Connecting the internet of things with smart assistance systems
ENTOURAGE, an interdisciplinary project involving the CONWEAVER GmbH, has succeeded in attracting funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) through its Smart Service World technology competition. ENTOURAGE is one of 16 successful projects selected out of 130 entries. Over the next three years it will seek to build a bridge connecting the Internet of Things with smart assistance systems.
The Internet of Things connects things, products and services. It relies on a wide variety of data supplied by sensors such as traffic monitors, weather stations, thermostats or GPS navigation devices, and by other sources such as timetable information services. Smart services transform all of this data into tailored solutions – but so far there is no established, open way to connect data and services easily. However, that’s precisely what’s needed for smart assistants, which filter, aggregate, and process data from a variety of sources to make it easily accessible to the user and are even capable of making autonomous decisions within the boundaries of pre-defined user preferences.
To fill this gap, the partners in the project ENTOURAGE – Smart Assistance – Enabling Trusted Ubiquitous Assistance are developing and testing an open ecosystem to support smart, secure, and reliable assistance systems in the Internet of Things. ENTOURAGE provides a hub for data and services, functioning as the link between IoT-platforms and services. It unites technical, organizational, and legal components, and lays the groundwork for innovative, open assistance systems. The BMWi is funding the project as part of its Smart Service World program.
“The nub of the problem is that all the various data sources supply their data in different ways. That leaves providers of assistance systems with the challenge of how to accommodate each data source individually – making it much harder to develop smart assistants that can provide intelligent support by combining all sorts of different information,” explains Dr. Michael Kubach from Fraunhofer IAO. The hub developed as part of the project is designed to act as the intermediary between the various data formats and services, allowing assistance systems to easily make use of and respond to data from a range of sources. “This new approach overcomes market barriers and paves the way for cross-application and cross-manufacturer smart service solutions. It’s an extremely promising area, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises both in Germany and across Europe,” forecasts Kubach.
The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy is funding the development and testing of Internet-based services in 16 projects with a total of around 50 million euros through "Smart Service World - Internet-based Services for Business". This is supplemented by 40 million euros in funding from the project participants. Smart services" are part of the German government's digital agenda and high-tech strategy.
The ENTOURAGE team consists of experts from Robert Bosch GmbH, Fraunhofer IAO, CONWEAVER GmbH, HaCon Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH, Darmstadt University of Technology and the University of Kassel and is coordinated by the ENX Association. Other associated partners are BITKOM, TeleTrust, T-Systems as well as the city of Cologne and the Berlin-Brandenburg transport association.
One of the project goals is to network usually closed, manufacturer-specific Internet-of-Things platforms. With the help of such connections, domain-independent assistance systems could be developed. Joachim Caspar from CONWEAVER GmbH comments:
With this project, we wanted to explore a new connection between manual and automatic analysis. This resulted in a hitherto unique bundling of core competencies of the project partners involved: A comprehensive consulting process by C21 Consulting allows the focusing and modeling of an observation domain on the web, which then becomes interactively analyzable with an IT tool by CONWEAVER and Fraunhofer IGD.
With this project, we wanted to explore a new connection between manual and automatic analysis. This resulted in a hitherto unique bundling of core competencies of the project partners involved: A comprehensive consulting process by C21 Consulting allows the focusing and modeling of an observation domain on the web, which then becomes interactively analyzable with an IT tool by CONWEAVER and Fraunhofer IGD.
