Ten Finalists Announced for First GNSS Living Lab Prize

As part of the European Satellite Navigation Competition 2010, the first GNSS Living Lab Prize has called for solutions that exploit Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) to address issues such as energy efficiency and the environment; health, ageing and inclusion; and media. A total of 57 proposals from 22 countries were submitted, from which a panel of international experts has chosen 10 solutions to proceed to the final round.

In the energy category, three proposals have been nominated that aim to improve emission transparency in road transport, reach the last mile in urban mobility, and motivate citizens to recycle domestic waste properly.

For the topic of health, two location-based monitoring solutions for heart patients as well as preventive and rehabilitative physical activity have been nominated, as well as a tracing system that verifies the provenience and products used for cultivation and treatments in the food value chain.

Four applications have made it to the finals in the media category, addressing topics such as leisure and tourism, as well as remote and game-based learning.

For a detailed overview of the nominated applications, please refer to the summary below. The GNSS Living Lab Prize is part of the project GAINS (Galileo Advanced INnovation Services), which is funded under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Living Labs are user-driven open innovation platforms organised within the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL).

The three winners will be announced along with the other special topic winners and 23 regional winners of the European Satellite Navigation Competition on 18 October at the Munich Residenz.

To obtain accreditation for the ESNC Awards Ceremony on 18 October at 7pm in the Allerheiligenhofkirche of the Munich Residenz, please send an email to Julia Mikkers: mikkers@anwendungszentrum.de

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ENERGY:
Stef and Selene Kolman, Bernard Veltien and Tomas van der Wansem from the Netherlands have designed a way to leverage on-board diagnostics (OBD, a universal car-computer system) and real-world data to display on-location vehicle emission profiles on mobile phones instead of referring to the standard specifications of car energy labels. Their solution, OpenCarData, taps into a vehicle's OBD information flow, transmits it in real-time to an open-source system, and thus provides a real-time “health check” of an individual car or an entire fleet.

George Gallais from VULog and Brigitte Trousse from INRIA have developed a multi-modal transport concept for urban mobility that provides electric bus shuttles to connect to regular buses and trains for the last mile to decrease the use of private cars. The first service of the Last Mile Information System with GNSS (LMIS-GNSS) project will be implemented in Sophia Antipolis, a Cote d'Azur technology park that receives 30,000 commuters each day.

Florian Blattmann, Valentin Fisler, Leo Steiner, and Keiran Smith from Mr.Green Recycling-Service GmbH are providing a service that offers a clever, easy, environmentally friendly, and sustainable way of recycling for private households. Clients just need to collect all reusable waste in one bag, and Mr. Green will pick it up, sort it, and dispose of it correctly. The student company has already acquired 160 clients in Zurich in its first three months.

HEALTH:
MONITORS (MONItoring and Traceability ORiented System), developed by Remo Moro and Claudio Camporeale from the Rome-based Sesa spa, provides support to farmers and institutions responsible for tracking and monitoring agricultural products and managing activities involving products and fields by using RFID and GNSS. MONITORS aims to simplify the management of field activities and reduce the environmental impact of pesticides by applying them more correctly.

Cardiac Power Monitoring (CPM), developed by Volker and Johannes Tank from Kreative Technologie LWU UG in Germany, is a novel technique to determine and monitor the specific physical heart power of any person performing physical endurance exercise. CPM accompanies preventive and rehabilitative physical training with a GNSS-based management system that provides high-precision position measurement, mapping, and tracking of a plurality of training courses and types over training periods.

Thys Cronje from diacoustic in South Africa has been nominated for an integrated decision-support system for location-based cardiac murmur monitoring. The patented computer-aided auscultation system detects and evaluates heart murmurs and determines the patient and/or healthcare providers' location to monitor and optimise healthcare service delivery, enhance current cardiovascular care practices, and assess the patterns and trends of cardiovascular diseases.

MEDIA:
Dylan Seychell, Alexiei Dingli and Tunde Kallai from Malta have designed a concept for a Digital Information Navigation and Orientation System for Smart Cities (DINOS). DINOS will be a hybrid system that collects and manages information and aids users travelling in cities by making use of localisation services. It will incorporate an intelligent information system that automatically manages the status of queues at attractions by determining which queue is moving the fastest, thus distributing visitors among different places of interest.

mLearning4Africa is an innovative platform that provides low-cost mobile learning services to African schools, universities, and corporations in remote areas. It offers a rich content management and publishing system for mobile learning that improves access to high-standard education materials for people in impoverished remote areas. The use of GPS can further improve learning experiences while engaging students in outdoor and physical activities. The mLearning4Africa project was initiated by Mamadou Diop from the Group Institute for Entrepreneurship and Management (ISEG) and International University for African Diasporas (UNIDAF) in Senegal.

Quest for Knowledge (QFK) is a platform that enables learning through gaming in real live environments, surpassing e-learning experiences offered within traditional virtual classrooms. Learners (players) use mobile multimedia devices and location-based services to learn through the infinite possibilities of communication, social networking, and the creation of multimedia content. They actively participate in discovering, analysing, interpreting, and solving problems. QFK has been developed by Andrej Stern and Klemen Pecnik from the Laboratory for Telecommunications (LTFE) at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The concept of applying new tactile interactions for an augmented world comes from Nicolas Esposito from the University of Technology of Compiègne, France. The idea enhances existing (picture and sound-based) augmented reality applications by adding rich tactile feedback to mobile applications. The system consists of mobile applications (leisure, gaming, etc), tactile languages (emotions, notifications, etc), and tactile smartphone accessories that go beyond mere vibrations.