"Task aware location based services for mobile environments"

TALOS is a project that will provide the technological foundations for the task-aware supply of rich content in mobile LBS environments.

Despite the growth in the number of mobile users, the wide-spread adoption of ubiquitous wireless networks, and the ever increasing capabilities of mobile handsets, the market of mobile services is still dominated by simple infotainment services. This is especially apparent in the area of Location Based Systems, which with few exceptions (e.g. navigation), have not fulfilled its predicted commercial success in mobile environments. Some reasons here are that (i) content offered in typical LBS applications is still narrow and static (ii) available methods and interfaces in mobile handsets for the discovery of available content are at best insufficient (e.g. keyword type search) and (iii) mobile users still require a GPS module (integrated or autonomous) to utilize location based services and (iv) existing structured content available in several LBS applications is hard to reuse.

The scope of the project is to address the above problems to the benefit of the participating SMEs, offering them a clear S&T advantage over their competition, enabling them to deliver commercially successful location based services for mobile environments. In particular,

• we will develop a user interface based on the principles of task computing, which provides an efficient content discovery channel for mobile users, and
• we will employ approximate positioning techniques requiring no extra hardware other than their mobile phones.

Furthermore, in order to enrich the available content in mobile LBS, we develop:

• task annotation tools for structured content, enabling the SMEs to offer their existing content in a task-aware manner,
• spatiotemporal annotation tools for structured content, and
• tools for integrating Web content.