NEWSLETTER GERMAN RESEARCH CENTER FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 1/2007 RESEARCH LABS IMAGE UNDERSTANDING AND PATTERN RECOGNITION KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT INTELLIGENT VISUALIZATION AND SIMULATION DEDUCTION AND MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY INTELLIGENT USER INTERFACES ROBOTICS SAFE AND SECURE COGNITIVE SYSTEMS INFORMATION SYSTEMS DFKI at CeBIT 2007 Two new DFKI shareholders from the DAX 30 Germany Land of Ideas Selected Place in the Land of Ideas Selected Place 2007 © 2007 DFKI I ISSN - 1615 - 5769 I 19th edition German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence Competence Center of Computer Science is a „Selected Place“ at CeBIT 2007 DFKI, as part of the Com- booth A60 and at the exhibit booths of DFKI (B69) and petence Center, will fulfill the University of the Saarland (B65), the topics will its role as a „Selected range from computer graphics and language technolo- Place“ on March 19, 2007 gies to cryptography and networked multimedia. The at CeBIT 2007. Head of the Language Technology Division at DFKI, Prof. Dr. Hans Uszkoreit will be introducing the COMPASS2008 The Competence Center was established at the University project, a digital tour guide to be deployed in the of the Saarland in 2004 with a grant from the Saarland Chinese capital (p. 10). state government. The center consists of approximately How to get a driver's 30 IT and IT related faculty chairs at the university as license in math will be well as the non-university affiliated research institutes: explained with the aid DFKI, Max Planck Institute for Informatics, and the Inter- of the eLearning envi- national Conference and Research Center for Computer ronment, ActiveMath Science, Schloss Dagstuhl. (p. 18) by Prof. Dr. Jörg Siekmann, Head of DFKI The purpose of the Center, under the trademark Deduction and Multi- „Informatik Saarland“ is to inform business, govern- agent Systems Division. ment, and the public about the research results with the aim of strengthening technology transfer. In presentati- Additional information ons and exhibits in the future talk forum in Hall 9, www.informatik-saarland.de „Open House“ at the Virtual Office of the Future at DFKI DFKI-Kaiserslautern is the place to be on 24 April in the „Land of Ideas”. There you will find more than 60 research scientists working on innovative software solu- tions in the areas of knowledge management, intelli- gent image understanding, and pattern recognition, visualization and simulation. This is also the planned date of the official opening of the new DFKI office buil- ding in Kaiserslautern. The Rhineland-Palatinate State Minister of Education, Science, Youth, and Culture, Doris Ahnen will inaugurate the new building accompanied by the The Lord Mayor of Kaiserslautern, Bernhard J. Deubig, the President of TU Kaiserslautern, Helmut J. Schmidt, the DFKI management and other guests. The trophy for the „Selected Place 2007“ will be presen- ted in the new „showroom“ by a representative of the initiative „365 Selected Places in the Land of Ideas“ and l.-r. Prof. D. Zühlke; D. Bertram, Deutsche Bank; Dr. W. Olthoff; a representative of Deutsche Bank. Prof. A.Dengel; U. Schmidt, Deutsche Bank Following the ceremony, guests can enjoy an overview pendently derives knowledge and processes it beyond of the technologies and research results of DFKI. An the boundaries of one specific application. At the work appreciation of the complete innovation cycle at DFKI - place of the future, innovative computer systems recog- from leading edge research to practical applications - nize the work habits and understand the goals of the will be possible with a series of live-demonstrations. user and provide relevant information in the current There will also be a lively and understandable presenta- working context. tion of the work of the AI researchers on implementing the „virtual office of the future“: Information and Additional information knowledge assistants helping humans to master www.dfki.de/vof knowledge-intense tasks. The work place of tomorrow is the semantic desktop, which links e-mails, files, pho- tos, or appointments in a semantic network and inde- 2 Newsletter 1_2007 I © DFKI German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence 4 of 365 „Selected Places“ in the Land of Ideas Germany Four times, directly or indirectly, Science, the research carried out at DFKI-Kaiserslautern, Land of Ideas DFKI has been a select place in the the educational joint venture SaarLernNetz, and the land of ideas, and for one day of SmartFactory. The nation-wide competition „365 the year respectively, the ideas Selected Places in the Land of Ideas“ is part of the pro- Selected Place 2007 and results are presented to an ject initiative „Germany – Land of Ideas“ under the interested public. From among patronage of the Federal President, Horst Köhler. over 1500 entrants, DFKI entered 4 winners with its par- ticipation in Saarland's Competence Center of Computer Additional information www.land-der-ideen.de SmartFactoryKL a „Selected Place 2007“ The „Technology Initiative SmartFactoryKL e.V“ is the nologies like machine „Selected Place“ on May 21, 2007. operations and locating per cell phone and wire- SmartFactoryKL – the intelligent factory of the future – less networks. The official unites companies and research institutes that have presentation of the certi- agreed to the joint development, use, and distribution ficate is planned for 3:00 of innovative industrial technologies as their common p.m. in the SmartFactoryKL goal. Products and methods are studied and developed in Kaiserslautern-Siegel- in common projects and then thoroughly tested in a bach. In addition to the demonstration facility. The declared goal of the initiati- Economics Minister of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate ve is the transfer of knowledge to the public domain and The Lord Mayor of the Kaiserslautern, well-known according to Prof. Dr. Zühlke from the Center for Man- representatives from industry will also be on hand to Machine Interaction ZMMI at DFKI. This should serve to address the assembled guests. Furthermore, the event sustain the innovative strength and international com- will provide an opportunity for exchange and interacti- petitiveness of German industries in the area of machi- on between companies, research institutes, and private nery and plant construction. persons, who have come to get a sneak preview of the factory of the future. The selection as a special place in the „Land of Ideas 2007“ gives the SmartFactoryKL an opportunity to intro- Additional information duce itself to a broad public and in a series of ongoing www.smartfactory.de demonstrations present innovative manufacturing tech- Saarland's Center for Self-Directed Learning, one of „365 Selected Places in the Land of Ideas" and its three Centers for Self-Directed Learning located at Saarbrücken, Merzig, and Sankt Ingbert. The major aim of SaarLernNetz is to bring the concept of lifelong learning closer to the broad public and to faci- litate access to the associated infrastructure. The effi- cient transfer of knowledge and qualifications with the aid of self-learning software and eLearning programs provides for sustainable improvements in the quality of life for educationally challenged groups and persons with emigration backgrounds. The official presentation ceremony is planned for May 23 with representatives of the „Germany – Land of Ideas“ initiative at the Center for Self-Directed Learning in Saarbrücken. Representing l.-r. M. Heipp; E. Rieder; Dr. S. Reichrath, State Secretary at the all of the locations in Saarland on this date, the down- Ministry for Education, Culture and Science, Saarland; Dr. J. Burgard town Saarbrücken Center will present the entire range of continuing adult education programs. This year on May 23, the regional educational cooperati- on „SaarLernNetz“ under the lead management of DFKI is the „Selected Place in the Land of Ideas“. The Federal Additional information www.saarlernnetz.de initiative „Germany – Land of Ideas“ honors the inno- www.selbstlernzentrum-saar.de vative continuing education network of The Saarland Newsletter 1_2007 I © DFKI 3 German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence ArKoS – Cross-Company Cooperation Made Simple... In October 2006, the „ArKoS – Architecture for collaborative models for the design, implementation, Collaborative Scenarios“ a project coordinated by the and control of collaborative processes. Institute for Information Systems (IWi) at DFKI, was com- pleted after a successful 3-year term. The project bene- The CoMoMod prototype represents the first time that fited from the participation of 30 partners from research aspects of collaboration have been integrated into busi- and business in the search for innovative solutions to ness process modeling. The P2P tool allows real time promote collaborative business processes. Here, interactions among modelers working at separate methods and tools were developed to facilitate cross- organizations on the same model and chat-supported company cooperation. model design. Models can then be stored as XML-based standardized BPMN formats. And, an integrated BPEL engine creates executable code for web services. Collaborative models such as performance descriptions, organizational charts, or process documentation must be selectively provided to the cooperation partners. Existing tools are inadequate for this task, whereas The ArKoS solutions were developed in close cooperati- CollMaP as a web-based model management platform is on with the construction industry as an initial