Multimedia, Knowledge and Web Technologies Research Area

Research Projects

Innovative and Novel First Responders Applications – INFRA
Start: 01/12/2008 (estimated)
End:  30/11/2010
Funding: EU
Status: Ongoing
Web: not yet available

Project Overview
Unfortunately, due to historic and organizational reasons, communications and digital personal safety applications are currently fragmented and operate in “islands”, with only very basic cooperation between the different First Responder (FR) teams and the Critical Infrastructure (CI) control centre. Each type of FR (Police, Fire, and Medical) has its own legacy equipment and isolated applications. In a similar manner, there is no standardization deployed at CI sites. Thus, FR teams cannot rely on a standardised environment that is common to all CI sites.  This situation is quite typical in Europe and globally. INFRA will provide a major step towards a standard, seamless, effective and efficient FR environment, which will ensure interoperability with the CI control centre, will save lives and reduce the financial damages of catastrophic events in CI sites.
Thus, this project aims at researching upon and developing novel technologies for personal digital support systems as part of an integral, secure emergency management system to support First Responders in crises occurring in various types of Critical Infrastructures under all circumstances, in an attempt to enable enhanced and spontaneous communication and collaboration among First Responder teams and in this way save more human lives as well as reduce the financial damages of catastrophic events.
Expected Results
INFRA will result in an integrated set of tools enabling interoperable technologies for the effective communication and instant alert among different FR teams on the same CI site. Specifically, INFRA will focus on innovation at two major levels:
1.    Create an open, standards based interoperability layer that will allow:
a.    Broadband access for high bandwidth applications (i.e. live video with synchronized graphical overlays).
b.    Autonomous wireless broadband in underground tunnels and concrete buildings.
c.    Full (voice and data) communication interoperability between all FR teams, their command posts and the CI site control center.
d.    Full interoperability of FR applications in use by the FR teams.
2.    Provide practical and useful novel applications for FR teams, all integrated within the open interoperability layer:
a.    Thermal imaging applications.
b.    Template-based, depending on the crisis type, authoring tools enabling near real-time video annotation and graphics enrichment for media-rich communication and instant alert among FRs.
c.    Advanced fibre optic sensors.
d.    Indoor navigation system.
        
AIT’s Contribution
AIT will research upon enriched media authoring, video annotation and metadata generation, multimedia packaging, real-time streaming over wireless broadband networks and playback on mobile devices for various types of emergency situations. The result will be an integrated rich media based alert and communication solution for effective ad-hoc communication among FR peers handling mobile devices.
Video Annotation example on a mobile device
Partners

• Athena CS3 Security Implementations Lts, Israel (Coordinator)
• Halevi Dweck & Co. ARTTIC Israel Company LTD, Belgium
• University of Limerick, Ireland
• ISDEFE Ingenieria de Sistemas S.A., Spain
• Democritus University of Thrace, Greece
• Rinicom, UK
• everis Spain S.L., Spain
• Hopling Technologies, The Netherlands
• Opgal Optronic Industries Ltd, Israel
• Athens Information Technology (AIT), Greece

Broadband Access Satellite Enabled Education – BASE2
Start: 01/09/2005
End:  31/08/2008
Funding: EU
Status: Completed
Web: http://www.dat.demokritos.gr/base2

Project Overview
BASE2 has been an FP6/SPACE STREP project having as overall objective the implementation of an end-to-end system for tele-education applications, integrating broadband terrestrial networks with satellite broadband technologies to facilitate the sustainable provision of advanced integrated tele-education services to remote agrarian and maritime user communities.

Expected Results
This project has implemented, tested and validated, involving real user communities, an advanced platform for the provision of tele-education, e-learning and communication services to a variety of remote agrarian and maritime sites, over inter-connected satellite and broadband wireless telecommunication infrastructures. The singularities of the targeted remote communities (agrarian and maritime) placed the emphasis on the optimal creation, configuration, publishing and delivery of educational resources in asynchronous mode deploying an advanced LMS/LCMS, as well as on the optimal access to and perception of live educational sessions by deploying a video conference and tele-education platform (ISABEL) and a platform for transmitting live Webcasts, both of which allowed the simultaneous access of multiple remote sites (tele-education halls as well as users from their home) to the live lecture.
The BASE2 Network Architecture: broadband satellite and wireless network infrastructures inter-work for the provision of advanced synchronous and asynchronous e-learning services at remote agrarian and maritime communities.
The implementation of a classroom-oriented BASE2 scenario: an example of a live lecture transmitted to various connected remote sites through the use of the ISABEL platform (virtual class implementation).

AIT’s Contribution
In BASE2, AIT has been the leader of WP1: Service Definition and Content Creation, leading to an extensive user requirements analysis and monitoring on the preference of e-learning/distance learning services. Furthermore, within WP1, AIT supervised and significantly contributed to the learning content creation and digitization (in the form of recorded lectures by invited expert speakers), its configuration and publishing to the BASE2 content repository and learning management systems. AIT has contributed in setting up a learning content repository, enabling the easy interaction and collaboration of content creators, content aggregators and content distributors in the e-learning business domain. This content repository is maintained beyond the end of the project as a lifelong learning result at: http://palantir.ait.gr:8080/base2/base2?action=login
The content repository and e-learning portal including recorded webcasts synchronized with presentation slides, developed for the needs of BASE2 by AIT.
Identifying the need, based on user feedback, for all the time access to educational resources and for integration of synchronous and asynchronous modes of learning, AIT has further invested efforts towards introducing an advanced learning management/learning content management platform and relevant educational services and resources for the agrarian and maritime communities that extended the in-house built AIT advanced e-learning platform. This effort has resulted in creating relevant agrarian and maritime virtual communities with controlled access to configured e-learning courses of their interest. Recorded and live Webcasts support has been further implemented. The developed framework is maintained beyond the end of the project as a lifelong learning result at:http://palantir.ait.gr/base2/dmz/

The content repository and e-learning portal including recorded webcasts synchronized with presentation slides, developed for the needs of BASE2 by AIT.
Finally, AIT has contributed in the definition of the user acceptance evaluation methodology, deployed during the BASE2 trials, and in the analysis of user acceptance evaluation results.

Partners

• NCSR “Demokritos”, Greece (Coordinator)
• Athens Information Technology, Greece
• Brunel University, UK
• FOKUS - Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V, Germany
• Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain
• University of Cyprus, Cyprus
• General Confedaration of Greek Agrarian Association (GESASE), Greece
• Superfast Ferries, Greece
• Hellenic Aerospace Industry S.A, Greece

European Learning Grid Infrastructure – ELeGI
Start: 01/02/2004
End: 30/06/2007
Funding: EU
Status: Completed
WEB: http://www.elegi.org/

Project Overview
ELeGI has been an FP6/IP project having as main objective to design, implement and validate a pedagogy driven, GRID-based service oriented software architecture for supporting ubiquitous, collaborative, experiential based and contextualized learning approaches in dynamic virtual communities for effective human learning and in this way promote and support a learning paradigm shift. A new paradigm focused on knowledge construction using experiential based and collaborative learning approaches in a contextualized, personalized and ubiquitous way would replace the current information transfer paradigm focused on content and on the key authoritative figure of the teacher who provides information.

ELeGI SOA and Grid-based Learning Infrastructure

Expected Results
The ELeGI project had three main goals which it has successfully completed:

• To define new models of human learning enabling ubiquitous and collaborative learning, merging experiential, personalized and contextualized approaches. Towards this goal, novel pedagogical models and collaborative didactic methods have been devised for formal and informal learning paradigms, validated through the targeted real-life formal and informal learning test-beds (SEES).
• To define and implement an advanced service-oriented grid-based software architecture for learning. The achievement of this goal allowed the access to and integration of different technologies, resources and contents towards a SOA and grid-based service architecture in order to realize the new learning paradigm. This objective was driven by the pedagogical needs and by the collaboration needs provided by the test-beds (SEES) and informed by the experience gained through implementing the demonstrators.
• To validate and evaluate the software architecture and the learning approaches through the use of SEES test-beds and demonstrators. The project built extensively on two formal and two informal learning SEES test-beds, dealing with real life learning scenarios, such as distance learning and virtual class/lab sessions (SEES4), advanced services for open universities (SEES5), chemists collaboration towards building an organic chemistry ontology (SEES2) and e-qualification and e-portfolio for training (SEES1), creating thus new learning environments rather than creating new learning resources per se. 

 

AIT’s Contribution
Since year two, AIT has been assigned WP4 leadership. WP4 concerned SEES Definition and Experimentation support, overseeing the development of SEES learning scenarios and test-beds, as well as the validation of the deployed pedagogical models and the evaluation of the software test-beds involving real user communities. AIT has been further SEES4 test-bed provider, developing and validating the following formal learning scenarios, in the context of AIT’s collaboration with the Information Networking Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, towards offering a Master Program on information networking deploying distance learning:

• Wireless Network Virtual Laboratory (WiNeVL) – VSEs in ICT, realizing formal collaboration of remote classes during a live course and lab session (Virtual Class, Virtual Lab), synchronously executing Virtual Scientific Experiments (VSEs) deploying the developed Grid-based Sensasim Simulator, running simulations of Wireless Sensor Networks. The Sensasim simulator includes a chatting mechanism for the efficient communication of remote student and tutor communities during a live Virtual Lab session. The Sensasim simulator is accessible at: http://palantir.ait.gr:8888/Sensasim/
• Personalized Learner Access to Educational Content – lifelong learning, investing on asynchronous personalized formal learning, implemented by deploying ELeGI’s Grid-Aware Intelligent Web Tutor (IWT-GA) with the aim to personalize and guide the individual learning experience. IWT-GA has been loosely integrated with Sensasim Simulator to allow training of students in asynchronous learning mode. 

Enhancing student community-building and experiential learning by shared virtual laboratories. GRID-SENSASIM: GRID-Based Virtual Lab supporting wireless sensor network simulations
Personalized Learner Access to Educational Content

Partners

• Atos Origin, Spain (Coordinator)
• Centro di Ricerca in Matematica Pura ed Applicata (CRMPA), Italy
• Centro di Eccellenza su Metodi e Sistemi per l’Apprendimento e la Conoscenza (CEMSAC), Italy
• Université Montpellier 2, France
• Telindus Group NV, Belgium
• University of Southampton, UK
• University of St. Andrews, UK
• Karl-Franzens-Universitaet Graz, Austria
• The Open University, UK
• Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils, UK
• Universität Stuttgart, Germany
• Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany
• Kaunas Technology University, Lithuania
• Communication & Systèmes - Systèmes d'information, France
• Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, FIM NeuesLernen, Germany
• Hellenic Open University, Greece
• University of Dundee, UK
• Athens Information Technology (AIT), Greece
• Facultés N.D. de la Paix, Belgium
• Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
• Université De Pau et des Pays De L’adour-Iut de Bayonne, France
• Centrale Recherche SA, France
•  
European Microsoft Innovation Centre, Germany

Satellite Network of Rural Schools –  DIAS
Start: 01/12/2003
End: 31/06/2005
Funding: National (GSRT)
Status: Completed
WEB: http://www.dias.ea.gr 
 
Project Overview
The ZEUS (Satellite Network of Rural Schools) project envisions the implementation of advanced communication channels for the provision of support to isolated schools in Greece. The project has been based on the close cooperation between pedagogical experts, trainers, teachers, software developers and communication experts, to design, develop, and implement an advanced learning environment which deployed satellite communications in order to support the training of teachers in schools located in rural areas, mainly in Central Greece and in the Aegean Sea.
Support of the training of teachers in schools located in remote rural areas in Central Greece and the Aegean Sea, through their access to advanced learning services over satellite communication infrastructure.
 
Expected Results
The project has aimed at providing in service training to multi-grade teachers by utilizing the capabilities of advanced satellite systems. The training program aims at enhancing professional skills of multi-grade schoolteachers as well as to develop their abilities in using ICT as supporting tool in everyday teaching. Subsequently, the teachers could act as instructors to familiarize the local community with using e-learning facilities (e.g. students, farmers). The ZEUS project has thus developed a framework and a model for the continuous training and support of multi-grade schoolteachers, enhancing communication among remote multi-grade school teaching environment and outside educational community.

AIT’s Contribution
AIT’s role in ZEUS has been to define the framework of customized e-learning solutions in the form of e-learning portals and content management systems, as well as develop and validate them in a real-life fully-deployed e-learning environment, involving target user communities from remote multi-grade schools. The developed framework, still maintained at AIT as a lifelong learning service, accessible at: http://homer.ait.gr:8080/dias/dias_login.jsp
Developed in the ZEUS project and still maintained as a service: e-learning portal and content management system for schoolteacher communities training

Partners

• OTE S.A., Greece (Coordintator)
• HELLAS SAT, Greece
• NTRACOM S.A., Greece, (AIT has been subcontractor)
• ELLINOGERMANIKI AGOGI
• UNIVERSITY OF AEGEAN
•  
Q-PLAN A.E.

Automatic Identification of Dangerous to Sensitive User Groups Content in Audiovisual Data –  PENED, PhD grants
Start: 01/12/2005
End: 31/12/2009
Funding: National (GSRT)
Status: Ongoing
WEB: not available
 
Project Overview
The massive distribution of digital videos in the form of movies in DVDs or the web, as internet TV applications, in social media applications, such as YouTube, and the rather easy access to them have further led to the need to protect sensitive user groups, such as children, from inappropriate and harmful to them content. A major category of such harmful content is movie violence. This project aims at deploying multimedia processing and analysis, pattern matching algorithms and knowledge engineering and extraction approaches in order to automate the process of identifying and annotating violent scenes in movies at the best possible extent.
Movie violence is recognized as a threat to society, nowadays, with the explosion of digital movies creation and distribution on the Web and other communication channels (Source of images: YouTube, at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVea5KDA28M)

Expected Results
The project funds three PhDs, one on audio analysis and pattern matching for auditory violent clues, such as screams, explosion sounds, gun shots, etc., one on video analysis and pattern matching for visual violent clues, such as blood, guns, violent movement patterns, etc., and one on fusing the results from the tow single modalities and deploying knowledge representation and reasoning approaches to extract more complete knowledge about violent instances.

Ontological engineering and reasoning framework.
The result of the project will be a violence identification and annotation filter for movies.

AIT’s Contribution
AIT is supervising one of the PhDs, in collaboration with Demokritos Univ. of Thrace, researching on defining multimedia and violence domain ontologies and devising novel probabilistic reasoning algorithms, based on intermediate single modality results and their significance index to extract higher and more abstract violence knowledge in relation to a video scene. In this, way appropriate annotation of violent scenes takes place that can drive a filter during playback to control the playback of such scenes based on the viewer profile.
Violence Ontology Segment

Partners

• Dept. of Informatics & Telecommunications, University of Athens, Greece
• Inst. of Informatics & Telecommunications, NCSR “Demokritos”, Greece
•  
• Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece (collaboration with AIT)

Dynamic Virtual Games Generation and Rendering
Start: 01/06/2006
End: 30/07/2007
Funding: Private
Status: Completed

Project Overview
The project has targeted to dynamically generate game simulations with differentiating temporal evolution dependent on externally provided desired outcome parameters. Dynamic generation of game simulations disengage game programmers from tedious manual updating work, addressing a major business goal to offer users sufficient variety and thus enhanced entertainment experiences that will maintain their interest high. INTRALOT has sponsored this research project.
An example of Virtual Games Generation based on the results of the 2008 Olympics (Source of image: ps3.kombo.com/article.php?artid=7756)

Mobile Games Software Protection
Start: 01/01/2008
End: 31/12/2008
Funding: Private
Status: Ongoing

Project Overview
The project targets to prevent unauthorized or malicious users from modifying mobile games software code for their own personal profit. To achieve this, tamper-proofing algorithms are researched upon, developed and tested. The goal of such algorithms is to disable the normal execution of the code and, if possible, notify the code’s owner. INTRALOT sponsors this research project.
Mobile games – how to protect them from malicious attackers? (Source of image: http://www.slashphone.com/nokia-will-allow-n-gage-games-license-to-be-transferred-23529 )
 
Fraud Detection in online games
Start: 01/06/2008
End: 31/12/2009
Funding: Private
Status: Ongoing

Project Overview
The project targets to develop algorithms to efficiently detect fraud against an internet gaming operator. Fraud detection in internet gaming seeks to reduce security risks by identifying potential perpetrators of fraud. The outcome of this project will be a system capable of detecting fraud in practice while maintaining false alarms to an acceptable operational level for the users of the system. INTRALOT sponsors this research project.
Online games leave ground to fraud attacks against service operators (Source of image: abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3752500 )

Semi-automated video content enrichment with multimedia objects
Start: 01/10/2008
Funding: Private
Status: Ongoing

Project Overview
The project targets to develop algorithms and tools to automatically identify objects, regions and temporal segments of interest in audio-visual data that will later enable the semi-automated placement of other multimedia objects and graphic elements with the enable to enrich the original video data for enhanced user experience. INTRALOT sponsors this research project.