Computing and Communications Technologies: Quo Vadis ? Athens, 20 May 2001 Horst Forster European Commission ATH0

Distributed Systems Control Systems Cognitive Vision Embedded Systems Optical Networking Network Management Distributed Applications Service Provision Pervasive Computing / Networking Computing and Networking IBM0

Where do we go from now ? Computing and embedded software are ubiquitous Networks and bandwidth are proliferating... and growth continues Cheap miniaturised sensors emerge IBM1

Implications Infrastructure supports more functionality Applications become distributed Applications are tethered to the physical world Systems are increasing in scale and complexity ATH2

Implications: Infrastructure Evolution Static optical networking Data prevails over voice Cellular telephony on the rise Dynamic optical networking Data-centric networks Cellular telephony meets Internet All-optical networking ? and beyondTowards 4th G ? ATH3

Challenges: Infrastructure Transformation... from connected networks and computers... to service access and delivery environment adapt automatically and dynamically distributed (and possibly mobile) demands satisfy all aspects of the users computing, communication, storage and service functionality CONTROL ATH5

Challenges: Applications Transformation... from processing and delivery of data... to interaction with many data sources, dynamically changing data-sets and tasks augment human capabilities in analysis, interpretation and decision-making computation cannot always prevail master scale and complexity in an intelligent way COGNITION ATH6

In short As computing and communications become ubiquitous, control and cognition will rank as key enabling technologies ATH7

Cognitive vision systems Examples of projects COGVIS -provides methods to enable task-oriented categorisation and recognition of objects and events -system:understands - recognition/categorisation through association knows - memory as a basis for information representation/maintenance learns - allows operation beyond initial specifications -a prototype integrating methods will interpret user actions and perform tasks, e.g. fetch and deliver objects in realistic settings COGVISYS -builds a vision system that can be used in a wider variety of vields -system: self-adapts at level of perception uses explicit knowledge base at level of reasoning -demonstrators will translate visual information into textual description e.g. for traffic surveillance, sign language interpretation, video annotation IBM2

Pervasive Computing Example O Z O N E nomadic use of technology natural interfaces pervasive connectivity; location & situation awareness dynamic configuration of computing elements and services high performance (low power) hw/sw platforms low cost IBM3