Hydra project releases the second newsletter

The Hydra Project, an integrated research project within the EU’s 6th research framework program, has released its second project newsletter informing about recent results and project achievements. These results have been presented at several scientific conferences as well as on events targeting commercial exploitation.

The Hydra project pursues the vision to create a widely deployed middleware for networked mobile and embedded systems that will allow producers to easily develop cost-effective and innovative applications for new and existing devices.
Thus, the middleware under development will become an enabling tool to integrate all kinds of mobile and stationary embedded devices into an intelligent ambient networking environment. Besides the middleware, developer kits will be offered that enable hardware and software developers to easily create innovative, cost-efficient and outstanding applications based on the capabilities of the middleware. The middleware will allow users to optimize their processes by gaining higher efficiency and flexibility. To reach these goals a consortium of 13 research and development partners is cooperating, universities as well as partners from industry.

The newsletter informs about the current status and further new achievements of the project. The following abstracts provide an overview of the topics covered within:

  • Hydra - economic impulse for embedded systems
    The importance of embedded systems in the daily life of each human is growing steadily. These systems denote modular systems that are combined to form higher-complexity and more powerful systems. They are included in healthcare devices, in building automation systems and home appliances, in mobile phones and even in agriculture systems. Advanced applications in these fields require connecting a growing number of devices, typically from many manufacturers. At this point the research project "Hydra" is most relevant, because its vision is to create a widely deployed middleware for networked mobile and embedded systems that will enable producers to easily develop cost-effective and innovative applications for new and already existing devices.
  • The importance of Security
    Enabling Inclusiveness for application specific security concepts and Semantic Interoperability are two significant objectives of the of the Hydra middleware. This raises significant challenges both in terms of securing Hydra middleware itself and in terms of enabling security resolution in a heterogeneous environment. Therefore two strategies have been developed to solve this issue. On the one hand virtualisation as the main concept to secure Hydra itself and on the other hand open security meta standardisation as a means to enable interoperable security and resolution of security.
  • Healthcare Scenario using Hydra Technology
    The second iteration of the prototype development focuses the healthcare domain. The selected scenario, called "Overload", shows possible combinations of devices and functions in the healthcare domain and raises the opportunity to combine the different functions and components of the initial building automation prototype with the healthcare scenario.
  • Description of the 2nd Demonstrator
    After a successful introduction of the first building automation demonstrator a 2nd demonstrator is currently under development. This demonstrator combines functionalities of the building automation and the healthcare domain. The demonstration of the 2nd prototype will be presented in a web based tactile interface. The user experience is based on rotary sections included in the building automation and healthcare domains to be covered for the patient/home user. Relevant information about the users’ home or health is displayed on his mobile phone.
  • Hydra Middleware Runner-Up at Best Demonstrator Award
    At the ICT Mobile Summit in Stockholm (June 10 - 12, 2008) researchers from FIT, the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, and from SIT, the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology, presented conjointly an award-winning Hydra prototype application. The demo of the Hydra middleware showed its main features: context awareness and semantic security resolution with a sensor-equipped intelligent building that sends short messages to inform about an attempted intrusion or a technical defect. This outstanding demonstration was awarded with the runner-up Best Demonstrator Award.
  • Related Projects - The SENIOR Project
    SENIOR - "<link http: www.seniorproject.eu>Social Ethical and Privacy Needs in ICT for older people: A dialogue Roadmap" - is a 24 month support action project which aims to provide a systematic assessment of the social, ethical, and privacy issues involved in ICT and Ageing, to understand what lessons should be learnt from current technological trends, and to plan strategies for governing future trends.
  • Outlook for the next months
    A short overview of the next upcoming events and conferences, where members of the Hydra consortium will present and discuss actual Hydra results, is given. Further a selection of papers that have been published in 2008 are listed. These papers can be downloaded from the official Hydra website.

The newsletter can be downloaded here:
<link http: www.hydramiddleware.eu>www.hydramiddleware.eu/downloads.php

For further information, please visit the project Web site: <link http: www.hydramiddleware.eu>www.hydramiddleware.eu and <link>our international webpage on research projects.