Welcome to the w5 Consortium Birds of a Feather Meeting February 13 th 2001

Introductions… Dave Marples Telcordia Technologies Inc. Pilgrim Beart activeRF Ltd

…a few thanks to our sponsors;

Today’s Mission is to; Characterize w5 Identify common requirements Review current industry initiatives Network and make contacts Spot business opportunities Make links between Industry and Academia Determine a route forwards

Schedule 9.00Introductions 9.20 Meet your Collaborators 10.10Other industry initiatives (AIM) 10.30Coffee / Tea sponsored by activeRF 11.00A wider perspective for location 11.20Technical Challenges & Issues 12.30Lunch - sponsored by Marconi Communications Inc.

Schedule 14.00Other industry initiatives (WLIA) 14.30Coffee / Tea - sponsored by MTI 15.00The Route Forwards 16.30Close

What is the mission of w5? To define open standards for the real-time exchange of location information between independently specified and developed systems, with concerns of privacy, authentication, timeliness and accuracy explicitly addressed.

With and Without w5… App 1 App 2 App 3 RTLS 1 RTLS 2 RTLS 3 RTLS 4 RTLS 5 App 1 App 2 App 3 RTLS 1 RTLS 2 RTLS 3 RTLS 4 RTLS 5 Common APIs

A few thoughts… The guy sitting next to you is still your competitor. We have to enable applications, because these deliver user value, and infrastructure alone does not. The photocopier is our friend – if we can adopt an existing standard rather than creating one, we should do so. The greatest single risk to success in these markets is user perception – privacy is job 1.

Next… Presentations from two other industry initiatives set up in the location space

What w5 is about A slightly more technical overview Pilgrim Beart CEO, activeRF Ltd

Generic Sensing Infrastructure servertags nodes transmission clients

W5 Who? What? Where? When? Why?

Who, What… Who A user, represented by a device (e.g. ID tag) or attribute (e.g. fingerprint, voiceprint) User has meaning within the context of the applications What An RFID, numeric or textual Typically a serial number, GSM number etc. Maybe sensing infrastructure dependent, made generic via database lookup…

…Where… Location or even micro-location Longitude/latitude may only be appropriate for certain applications… – Could be (x,y) relative to defined point, but – Often more useful to say “Board Room” or “Warehouse 7” – location ID. Will have intrinsic granularity and uncertainty May be nested (i.e. one location can be within another) Location may need to be inferred from transitions, such as when going through doorways

…When… Queries may be real-time with live updates/triggers If history is maintained queries historical queries may be possible (where was x at time y?) Latency, Granularity & Synchronisation are all important – Timezone of event-stamp (capture). UTC. – Timezone of event-query (client) Timestamping techniques can be used to eliminate duplicate captures from the sensing infrastructure.

…Why… Represents context for location actions. Vital to condense mass of data down Turning data into meaningful KPIs Same information may be presented in different contexts (work, home etc.) which may require different actions. The user may have context outside of their current role which must also be captured. “Fedex”, and “wood for the trees”

…and Who wants to know? Privacy – Assets don’t have rights, people do. – If tracking people (directly or indirectly) are they aware, can they control, are they benefiting? Security – Commercial data is sensitive. Encrypt. Anonymise. Context – Users may allow their location information to be released for some reasons, but not for others.

w5 isn’t… Not a low-level physical “tag” standard Not an RFID standard Not tied to a particular location technology – Enables heterogeneity

w5 is… A high-level interface, an “API” Serial data (across physical link or IP socket) XML and other “intelligent data” (w5ML?) Database storage and interrogation Pull (polled) or Push (event-driven, triggers) Publish & Subscribe Agents (“tell me when X & Y are in same place”) Client-centric (peer-to-peer) or Server-centric … and it supports micro-location