Economic development and S&T prospects. One of the main reasons to run a project like REGNET is based on the concept of new e- economy applied to the operations of cultural heritage institutions. Since there are different types of organisations there are also different possibilities to exploit the potentials of the REGNET project. The different types of organisations are: • Content providers (cultural institutions like libraries, museums, archives, etc) • Service suppliers (cultural industries like IT-enterprises, new media company, internet service providers, etc) • Business access points (organisations which provide access to the REGNET system (e.g. cultural institutions, local administrations, tourist offices, information brokers, etc) REGNET is relevant to all types of organisations: content providers are enabled to sell digital or physical goods as well as services (experts, exhibition planning, etc) and products (museum shop, copies of real objects, etc) using the REGNET e-business subsystem; service supplier are able to sell their services (e.g. running a REGNET System) and products to a broader community in the field of cultural heritage (the exploitation of the REGNET System itself is dependent on a consortium agreement); business access points are able to sell consultancy work or can even offer services (e.g. distributed searches) using the REGNET System. The market for REGNET systems and services can be estimated roughly by the number of museums, libraries and archives in Europe. Based on studies like MAGNETS (Museum & Galeries New Technology Study) the number of cultural organisations might be at 100.000 throughout Europe. (e.g.: MAGNETS: 15.000 museums & galleries with over 500 mio visitors each year). From an German publication (Institut für Museumskunde) of 1998 the percentage of museums having a WEB presence is estimated by 25%. Following the overall trend for 2000 the WEB presence of cultural institutions might have been doubled to over 50%. Another indicator related to trend of WEB-presence of cultural institutions is VLMP (Virtual Library Museums Pages). In 1997 there have been 630 museums listed in the vlmp- data base (xxxx://xxx.x-xxxxx.xxxxxx.co.uk/infoage/articles/market/wrlsmkt.htm ). An evaluation of the vlmp-data base in 2000 (September) delivered 4.872 museums. Regarding museum shops there is a US-figure available from 1999 (“Museums and the Web 1999”): it was stated that 34% of museum homepages have a museum shop for selling goods (xxxx://xxx.xxxxxxxxx. com/mw99/paper...
Economic development and S&T prospects. The emergence of the Internet and the “World Wide Web” as a universal medium for the access to and processing of information, and increasingly for the conducting of commercial transactions, is providing tremendous opportunities to businesses. However the exploitation of the internet as a means of conducting business will only reach its full potential when the representation of information to be exchanged between business partners becomes formalised and standardised. The development and adoption of large scale, domain specialised ontologies is a means to this end. Currently the provision of genuine web-based services where the complete transaction takes place online (as opposed to the use of the internet for selling goods such as books, CDs, travel tickets etc.) is very much in its infancy. A few subscription-based services offer access to rapidly changing information such as stock market figures or weather forecasts and, especially since the demise of Napster a number of companies have announced plans to provide commercial access to music and e-books. This is just the tip of a very large iceberg however. All these “services” share one important attribute: the commodity which they are ultimately supplying is well-defined and easily identifiable. To facilitate more complicated transactions requires the technology associated with the semantic web. The two fundamental ingredients of the semantic web are standardised mechanisms for de- scribing (and hence advertising) services, and languages or ontologies for representing and exchanging data in a particular application domain. Whilst current directories of services such as that provided by UDDI are static, we believe that these will be replaced by dynamically- updated service repositories. Although this project focuses on mathematical services, much of the experience gained will be relevant to the development and deployment of other scientific and indeed non-scientific services.
Economic development and S&T prospects. Research and Technology Development in the field of software and systems development, is of course, an integral part of the IST Program. Nevertheless, due to the expected demand for quality embedded software and systems products in the coming information society, there is a need to develop methodologies and tools that will facilitate the development of quality software and make the whole process more efficient and attractive to employees. The ARTIST project brings together outstanding research teams with complementary skills, and strong connections with industry. They will pool their resources, knowledge and experience to further develop the state of the art in the area of advanced real-time systems. None of the partners separately has direct access to all required resources to address the full range of user needs and technology. Research is essential for economic development but difficult for industry because of its need to focus on daily operational activities to meet current deadlines. Especially, embedded systems and software developers, must adapt to fast technological evolution and market constraints. On the other hand, it is crucial that research follows the evolution of industrial needs. The latter trigger the emergence of new problems and new research areas e.g. research on flexible real- time systems. ARTIST will act as a catalyser by providing the appropriate structure and opportunities for interaction between researchers and also between researchers and industrials and by creating the conditions for xxxxxxxx xxxx and cross-fertilization. .
Economic development and S&T prospects. The essence of the BIBA project is to propose and evaluate a new paradigm for intelligence and cognition of sensory-motor systems either natural or artificial. It is clearly a very ambitious and very long-term project. It is very difficult to foresee the economic development and scientific prospects of this kind of project. However, it should be clear that in case of success we expect some major breakthrough on both the potential industrial applications and the scientific questions. Bayesian computing may be applied to any problem where: - All the needed information is not at hand; - Part of the available information is uncertain; - Only a partial comprehension of the problem has been reached; - Some experiments or databases are available for "learning" about the considered problem. These characteristics correspond to a potential huge market! Nowadays prototype Bayesian applications emerge all around the world in numerous fields: image, video, text and speech processing, sensor fusion, user and client profiling, CAD and tolerancing systems, process control, malfunction diagnosis, robotics, game programming, medical diagnosis and monitoring, data mining, financial decision, etc. GRAVIR has some experiences in applying probabilistic reasoning in several of these fields: robotics (X. Xxxxxxxx's PhD - 1999), CAD systems (X. Xxxxxxxxx's PhD - 1999), sensor fusion and integration (CarSense European project - pending), leg and knee prosthesis design (Research project with the German company Aesculap - pending) and game programming (Research project with the French company GETRIS - pending). A spin-off company will start in the coming month. A few small innovative companies have been in the Bayesian business for the last few years, most with little success. Things started to change very lately as Bayesian applications began to spread around. Some of the forerunners suddenly turn out to be commercial and financial success stories (for instance Autonomy, a spin-off of Neurodynamics). Some big companies (for instance, Microsoft) posit Bayesian inference as one strategic option for future technical development. We think that it could be only the very beginning of a new major evolution of computing: probabilistic reasoning instead of logic and Bayesian computer instead of Turing machine . The BIBA project and its partners hope to take an important part in these changes.
Economic development and S&T prospects. The network is formed around the key European players in intelligent technologies for smart adaptive systems. In particular, the structure of the IBA-groups is directed to the dissemination and exploitation of existing and well-identified results into the respective sector of economy. The IBA groups cover a wide range of applications in : • Production Industry • Transportation • Telecommunication and Multimedia • Human, Medical and Healthcare • Finance, Trade and Services High interaction from academia and industry through the technology transfer schemes, can help to improve competitiveness of the late one in the aforementioned areas. In addition to those activities of the IBA- committees, the electronically-supported education and training material is one of the most effective way to disseminate the technology to newcomers from application and research. Demonstrators of different solutions for various applications, which are already available by network members or which should be developed, can show the benefit and the technical excellence of the considered technology. This will be provided by the information available on the networks web page and well-prepared brochures for decision makers in industry describing potential applications and their benefits. This should lead to communication to potential customers of the “technology”, who wish to enhance their actual products/services. This would then be followed again by improvement in their competitiveness within their market. Participation in industrial events and trade fairs as well as the organization of the annually planned symposia will promote the network activities and therefore support dissemination of technological achievements. All of these activities are open to the public and will be promoted beyond the members of the network. Existing user groups and mailing lists in the area of the network will be included in the information flow and should be involved in the network activities (e.g. symposia, training courses, etc.).
Economic development and S&T prospects. 5.1. Economic prospects The production of complex autonomous system is a long-lasting challenge not only to European industries. In spite of the great advances made recently, autonomous systems of reasonable complexity are still confined inside research labs and their use in unconstrained environments is limited to special cases. On the other hand there seems to be an increasing request (at least in principle) for autonomous systems capable of working in human populated areas and their interaction with humans in a safe and human-like fashion, is certainly one of the major challenge for the robotic industry worldwide. The main approach adopted so far has been “incremental'“ with the implicit assumption that new skills can be added to existing systems with little effort. What we want to demonstrate in this project is that there is an alternative way to build complex autonomous systems and that this approach could also help in better understanding how human behaviors are generated and controlled (an essential knowledge if we want to build systems interacting “naturally“ with humans). This goal is, therefore, far reaching but, if a systematic approach will be developed, it may prove to be a very strong technological advantage. Moreover, as new approaches are potentially good sources of new technologies, indirect advances could be obtained which, in the long run, may prove to be even more important for European technology. We see as particularly interesting the possibility of developing new sensors and actuators as well as new technologies to process sensory information. The major challenge, at this time, is to prove that what we are proposing is really new and does offer a valid alternative to the production of adaptable complex systems. In the long run, after the project, industries producing autonomous systems for industrial as well as service use may have a much stronger position in the market.
Economic development and S&T prospects. This section describes a preliminary analysis of possible business and technological opportunities derived from MobileMAN. The MobileMAN consortium consists of partners whose role and competence fill the complete chain of scientific, technological, and industrial skills required realising a fully functional mobile- ad-hoc-network terminal prototype. The project will also produce a new socio-economic model for mobile-ad-hoc networks enabling both the profiling of applications, and services and the analysis of the MobileMAN technology social impact. The consortium approach is to make a market analysis, to use dissemination to create awareness around the solution provided by MobileMAN, and to define and execute an exploitation plan. During the project execution, a specific work-package (WP5) has been planned to face with this important aspect. The strategic importance and the high innovation of MobileMAN have been recognised by several industries, which expressed the interest in being part of the Advisory Board of the project, and in some case, proposed also to support the project with their technologies.
