Objective
Considerable technical advances are currently been taken in mobile and wireless networks and terminals. The forecasts by market research institutes (e.g. IDC) predict an impressive market share for the available and upcoming GPRS and 3G terminals. Higher bandwidths combined with improved terminal capabilities (e.g. high processing power, high quality displays and long battery life) will enable new services to be delivered to users with intelligent multimedia terminals in their pockets.
The new attractive technological framework does not, however, guarantee the user acceptance.
The success in this respect depends heavily on the availability and affordability of well designed, implemented and tested multimedia services in relevant application areas. The mobile environment is particularly demanding with respect to audio-visual applications. Current services have not made much impact on the market because of their low quality of video, weak reliability, high prices and minor utilities.
Although mobile IP and IPv6 ease the implementation of new mobile applications with rich content, typical obstacles still remain, such as low bit rates, burstiness and delays, as well as the limited memory and processing power of mobile terminals. Streaming of multimedia information, including optimised solutions for multiplexing and synchronisation, is an area that still needs particular attention. In addition to these obstacles, the general heterogeneity of mobile channels and terminals further challenges the development of successful services.
A fundamental step in establishing new, intelligent, multimedia-rich services for mobile users is the provision of a common technology base. This will lead to concrete applications and services with strong potential appeal to a large customer base.
The INMOVE project will contribute to this process by designing and testing a prototype software toolkit for building mobile/wireless audio-visual applications and services.
Objectives:
To design a toolkit that provides general and modular solutions for video-related mobile applications. The toolkit will be based on open standards and technologies and combine and enhance the range of the existing technologies in an open and easy-to-deploy platform. This is crucial in order to achieve wide diffusion and commercial relevance for the developed technology;
To demonstrate the use of the toolkit in constructing versatile applications. The purpose is to verify how flexible the toolkit is for combining multimedia elements together with other essential elements when building attractive and intelligent applications;
To trial the applications with end-users.
Work description:
The INMOVE toolkit will be an expandable set of software tools enabling the provision of a new range of intelligent video services to end users in various mobile/wireless networks (2.5/3G and unlicensed bandwidths, Bluetooth and WLAN) utilising IPv6 capabilities. The toolkit framework will be based on open architecture and object oriented programming languages and analogies to common conventions. Tools will be derived from various hierarchical levels: from simple mathematical algorithms and signal processing tools to basic but complete video networking solutions for various mobile/wireless networks. The toolkit uses open source and commercial third-party libraries and will include intelligent tools for video compression, processing, transmission and analysis created by project partners.
Toolkit demonstrators will be used for verifying the technical feasibility and performance of the toolkit and individual tools. It will be the vehicle for inexpensive and efficient service provision, thus reducing the costs and prices, but increasing the richness and the quality of new generation audio-visual services. The INMOVE toolkit will dramatically lower the threshold for content providers and value-added service providers to enter the challenging mobile audio-visual market.
The applications
The INMOVE end-user oriented applications will fall into two application areas: Intelligence Monitoring and Sports Viewing, as both are expected to have a strong appeal to a large potential customer base. Further, the applications to be developed offer a natural framework for demonstrating the essentials of the toolkit software, with an emphasis on usability issues, relevant signal processing features, and wireless capacities and mobility.
In addition, INMOVE based Intelligence Monitoring applications and services will help users to improve their quality of life. The mobile services can be used for personal and residential safety and public security, as situations and sites can be viewed, analysed and/or stored remotely. This will prevent crime and other hazards through surveillance and alarms.
In the longer term, the generality, openness and use of standards in the INMOVE toolkit means it will be possible to use it in any context where audio-visual content needs to be produced or viewed in move.
During the project, the applications will be developed in increasing stages of sophistication, starting from simple demonstrators introducing basic user functionalities, proceeding to trial systems working in a laboratory environment, and ending with applications operable in mobile/wireless network environments.
The trials
The potential end-users will pilot the applications to validate the toolkit and applications for usability and attractiveness. The trials will be carried out in phases, along the project synchronised to the phases of the application development work. The requirements defined at the initial phase of the project will be crosschecked against the user response from the trials, and updated. The toolkit and applications will be modified accordingly. Further, the evaluation of user response will give essential input for assessing the business potential of the toolkit and applications, to be used in the exploitation plan.
Funding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
02044 Espoo
Finland
Participants (7)
1263 Copenhagen
KT1 1LQ Kingston Upon Thames
00370 Helsinki
2628 VK Delft
9200 Aalborg Sv
02150 Espoo
16126 Genova