.:: AIT - Autonomic & Grid Computing Group (AGC) Projects::.

Overview

Research Topics

Research Projects

Infrastructure

Scientific Contributions

Research Prototypes

Autonomic & Grid Computing Group (AGC)

Research Projects

The following funded projects are or have been part of AIT’s research activity on Autonomic and Grid Computing:

CHIL (FP6 Integrated Project, EC funded) (completed)

PERLA (IST, EC funded) (completed)

DIOSKOUROI (GSRT funded) (completed)

PROSTO (GSRT funded) (completed)

IBM Speech TV (Consulting Project, funded by IBM) (completed)

PRIAMOS (GSRT funded) (completed) (in progress)

ASPIRE (FP7 Integrated Project, EC funded) (in progress)

HERMES (FP7 STREP, EC funded) (in progress)

My-e-Director (FP7 STREP, EC funded) (in progress)

INTRALOT Camera Reader (Consulting Project, funded by INTRALOT) (in progress)

CHIL (Computers in the Human Interaction Loop)

Full Project Name	Computers in the Human Interaction Loop
Start Date	01/01/2004
End Date	31/08/2007
Funding	EU FP6 ICT 1st Call (CHIL was ranked 2nd best Integrated Project, in the strategic objective 'Multimodal Interfaces', in the scope of the 1st FP6 IST first call, and was among the 6 first projects to be negotiated, among many hundreds of proposals.)
Status	Completed
Official Web Site	http://chil.server.de/ (web site) http://chil.server.de/servlet/is/5777/ (CHIL technology catalogue)
Project Overview	CHIL explored and developed a fundamental shift in the way we use computers. In contrast to building machines that have to be operated directly and explicitly (by keying in commands), CHIL realized computer services that are delivered to humans in an implicit, indirect and unobtrusive way. Thus, CHIL introduced Computers into a loop of Humans interacting with Humans, rather than condemning a human to operate in a loop of computers, forcing him/her to attend to and interact with an artifact on its artificial terms. The CHIL vision required a great deal of research work in several areas, which targeted: Substantial advances in perceptual user interfaces, which translate to improvements in technology components such as speech recognition, speaker ID, emotion detection, face ID, people tracking, emotion detection etc.. CHIL will employ the most advanced techniques (e.g., ASR based on MultiMirophone Arrays) Communication and software technologies, as well as the appropriate middeware coupling the various components in a way that real time decisions and interactions are supported. Modelling, understanding and appreciation of the context and activities of humans, including their perceptual and cognitive abilities, and the social roles in a given environment. Unobtrusive Services taking advantage of the above capabilities relating to robust multimodal perception, reliable cognition and social responsiveness of machines in human contexts. In the scope of CHIL, particular services will be considered as instantiations of the overall vision. These services will be speculative and will serve as case studies to exploring the cognitive and social dimensions of the problem.
Achieved Results	The project produced several leading edge research results in particular: Robust autonomic high performance prototype context acquisition systems based on audio and/or video processing, e.g., face identification, personal tracking, speaker identification, acoustic localization and many more. The CHIL reference architecture for building and deploying perceptual systems in smart spaces. The results of the project are more thoroughly described in the official technology CHIL catalogue (http://chil.server.de/servlet/is/5777/). Several of these results have been demonstrated in the scope of many large scale public events. Moreover, some of these results have also been exploited (as background knowledge) in many other research projects.
AIT’s contribution	AIT was a core member of the CHIL consortium (Computers in the Human Interaction Loop). AIT participated actively in all technical WPs of the project. Allocating more than 234 person months for the project duration AIT focused on the following activities: Setting up a smart room supporting the development and demonstration of real- time non-obstrusive services, and serve as one of the major CHIL demonstration sites Technology Development in the areas of FaceID, FaceDetection, SpeakerID, Person Tracking (2D/3D), Multimodel person tracking, Source Localization / Beamforming Design and Implementation of the mddleware supporting information fusion integration and context awareness of the components. This middleware was part of the CHIL architecture. Implementation of the Memory Jog service providing to several individuals-participants background information and memory assistance, in the course of human encounters. The memory jog maintains names, organizations of people attending a meeting, provide records related those conversations, all in an effort to provide real-time on-demand information depending on the state of the user, the activity at hand, and the individuals with whom he is interacting. Conduction of Observations and Simulation Studies towards extracting realistic user requirements for the Memory Jog service, as part of a User Centerred Design process AIT’s results are also part of the official CHIL technology catalogue: http://chil.server.de/servlet/is/5777/. AIT faculty involved actively in this project: Lazaros Polymenakos (principal investigator) John Soldatos Aristodemos Pnevmatikakis Fotis Talantzis Christos Boukis
Partners	[1] Fraunhofer Institut fur Informations- und Datenverabeitung, Karlsruhe [2] Universitat Karlsruhe (TH), Interactive Systems Laboratories [3] Daimler Chrysler AG, Stuttgart [4] ELDA, Paris [5] IBM Czech Republic, Prague, [6] Resit - Research and Education Society in Information Systems, Athens [7] Insitut National Polytechnique de Grenoble [8] Insituto Trentino di Cultura, Trento [9] Kungl Tekniska Hogskolan (KTH), Stockholm [10] Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Orsay [11] Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Eindhoven [12] Universitat Karlsruhe (TH), IPD, Karlsruhe, [13] Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona [14] Stanford University, Stanford, CA [15] Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

PERLA

Funding	European Commission, IST programme
AIT’s contribution	Aristodemos Pnevmatikakis worked in WP4, towards producing deliverable: 'D11: 802.16a transceiver architecture and circuits specifications'
Partners	Intracom S.A, ST Microelectronics, University of Catania, Swindon Silicon Systems, Theta Microelectronics

DIOSKOUROI

Full Project Name	Δίκτυο Κατάρτισης και Εκπαίδευσης σε Προηγμένες Υπηρεσίες Δικτύων και Πληροφορικής (ΔΙΟΣΚΟΥΡΟΙ)
Start Date	01/11/2003
End Date	31/03/2006
Funding	National Funding, Greek Secretariat for Research and Technology, 'ΑΝΤΑΓΩΝΙΣΤΙΚΟΤΗΤΑ' Programme.
Status	Completed
Official Web Site	http://www.icsd.aegean.gr/dioskouroi/
Project Overview	The project focused on teaching appropriately selected target groups on technology topics related to multiservice networking, wireless networking, e-health and e-government. Several postgraduate students, and professionals of the target groups were be trained in the premises of the organizations of the consortium (including AIT premises).
Achieved Results	High quality training material on e-government and e-health related topics Benefits for the participants of the trainings.
AIT’s contribution	AIT prepared training and educational material relating to telecoms / networking, e-health, and e-government. AIT Professors were instructors of the courses, and have given lectures in the scope of the many seminars series organized by the project. AIT faculty involved actively in this project: John Soldatos (principal investigator) Lazaros Polymenakos
Partners	[1] University of the Aegean [2] National Techical University of Athens [3] University of Piraeus [4] Technical Unoverity of Larissa [5] Technical Universty of Crete [6] Athens Information Technology [7] EXODUS S.A

PROSTO

Full Project Name	Προηγμένα Συστήματα Τηλεματικής Οχημάτων (ΠΡΟΣΤΟ)
Start Date	01/01/2004
End Date	30/04/2006
Funding	National Funding, Greek Secretariat for Research and Technology, 'ΑΝΤΑΓΩΝΙΣΤΙΚΟΤΗΤΑ' Programme.
Status	Completed
Official Web Site	http://www.icsd.aegean.gr/dioskouroi/
Project Overview	The project focused on teaching appropriately selected target groups on technology topics relating to managing transport traffic and vehicles. Moreover, several postgraduate students, and professionals of the target groups were trained in the premises of the organizations of the consortium.
Achieved Results	High quality training material on e-government and e-health related topics Benefits for the participants of the trainings.
AIT’s contribution	AIT will prepared training and educational material relating to wireless applications in transport traffic management, as well as to advanced dynamic programming techniques for traffic, transport and vehicle management optimization. One seminar series was held in AIT in November 2005. AIT faculty involved actively in this project: Lazaros Polymenakos (principal investigator) John Soldatos Aristodemos Pnevmatikakis Fotis Talantzis Christos Boukis
Partners	[1] Εθνικό Κέντρο Έρευνας και Τεχνολογικής Κατάρτισης - Ινστιτούτο Πληροφορικής & Τηλεματικής [2] Πανεπ. Πατρών - Τμ. Ηλεκτρολόγων Μηχανικών & Τεχνολογίας Υπολογιστών - Εργαστήριο Ασύρματης Επικοινωνίας [3] ΕΘΕΛ Α.Ε. (Εταιρεία Θερμικών Λεωφορείων) [4] ΗΛΠΑΠ Α.Ε. (Ηλεκτροκίνητα Λεωφορεία Πειραιώς Αθηνών Περιχώρων) [5] Athens Information Technology

Speech TV

Full Project Name	Speech TV
Start Date	1/06/2005
End Date	31/12/2005
Funding	Consulting Agreement funded by IBM research
Status	Completed
Official Web Site
Project Overview	The purpose of the specific project is to combine the IBM embedded speech recognition software with the INTRACOM TV set-top box embedded software in order to provide a prototype of a TV set-top box that is controlled both by voice commands and remote control. Incorporating the ability to interact with a device not only by pressing buttons but also by voice commands (or in other cases by visual commands, gestures etc.) is what is referred to in the literature as creating a multi-modal interface for the device. Adding advanced multimodal interfaces to enhance the user experience is a hot research area.
AIT’s contribution	AIT in collaboration with IBM and INTRACOM investigated how to best combine the advanced functionalities of the emerging home entertainment set-top boxes with the ease of voice commands and control. AIT faculty involved actively in this project: Lazaros Polymenakos (principal investigator) Fotis Talantzis Christos Boukis
Partners	IBM, INTRACOM and AIT

PRIAMOS

Full Project Name	ΠΡΙΑΜΟΣ - ΠΡοσαρμοστικά συστήματα πραγματικού χρόνου για εξόρυξη σημασιολογίας και ευφυείς διεπΑφές - επίδειξη σε εφαρΜΟγές ασφάλειαΣ και Επικοινωνίας του Πολίτη
Start Date	07/09/2006
End Date	06/03/2008
Funding	National Funding, Greek Secretariat for Research and Technology, 'ΑΝΤΑΓΩΝΙΣΤΙΚΟΤΗΤΑ' Programme.
Status	Completed
Official Web Site	http://orpheus.telecom.ntua.gr/
Project Overview	Dynamic extraction of content meta-data based on real-time processing of A/V streams. Use of these meta data in the scope of surveillance and meeting support applications.
Achieved Results	Significant performance improvement in several AIT’s perceptual processing components Integration with rule based ontological systems for context driven functionality.
AIT’s contribution	In this project AIT contributed its A/V processing components (notably faceID, person traking, speech activity detection, acqoustic localization and more). These systems and algorithms were significantly improved in the scope of the project. AIT developed the meeting support demonstration within its prototype smart space. AIT faculty involved actively in this project: John Soldatos (principal investigator) Lazaros Polymenakos Aristodemos Pnevmatikakis (WP2 leader) Fotis Talantzis Christos Boukis
Partners	[1] National Technical University of Athens [2] ARCHETYPON

ASPIRE

Full Project Name	Advanced Sensors and lightweight Programmable middleware for Innovative Rfid Enterprise applications
Start Date	01/01/2008
End Date	31/12/2010 (expected)
Funding	EC (European Commission), FP7 Research Programme, 1st ICT Call
Status	In progress
Official Web Site	http://www.fp7-aspire.eu (web site) http://forge.objectweb.org/projects/aspire/ (forge) http://wiki.aspire.objectweb.org/ (wiki)
Project Overview	ASPIRE will research and provide a radical change in the current RFID deployment paradigm through innovative, programmable, royalty-free and privacy friendly middleware. This new middleware paradigm will be particular beneficial to European SME, which are nowadays experiencing significant cost-barriers to RFID deployment. ASPIRE will significantly lower SME entry costs for RFID technology, through developing and providing a lightweight, royalty-free, innovative, programmable, privacy friendly, middleware platform that will facilitate low-cost development and deployment of innovative RFID solutions. This platform will act as a main vehicle for realizing the proposed swift in the current RFID deployment paradigm. The ASPIRE middleware platform will take into account innovative European developments in the area of ubiquitous RFID-based sensing (i.e., physical quantities sensing (temperature, humidity, pressure, acceleration), mobile sensing) towards enabling novel business cases that ensure high ROI (Return on Investment).
Expected Results	The project will produce an Open Source RFID middleware platform, as well as a range of tools for application development.
AIT’s contribution	AIT is one of the lead partner of the consortium. AIT is in change of the technical management of the project (Prof. Soldatos is ASPIRE’s technical manager). AIT will play a leading role in the development of the ASPIRE middleware platform, while it will also lead WP4 dealing with programmability. AIT faculty involved actively in this project: John Soldatos (principal investigator and ASPIRE project technical manager).
Partners	[1] Aalborg University - CTiF AAU DK [2] INRIA (ObjectWeb@INRIA, POPS) INRIA FR [3] Université Joseph Fourrier – Grenoble [4] University – LIG Laboratory UJF FR [5] Research and Education Laboratory in Information Technologies – Athens Information Technology AIT EL [6] Melexis technologies SA MELE CH [7] Open Source Innovation Ltd OSI UK [8] NORMAPME European Office of Crafts, Trades and SMEs for Standardisation NORM BE [9] SENSAP S.A EL [10] Pole Traceability Valence PV FR [11] Instituto Telecomunicações PT

HERMES

Full Project Name	Cognitive Care and Guidance for Active Aging
Start Date	01/01/2008
End Date	31/12/2010 (expected)
Funding	EC (European Commission), FP7 Research Programme, 1st ICT Call
Status	In progress
Official Web Site	http://www.fp7-hermes.eu
Project Overview	HERMES provides an innovative integrated approach to cognitive care covering the domain of cognitive support and training. This is achieved through an advanced, integrated, assistive technology that combines the functional skills of the older person to reduce age-related decline of cognitive capabilities and assist the user where necessary. Based on intelligent audio and visual processing and reasoning, the project results in a combination of a home-based and mobile device to support the user’s cognitive state and prevent cognitive decline. HERMES assesses the following five core objectives associated with the five main areas of cognitive support, care and wellbeing: OBJ 1. Advanced activity reminding to assist the user in performing everyday tasks and to support independent living. Modeled after human associative memory, activities are automatically deduced from the captured information using advanced speech recognition and processing algorithms. OBJ 2. Facilitation of episodic memory through the capture of content in audio and image including when, where, who, and what of a moment, including additional contextual information. OBJ 3. Cognitive training through games with important moments. OBJ 4. Conversation support on the grounds of interactive reminiscence based on the recordings of important moments. OBJ 5. Mobility support to address the needs of the user outside of the house with cognitive support when and where needed. HERMES aims specifically at supporting the decline in (declarative and prospective memory) capabilities by using other functional cognitive skills and training these, thereby reducing the need for active care and support and substantially increasing the ability to cope with everyday life and to live independently.
Expected Results	Pervasive systems that provide memory aid and assist in tangible improvements to the cognitive decline. Advanced audio/video processing systems (based on AIT’s background technologies) customized for elderly users. Pervasive context-aware applications and cognitive training games for ICT assisted support of people with dementia and cognitive problems. Perceptive motivating interfaces for the elderly interaction with ICT systems (based on novel multi-touch surfaces).
AIT’s contribution	AIT is the lead technical partner of the consortium. It contributes and improves its background A/V processing technologies. Moreover, it customizes those systems for use by the elderly. AIT is responsible for the technical integration of applications and cognitive training games to be developed in the project. Furthermore, AIT is developing a motivating perceptive multi-touch surface, as an optimal interface for elderly interaction with the system. Prof. Soldatos is the technical director of the project and Prof. Pnevmatikakis the leader of WP4. AIT faculty involved actively in this project: John Soldatos (principal investigator and HERMES Technical Director) Lazaros Polymenakos Aristodemos Pnevmatikakis (WP4 leader) Fotis Talantzis Christos Boukis
Partners	[1] CURE – Center for Usability Research and Engineering CURE Austria [2] INGEMA Foundation INGEM Spain [3] IBM Haifa Research Lab IBM Israel [4] University of Bradford BRAD UK [5] Athens Information Technology AIT Greece [6] TXT e-solutions, TXT, Italy

My-e-Director 2012

Full Project Name	Real-Time Context-Aware and Personalized Media Streaming Environments for Large Scale Broadcasting Applications
Start Date	01/02/2008
End Date	31/01/2011 (expected)
Funding	EC (European Commission), FP7 Research Programme, 1st ICT Call
Status	In progress
Official Web Site	www.myedirector2012.eu/
Project Overview	The main goal of My-e-Director 2012 is to research and develop a unique interactive broadcasting service enabling end-users to select focal actors and points of interest within real-time broadcasted scenes. The service will resemble an automated ambient intelligent director that will operate with minimal or even without human intervention. Contrary to state-of-the art services of similar nature that focus on few targets and low-level activity scenes (e.g., the Automated Coverage (BBC 2006) and PolyOmaton projects (AIT 2007)) developed by the My-e-Director 2012 partners), My-e-Director 2012 will target large scale multi-actor, multi-target environments and high-activity scenes. Hence, the proposed ambient intelligent director service will provide new forms of end-user experience, while also enabling deployment of novel revenue-generating services for broadcasters and content providers. From a research and technological perspective the key innovative features of the My-e-Director 2012 broadcasting service are: Research and development of novel technologies for identifying and tracking “targets” and scenes of interest. Research and development of mechanisms for mapping the low-level semantics (derived from live information acquisition) to high-level semantics defining rules for user-driven selection of cameras and tailored streaming. Advanced personalization mechanisms that hinge on the specification of preferences and profiles associated with My-e-Director 2012 broadcasting options. My-e-Director 2012 will research advanced knowledge representation and learning mechanisms for instantiating and evolving these profiles. Development and deployment of broadcasting services enabling delivery of personalized streams over a variety of channels and networking infrastructures, including mobile networks. While the project will carry out innovative research in all the above areas, its research concerns the feasibility and potential of the My-e-Director 2012 technologies for large scale deployment of user-directed streaming services in realistic multi-camera environments. My-e-Director 2012 will concentrate on athletic events for demonstrating and evaluating its technologies and services. Large Scale Broadcasting events (such as coverage of Olympic games) provide a first class forum for demonstrating the My-e-Director 2012 novel broadcasting case, given that they offer a large scale multi-venue, multi-event heterogeneous environment with many actors and high-activity scenes. The consortium will organize trials in both controlled laboratory-based environments, as well as field trials. As an ultimate target, My-e-Director 2012 endeavours to provide a unique technology showcase for the coming 2012 Olympic Games in the City of London. Such a showcase will be realized based on the “Olympic” partners of the consortium, namely ATOS Origin (the official IT provider of the 2012 Olympics) and BBC (the Olympic rights holders for the UK).
Expected Results	Real time person tracking in video scenes with multiple actors and very high activity. Novel automated multi-camera selection mechanisms for the sports events. A technology showcase for the London 2012 Olympics
AIT’s contribution	AIT will contribute in two main areas: Person tracking, where it will contribute and advance its visual person tracking technology. Multi-camera selection, where it will research techniques for optimal camera selection in comlex sports environments comprising multiple events, actors and cameras. The work will build upon AIT’s “Polyomaton” systems for automated coverage of meetings. AIT faculty involved actively in this project: John Soldatos (principal investigator) Lazaros Polymenakos Aristodemos Pnevmatikakis (WP4 leader)
Partners	[1] ATOS Origin ATOS [2] Institute of Computer and Communication Systems ICCS [3] Research and Educational Laboratory in Information Technologies – Athens Information Technology AIT [4] British Broadcasting Corporation BBC [5] INESC - Inovação – Instituto de Novas Tecnologias INOV [6] Queen Mary and Westfield College, London QMUL [7] Fondazione Bruno Kessler Istituto Trentino di Cultura FBK-Irst

Camera Reader

Full Project Name	Camera Reader
Project Overview	Build a system that senses and processes user forms as they are presented to an overhead fixed camera
AIT’s contribution	The implementation of the algorithms and hardware drivers for an end-to-end system, from concept to deployed product.
Partners	INTRALOT, AIT

Students' Views

"As I flashback in memory to this 2004-2005 year, I feel overwhelmed by the rewards and satisfaction from this experience. It is the special and unforgettable friends that I made in Greece, and the professionalism and friendliness of AIT's professors and staff, which gave me the opportunity to get the best boost for my career, and still manage to feel home and enjoy the beauty of Greece. As a tech-savvy, I applied to AIT to satisfy my zeal about new technologies and I was quite confident that I will get what I want. In AIT, I was very pleased by the faculty, staff and students, because one feels he’s living among his family and friends, especially that the faculty was highly supportive, encouraging me to follow my studies."

Ghassan El Abdallah, MSITT 2005 (Lebanon)

news list News & Announcements

AIT – AAU PhD Workshop on June 11 and 12, 2012 @ AIT !
2012-05-22

On June 11 and 12, AIT welcomes faculty from Aalborg University (AAU) in a 2-day PhD workshop.

AIT's 1st Gaming Forum a Success!
2012-05-11

AIT's 1st Gaming Forum was a two day celebration of Gaming that brought together the Greek gaming industry with academics and gaming enthusiasts of all ages. The Gaming Forum was co-organized with the British Council and Cowboy Tv and realized thanks to the support of Grand Sponsor hellas online, Gold Sponsor intralot, Sponsor the EU project KnowInG and Grand Communication Sponsor MTV.

17 High School students participated in the ATHENA Exchange program co organized by AIT & INTRACOM Albania
2012-05-07

17 students and 3 professors from Arsakeio, Harry Fultz, Ismail Qemali, Sami Frasheri and Petro Nini Luarasi schools, spent 4 days of cultural and educational experiences.

Open Invitation to AIT Research Seminar, April 10, 2012
2012-04-03

AIT is pleased to invite you to a Research Seminar on "Technology-enabled social learning.". The Seminar will be conducted by Mr. Hristijan Petreski, Project Manager, Intracom.

AIT Alumni Club has 44 new members!
2012-03-16

"It is not the solution all of us to go abroad" said Mr. Robby Bourlas, Managing Director of the Public, Multirama and getitnow.gr addressing to 44 students representing Greece, Cyprus, Jordan, Romania, Malawi, and Armenia, graduated with a MSc in Management of Business, Innovation & Technology (MBIT) from AIT. "You can still find business opportunities in Greece, as long as you believe it. In a difficult period like the one we live in, it is just harder to find these opportunities."