Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie
dell’Informazione “A. Faedo”

Easy Rider intends to create integrated development synergies between mobility, road network, health and insurance systems in order to define a new concept for vehicle use. This use will also be based on a new concept for road traffic infrastructure. It will combine automotive technologies with informatic and network technologies, together with the services and procedures of organizations that form part of the personal and/or goods transport ecosystem in an urban context, while taking into account the characteristics and needs of users/drivers at the heart of this ecosystem. The first objective will be pursued by regulating traffic, reducing travel time and time to locate a parking space, and by controlling driving style. The second objective will be pursued by monitoring drivers' psycho-physical condition, by identifying and sending vehicles information concerning hazards on the road, by dealing with emergency calls, by increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of assistance in cases of accident and development of modes of interaction using onboard vehicle devices that cause minimal distraction.

The aim of Easy Rider is therefore to design and implement a communications network between vehicles, control centers and road infrastructures that makes available infomobility and traffic safety services in urban contexts, with the option to extend this to extra-urban contexts. Test sites will be set up in the city and province of Turin, the city of Rome, on the Naples bypass and in Sicily. The environmental and safety impact will be evaluated by means of feedback from test sites and will enable estimates to be made of the reduction of pollutants as a result of implementing the system developed.

Easy Rider is structured in four sub-projects, each representing a line of activity. Line 1 focuses on development of telematic platform families to be installed as original equipment on new vehicles or as a retrofit on the existing vehicle fleet. Line 2 focuses on development of both urban and extra-urban infomobility services. Line 3 is dedicated to development of a road safety service centre. Line 4 is focused on development of systems to be installed by the roadside and linked to an infrastructure control centre.

Partners: Magneti Marelli, Fiat Group Automobiles, Iveco, Centro Ricerche Fiat (CRF), Transport System Study Centre, Plast Ottica Research Centre and Elasis. Abaco Logistics, Aitek, Anas, Autostrade per l'Italia, Art, Booz&Company, 5T, DMD Computer, DMD Med Tech, Electrolux, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, Infoblu, LCT Infotelematics, Med4all, Mizar, MoMA, Re:Lab, STMicroelectronics, Sitaf, Tecnositaf, Telecom, Tubosider. The partnership further benefits from the presence of research departments from six organisations: Genoa University, Modena and Reggio Emilia University, Salerno University, National Research Council (WNLAB-ISTI), Mario Boella Institute and CERTeT University.

Note: Easy Rider got the maximum evaluation score (60/60).

Start: 2009-07-01      End: 2013-12-31

Contact:  Erina Ferro

FP7 project, contract n. 247950

The potential benefits of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions are already clearly recognised, and societal trends indicate that they will be attractive to a large and increasing number of people. But uptake of such solutions has so far been limited. UniversAAL aims to reduce barriers to adoption and to promote the development and widespread uptake of innovative AAL solutions. It will benefit end-users (i.e. elderly people and people with disabilities, their carers and family members) by making new solutions affordable, simple to configure, personalise and deploy. It will benefit solution providers by making it easier and cheaper to create innovative new AAL services or adapt existing ones using a compositional approach based on existing components, services and external systems.

The vision of the project is that it should be as simple for users to deploy an AAL solution as it is today to browse Apple’s “App Store”, find an interesting mobile application and download it to your iPhone. universAAL will adopt the “store” concept, customizing it for AAL services. It will extend the concept by supporting multiple execution platforms, deployment to multiple devices/users, and allocation of local human resources.

The main objective of the project is to make it technically feasible and economically viable to conceive, design and deploy innovative new AAL services. To do this, we will:

1. produce a platform providing the necessary technical support, and acting as an open, common basis for both developers and end-users;
2. carry out support activities promoting widespread acceptance and adoption of the platform. These activities form an integral part of the project and will start at an early stage.

Start: 2010-02-01      End: 2014-01-31

Project website: http://universaal.org

Contact:  Erina Ferro

This research activity primarily aimed to overview the current research activities performed in this field and then to investigate the potential applications that an integrated architecture constituted by sensor networks and satellite links may have in some satellite-based scenarios. Five scenarios have been investigated in terms of specific requirements and traffic characteristics; the traffic characteristics of the studied scenarios have allowed compressing the five original scenarios to three scenarios. All possible technologies (available at the writing time) usable in satellite and in sensor networks have been analyzed, together with techniques for data routing, clustering, data fusion, satellite access algorithms, data models for sensor network traffic. The performance evaluations of various aspects of the integrated system have been done according to well-defined evaluation parameters. Distributed collaborative beamforming has also been studied, and security aspects both in WSNs, in satellite networks, and in hybrid WSN-satellite combinations have been deeply addressed. A new algorithm for intrusion resilience in unattended WSNs has been studied and evaluated. The challenging research aspects that could be further investigated were also evidenced.

Start: 2010-04-01      End: 2012-05-31

Project website: http://www.satnex.org/

Contact:  Erina Ferro

The EvAAL competition is an initiative promoted by the WN-Lab and other partners of the universAAL project.

It aims at bringing together both academic and industrial research communities to work together on challenging and open problems in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), with the purpose of evaluating different approaches and envisioning new research opportunities.

The second edition of EvAAL was held in 2012 and we are currently organizing the third edition.

The 2012 edition of the competition comprised two tracks and a final workshop:

• - Track 1 on Indoor Localization and Tracking for AAL, to be held on the 2-6 July, 2012 at the Smart House Living Lab of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain
• - Track 2 on Activity Recognition for AAL, to be held on the 9-13 July, 2012 at the CIAmI Living Lab in Valencia, Spain
• - EvAAL workshop to be held in conjunction with the AAL Forum on the 24-27 September 2012, Eindhoven, NL (http://www.aalforum.eu/).

The slides of the presentation of EvAAL at the final workshop give some details about the organization of the 2012 competition.

In 2011 edition the WN Lab contributed to the first EvAAL competition in the following roles:

• Steering board chair: Stefano Chessa
• Steering board members: Francesco Furfari and Francesco Potortì
• General co-chair: Stefano Chessa
• Technical program co-chair of the Indoor localization track: Francesco Furfari
• Publicity chair: Francesco Potortì
• Members of the program committee of the indoor localization track: Francesco Furfari, Francesco Potortì

In the 2012 edition the WN Lab contributed to the EvAAL competition in the following roles:

• Steering board chair: Stefano Chessa
• Steering board members: Francesco Furfari and Francesco Potortì
• General chair: Stefano Chessa
• Technical program chair of the Indoor localization track: Paolo Barsocchi
• Publicity chair: Francesco Potortì
• Financial chair: Francesco Furfari
• Members of the program committee of the indoor localization track: Francesco Furfari and Francesco Potortì
• Members of the program committee of the activity recognition track: Stefano Chessa

For the 2013 edition the WN Lab will contribute to the EvAAL competition in the following roles:

• Steering board chair: Stefano Chessa
• Steering board members: Francesco Furfari and Francesco Potortì
• General co-chair: Francesco Furfari
• Technical program chair of the Indoor localization track: Paolo Barsocchi
• Publicity chair: Francesco Potortì
• Dataset management chair: Stefano Chessa
• Members of the program committee of the indoor localization track: Francesco Furfari and Francesco Potortì
• Members of the program committee of the activity recognition track: Stefano Chessa

Start: 2011-07-27      End: 2015-12-31

Project website: http://evaal.aaloa.org

Contact:  Stefano Chessa

EU FP7 project: ICT-2011.5.4 b) Smart and self-adaptive environments prolonging independent living

Early detection and adaptive support to changing individual needs related to ageing is an important challenge in today society. The Giraff+ project aims at developing a system that addresses such a challenge. The system consists of a network of home sensors that measure e.g. blood pressure or temperature, or detect e.g. whether somebody occupies a chair, falls down or moves inside a room. The data from these sensors are interpreted by an intelligent system in terms of activities, e.g. the person is going to bed, and health and wellbeing, e.g. the person is tired or well rested. These activities can then trigger alarms or reminders to the person or his/her caregivers, or be analysed over time by a health professional. The system should automatically adapt to perform specific services such as checking the person’s sleeping patterns. There is also a telepresence robot, the Giraff, which can be moved around in the home by somebody connected to it over internet, e.g. a caregiver. The Giraff is effectively a mobile communication platform, equipped with video camera and display, and microphone and speakers, and it helps the user to maintain his/her social contacts. Particular emphasis is put on user evaluation outside the laboratories. The Giraff+ system will be installed and evaluated in at least 15 homes of elderly people distributed in three European countries (Sweden, Italy and Spain). These evaluations will drive the development of the system. The concept of “useworthiness” will be central in order to assure that the Giraff+ system provides services that are easy and worth using. In addition, by using existing and affordable components (besides the Giraff robot also sensors from two participating companies: Tunstall and IntelliCare) we strive to achieve a system that is affordable and close to commercialization.

Start: 2012-01-01      End: 2015-01-01

Contact:  Francesco Furfari

A small number of years ago, web delivery relied on a few standard protocols layered on top of proven TCP stacks. Performance over satellite was highly variable and usually resulted in a need for TCP-PEP to mitigate the effects of satellite delay on the TCP and HTTP protocols. The emergence of Google as a major web content provider has resulted in a step-change in the way the web operates - TCP has started to change (e.g. google has proposed many updates, some of which are likely to be accepted by the wider community). Significantly, web delivery is also evolving rapidly towards methods such as SPDY (based on cloud data servers) and more web uses emerge, e.g., web-based conferencing components in the near future. This project seeks to build models that will help to understand where these changes will leave the satellite community and what to do in the future and to avoid the need to react only after users start to experience the implications of these changes!

Start: 2012-11-01      End: 2013-10-31

Project website: http://www.satnex.org/

Contact:  Alberto Gotta

EU Project CIP-ICT-PSP-2012-6-TN111

ENGAGED is a Thematic Network that will build a learning community of stakeholders, from different backgrounds and from across different European countries, to nurture the emergence of innovative and sustainable active and healthy ageing services that make best use of technology. Its focus on active and vigorous community building and clustering, evidence sharing and road mapping for targeted deployment is fully in line with the specific objectives of the 2012 ICT PSP work programme.

(web site: to be defined)

Start: 2013-01-01      End: 2014-12-31

Contact:  Francesco Furfari

National Project, MIUR

Il progetto prevede di 1) verificare quale incidenza eserciti nell’eguale godimento dei diritti fondamentali l’esiguità delle risorse disponibili, specie nel presente contesto segnato da una crisi di natura economica particolarmente estesa, in cui si radicano e da cui traggono alimento spinte e tendenze idonee a travolgere o comunque trasformare profondamente le strutture del vivere sociale, dell’ordinamento giuridico, delle organizzazioni sovranazionali; 2) delineare proposte e soluzioni (giuridiche, istituzionali, di regolazione, ecc.) per lo sviluppo delle politiche di trasporto quale “bene pubblico” europeo: da un lato, banco di riflessione per una effettiva tutela dei diritti degli utenti come singoli e come collettività, dall’altro banco di prova per la sperimentazione, nel rapporto pubblico-privato, di politiche orizzontali di efficienza e competitività, di sostenibilità ambientale, di coesione economica, sociale e territoriale. Il settore dei trasporti, delle infrastrutture e dei servizi è infatti un terreno privilegiato per misurare l’impatto della crisi su diritti fondamentali, dal momento che le diverse modalità di trasporto incidono, sia in termini di sostenibilità sociale sia in termini Di sostenibilità ambientale, su situazioni giuridiche individuali e collettive. Basti in proposito pensare al tema dell’affordability dei servizi urbani, ai servizi ferroviari regionali, o all’accessibilità delle aree periferiche marittime; come pure all’inquinamento, al congestionamento, al rischio stradale, alla compromissione di ambienti protetti, alla conflittualità con territori e con le comunità che vi risiedono. Una politica dei trasporti, che voglia perseguire, al tempo stesso, il rilancio economico attraverso le opere infrastrutturali e il rafforzamento della garanzia dei diritti, ha bisogno, dunque, di adeguati modelli di governo locale, nazionale e sovranazionale. L’Unità di Ricerca del WNLAB fornirà esempi di logistica informatizzata con relative problematiche sulla sicurezza e privatezza dei dati.

(web site: to be defined)

Start: 2013-01-01      End: 2015-12-31

Contact:  Erina Ferro

EU Project CIP-ICT-PSP-2012-6 / Theme 3 Health Age Incl - ICT for health, aging well and inclusion

In the last decade several ICT systems aimed to solve some of the problems of older people in relation with sustainable independent living and the promotion of active ageing. The research community has spent a lot of resources developing personalised solutions covering the different perspectives of the problem - societal, organisational and economical with different levels of success. To face some of these problems universAAL was launched in 2010 aiming to reduce barriers in adoption and promoting development and uptake of innovative AAL solutions. The technical strategy has been to enable interoperability in terms of execution on a wide variety of different operating systems, allowing plug-and-play use of sensors and other equipment available on the open market and enabling easy composition of service elements to provide higher-level services. With the universAAL platform as technical basis, the ReAAL pilot shall deploy the platform in order to provide relevant services for older people in seven different countries and about 7000 users. Partners of the universAAL project will set up a full exploitation environment that consists of uStore, Development Depot, run-time platform components running on native Android, Windows and Java. SMEs ssociated to the universAAL project will adapt the devices required by some of the stand-alone native services and standard services.

(web site: to be defined)

Start: 2013-01-01      End: 2015-12-31

Contact:  Francesco Furfari