Backing for smart home tech
TU Kaiserslautern has won funds to help enable devices and other objects to better communicate with each other.
The German university is co-ordinating the €7.5m Horizon 2020 ‘Open virtual neighbourhood network to connect intelligent buildings and smart objects’, or VICINITY, project which includes the participation of 15 institutions from ten European countries. The venture is co-ordinated by a computer scientist Professor Dr Christoph Grimm from Kaiserslautern.
Speaking about the project which is scheduled to begin in January, Professor Dr Arnd Poetzsch-Heffter, vice-president for research and technology at TU Kaiserslautern, said: “We are very pleased that project VICINITY has been able to secure such comprehensive support from the EU.
“We are particularly proud that TU Kaiserslautern will assume a key role as co-ordinator for this international co-operation. We congratulate Professor Grimm and his team for this achievement.”
According to TU Kaiserslautern, a particular challenge regarding the Internet of Things is that networking will increasingly become ad hoc, unplanned and functional across different manufacturers and domains, therefore leading to the need for the ability to decipher diverse signals, whilst making them available to other devices.
The project will primarily focus on addressing communication issues between different objects and will seek to develop interoperability as a service which is provided by the manufacturers and made available via the Cloud.
