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February - SENSE Observation System demos the Marauder's Map ... read here February - Metaverse1: the project, not the planet ... read here February - Cover AI-students visit Almende ... read here January - Almende wraps up in ICIS project ... read here January - Almende's best wishes for 2010! ... read here December 2009 - New research projects aim at 'advanced logistics' ... read here November 2009 - Almende subsidiary scores prestigious pilot with JM Imtech in Shanghai ... read here November 2009 - Almende Tracking Application at De Eerste Nationale Dag van de Zelforganisatie (event) ... read here October 2009 - Multi-agent software for health care and education ... read here August 2009 - Almende envisions Sustaining Service Ecosystems ... read here July 2009 - DEAL still delivers: improving logistics with multiagent systems ... read here June 2009 - Towards massive decentralization ... Hybrid multiagent systems to the rescue ... read here May 2009 - ICT increases the brain of society ... read here April 2009 - Hans Abbink envisions ICT in 2030 ... read here March 2009 - Almende @ AAMAS 2009 ... read here October 2008 - Almende @ BNAIC 2008 ... read here September 2008 - Agent-based incident communication support @ MATES 2008 ... read here August 2008 - Inside look at Replicator project ... read here Archive News ... read here
SENSE Observation Systems demos the Marauder's Map The 2010 edition of ICTDelta will be an inspiring and dynamic festival revealing all the latest on Dutch ICT initiatives. The festival, held on the 18th of March, presents a packed programme of presentations, discussion sessions and demonstrations. Among those demonstrations is The Marauder's Map by Almende spin-off SENSE Observation Systems, part of the What's Cooking theme. What's Cooking showcases small, fast, intelligent and energy-friendly devices and application which have become facts of daily life.
Marauder's Map is a wireless sensor network used to locate or track people in any environment. Static sensor nodes are distributed in an environment, and serve as reference nodes. People in this environment carry mobile sensor nodes. Static nodes derive the distance between themselves and the mobile nodes from the amount of radio messages received. This information is gathered on a laptop computer which determines the precise location of the mobile nodes. These locations are visualized by projection on a map of the environment.
Almende director Hans Abbink will contribute to the discussion organized by IIP Brains & Cognition held at ICTDelta 2010. The ICT Innovation Platform Brain & Cognition aims for the formation of a national ecosystem and joining forces on the cutting edge of ICT and brain and cognition.
Links More information on SENSE Observation Systems The complete programme of ICTDelta 2010 The registration form to attend ICTDelta 2010 February 2010 Metaverse1: the project, not the planet It's no coincidence that Metaverse1, an ITEA 2 project Almende participates in, is named after a fictional virtual world in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. The Metaverse in Snow Crash is an urban environment, either projected as high-quality virtual reality display onto goggles worn by the user, or shown as low-quality public terminals in booths. The users appear as avatars of any form.
The Metaverse1 project can be viewed as a means to overcome the division between real and projected virtual worlds. The goal of the Metaverse1 project is to provide a standardized global framework that enables the interoperability between virtual worlds (as for example Second Life, World of Warcraft, IMVU, Google Earth and many others) and the real world (sensors, actuators, vision and rendering, social and welfare systems, banking, insurance, travel, real estate and many others). Ultimately, users will be able to manoeuvre between the real and virtual worlds without having to worry about incompatibility between virtual and real goods, avatars, rules, security, privacy, ethics.
Within Metaverse1, Almende focuses on virtual presence. This means modelling real (world) people and their activities within their virtual world. The use case virtual presence is concerned with creating a seamless integration between the virtual and real world, where real world devices such as communication devices, wireless sensor networks (WSN), actuators, and robots are used to connect both worlds. This use case is realized by creating a 'smart' room with sensors and actuators which interacts with a replica (see images) in the virtual world. Within the use case there is not only real-to-virtual world but also virtual-to-real world communication. For the first, WSN technology enables activities in the real world to be detected and visualized in virtual worlds. In case of the latter, social robots in the virtual world establish communication to the real world by means of audio, video and text-to-speech.
Images: The real and virtual world in Metaverse1
A real world project challenge for Almende is to provide environment information and activity predictions sensed from the real world, and a framework for the integration with virtual worlds. Users will only accept manoeuvring between real and virtual worlds when the integration between the world is seamless. In order to achieve this the framework should translate hardware independent sensor information into predictions about the environment state and perceived activities. This is achieved by defining standardized information structures and by applying multi-layer abstractions. Predictions about the environment state and activities of daily life are made by fusion sensor information from low level non-intrusive sensors like mobile phones, accelerometers, switches, light sensors, ECG's and thermometers.
Links Metaverse on Wikipedia (including links to Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash)
Cover AI-students visit Almende Artificial Intelligence students from Groningen University will visit Almende Friday 12 February. For us a great opportunity to show how artificial intelligence plays an import role in organizing complex hybrid agent networks. This will be the second time that Almende hosts students from student body Cover. Their previous visit was 29th of May 2009. The programme for upcoming Friday is as follows: 12.15 Arrival and welcome
12.30 Lunch (in the basement and in the Almende-vergaderzaal) 13.15 Small research sessions (3 x 20 min) - Freek van Polen (Almende) - hardware / middle-ware Myria Nodes and Almende's vision on sensor-data - Duco Ferro (Almende) - network visualisation / Trigion case
14.15 Brief walk to the Natuurhistorisch Museum (Westzeedijk 345 - Museumpark)
14.30 Start research meeting - welcome by Jan Peter Larsen (Almende)
14.45 Research project overview by Alfons Salden (Almende)
15.30 Almende Research Meeting by Anton Nijholt (Human Media Interaction Research Group - Twente) People as Content
16.30 Walk back to Almende and drinks
Almende wraps up in ICIS research project The ICIS Final Event of January 26th proved a worthy ending of this five-year BSIK program. ICIS aimed to develop better techniques for making complex information systems more intelligent and supportive in decision making situations. Almende presented its contributions on an architecture for hybrid actor agent networks and SENZORG, the application of this platform in a health care setting. According to Almende, such an architecture supports both people (e.g. cognition, decisions and emotion) and software agents (e.g. speed, frequency and connectivity). Throughout the project, Almende worked on a multi-agent platform allowing for new technology plug-ins (e.g. ICIS building blocks) and validated the sensor-platform in a case-study with Humanitas.
The ICIS project started in 2003 and was hosted by D-CIS Lab, the open research partnership of Thales Nederland, the Delft University of Technology, the University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Foundation of Applied Scientific Research.
For more information on all the Almende activities within ICIS visit the ICIS project page or visit the ICIS website.
Almende's best wishes for 2010! Almende would like to wish everyone a happy 2010!
For Almende, this year means the start of three brand new projects. One of these is the FP7 project FIT4Green. This project aims at ICT energy reduction. It does that by creating an energy-aware layer of plug-ins for IT data centre automation frameworks. Two other new projects - as mentioned DELIVER and SUPPORT - focus on the improvement of logistic planning and matching within complex logistic networks. Additionally, Almende will continue its research activities in ongoing projects. In the Replicator project (project page) Almende will focus on global workspace theory. This follows from the work we did on sensor fusion. This work was twofold. Almende worked on fusing different kinds of sensory data. Second, a dynamic architecture was developed in which different sensors could be switched on and off, depending on the functional requirements. Follow the latest developments within Replicator by regularly tuning in to http://replicator.almende.com.
New research projects aim at 'advanced logistics' The upcoming new year for Almende means the beginning of new research projects. Two of these projects focus specifically on the domain of logistics. Both projects, DELIVER and SUPPORT, aim to improve the planning and matching within complex logistic networks. DELIVER is a Eureka innovation project coordinated by Almende. Project partners are University of Leiden, Trigion, Dortmund University (Germany), RIFF (Germany) and Almende subsidiary DEAL Services. SUPPORT aims to support and strengthen the logistic networks around the Port of Rotterdam. Participants in SUPPORT are Almende (coordinator), TU Delft, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), APM Terminals BV, De Rijke Trucking BV, Hebra Containervervoer BV, Peeman Transport BV and DEAL Services.
DELIVER ICT systems for planning and logistic optimization are all too often used a priori and leave out real world dynamics. In practice, any incident or disturbance means deviating from the plan, inefficiencies of around 20% in mobile service organizations, home delivery and courier services and significant negative effects on customer satisfaction and quality of service. DELIVER looks at planning from a fundamentally different angle. DELIVER takes the 'dreaded' real world dynamics to continuously improve on the best available plan. This makes the process of planning perpetual.
The most important challenge within DELIVER is using current state-of-the-art planning algorithms in parallel. Software agents within a distributed agent-based framework will coordinate of the use of different algorithms, depending on real-world events. Using evolutionary and heuristic techniques, the set of algorithms in DELIVER evolves on the bases of past real-world events and criteria. Research is carried out by the excellent research institutes LIACS (Leiden University) and Technical University of Dortmund, and applied research partner and coordinator Almende. Technology partners Deal Services and RIF can productize the project results and bring them to the market. Trigion is the largest security organization in the Netherlands and will act as a domain expert for mobile service organizations and launching customer. SUPPORT SUPPORT focuses on one of Europe's main ports: the Port of Rotterdam. The Port of Rotterdam can be considered as a complex interconnected network of companies and logistic processes. Planning is of utmost importance. Unfortunately, plans don't foresee in incidents and disruptions. In order to minimize the effects of incidents and disruptions, SUPPORT proposes continuous synchronization. Each actor within this complex network is represented by a software-agent, as are its goals, constraints and data. This multi-agent network approach enables a more effective communication between all relevant players and the management of their own and shared logistics processes. The result is a highly synchronized distributed representation of reality which allows organizations to deal with incidents and disruptions through interaction.
As mentioned, DELIVER and SUPPORT kick-off in January 2010. Progress made in these projects can be read on the DELIVER blog and the SUPPORT BLOG.
Almende subsidiary scores prestigious pilot with JM Imtech in Shanghai ASK Community Systems, one of five Almende subsidiaries, has scored a pilot project for a period of one year. Starting from mid-December this year, ASK Community Systems will be serving the Shanghai Jin Mao Tower owned by JM Imtech. The Jin Mao Tower is an 88 floor structure and ranks second tallest in Shanghai (China). ASK Community Systems will be providing their Emergency Response solutions, using their intelligent communication platform. The validation of this project will bring ASK CS the opportunity to expand the application to a much larger scale.
JM Imtech is a joint venture between Imtech Germany and Jin Mao Group China. One of the iconic buildings of Shanghai owned by Jin Mao Group is the Jin Mao Tower. Currently the building houses over 300 multi-national companies (32 of which are the Fortune 500 companies) as well as the Grand Hyatt hotel.
JM Imtech as the facility management service provider of Jin Mao Tower is responsible for providing Grade-A facility management services at 24/7. Alerting all (or a certain part of) the hosted companies at the earliest possibility in case of emergency is one of the challenges faced by JM Imtech. ASK Community Services will provide their emergency response solutions using the ASK platform. Both parties are convinced of providing an emergency response solution with reliability (by collecting feedback and user responses) and flexibility (by multiple communication means and the selection of target groups).
The close collaboration of JM Imtech and ASK CS Shanghai, as well as the support from ASK CS NL, should guarantee success in this pilot project. Accordingly, the validation of this project brings the opportunity to expand the application to a much larger scale (JM Imtech provides the facility management services to 20 other high-end office buildings).
Links Jin Mao Tower on Wikipedia ASK Community Services NL (headquaters) ASK Community Services China (in Chinese)
Almende Tracking Application at De Eerste Nationale Dag van de Zelforganisatie Last Wednesday the 11th of November 2009 the first National Day of Selforganization was held in Rotterdam. An excellent occasion for Almende to show what can be done with a Wireless Sensor Networks, and so a lot of effort was put into creating an operational Tracking Application. The application was used on the conference to track a number of visitors as they moved through the area. It consisted of a number of static nodes that were spread through the conference area and of which the location was recorded, and a number of mobile nodes that were handed out to selected visitors. While no further functionality was added, a little creativity goes a long way: the organizer could use it to alert people when workgroups start, visitors could use it to look up where certain other visitors are during the lunch break to go talk to them, etc.
The graphical user interface that was developed can be viewed on http://1.latest.almendetracker.appspot.com/ (work in progress). As it is still in the developmental stage, it is quite slow.
Links Almende Sense Tech Blog: more info about the Almende / Sense Wireless Sensor Network applications De Eerste Nationale Dag van de Zelforganisatie: homepage of Stichting Zelforganisatie (in Dutch)
Multi-agent software for health care and eduction One of Almende's latest projects is one in which requests for health care are matched to students of Zadkine Rotterdam (secondary vocational eduction). The goal of this project is two-fold. First of all, Almende will work on the underlying ICT system allowing requests for health care to be answered in real-time by Zadkine interns. Another important aspect of this project is feedback within this ICT system. Feedback gives insight in the quality of service provided by the students. The feedback is also used to monitor individual students in their internship. This project is a collaboration between Almende, Zadkine Rotterdam, Opleidingscentrum Gezondheidszorg, Laboratoriumtechniek en Optiek and Humanitas-Bergweg.
Almende Envisions Sustainable Service Ecosystems
Alfons Salden (Almende) will contribute to the workshop Autonomic Computing and Networking for Service Ecosystems organised by Telecom Italia, to be held 23rd of September in Turin (Italy). The programme is focussed on opportunities and technological challenges related to the development of new pervasive Service Ecosystems where multiple parties can interact to produce and consume contents, services and applications. Alfons Salden will present on Renormalized Synergetics for Sustaining Service Ecosystems in the Applications Scenarios and Future Visions track, as well as be part of the closing panel themed Innovation models based on AC&N and related exploitations.
In the future Users, Machines, Enterprises, Providers will produce and consume large amounts of data and services through system and pervasive devices with more and more storage and processing capabilities. Computation, storage and communication services will be pervasive: people, smart objects, machines, platforms and the surrounding space (e.g., with sensors, RFID tags, etc.) will create a highly decentralized common pool of resources (up to the very edge of the “network”) interconnected by a dynamic “Network of Networks”. This evolution is offering the opportunity of developing new pervasive Service Ecosystems where multiple Players (from SME to LE, from Network/Service Providers to Applications Developers and Users) can interact to produce and consume contents, services and applications.
“Network of Networks” for Service Ecosystems has to be flexible enough to accommodate different computing and communications paradigms, such as, client-server, peer-to-peer and traditional network-centered control. Resources will not belong anymore to one single administrative domain, so the aggregation of resources should be carried out in a dynamic and cooperative way.
Technological challenges of this vision includes developing autonomic and self-managed computing and networking frameworks capable of meeting the new emerging requirements, in terms of complexity and adaptability, whilst simultaneously enhancing performance, reliability and reaction times of traditional solutions.
Links
DEAL still delivers: improving logistics with multiagent systems The DEAL project officially ended end 2007, but the topic of improving logistics is still a hot issue. Most recent, Valentin Robu (CWI) defended his PhD thesis 'Modeling Preferences, Strategic Reasoning and Collaboration in Agent-Mediated Electronic Markets' at the Eindhoven University of Technology.
Robu's thesis reports on two research subjects: collaborative tagging techniques and automation through intelligent agents. The latter is research done in the Distributed Engine for Advanced Logistics (DEAL) project. This project, coordinated by Almende, aimed to achieve reductions in cost, traffic jams and carbon dioxide emissions. Valentin Robu looked at how these environments could be automated with intelligent agents. This independent software programmes can bid on various loads on behalf of their owners. The scientist developed techniques for negotiations and auctions. A decentralized system with intelligent agents appeared to be much faster and better able to adapt to unforeseen circumstances than centralized planning methods.
The results of this successful project are marketed through DEAL Services. This Almende spin-off focuses on continuously improving logistic processes, through combining multi-agent systems with the newest information communication technologies.
Links
Towards massive decentralization ... Hybrid multiagent systems to the rescue At the most recent AAMAS in Budapest, Invited Speaker Michael N. Huhns (University of South Carolina) spoke on "continuing the trends". According to the Huhns the most important and interesting of todays computer challenges relate to the problems and opportunities afforded by massive decentralization and disintermediation. Crucial are the domains which ask for controlled action, but where centralized control in infeasable. Typically these domains involve not only machines and computers, but people and organizations, making distributed problem solving increasingly complex.
Huhns mentions the domains of healthcare IT for patients, consumer control of electricity distribution and consensus knowledge and decisions as an example of such domains.
Almende is familiar with these domains through many of its research projects. Moreover, our research aims on organizing such complex hybrid networks, without pursuing any form of centralized control. Instead, all stakeholders in a distributed problem domain are represented by an agent. Each agent has a goal and acts locally. Interactions and negotiations between these agents, their form of consensus, leads to a decentralized form of control.
Michael Huhns concluded his talk by stating that "A multiagent foundation provides for autonomous active components that can engage in n-party interactions, negotiate with each other, and reconcile their individual, possibly idiosyncratic semantics". But to tackle massive distributed societal problems, these multiagent systems in the same way have to interact with and engage in human systems.
links: Michael N. Huhns AAMAS profile
ICT increases the brain of society Keynote speaker Robert Atkinson predicts a "new intelligent revolution" at the third ICTDelta event held Tuesday 12 May in Utrecht. We should consider this revolution to be invisible, even though its consequences will be enormous. Enough reason for Atkinson, President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, to call upon the (financial) support of the Dutch government. This keynote preceded the presentation of ICT2030.nl, an agenda on how ICT should be incorporated in research, education, entrepreneurship and innovation for a prosperous, sustainable, healthy and safe Holland in 2030.
ICT, like steam power, electricity and steel, should be regarded as a general purpose technology (GPT). According to Atkinson, GPT's have four main characteristics. First of all, such technologies have rapid performance and price improvements. Second, general purpose technologies become part of most industries, including 'old economies'. A third characteristic is that such a technology is a major innovation enabler. And last, GPT's drive productivity and growth in societies.
According to Atkinson, ICT has all of the above characteristics. Without a doubt, information communication technologies have an impact on virtually everything within society. The next phase is what Atkinson calls the Intelligent World. ICT will be the societal “embedded nervous system” in which "everything that can be digitized will be digitized". But like a nervous system needs a brain, this emerging intelligent world needs funding. " ... and not investing in ICT, arguing that there is enough ICT already, is like saying that we already have enough brains" (Hans Abbink).
Hans de Groene, on behalf of Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Maria van der Hoeven, accepted the first copy of ICT2030.nl, presented by ICTREgie president Gerard van Oortmerssen, president of ICTRegie.
links: ICTDelta 2009 website Keynote presentation ICT Transformation in the Coming Decade by Dr. Robert Atkinson (Information Technology and Innovation Foundation) Information Technology and Innovation Foundation website
Hans Abbink envisions ICT in 2030 On the brink of ICT Delta 2009, Almende's CEO Hans Abbink expresses his wishes for ICT in 2030 (see video - in Dutch).
"What would you want to see realised with ICT in 2030 - and why?". Hans Abbink and twenty-four experts from the field were asked this question ahead of the ICT Delta 2009 event. This annual conference organised by ICTRegie on 12th of May 2009, zooms in on the priorities of todays ICT. The ultimate goal of ICT2030 is to formulate "a stimulating and broadly supported long-term vision on Dutch ICT research and education".
Most important aspect of Abbink's answer is that next generation ICT should increase the potential of humans. According to Hans Abbink, current ICT affects us in a top-down fashion. In general this means that humans have to comply to ICT. In contrast, Almende develops hybrid agent networks. These networks consider humans and ICT as equal and interacting partners. Using the superior qualities of ICT (very fast and frequent communication) alongside cognitive capabilities of humans enables such networks to be adaptive and flexible.
At ICT Delta 2009, the ICT2030 document will be handed to Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs Maria van der Hoeven. More information about ICT Delta 2009 can be found here.
The video quotes of Hans Abbink and twenty-four other leading ICT experts can be found here.
Almende @ AAMAS 2009 More information can be found on the AAMAS 2009 website: http://www.conferences.hu/AAMAS2009/
Almende @ BNAIC 2008 Almende researchers Tamás Máhr, Xiaoyu Mao, Duco Ferro and Freek van Polen will be present at the next edition of BNAIC (30-31 October). Máhr will present Agent Performance in Vehicle Routing when the Only Thing Certain is Uncertainty, written in collaboration with Jordan Srour (TU Delft), Mathijs de Weerdt (TU Delft) and Rob Zuidwijk (TU Delft). The poster session of the 20th edition of the Belgian-Netherlands Conference on Artificial Intelligence will feature Almende's Xiaoyu Mao, Duco Ferro and Freek van Polen.
The presentation Agent Performance in Vehicle Routing when the Only Thing Certain is Uncertainty compares the centralized optimization approach to the decentralized multi-agent approach in the setting of dynamic vehicle routing problem. It is shown that optimization is suitable for situation in which there is little to no dynamism, whereas multi-agent are more capable to deal with changing circumstances. Tamás Máhr will present at BNAIC 2008 on Thursday at 16.30.
The poster presentations will be held throughout the duration of BNAIC 2008. Almende presents Self-organizing mobile surveillance security networks by Duco N. Ferro and Alfons H. Salden, Distribute the Selfish Ambitions by Xiaoyu Mao, Alfons Salden and Nico Roos (Maastricht University) and Categorizing Children: Automated Text Classification of CHILDES files by Rob Opsomer, Petr Knoth, Freek Van Polen (Almende), Jantine Trapman and Marco Wiering.
http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/bnaic2008
Agent-based incident communication support @ MATES 2008 Almende's Duco Ferro and TU Delft's full professor Catholijn Jonker presented their paper Filtering Algorithms for Agent-Based Incident Communication Support in Mobile Human Surveillance at MATES 2008. The sixth edition of Multi-agent system Technologies, aimed to promote the theory and applications of agent- and multi-agent technologies, was held in Kaiserslautern, Germany.
This paper presents an ontology and a filtering algorithm used in an agent-based system to support communication in case of incidents in the mobile human surveillance domain. In that domain reaching the right people as soon as possible is of the essence when incidents occur. The main goal of our efforts is to significantly reduce the response time in case of incidents by proposing and setting up the communication to the right people. Experimental results show that this can reduce the response time by more than 50%, e.g., from 40 to 20 minutes. To continuously improve the accuracy of the proposed communications, the agent-based system uses feedback mechanisms. An implementation of this system, ASK-ASSIST, has been deployed at a mobile human surveillance company.
The presentation Filtering Algorithms for Agent-Based Incident Communication Support can be downloaded here (.ppt)
Inside look at Replicator project For all those interested in the development of an advanced robotic system, consisting of a super-large-scale swarm of small autonomous mobile micro-robots that are capable of self-assembling into large artificial organisms, Anne van Rossum's tech-blog gives you a detailed look into the Replicator kitchen on http://replicator.almende.com.
Replicator, a FP7 project which started in March this year, aims to develop multi-robot systems in which individual robots can be coupled together to form larger robot organisms. Those large robots are called Replicators. They are able to reconfigure from one form to another. This reconfiguration process is guided by changes in the environment and is fully autonomous in the sense that humans do not play a role at runtime.
Within Replicator, Almende is extensively involved in the prototyping and evaluation of multi-sensor data fusion agents, and the prototyping and evaluation of emergent self-organized control.
Almende Summer School - 2nd edition Almende has announced its second edition of Almende Summer School. The central theme of this 4-day event, to be held from 25th of August till 28th of August, is 'Coordination Techniques for Self Organizing Human Agent Networks'. The Almende Summer School aims to bring together graduate students, PhD students and researchers from academia and industry for an intensive programme of courses and workshops.
Speakers include Prof. dr. Ir. J.A. La Poutré (Center for Mathematics and Computer Science - Amsterdam), Prof. dr. J. Van Den Herik (Department of Computer Science - University Maastricht), Prof. D. Weyns (Department of Computer Science - Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) and Almende's CEO and CTO Hans Abbink and Peet van Tooren.
The application fee is 175 euro, which includes tuition, manuals, lunches, farewell dinner and other social activities. Please check the Almende Summer School website or contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information and ways to apply.
March 2008 Two courses on self organization: "Introduction to Self-organization" and "Elements of Self-organization" have started on March 4, 2008. Each Tuesday from 17:00 untill 19:00 one of the 26 lectures is presented in the Zweedse Kerk in Rotterdam. For more information go to http://lectures.almende.com
January 2008 A pre-kickoff meeting in Stuttgart formed the official start of the European FP7 Replicator project in which Almende partakes and the related bio-insipired Symbrion project. In those projects micro-robots that connect together to form large macro-robots will be used to be able to perform activities that are out of reach for wheeled robots that can not reassemble themselves to overcome certain obstacles in their environment. In the meeting the physical hardware, like the battery cell type, the docking mechanism, as well as the electronical substrate, like the architecture, the processor and the software, like the hardware abstraction layer, the operating system were discussed.
December 2007 Almende's Alfons Salden was invited to speak at the 2nd International Conference on Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systems in Budapest (Hungary) from December 10-13.
The conference focuses on research and application of bio-inspired computer science and engineering methods that allow heavily networked and distributed (mobile and autonomous) devices to robustly interact with the physical world in multiple ways, at multiple scales, under changing environments and noisy input, and yet exhibit the desired behavior and response time, under constraints such as energy consumption, size, and processing power. Consequently, such systems must adapt and learn how to handles such complexity, stability and performance issues.
Salden was invited for the Bioinformatics and Industrial Track of BIONETICS 2007, where he presented the joint work of him and Duco Ferro carried out within the CIM and the ICIS project: D. Ferro and A. H. Salden, “Self-organizing mobile surveillance security networks”
downloads:
This summer school was more than a place which people attended to follow courses; it was also a social event where people met other people, discussed research, and started collaborations. Students from over 15 countries participated in the Almende Summer School.
Well-known speakers within the Artificial Intelligent gave valuable lectures as well as workshop instructors provided interesting and motivating workshops. Among the speakers were Prof. Peter van Roy (Universite Catholique de Louvain - Belgium), Prof. dr. John Jules Ch. Meyer (Utrecht University), Dr. H.J. Bert Kappen (SNN) and Hans Abbink (Almende). During the final discussion panel, knowledge and experiences of the participants were shared, and new collaborations were started.
The first edition of the Almende Summer School was sponsored by D-Cis.
Check this website for information on the second edition of the Almende Summer School in 2008.
July 2007 Our new brochure "Almende Strategy" is available as a downloadable document or by This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . |
The 2010 edition of ICTDelta will be an inspiring and dynamic festival revealing all the latest on Dutch ICT initiatives. The festival, held on the 18th of March, presents a packed programme of presentations, discussion sessions and demonstrations. Among those demonstrations is The Marauder's Map by Almende spin-off SENSE Observation Systems, part of the What's Cooking theme 
It's no coincidence that Metaverse1, an ITEA 2 project Almende participates in, is named after a fictional virtual world in Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash. The Metaverse in Snow Crash is an urban environment, either projected as high-quality virtual reality display onto goggles worn by the user, or shown as low-quality public terminals in booths. Users appear as avatars of any form. The Metaverse1 project can be viewed as 
The ICIS Final Event of January 26th proved a worthy ending of this five-year BSIK program. ICIS aimed to develop better techniques for making complex information systems more intelligent and supportive in decision making situations. Almende presented its contributions on an architecture for hybrid actor agent networks and SENZORG 
Almende would like to wish everyone a happy 2010! For Almende, this year means the start of three new projects. One of these is the FP7 project FIT4Green. This project aims at ICT energy reduction. It does that by creating an energy-aware layer of plug-ins for IT data centre automation frameworks. Two other new projects - as mentioned DELIVER and SUPPORT - focus on the improvement of logistic planning.