties (signal integrity, minimized transmission delay, electromagnetic compatibility, etc.) of large PCBs in a broad frequency range routinely in the design phase. Large PCBs are employed in, among others, telecommunications. Data transfer by means of broad band DSL still exhibits large growth rates. Solutions are realized providing free access between different service-levels (ADSL, SHDSL, VDSL) and thus help to optimize the costumers costs. Thus, the development of powerful numerical methods for the design of PCBs is of great importance. The approach was to provide adequate circuit models extracted from accurate field simulations. The simulation times of circuit models are essentially smaller than those of the corresponding field models and thus, are suitable to assist the design of PCBs. For the field simulation individual components on PCBs are considered separately and simulated by FEM in the frequency and in the time domain or by the FDTD in the time domain. Hereby the components are appropriately terminated by transfinite elements for FEM or by surface impedances for FDTD. Based on the field simulations of the individual components circuit representations in terms of input impedances, scattering parameters, etc. are extracted. Subsequently the individual circuits are assembled to one large circuit representing the entire PCB. Additionally, the computation times for the solution of the equation system resulting from FEM were attempted to be minimized using geometric multigrid techniques

"@en . "2004-03-01"^^ . "2006-10-31"^^ . . . "MyOntology - Open Ontology Environment for Semantic Web-based E-Commerce" . "

There is no doubt that the Web is one of the most important sales channels for many industries. One core task in using the Web for E-Commerce applications is the search for suitable suppliers. Unfortunately, using traditional search engines like Google for discovering suitable offerings is unsatisfying. This is due to several causes: Firstly, describing products in a meaningful way requires a high degree of detail. For example, we do not just need to search by coarse product categories (“cell phone”, “tumble drier”,…) but usually want to restrict potential matches by a combination of categories and constraints on product properties (“a color TV set that weighs less than 3 kilos and operates on 12 and 220 volts”). Secondly, there are often multiple natural languages used in parallel, e.g. German and English. Also, other challenges of text-based retrieval, like synonyms or homonyms are very relevant. Thirdly, products can be described and searched along multiple different perspectives, e.g. what the product is (example: a chemical substance, the shape and dimensions of a part) or what you can do with this product (example: purposes and usages).
\r\nThis representational complexity in combination with a pressing business need makes product and services discovery a promising application domain for using Semantic Web technology, in particular ontologies. However, we can see that one paramount problem for E-Commerce solutions based on Semantic Web technology is the lack of high-quality ontologies for products and services, in particular such that are up-to-date. Quantitative analysis has shown that, due to the continuous product innovation, the engineering-centric creation of ontologies may be too slow.
\r\nThe popular approach of having ontologies carefully developed by a small number of individuals has substantial weaknesses. E.g., the ontology evolution is not under the full control of the ontology-user community. For example, missing entries cannot be added by any user who reveals the need for a new concept, but has to be added by the small group of creators instead. This slows down ontology evolution and it is very likely there will be a loss of user feedback. Also, users creating annotations cannot easily grasp the intension of a concept. There is a lack of communication between the ontology creator and the broader user community. This approach leads to a substantial time lag within the standardization process, as new product attributes (e.g. “built-in camera” in the case of mobile phones) can only be added months after the introduction of new features. Hence this approach cannot keep pace with the needs of innovative markets.
\r\nIn the OntoWorld project, we will use the infrastructure and culture of Wikis as an ontology workbench that fosters true collaborative, community-driven ontology creation and maintenance in the products and services domain, and establish a standardized framework for ontology-based products and services description for E-Commerce applications.

"@en . "2006-10-01"^^ . "2009-03-31"^^ . . . "NEXTWRAP Next Generation Web Wrapper Technologies" . "

This Fit-IT project aims at significant scientific and technological improvements of Web information extraction and annotation technologies. Companies operating in globally connected markets have an acute pain point in acquiring factual data from Web portals and extra- and intranet Web sites for a variety of their mission critical business processes, like procurement, quality assurance, or market monitoring. This project addresses the following aspects of this problem:

\r\n
  • Enabling visual data extraction from poorly structured sources such as PDF documents and 3270 screen images. We developed segmentation techniques to generate a taxonomy of document objects (such as columns and tables). Based on the low-level segmentation, an ontology is generated that uses various kinds of relationships between these objects and reasons on top of them. On the one hand, the document ontology can be used to export poorly structured documents to HTML and to understand the reading order of documents. Unlike other converters, this approach understands the structure instead of simply preserving the presentation. On the other hand, on top of the document ontology an interactive and visual data extraction can be performed. The application designer can select a sample, and the system uses graph similarity matching techniques to generalize this subgraph to match similar instances.
  • Enabling a visual information extraction system to deliver information into ontological knowledge bases. XML to RDF mappings for sample scenarios have been studied. A model generation step prior to the wrapping phase has been proposed, and visual mappings from the wrapper model to formats such as RDF schema and relational databases were prototyped.
  • Enabling the automated correction of tree-based wrappers in case of major changes in the structure of the input documents and thus improving robustness of data extraction. So far, techniques for an automated adaptation and repair of wrappers were considered for text-based grammatical wrappers only. An ample set of use cases and automatic test suite was put together to understand which kind of changes frequently occur. Schema matching techniques and AI heuristics are used in the creation of the change ontology.
    • \r\n
\r\n

Investigating new interface paradigms for wrapper generation. We investigated novel simplified web-based interfaces to facilitate wrapper construction by lay users. At the same time, we support the creation and maintenance of community-based ontologies. A prototype system called "htmlButler" is being developed; htmlButler allows users to create wrappers on single pages by merely clicking at one element or text block and the system understands and tokenizes the content. The tokenization library, developed within this project, is based on an extensible ontology - which is mainly a hierarchy of syntactic and semantic concepts. Using tokenization, the system presents several alternatives for later change notification of the user by the system. These alternatives correspond to the different interpretations of the possible intentions of the user.

"@en . "2005-01-01"^^ . "2007-03-31"^^ . . . "OMOR - Optimisation Methods in Object Recognition" . "

The goal of the project is to develop robust and efficient techniques for the recognition and localisation of objects in images and video sequences.
\r\nThis goal can be subdivided into the following aims:

\r\n
  • Improve the use colour information in object recognition – for example, illumination changes and shadows should be taken into account in the feature calculations.
  • Combine image patch and segmentation techniques – these techniques often provide access to complementary information.
  • Use models of the relative positions of interest points and segmentation regions to describe objects.
  • Use optimisation methods to locate the objects in images and videos based on the configurations of interest points and segmentation regions.
    • \r\n
\r\n

The solution to the object recognition problem is important in the following two applications:

\r\n
  • Content-based image and video retrieval: the amount of visual information that we have access to is exploding, but the techniques for searching through this visual information are not well developed. Algorithms that can recognise objects in images and videos will allow information extracted directly from an image or video to be used in locating it using a search engine.
  • Video surveillance: automating the analysis of video streams from surveillance cameras will help in coping with this flood of information. Object recognition algorithms can be applied for example to recognise if an object lying in a surveyed location represents a potential threat (such as an unattended suitcase) or not (such as an empty bottle).
    • \r\n
"@en . "2008-03-01"^^ . "2011-02-28"^^ . . . "OntoReA - Ontology-based Reflective World Model for Autonomous Agents" . "

Today's distributed physical systems, e.g., for automated manufacturing or logistics have to deal with increasing complexity and a need to adapt to rapidly changing environments. Traditional hierarchical and centralized approaches are not adequate for control of such distributed systems and can fail due to insufficient capabilities to cope with high degree of complexity and practical requirements for robustness and flexibility. A useful approach for decentralized control is to employ autonomous software agents. This approach can be used in distributed physical systems by assigning software agents to physical components.

\r\n

Such a component can be viewed as an embodiment of its assigned software agent. Viewed from the other side, the software agent serves as an artificial “intelligence” of the physical component. The assigned software agent is supposed to guide the physical component to show useful local behavior and to cooperate with other such components. Based on the local behavior, the overall control of the distributed physical system would achieve desired global behavior. As an extension to the usual approaches for software agents, we propose to integrate a reflective symbolic “world” model based on ontologies into each software agent. Given an ontology of the “world” surrounding the agent and its assigned physical component, the agent is provided with a realtime representation of its environment built from sensor data and communication with other agents. In addition, this model integrates all the information that represents the physical component associated with the software agent. This information includes a symbolic representation of the “self” of this component and its relations to surrounding environment (“world”). In this new sense, the model becomes reflective. This reflection provides a clean representation of the relevant knowledge and information. We conjecture that it will facilitate the self-localization of the embodiment and cooperation with other components. In addition, it may facilitate the reasoning and the acting upon the “self”.

"@en . "2008-03-01"^^ . "2010-08-31"^^ . . . "OntoUCP A Unified Communication Platform both for Machine-Machine and Human-Machine Interaction based on Ontologies" . "

Today’s communication protocols for machine-machine interaction are still low-level from a semantic point of view. Most communication protocols are based on a simple request-response model or on the message-passing metaphor. Hence, these protocols are hard to understand for humans without explicit technical knowledge and they support predefined interaction scenarios only.

\r\n

Developing user interfaces for human-computer interaction is hard, error-prone and expensive. Most current models of interaction design build on scenarios and task analysis. We think that interaction design should be more along the lines of communica­tion between humans. With this motivation, we developed a new approach to modeling interaction design based on insights from theories of human communica­tion. From such discourse models, we aim for auto­mated genera­tion of consistent multi-modal user interfaces on multiple devices.
\r\n
\r\nThese discourse models will also facilitate a unification of human-machine and machine-machine communication on a “high” semantic level. Introducing higher semantics into communication protocols allows more “natural” (human-like) communication and thus supports mixed-initiative dialogues. This unification enables scenarios where a machine initiates a communication, without having to know whether the partners are machines or humans. Our approach enables building of high-level communication interfaces enabling easier integration and interoperability of systems especially in the areas of enterprise application integration and ubiquitous computing, as well as a gradual transition towards autonomous self-managed systems. The markets of these domains from today’s point of view hold high potential for communication platforms, since a strong growth in the next years is expected.
\r\nThe goal of our project is a solution for a high-level communication platform based on ontologies. It involves an already developed discourse ontology for representing human communication theory as well as a declarative language based upon the discourse ontology and domain ontologies for describing the communication. We currently build an engine that interprets our discourse models and ontologies for enabling the dialogues.
\r\n
\r\nFinally, the project provides advantages for, e.g., elderly and challenged persons due to its support of multi-modality and easy integration of special devices, thus broadening the market of applications based on the communication platform.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2004-11-01"^^ . "2008-09-30"^^ . . . "OUTLIER - Online and UnaTtended Learning for Implicit Event Recognition" . "

The ever increasing number of cameras in surveillance system requires automatic video analysis in order to spot critical situations and to alert the monitoring personnel in a timely manner. While most current approaches in this area aim for detecting a large number of specific events on a large set of complex application scenarios, the goal of this project is to go far beyond state of the art by developing novel online learning methods to detect unusual situations in a camera specific scenario. We will exploit the huge amount of data available from a specific camera to reliably learn usual and unusual situations.

\r\n

In particular the OUTLIER project will carry out basic research in the following areas:

\r\n
  • Novel methods for semi-supervised learning in huge amounts of unlabeled data
  • Improved exemplar based learning methods for huge amounts of data
    • \r\n
\r\n

Special attention will be paid to avoid drifting and to optimize the sensitivity of learning methods. These generic learning algorithms will be applied for the detection of unusual situations in public places and traffic scenarios. Typical examples are fog and smoke, wrong way driving, lost goods and accidents. Unlike other approaches we do not want to model these situations explicitly and individually, but we will resort to learning to discriminate the usual situation from the unusual one.

"@en . "2009-07-01"^^ . "2011-06-30"^^ . . . "Pathfinder - Malicious Code Analysis and Detection" . "

Malware, such as viruses, worms, or spyware, is defined as software that fulfills the deliberately harmful intent of an attacker when run. Current systems to detect malicious code (such as virus scanners) are mostly based on syntactic signatures. Unfortunately, this approach necessitates frequent updates to the signature database and lacks the ability to identify malware code that mutates while reproducing or spreading across the network. In the Pathfinder project, we research techniques to obtain a more general and robust description of malicious code that is not affected by syntactic changes.
\r\nIn the run-up to the project the group around the Vienna University of Technology published several papers regarding the malicious code detection and analysis and developed the malicious code analyzer TTAnalyze. This protype executes an unknown program inside a PC emulation environment and logs all relevant calls. The result of such an execution run is a report that contains information to give an impression about the purpose and the functionality of the analyzed sample. Unfortunately, its analysis is based on a single execution trace only. In the Pathfinder project, we will develop a solution that addresses the problem of test coverage. The basic idea is that we explore multiple execution paths of a program under test, but the exploration of different paths is driven by monitoring how the code uses certain inputs.
\r\n
\r\nMalicious software not only poses a major threat to the security and privacy of computer users and their data. It is also responsible for a significant amount of financial loss (in 2005, the financial loss caused by malware was estimated to exceed 14 billion US dollars). Currently, anti-virus vendors have to perform malware analysis manually, a tedious and time-consuming task considering the fact that hundreds of malware sample are received every day. The Pathfinder project results can lead to the development of a novel virus scanner product that operates with behavioral profiles instead of signatures to improve the overall IT security
\r\n
\r\nSecure Business Austria will provide the project with its malware detection knowledge and will be responsible for the project mangement.
\r\nThe Vienna University of Technology will bring in its aforementioned expertise in program analysis and malware detection. Members of the Secure Systems Lab have already published a number of scientific papers on novel techniques for malware detection and anlaysis.
\r\nIkarus Software will contribute its comprehensive knowledge and expertise to the Pathfinder project.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2007-03-01"^^ . "2009-08-31"^^ . . . "PAWiS: Systems Architecture for Power Aware Wireless Sensor Network Nodes" . "

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are made up of many small and low-cost sensor-nodes with networked wireless radio-communication ability, unifying nearly all design disciplines into one device: ultra-low power radios, MEMS-based sensing technology, analog to digital conversion, signal conditioning, signal processing, energy-aware communication protocols running on low-power embedded controllers, small-outline-antenna, energy management and energy scavenging. WSNs can be used for a vast variety of different application-fields.

\r\n

Applications include environmental sensing and control, sensor and actor networks in vehicle (automotive) environments, diagnostics, guidance and control systems in automatic manufacturing environments, container- and item-tracking, warehouse inventory and wireless meter reading, just to name a few.

\r\n

Most of these applications require energy autonomy of several years, but for many applications, state-of-the-art solutions simply do not provide the required autonomy when using batteries as the energy source of choice. This limits the actual market potential of wireless sensor network applications currently to a fraction of the actual possible market size. Hence minimization of energy consumption for a single sensor-node is compulsory to offer autonomy. Reduction of energy consumption to such low levels would enable the deployment of large maintenance-free networks that do not require the replacement of energy storage elements during the whole lifecycle of deployment. In many cases low cost energy scavenging systems that extract the energy from different sources of the environment such as light, vibrations, temperature differences or the like, could then provide enough energy to power a single sensor node.

\r\n

In order to achieve energy autonomy, state-of-the-art solutions have to be improved significantly. Therefore the development of such heterogeneous, extremely energy-efficient sensor-node devices requires new approaches in all aspects relevant for the syste m design, particularly the top-down design methodology neededThe goal of this project is to develop both efficient system architectures and the related design methodology for power aware Wireless Sensor Network nodes that allow for capturing energy-inefficiencies in every aspect of the system. This includes all layers of the communication system, the power supply and energy management, the digital processing unit, the sensor interface and the targeted class of the application itself, which defines communication key properties (environmental conditions, required data-rates, etc.) The proof of concept will be based on a prototype system that allows a future integration into a single System-on-Chip (SoC) or System-in-Package (SiP).

"@en . "2005-09-01"^^ . "2008-12-31"^^ . . . "Photonic I/O Device device for mobile devices and embedded systems" . "

Biometric identification solutions have key advantages over person-independent identifiers such as PINs or passwords, for ensuring secure and reliable identification of authorized people. Features such as fingerprints, iris and face muscle movement are unique for each person.

\r\n

Within the framework of a BMVIT-sponsored FIT-IT Project, NANOIDENT Technologies AG in Linz is developing a “Photonic I/O Device” for mobile electronic applications (Project Number 809441/8826). This is a revolutionary new approach to secure modern mobile devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs or smart cards, against use by unauthorized people. The combined input/output function (I/O) simplifies operation and enhances user convenience, at the same time significantly increasing user acceptance. The development of the “Photonic I/O Device” is enabled through the use of organic semiconductor materials, which because of their unique material properties can be manipulated in liquid form, for instance with printing technology. This allows the development of radical new concepts and ideas for the design of biometric security systems.
\r\n
\r\nNANOIDENT’s “Photonic I/O Device” taps the full potential offered by this new organic semiconductor technology, and combines

\r\n

* a high-resolution display
\r\n* a display-integrated tamper-proof fingerprint sensor
\r\n* an ambient light sensor and
\r\n* touch-screen functionality

\r\n

into a user-friendly input/output interface for a next-generation mobile electronic device, which provides protection from unauthorized use. Through the combination of these functions the usability of mobile devices will be substantially improved.
\r\nThe ultimate goal of this project is to develop a “Photonic I/O Device” compatible with smart cards, which allows the integration of important security, touch screen, and display functions on a smart card.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2005-01-01"^^ . "2006-12-31"^^ . . . "PIPE - Pseudonymization of Information for Privacy in e-Health" . "

e-Health by definition requires the sharing of patient related data when and where necessary. Electronic health records (EHR) promise to improve communication between health care providers, thus leading to better quality of patients' treatment and reduced costs. As highly sensitive patient information provides a promising goal for attackers and is also demanded by insurance companies and employers, there is an increasing social and political pressure regarding the prevention of health data misuse. Within this project we develop | based on our patent | the new system PIPE (Pseudonymization of Information for Privacy in e-Health). It differs from existing approaches in its ability to securely integrate primary and secondary usage of health data. The aim of this project is

\r\n
  • to broaden our patented approach to support (semi-)structured meta data
  • to develop alternative secure storage and retrieval techniques
  • to provide for secure storage and access to medical emergency data
    • \r\n
\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2008-03-01"^^ . "2011-02-28"^^ . . . "POWER-HOUSE - POWER-aware, Hardware-supported Operating system and Ubiquitous application Software development Environment" . "

Various embedded systems are constrained through their power consumption.Applications are ranging from battery powered device for consumer electronics (e.g. portable audio/video devices, feature phones) up to RF-powered smart card systems. Especially embedded systems software programmers (firmware, operating systems, and applications) are still missing effective tools for power estimation during the software development cycle. So called “power-bugs” are thus only detected when the already finished implementation is downloaded to the target device, which is usually late in the project, especially for concurrent hardware and software development. Furthermore, the strongly competitive market requires system-level development of embedded systems even when not all target devices are available in silicon. Rapid improvement in FPGA technology allows real-time functional emulation of single components within the embedded system. However the critical aspect of power is not covered by this approach. The goal of POWER-HOUSE is to provide key innovations for power aware embedded systems development:

\r\n

(1) integration of accurate power consumption trace into the software development environment to enable power-aware programming,

\r\n

(2) real-time power emulation to evaluate the impact of the emulated device on the power consumption of the embedded system and

\r\n

(3) development, implementation, and fabrication of a power aware operating system for RF-powered smart cards. It is expected that the proposed approach dramatically increases the possibilities for power emulation-based debugging compared to existing commercial tools.

\r\n

Furthermore, the overhead introduced by real-time power emulation is likely to be compensated by the added value of the tool chain.

"@en . "2008-03-01"^^ . "2010-02-28"^^ . . . "POWER-TRUST - Low POWer & Energy Relevant techniques Targeting Robust Universal Security in deep sub-micron Technologies" . "

When talking about IT-Security, resistance against attacks is the basis of Trust in ITSystems. The development of countermeasures against various attacks, such as SPA/DPA , SEMA/DEMA or DFA , has become a challenging topic for academia as well as industry over the last decade. Recent improvements in attack techniques (e.g. early propagation weakness in case of DPA) and findings about incompleteness of proposed countermeasures (e.g. MDPL ) have brought up new approaches towards attack resistance (“improved MDPL” for DPA, redundant calculation for DFA etc.). Unfortunately all those proposed countermeasures have in common, that they increase the power and energy consumption tremendously, and thus jeopardizing the intended usability for various applications, such as contactless operated ePassports or eID cards or battery powered mobile TPMs for use with m-commerce or eGovernment. This increase of power or energy consumption has basically two fundamental reasons, the first of which is the increase of switching activity, as it applies to randomization or masking techniques as well as to dual-rail pre-charge coding of signals e.g. in CMOS based technologies. The second effect being increased leakage current due to increased area consumption will become even more dramatically as production of security relevant circuitry shall move on to ever smaller deep submicron technologies, as e.g. expected in the field of smartcards, where 90 nm non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies are under development. As it is well understood leakage current can become a serious problem in such deep submicron technologies. Developers of attack countermeasures have been so much focussing on security only, that economical aspects have been more and more neglected recently. None of the lately proposed “power-hungry” hardware countermeasures has found its way into commercial products!
\r\nThere exists an urgent need for cooperative research to re-align the academic creativity with the industries’ needs. The POWER-TRUST project aims to achieve such re-alignment and to develop widely applicable countermeasures – optimized in terms of power and energy consumption – especially for upcoming new technologies and trustworthy security tokens in mass production.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2008-03-01"^^ . "2010-02-28"^^ . . . "POWERCARD - Methodologies for Designing Power-Aware Smart Card Systems" . "

Methodologies for Designing Power-Aware Smart Card SystemsSmart Cards sind kleinste Computersysteme mit geringen Hardware-Ressourcen. Diese stellen trotz der Einschränkungen umfangreiche Funktionalität zur Verfügung. Neben der geringen zulässigen Chipgröße ist auch die Leistungsaufnahme kritisch. Das Ziel dieses Projektes war die Entwicklung und Evaluierung einer neuen Hardware/Software Codesign-Methodik für das Design von Smart Card-Systemen unter Berücksichtigung des Stromverbrauchs, der Systemressourcen und der geforderten Rechenleistung.

\r\n

Die entwickelte HW/SW Codesign-Methodik führt abstrakte Plattformen ein, um einen durchgängigen Entwurfsfluss zu erhalten. Jede abstrakte Plattform stellt spezielle Prozesselemente und Kommunikations-elemente zur Verfügung. Aufgrund der Definition der Elemente können automatisierte Transformationsschritte innerhalb und zwischen Plattformen spezifiziert werden.
\r\nDiese Methodik ermöglicht die Implementierung eines funktionalen Modells eines Systems basierend auf einer abstrakten Plattform und die Abbildung auf eine Plattform für Hardware- Architekturen. Durch die automatische Transformation zwischen den Plattformen können verschiedene Hardware-Architekturen evaluiert werden. Das Bild zeigt die Abstraktionspyramide mit den definierten Plattformen. An der Spitze steht die Idee für ein System, an der Basis befinden sich die verschiedenen Realisierungen. Jede Plattform beschreibt einen bestimmten Abstraktionsbereich. Die Evaluierung der Methodik wurde Anhand der Entwicklung einer Java Card durchgeführt. Um die Unabhängigkeit der Methodik von der Zielarchitektur zu evaluieren wurde einmal eine horizontale Architektur und einmal eine vertikale Lösung vorgegeben. Die horizontale Lösung beschreibt einen applikationsspezifischen Java-Prozessor und die vertikale Architektur eine Multi-Prozessor Architektur mit einem Java Coprozessor. Die einzelnen Module werden dabei auf Komponenten der vertikalen Lösung oder auf eine Ebene in der horizontalen Lösung abgebildet.

\r\n

Dieses Projekt war der Startpunkt für eine Reihe weiterer Aktivitäten. In einem Nachfolgeprojekt wird die Optimierung von Software zur Glättung des Stromprofils untersucht. Innerhalb von NXP wurde die entwickelte Methodik erfolgreich in einem ersten Projekt umgesetzt und kommt nun in weiteren Projekten zum Einsatz.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2003-01-01"^^ . "2005-07-31"^^ . . . "PRODEQUAC - Prototype Development for Quantum Cryptography" . "

Der sichere Datenaustausch zwischen Unternehmensstandorten erfolgt meist über so genannte VPN-Tunnel (VPN steht für virtual private network“). Dabei handelt es sich um verschlüsselteVerbindungen zwischen privaten und firmeninternen Netzwerken über das öffentliche Internet. Für Hacker und Wirtschaftsspione ist diese Verbindung eine potentielle und oft genützte Angriffsfläche.

\r\n

Durch die Arbeit im Projekt PRODEQUAC und im Folgeprojekt „QCC: Quantum Cryptography on the Chip“ wird es möglich, die Technologie der Quantenkryptographie, mit der zufällige Bitfolgen zur Verschlüsselung von Nachrichten mittels quantenphysikalischer Prozesse erzeugt und verteilt werden, in bestehende IT-Infrastrukturen von Unternehmen zu integrieren. Der PRODEQUAC-Prototyp wurde als so genannte Hardware- Firewall realisiert und besteht aus zwei voneinander getrennten Einschubkarten mit jeweils eigenem Betriebssystem.
\r\nDadurch ist die Trennung des internen Firmennetzes vom externen Internet auch physisch gewährleistet. Das Konzept verwirklicht die Kombination von neuen Sicherheitstechnologien und bekannten Strukturen in einem eigenen Gerät und erlaubt durch einfache Bedienung eine schnelle Integration in bestehende Systeme. Die ARC übernahm das Hardware- und Softwaredesign, die Implementierung und Entwicklung der Protokolle zur Erzeugung der Schlüssel, das Design der Sicherheitsarchitektur sowie die Projektleitung.
\r\nDie Gruppe um Prof. Anton Zeilinger (Institut für Experimentalphysik der Universität Wien) hat ihr herausragendes Know How im Bereich der experimentellen Quantenphysik in die Entwicklung des Geräts eingebracht. Die Programm- und Systementwicklung PSE der Siemens AG Österreich zeichnet verantwortlich für das Design der Schnittstellen zwischen dem prototypischen Gerät und der bestehenden IT-Infrastruktur sowie für die Administration und das Management der Schlüssel, des VPN-Tunnels und des Interfaces.

\r\n


\r\n 

"@en . "2002-09-01"^^ . "2004-12-31"^^ . . . "PUCKMAES - Physically UnCloneable KeyMAterial Extraction on Silicon" . "

Uniquely identifying objects and items are becoming an issue with ever increasing importance on our path towards the Internet of Things (IoT). So far the technology for connecting unique identifiers (e.g. integer numbers, codes) to objects in radio frequency identification (RFID) was either based on EEPROM or fuse technologies. Both of them require additional process complexity during mass production, thus adding significant contributions to the basic costs of identification technologies. In addition, fusesí states are easily being read out and thus do not provide any means for storing a secret value.

\r\n

A radically new approach towards identification and authentication - exploiting so called "Physically Uncloneable Functions (PUFs)" - is based on the unique variations of electrical characteristics inherently present in every material and appearing in every manufacturing process. These variations are usually not aimed for and only tolerated within certain limits, not to influence the specified behaviour and functionality of the produced devices. The idea to make use of the device specific uniqueness of material properties could bring a big improvement in terms of technology costs and logistics complexity avoiding time consuming programming steps as well as area overheads like todayís non volatile memories. In addition, these characteristics are supposed to be much less likely being manipulated and thus are adding an extra level of security to the ID technology.

\r\n

To go beyond the identification purpose secret values from PUFs may serve as key material for authentication and secure communications between participants in the IoT. The PUCKMAES project is aiming at research on reliable, easy-to-extract, secure PUFs that can be used as a base material for device dependent individual secret key generation on silicon, thus pushing further the foundations of a secure Internet of Things.  

"@en . "2009-02-01"^^ . "2011-07-31"^^ . . . "PUMA - Power Management solutions for Next Generation Mobile Applications" . "

The size scaling in the CMOS technology is predicted to stagnate towards the end of the decade. Only the SoC integration has the potential to continue IC cost reduction and to perpetuate growth in the product functionality. Thus there is a strong need to integrate PMUs for future mobile devices on a SoC, and for cost and form factor reasons use the latest deep submicron standard CMOS technologies. Innovation is required on a wide front in technology and device side (e.g. high voltage MOS devices, high voltage capacitors), as well as on system and circuit level. The driving factors, such as minimising standby currents at low/no load, reducing the number of external devices, enhancing safe battery operation and making use of deep-submicron advantages and standard CMOS without extra cost constitute the goals of the PUMA project. It is possible to achieve these goals only by integrating the PMU on the same chip as the power consumers and thus the development aimed at is integrating the PMU as an inherent part of the SoC. The target is to transform the PMU, which in a state-of-the-art solution is a separate entity usually on a separate chip, as a part of the 45nm SoC. When integrating the PMU in a SoC a challenge is the possible interference to RF modules that are integrated on the same SoC. This can be overcome by carefully analysing layout issues and defining guidelines for the top level integration of a PMU in a SoC containing RF sensible block, defining frequency planning techniques to avoid interference at critical frequencies and investigating switching interference mitigation techniques.

"@en . "2008-04-01"^^ . "2010-03-31"^^ . . . "pureNFC - Performant, usable and reliable embedded NFC systems" . "

 

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Near Field Communication (NFC) is a contactless communication technology emerged from existing contactless smart card standards like ISO 14443-3 A and B, Mifare, Felica. The operating distance ranges up to 10 cm. The innovation in NFC is the integration of existing contactless technologies into generic electronic devices like a mobile phone. Thus the strict separation of roles into contactless reader/writer device on the one hand and a contactless smart card on the other hand is not necessary any more. An NFC device can emulate both roles: to be a reader as well as to be a smart card at the same time. In addition the new peer to peer mode is introduced. It allows establishing automatically a generic data connection between two NFC devices as soon as they touch each other. Prerequisite for the automatic communication establishment is a constant active part in the NFC device. This feature is called “polling loop” since it must poll in an endless loop for new devices appearing in the proximity of the NFC device. For its market success it is therefore mandatory to be backwards compatible to legacy contactless infrastructure but also interoperable to upcoming NFC devices. This requirement can only be met if NFC devices scan for several different contactless protocols at the same time.

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Therefore the identification of other NFC devices is a time and energy consuming process. On the one  hand user experience demands a very fast operating NFC system. On the other hand the available energy is a very tough constraint in mobile devices. As a consequence the good design of an NFC device is a very crucial part.

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The aim of the proposed research project is to design a very efficient implementation of embedded  NFC devices that meet three requirements: fast reaction, interoperability und energy efficiency.

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"@en . "2007-05-01"^^ . "2009-06-30"^^ . . . "A special-purpose semantic meta-search generator for integrating deep web data" . "


\r\nThe aim of this project application is the creation of a special-purpose meta-search generator for integrating deep web data behind complex query interfaces and in the long term providing intelligent services to consumers.
\r\n
\r\nTypical application scenarios are domain-specific searches with complex web query interfaces, such as finding the cheapest flight over several airlines within a specific date range, or searches for particular products such as used cars on a number of different portals. As of today, Lixto offers some APIs to create mappings between web forms and to apply its extraction technologies, however, the creation of meta-search applications is cumbersome, time-consuming and error-prone. In this project the creation of a solid semantic mapping framework and a workflow-based execution-engine as core of a future meta-search system and a number of significant improvements are researched.

"@en . "2007-02-01"^^ . "2009-03-31"^^ . . . "QCC: Quantum Cryptography on the Chip" . "

Smaller, lighter, faster – this is the motto of the FIT-IT Project “Quantum Cryptography on a Chip – QCC”. For the first time a chip with a specially designed integrated security processor will be developed that enables the commercial use of quantum cryptography – namely for communication via over networks with rates in the range of gigabit per second. The chip could find its application in quantum-VPN-connections for the communication between different business locations. VPN stands for “virtual private network” and describes secured connections via the internet.
\r\nWhile absolute random sequences of bits are generated with the use of quantum physics, all the rest necessary for quantum cryptography is handled by the newly designed chip: encrypting messages, data acquisition and transmission.
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\r\nQuantum Physics offers major advantages in the generation of bit strings. One is inherent in the nature of quantum physics itself: its absolute randomness. Bit strings generated with methods of quantum physics (via particles of light carrying information) are absolute random.
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\r\nThe chip uses random bit strings that were generated via methods of quantum physics and converts them into keys for encrypting secret messages. The architecture of the chip is such that those areas that are responsible for creating the keys are physically separated from the modules for networking and encryption. This newly developed security-architecture prevents therefore attacks by computer-hackers.
\r\nFor encrypting secret messages the algorithm AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) is used. In doing so data streams with transfer rates of up to 1 Gigabit per second are encrypted by encryption-modules. The encryption modules on the chip can guarantee due to their special implementation into the hardware of the chip that time-critical communication can take place without quality-losses.
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\r\nMoreover the security-chip developed within the project “Quantum Cryptography on a Chip – QCC” is implemented in a platform-independent way and can therefore be used for every quantum technology that generates random bit strings

"@en . "2005-09-01"^^ . "2008-02-29"^^ . . . "Rapid Prototyping Kit" . "

The “Rapid Prototyping” approach is employed in the automotive industry to test new technologies in concept vehicles prior to their introduction in serial production. It is crucial that the implementation of the concept is fast and hence cost-saving, and that the transfer to a series-production vehicle is as simple as possible.
\r\nOne of these innovative technologies that have been used and tested in many prototyping vehicles over the past years is the Time-Triggered Architecture (TTA). It is especially suited for by-wire systems, where the safety requirements are very high.
\r\nThe goal of the project was the development of a “Rapid Prototyping Kit” in the form of an integrated software tool chain that enables vehicle manufacturers and suppliers to quickly develop vehicle prototypes based on the Time-Triggered Protocol (TTP). This integrated development environment thus supports and facilitates the rapid-prototyping process in the field of highly reliable distributed real-time systems. In addition, an essential gain of this project is that future machine code, generated by the programming tools, can be transferred to serial production in a straightforward manner and with special emphasis on already existing safety aspects.
\r\nAmong the most important results of the project there is the development of the programming tools I/O Toolbox, TTP-Matlink and TTP-Calibrate, which enable the user to develop new by-wire applications quickly and cost-efficiently. In the meantime, these software tools have been used by several vehicle manufacturers and suppliers to develop prototypes for steer-by-wire and brake-by-wire. The most important economic advantages are the enormous cost reduction for the rapid prototyping, and a shortened time-to-market.
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\r\nWithout the grant from FIT-IT, the project could not have been completed on this scale and with the finally achieved speed. In the highly dynamic market of embedded systems it is of great importance to be able to react quickly to changes. This necessary flexibility was achieved thanks to the FIT-IT support program. Also the cooperation with the Vienna University of Technology could again be intensified and the existing know-how be made available to the industrial partner TTTech

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"@en . "2002-11-01"^^ . "2004-01-31"^^ . . . "RAVEN - Relation Analysis and Visualization for Evolving Networks" . "2008-01-01"^^ . "2009-12-31"^^ . . . "ReadRF - Reader technology for logistic challenges with contactless identification devices" . "

RFID technologies experienced a strong dissemination in many different applications within the last few years. Especially HF-technologies (based on 13.56MHz carrier frequency) were successful in high volume applications for identification in access- and passport- control, for ticketing in public transport systems and for object identification in manufacturing- and logistics- systems. New application possibilities like brand protection, high speed bulk of goods detection, multi media data transfer, etc. are pushing the demand for increased performance of the contactless linking technology of RFID systems. Today’s HF - RFID Products are standardised in ISO 14443 and/or ISO 18000 where baud rates up to 848 kBd are specified. Discussions about new high speed standards have started in ISO working groups to cope with the demand for higher data- and detection- rates. Multilevel ASK and PSK have been proposed but are still far away from a realisation which fulfils requested performance, regulations and acceptable product costs. The 13.56MHz ISM band which is used in HF RFID systems has a very narrow defined bandwidth for the carrier frequency and very low levels defined for sidebands which is contradictory to higher data- and detection- rates. With ReadRF we follow the need to develop and evaluate innovative model and coding schemes. New modulation and coding schemes need to be developed and evaluated. The most promising approaches shall be put into prototype realisations for extensive real life testing and characterisation. Besides performance and compliance the prototype realisation also has to demonstrate feasibility of very high degree of monolithic integration for transponder ICs as well as transaction (reader) devices. Joint efforts in the areas of RF, Reader-, Transponder-, and Networksystem- Research and Development are necessary to push into a new generation of High Performance RFID, linking technology which enables a bundle of new very high volume applications in the contactless identification business.
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"@en . "2007-03-01"^^ . "2009-06-30"^^ . . . "RESHADE - Reciprocal Shading for Mixed Reality" . "

The aim of the RESHADE project is to simulate the mutual influence between real and virtual objects in mixed reality applications. Virtual objects in such applications appear disturbingly artificial because rendering completely ignores the real environment. But from the term ìmixed reality one would expect that virtual and real object harmoniously blend into one visual perception and cannot be distinguished easily.

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The ambitious goal of this project is to provide users with a perfect illusion, so that they cannot perceive a difference between virtual and real objects. That means virtual objects are responsive to changes in the real environment in real time. They have to be rendered in a believable realistic way so that they smoothly blend with reality. It is also important to simulate the visual effects of virtual objects on real ones.

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Besides for realistic rendering this technique can also be used for innovative ways of interaction and dynamic behaviour of virtual objects, which are key aspects of mixed reality. Research focuses on real time rendering algorithms for mixed reality applications that consider the lighting and geometry of the real environment. Special cameras will continuously capture reality. The real geometry will also be used to simulate effects of virtual objects on real ones in real time. Shading of real objects will be corrected by digital composition. Research results will be repeatedly evaluated in the course of the project within three different application scenarios. Thereby human perception is the sole key factor for assessment of the quality of the solution.

"@en . "2009-02-01"^^ . "2012-01-31"^^ . . . "Micro-Holons for Next Generation Distributed Embedded Automation and Control Systems" . "

Micro Holons for Next Generation Distributed Embedded Automation and Control

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Agile system components (mechanical, hardware, software) are necessary to implement visions such as "Flexible Production for Batch Sizes of 1“, "Customisation“ or Knowledge Economy“. To achieve this, machines and subsystems need to offer new characteristics including reconfigurability on the fly. State of the art technology is based on developments which started about 40 years ago, and is thus incompatible with these new demands. To counteract this, new, more agile designs ("Next Generation Distributed Embedded Automation and Control Systems“) are being developed and implemented within the framework of this project.

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The aim of the µCrons - Micro-Holons for Next Generation Distributed Embedded Automation and Control Systems - research project is to develop middleware for flexible, modular mechatronic components, which support reconfiguration in realtime (so called µCrons). As today's traditional, centrally organised and rigid control structure is not geared to meet these new requirements, the project is aiming to achieve a breakthrough via the implementation of highly flexible zero downtime production systems.

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During the 1st project phase an IEC 61499 compliant runtime for small and resource constraint embedded controllers was developed which serves as basis for the µCrons middleware. One of the main goals of this development was to introduce a hardware abstraction layer into the middleware for an easy porting to different embedded controllers and underlying Real-time Operating System (RTOS). During the 2nd project phase the basic µCrons middleware was enhanced supporting deterministic execution of IEC 61499 based applications as well as an enlarged set of (re-)configuration commands supporting dynamic reconfiguration (online change) of software components (function blocks). In addition the IEC 61499 engineering approach was enhanced supporting the specification of real-time constraints (timing constraints).
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"@en . "2004-05-01"^^ . "2006-11-30"^^ . . . "VPR" . "0000-00-00"^^ . "0000-00-00"^^ . . . "Procon" . "0000-00-00"^^ . "0000-00-00"^^ . . . "HPF" . "0000-00-00"^^ . "0000-00-00"^^ . . . "ClinSim" . "0000-00-00"^^ . "0000-00-00"^^ . . . "Complex Material Modeling Operations" . "2009-10-01"^^ . "2011-09-30"^^ . . . "Solutions for Health Logistics: Dynamic Stochastic Fleet Management" . "

HealthLog aims at improving the operations of health logistics providers by including stochastic aspects into their route planning and vehicle dispatching. It is planned to combine methods from statistical data analysis, stochastic modelling and operations research.

"@en . "2009-11-01"^^ . "2012-04-30"^^ . . . "Optimization of finger-joint profile geometry in wood" . "2009-10-01"^^ . "2010-09-30"^^ . . . "Modulation and Simulation of Effects during Laser Material Processing" . "2009-10-01"^^ . "2011-09-30"^^ . . . "Austrian Hybrid Dynamic Model E3" . "0000-00-00"^^ . "0000-00-00"^^ . . . "Austrian Hybrid Dynamic Model E3" . "0000-00-00"^^ . "0000-00-00"^^ . . . "INSEMTIVES - a bridge between humans and machines" . "

Semantic Technologies for the future web

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The objectives of INSEMTIVES are to bridge the gap bet­ween human and computational intell­igence in the current semantic content authoring R&D land­scape. The availability of a critical mass of useful machine-understandable data and the natural limitations of automation in semantic content creation-related tasks are hampering the worldwide uptake of semantic technologies. Technologies and applications are not designed to provide incentives and motivation for users to engage is manually creating semantic content or extending and revising existing one.   INSEMTIVES combines research with development and real-world applications. The foundations are methods and guidelines facilitating semantic content creation in an incentives-driven manner. They underly the INSEMTIVES platform (back-end) and various end-user tools for semantic content creation (front-end).These technology components are used in three case studies targeting the management of enterprise content, the annotation of Web service artifacts, and the management of multimedia in online worlds and games.   Thus, INSEMTIVES studies incentive models and means to optimally combine human and computer intelligence to enable the creation of massive amounts of valuable semantic data and to establish a global-scale user base therefor.   The goals of INSEMTIVES, therefore, can be summarized in the following points:

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  • Design methodologies for semantic content authoring balancing between human and computational intelligence;
  • Design incentive models and participatory methods enabling massive human involvement in semantic content authoring tasks;
  • Design models for representing user-generated semantic content and methods for supporting the life cycle of this content;
  • Implement a semantic content management platform and end-user semantic authoring tools based on the design guidelines and incentive mechanisms defined.
    • \r\n
"@en . "2009-04-01"^^ . "2012-03-31"^^ . . . "HYDROSYS - Ökosysteme unter präziser Beobachtung" . "

The research aim of the project is to provide a system infrastructure to support teams of users in the on-site monitoring of events and analysis of natural resources. The project will introduce the innovative concept of event-driven campaigns using handheld devices, potentially supported by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Event-driven campaigns provide users the capacity to analyse and predict environmental changes on-site, supporting the process of taking appropriate countermeasures to avoid environmental degradation. During these campaigns, users will be able to setup and retrieve data from mobile sensorstations, the UAV and external sources (such as permanent sensor networks) in order to generate dense information on a small area. The whole sensor network system will gather and store sensor data, and process simulations based on physical process models. Hence, a shared information system fusing heterogeneous data sources will be provided that supports teams of stakeholders to monitor environmental processes on-site, complementing remote monitoring and management. To enrich the data sets from a specific location, additional remotely controlled cameras will be deployed, mounted on sensorstations and below the UAV. Users will be able to analyse the environment using mobile phones and handheld computers, supported by advanced user interface techniques.   The project will improve monitoring and management for environmental scientists, institutions, service providers, engineering companies and municipalities through its strong integration of handhelds and sensor networks. The project will progress well beyond the current state in the art, by dealing with short-term events and detailed analysis of small sites. The analysis of such events is hardly supported by current methods, but has a large impact on environmental degradation. Furthermore, information is made available to citizens by providing mechanisms to access top-level environmental data. Within the project, cutting edge inter-disciplinary research will be performed to develop user-centered solutions. When the data is integrated with analytical tools in a shared information space it will also aid a wide range of managers and planners pursuing more environmentally sensitive solutions to engineering problems. To aid the process, the research is steered by considerable end-user involvement in all its phases.

"@en . "2008-06-01"^^ . "2011-05-31"^^ . . . "IKS – Interactive Knowledge Stack for small to medium CMS/KMS providers" . "

IKS – Interactive Knowledge Stack - is an integrating project targeted at the hun­dreds of SMEs in Europe, which are providing tech­nology platforms for content and knowledge man­agement to thousands of end user organisations. Downstream, hundred-thousands of corporate end users and millions of content consumers are affect­ed by the quality of service provided through these platforms. The majority of these platforms lack the capability for making use of semantic web enabled, intelligent content, and therefore, lack the capacity for users to interact with the content at the user‘s knowledge level.

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The major technological result of the project will be the “Interactive Knowledge Stack“, a layered set of software components and specifications which will make traditional content management platforms ca­pable of dealing with the future “Semantic Web“. Thus, the open source CMS frameworks should be extended to become semantically enabled and direct user interaction with knowledge-based content should be supported.

"@en . "2009-01-01"^^ . "2012-12-31"^^ . . . "HAMAM, Highly Accurate Breast Cancer Diagnosis through Integration of Biological Knowledge, Novel Imaging Modalities, and Modelling" . "

Despite tremendous advances in modern imaging technology, both early detection and accurate diagnosis of breast cancer are still unresolved challenges. Unnecessary biopsies are taken and tumours frequently go undetected until a stage where therapy is costly or unsuccessful.

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HAMAM will tackle this challenge by providing a means to seamlessly integrate the available multi-modal images and the patient information on a single clinical workstation. Based on knowledge gained from a large multi-disciplinary database, populated within the scope of this project, suspicious breast tissue will be characterised and classified.

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The exact diagnosis of suspicious breast tissue is ambiguous in many cases. HAMAM will resolve this using statistical knowledge extracted from the large case database. The clinical workstation will suggest additional image modalities that may be captured to optimally resolve these uncertainties. The workstation thus guides the clinician in establishing a patient-specific optimal diagnosis. This ultimately leads to a more specific and sensitive individual diagnosis.

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HAMAM advances the state-of-the-art as it proposes a sound statistical and mathematical framework to integrate and combine the whole spectrum of patient information. HAMAM also goes beyond currently available technology by developing a prototypical solution that will be able to efficiently integrate all relevant clinical and imaging information within a single platform.

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The overall strategy of the project is to foster the exchange and collaboration between basic scientists, clinicians, and IT experts, and to condense all information and knowledge in a common database and prototypical platform for multi-modal breast diagnosis.

"@en . "2008-09-01"^^ . "2011-08-31"^^ . . . "COMPAS Compliance-driven Models, Languages, and Architectures for Services" . "

The COMPAS project will design and implement novel models, languages, and an architectural framework to ensure compliance of services to design rules and regulations. COMPAS will use model-driven techniques, domain-specific languages, and service-oriented infrastructure software to enable organizations developing business compliance solutions easier and faster.

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COMPAS will develop monitoring and management tools for tracking and validating those compliance concerns that can only be verified at runtime, thus enabling governance of compliance concerns.

"@en . "2008-02-01"^^ . "2011-01-01"^^ . . . "Sesame SEmantic SmArt Metering: Enablers for Energy Efficiency" . "

The high-level societal goal of the project SESAME (SEmantic SmArt Metering: Enablers for Energy Efficiency ) is to facilitate home owners and building managers in saving energy within their environments and in optimizing their energy costs, while actively controlling and maintaining their preferred quality of living.

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To achieve its goal SESAME designs a technical solution that integrates smart metering and building automation in order to offer energy-optimization capability for both the energy consumer and provider. This solution enables both parties to profit from the deregulated energy market, by leveraging information about the energy usage, about the user needs, and about the potentials for optimization through a smart environment control.

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SESAME investigates two integration settings of a smart metering system and a building automation system. The first one is based on the current state-of-the-art where advanced energy meters are exclusively controlled by an external operator, and hence the building automation system can receive metering data only from remote sources. The second setting goes beyond and assumes integration based on local communications and co-location of a meter and a central controller in a building automation system. For both settings ontology-based modeling, multi-objective policy-based reasoning methods and service-oriented architecture (SOA) design with appropriate security and privacy preserving mechanisms are used.

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For the energy end-consumers the project designs a knowledge acquisition solution that supports creation and maintenance of policies describing preferences in energy use (e.g., green energy), as well as the rules for controlling the devices on the basis of the real-life sensor data from actuation of appliances.

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Targeting energy providers and grid operators, the project designs a foundation for a new type of energy services for interaction with the end customers. Energy Information Services automatically channel relevant energy information (e.g., pricing) over the Internet into the user policy framework for employment in the reasoning mechanisms. Energy Optimization Services enable the users to co-control their environment (switching on/off of devices, configuring actuators, etc.) according to their policies and together with the energy supplier, for achievement of a higher level of energy optimization.

"@en . "2009-09-01"^^ . "2010-11-30"^^ . . . "Advanced Ethernet for Time-Aware syntonicity" . "The goal of this project is to combine all the distributed synchronization efforts as a service of the physical layer and furthermore use the signal properties of the baseband signal to achieve an optimal synchronization performance with definitive guarantees and manageable system complexity. In the end, it will be possible to attach a new device to such a system and it will automatically synchronize to the master and report its current synchronisation quality. "@en . "2011-01-01"^^ . "2012-12-31"^^ . . . "Augmented Reality Measurement Tools for Construction Workers" . "There is a major trend in the construction industry to support the customer with more and better information through mobile devices and services such as mobile GIS and BIM. A future key element will be how the user is able to get to this information where it is needed. Sources for such information are both BIM systems and building plans, but also detection devices for hidden structures. Finding a way to visualize the data so that even non-experts can use this information will open the market to a whole new dimension. AUGUR will make the Invisible (Detected) and the Imaginary (Augmented data) visible.Specific tasks at construction sites, such as drilling holes and cutting into concrete walls, are time consuming due to failed drillings. By visualising information on the spot, work processes can be performed without using trial and error procedures, thus saving labour time and material costs. Furthermore, expensive repairs of structures damaged through drilling and accidents from disastrous destruction can be avoided. Therefore, augmented reality visualizations will help the customer through easier understanding, problem solving, great time and money savings as well as increased safety on the jobsite. "@en . "2011-04-01"^^ . "2013-03-31"^^ . . . "3D Simulation of the corrosion potential in biomass fired boilers" . "Material corrosion of steel surfaces in biomass combustion and boiler plants is of major importance especially when firing biomass fuels with high contents of chlorine, sulphur and alkali metals (waste wood, as well as agricultural and herbaceous fuels) but also for conventional wood fuels (wood chips, bark) with respect to increasing the steam parameters und thus the efficiency of future biomass CHP plants. Presently, due to the high complexity of the underlying processes no simulation tools suffi-ciently describing high temperature corrosion in biomass fired boilers in dependence on the influenc-ing parameters are available. Therefore, two basic models for the prediction of the local corrosion potential in biomass fired combustion and boiler plants in dependence of relevant influencing parame-ters shall be developed. The simpler approach will be an empirical model, which describes the corro-sion potential in dependence of relevant influencing parameters like the molar 2S/Cl ratio, flue gas temperature and surface temperature. The second and more sophisticated CFD-based model con-siders transport processes and chemical reactions between the steel surface, surrounding deposit layer and gas phase for the most relevant high temperature corrosion processes in biomass combus-tion plants. Both corrosion potential models will then be linked with an existing and comprehensive CFD-based deposit formation model, which provides the local values of e.g. flue gas temperatures and species concentrations as input values for the corrosion potential models and further allows for a 3D simulation of the local corrosion potential in dependence of the influencing parameters. The model based on an empirical approach allows simulating the local corrosion potential without exact knowl-edge of the fundamental processes and the corrosion potential model based on a detailed CFD ap-proach allows for a more detailed investigation of influencing parameters. Both models form basic models which will be structured in a way that they can be extended stepwise within future follow-up projects. Verification of the models shall be done by dedicated test runs at a drop tube reactor avail-able at BE2020+. Guidelines for the design and operation of biomass combustion plants with respect to corrosion shall be derived under the consideration of two different plant types which are of special relevance for Austria. On the one hand, the focus will be on multi-fuel plants for new agricultural and herbaceous fuels in small to medium-scale applications. On the other hand, large-scale steam boilers fired with wood chips, bark and waste wood will be considered. In this case, the future increase of the steam parameters and thus the electric efficiency is of special relevance. "@en . "2011-04-01"^^ . "2014-03-31"^^ . . . "Complex Material Modeling Operations" . "The finite element method (FEM) is a well established technique in a wide range of disciplines, most successfully applied in mechanical engineering. In the automotive and aerospace industries the FEM is commonly used for structural design and development of new products. It enables modern lightweight designs and facilitates the development and usage of new and highly specialized materials (composites, advanced aluminum alloys, high strength steels, etc.) as well as joining technologies (spot welding, adhesive bonding, etc.). The quality of FEM-results strongly depends on the availability of appropriate material models that describe the nonlinear behavior and failure of these materials. The development and identification of new material models has become an increasingly complex and expensive process, partly as a consequence of the tradition of using purely analytical, physically motivated mathematical models for predicting material behavior. On the contrary, other fields of application have shown that examplebased approaches, such as Machine Learning and pattern recognition, outperform traditional methods and significantly reduce the development effort. Furthermore their advantage increases with the complexity of the problem. At present the application of Machine Learning to material modeling is rather exotic in the field of Computational Mechanics. The preceding, FFG-funded project KoMModO [1] had picked up the idea of using Machine Learning methods as the base technology for a systematic approach to face complex material modeling with an underlying unified process. The aim of the new, proposed project CoMModO is to bring the technology into a wider technical and organizational context and to combine Machine Learning and Soft-Computing methods (example based modeling) with an Object Oriented Design approach in order to develop a requirement driven process for the modeling of material behavior in FEM simulations. "@en . "2009-10-01"^^ . "2011-09-30"^^ . . . "Construction Site Monitoring and change detection using UAVs" . "The goal of the project is to develop methods for modeling and surveying large construction sites. The project will make use of unmanned aerial vehicles and existing stationary or pan-tilt zoom cameras at the construction site. The goal is to provide accurate 3D models on a regular basis of the whole site. This will generate a 4D data set (3D+time). This data can then be used for documentation, visualization (we will use a mobile augmented reality system to overlay e.g. the plan or a model of the building) as well as measurement (e.g., how much material has been transported). From a scientific point of view we will have to solve following tasks: 1.Dense 3D reconstruction from highly overlapping data, we will use variational methods implemented on the GPU. 2.Accurate registration of subsequent models over time. Since the 3D reconstruction is changing (per definition) the method needs to handle this. This is an instance of the highly relevant 3D model updating problem. 3.Integration of multiple camera sources. Using the 3D model and additional cameras poses the problem of localization of the additional cameras with respect to the 3D model which is again an instance the registration problem. 4.Development of a handheld AR platform for visualization. In order to use AR technology the pose of the platform with respect to the model and the reconstruction needs to be determined. "@en . "2011-01-03"^^ . "2014-01-02"^^ . . . "Critical Content Filtering using hierarchical structured visual vocabulary" . "Internet content providers all over the world face a substantial increase of image uploads to their online platforms. To maintain their services in spite of social responsibility, like child-welfare and unwanted propaganda, filtering this user generated content is a necessity. We aim to investigate a novel solution for image-based filtering of critical content based on (i) an innovative algorithmic concept as well as (ii) a holistic system design combining the two typically separated use-cases filtering and retrieval. We propose to represent image content using a learned, compositional representation in form of a hierarchically-structured set of visual vocabulary. Our approach is mainly motivated by the finding that a hierarchically organized visual representation strikes a good balance between specificity, invariance and computational speed, such as fast indexing and matching. Unlike existing retrieval techniques employing a global representation of some image features, our proposed methodology represents relevant content by a multitude of specific object parts and part combinations at multiple spatial scales. Our proposal encompasses following innovative contributions: (1) The use of the proposed compositional representation within the context of image-based retrieval; (2) A top-down mechanism complementing the purely generative mechanism of feature grouping by feature selection and relevance feedback in order to further enhance specificity. These validating mechanisms should be effective without rebuilding the learned hierarchy; (3) Visual means providing an intuitive scheme to guide the user during a feedback stage. Many of the obtained high-level part combinations represent semantically meaningful graphical models, which are appropriate to visually render the quality of the learned representation. (4) Fast top-down verification in order to recover missing features. Integral image-based computations can significantly speed up the extraction of region-based (e.g. histograms) and contour-based (e.g. line integrals) features. Based on the above mentioned algorithmic innovations and the holistic system design the proposed solutions will outperform existing systems by: (i) Flexible use and expandability for a wide variety of critical content (e.g. unwanted and wanted logos, pornography, etc.) (ii) High precision and control; (iii) Minimal but very effective user interaction. "@en . "2010-05-01"^^ . "2012-04-30"^^ . . . "Dynamic Integration and Visualization of Information from Multiple Evidence Sources" . "Content providers and analysts alike increasingly rely on combining multiple data sources to build comprehensive, up-to-date and properly interlinked information spaces. These organizations critically depend on technologies for integrating these sources and tracking their evolution. DIVINE aims to provide such technologies, with a lightweight seed ontology acting as the focal point for integrating new evidence derived from multiple, evolving data sources. As such, the project advances ontology evolution research characterized by single-source solutions, which exploit mostly textual and rather static data. DIVINE integrates structured, unstructured and social sources. A modular and scalable portfolio of evidence acquisition services crawls public Web documents, queries Linked Open Data repositories, aggregates resource annotations from Web 2.0 applications, and triggers validation processes for missing or conflicting evidence. Since evidence from third-party sources is inherently uncertain, source-specific transformation rules and impact factors assign a confidence value to each new fact. A spreading activation network utilizes the collected evidence in conjunction with the confidence values for extending the seed ontology. DIVINE will monitor domain changes over time to derive knowledge evolution patterns. This domain-centric view makes DIVINE novel among existing change detection approaches, which tend to be domain-agnostic. Each ontology element is assigned a confidence matrix, which records the changes in confidence values over time. Data services and dynamic visualizations reveal rising, declining or cyclic patterns in the confidence matrices. Such patterns are important indicators û the rate of change or the date of a conceptÆs first appearance, for example, shed light on the evolution of knowledge and on the underlying processes that drive this evolution. Two use cases on news media monitoring and environmental knowledge management demonstrate and evaluate the systemÆs capabilities to structure large knowledge repositories in a scalable manner, uncover and manage flows of relevant information between stakeholders, and measure how well an organization's external communication is received, understood, and remembered. The use cases will be pursued in close collaboration with the projectÆs industry and associate partners. "@en . "2011-01-01"^^ . "2012-12-31"^^ . . . "Next-Generation Wrapping from Print-Oriented Documents" . "This project aims to further the state-of-the-art in user-guided information extraction or wrapping from print-oriented documents such as PDF files. Our ultimate goal is to be able to ôqueryö a large set of documents in a similar way to a database. In contrast to databases, where the structure of the data is homogeneous, only the semantics of particular records û and not their structure or presentation are necessarily homogeneous in our case. Thus, this project represents a major technological step in the recognition of logical and semantic structures from documents and their use in information extraction. The GraphWrap system has shown how graph-based extraction patterns can be used for user-guided information from PDF files. Based on the fundaments provided by GraphWrap, we will extend the concept of graph-based wrapping in the following ways, resulting in a powerful, robust data extraction methodology that can be applied to a number of business domains: òFuzzy relations, to cope with the inaccuracies in document analysis and extraction of semantic relations from the visual content òA multi-granular, graph pyramid data structure to represent the document, in order to make the data extraction as generic as possible òAn evolutionary semantic extraction algorithm, which provides robustness and error tolerance, and is able to optimize the result based on a semantic analysis of the content. "@en . "2011-01-01"^^ . "2012-06-30"^^ . . . "E-business Registry Permitting Enterprise Liaisons" . "The project ERPEL targets at an e-business registry serving as a backbone for executing on-the-fly e-business transactions between semantically enabled ERP systems. By on-the-fly e-business transactions we understand transactions that are conducted between companies, which are not yet in a partnership and dynamically find each other in order to engage in e-business transactions. These business partners have to find each other according to both their business needs and technical capabilities. This is supported by the ERPEL registry. Today, registries are often successfully used within a company, but there are hardly any success stories on public registries to support B2B. One reason is that registry entries may not be considered trustworthy. In order to avoid fake entries, the ERPEL registry will reconcile data with business directories of legal authorities. Furthermore, companies usually do not trust other unknown companies. In order to foster trust in this context we build upon techniques known from social networks. Thereby, we aim at establishing business networks within the ERPEL registry. Finding an appropriate business partner, it is important to know her business capabilities or in other words which products she offers. Usually companies maintain their product portfolio in their ERP system, but hardly anyone is willing to maintain this portfolio in another data store, i.e., the registry. Thus, we develop a seamless integration of the product portfolios, held in the ERP systems of the project partners, into the ERPEL registry. In order to avoid a proliferation of different naming and descriptions of the same products, we apply semantic techniques for product classifications. A search in the registry has to disclose the technical capabilities of a potential business partner in order to ensure interoperability. Overloaded business document standards, missing process choreographies, and a variety of communication protocols hamper an effective search. Thus, ERPEL follows a bottom-up approach starting from core documents with well-defined extension mechanisms, and unambiguous business choreography specifications. Furthermore, ERPEL comes with a default communication protocol specifically targeting SMEs. These unambiguous specifications allow the development of business service interfaces (BSI) that are integrated into the ERP systems. BSIs guarantee the execution of e-business transactions between customers of different ERP systems. The project overcomes one of the major (if not the) problems in real world B2B e-commerce from a scientific perspective: the heterogeneity of IT solutions across different business partners. By subdividing the complex heterogeneity issues into a number of manageable packages and by providing a semantically based integration with an emphasis on a minimum ôoverheadö load for the respective business partner, a solution for SMEs is delivered. SMEs will be enabled to execute e-business transactions leading to t "@en . "2010-05-01"^^ . "2012-04-30"^^ . . . "System on a Chip - for Future Optical Networks" . "For innovative universal optoelectronic interfaces of a 65nm CMOS system-on-chip, a transimpedance amplifier being appropriate for off-chip infrared-sensitive avalanche and PIN photodiode as well as a high- voltage laser driver for covering home network applications with visible-light laser diodes will be designed and characterised. The properties of integrated photodiodes in 65nm CMOS for visible light will be investigated for the first time and an electric-field-enhancement technique will be exploited to increase bandwidth and sensitivity of monolithically integrated optical receivers for home networking applications at a Gbit/s data rate. A SoC with integrated burst mode laser driver, on chip optical supervision and a receiver for a GPON (ITU-T G.984) BOSA will be designed in a 65nm CMOS process. The architecture therefore and the models of the optical externals, which include an innovative parameterised model of the laser diode and the back faced diode, are investigated. With these models new algorithms for on chip calibration of laser components, as well as interpolation and extrapolation of laser performance data can be explored. This allows the implementation of novel dual loop laser control architectures achieving more reliable laser operation, with possible lower cost devices. With this new approach of laser control algorithms and with integrating the optical control interface a performance and cost optimal solution is possible with minimum production test overhead. "@en . "2010-01-01"^^ . "2012-04-30"^^ . . . "Solutions for Health Logistics: Dynamic Stochastic Fleet Management" . "All over the world both the health and logistics sectors experience strong growth. While transport logistic problems are well-known in the health care industry, health care logistics as an explicit area of research is still underdeveloped in both academia and industry. By bringing together stakeholders from an applied research company, a university, an SME software company and a non-profit social health organisation HealthLog aims at exploring a new area of research and application. In particular, new computational mathematics methods for dynamic route planning and vehicle dispatching under consideration of stochastic travel-times and customer requests will be developed. The new approaches will be evaluated on a real-world application at Samariterbund Vienna. "@en . "2009-11-01"^^ . "2012-04-30"^^ . . . "Holistic aerial scene understanding using highly redundant data" . "The aim of this research project is holistic scene understanding in large aerial datasets, consisting of thousands of massively redundant high-resolution images. Holistic scene understanding is one of the major problems in computer vision and photogrammetry and has recently got a lot of attention. The problem of holistic image understanding includes two fundamental tasks: 3D scene reconstruction and semantic interpretation of the imaged content at the level of pixels. The tight interaction between semantic classification and 3D reconstruction is often ignored by state of the art aerial image processing workflows, due to the lack of computational power, the absence of efficient algorithms or the enormous effort of manual intervention. However, these tasks are mutually informative and should be solved jointly as a correct class labelling is a valuable source of information for reconstruction, and 3D information can help to improve the semantic interpretation. For instance, a correct classification is a valuable source of information for reconstruction in regions where dense matching methods fail (e.g. sheets of water and reflecting windows / facades), and 3D information can be used as a prior to improve classification (e.g. building and road detection). The high resolution and redundancy due to large overlaps of aerial images requires massive processing power which will be handled by taking advantage of graphic processing units that have proved to give a significant speedup compared to single core machines. In particular, we will focus on algorithms based on variational methods, which provide a high degree of parallelization capability. In order to reduce cost-intensive manual interaction, we further will exploit publicly available user-data from the Internet to improve both interpretation and 3D reconstruction.
In the HOLISTIC project we will provide a flexible framework for scene classification and 3D reconstruction from aerial images that outperforms current state-of-the art and delivers interpretable models at highest possible accuracy. To achieve this goal, we will focus our attention on the following two research subjects: (i) the joint optimization of geometry and semantic classification from aerial images in a unified framework, and (ii) the exploitation of existing geographic information systems and web data to support these two sub-tasks. In addition, we will use web-based standard to efficiently represent the obtained results for fast modeling and data parsing.