First triple victory at the European Satellite Navigation Competition 2008

An innovative tracking system for rescuing castaways by their own crew wins in three categories

Munich, 22.10.2008: Yesterday in the Court Church of All Saints of the Munich Residence the best application ideas for satellite navigation were again handed out for the fifth time. The Euro 20,000 main prize went to Great Britain again for the second time running. Furthermore from almost 300 presented project ideas, 13 regional prize winners and 4 special prize winners were honoured for their creativity and technological competence by the patroness and Bavarian Minister for Economics, Mrs. Emilia Müller.

The British company, Sci-Tech, has developed a tracking system for seamen falling overboard, which is made up of a navigation device fixed and installed in the ship and mobile ship and GPS/radio-communication units that are worn by all crew members. The system constantly sends the position of the castaways to the ship, which is thus shown relative to the ship so that the ship can be navigated to this position. The British jury were not alone in their choice of winner as the accuracy and reliability of the satellite signal is a matter of life and death in this application.

Pedro Pedreira, Executive Director of the European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA), awarded their special topic prize for the best application of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) to Sci-Tech's safety-critical system, which is based on EGNOS.

The international jury confirmed the innovative system as their choice for the overall 'GALILEO Master' winner. As a result, Peter Hall and Christine Edwards of Sci-Tech were the first participants to take home a record three trophies in one go.

There were three other prize winners distinguished by partners from industry and research for the best solutions in the following categories:

- Ralf Nejedl, Head of the Galileo programme at T-Systems and Dr. Keith Ulrich, Head of the DHL Innovation Center, together awarded the prize for the best concept for cargo volume optimisation to Dr. Mario Neugebauer and Dr. Jürgen Anke from the Dresden-based company, ubigrate. The system measures the available load volume of a delivery vehicle, lorry or container with ultra-sound sensors and sends this information together with the current position via mobile radio to the head quarters. Not only could the load volume of the DHL fleet be better exploited in the future by means of this, but global goods transport could also be optimised further. Savings on fuel, vehicles and routes will ultimately prove advantageous to the environment.

- Dr. Wen-Jean Hsueh, General Director of the Creativity Lab of the Industrial Technology Research Institute from Taiwan awarded a prize to the Taiwanese researcher Jung-Huang Liao for a tourism application for backpackers, group travellers and professional tour guides, which encompasses mobility, locality, touring and Web 2.0. "CITITOUR" turns the travellers into tour guides and at the same time makes available the appropriate hardware for the mobile exchange of experiences.

- The ESA innovation prize went to Pierre Salmona from the French start-up company, Locus, for a mobile phone-based museum guide, which by combining WiFi and stationary pseudo-satellites, so-called Pseudolites, allows indoor navigation. The prize was presented by Frank Salzgeber, the Head of the Technology Transfer Programme of the European Space Agency ESA.

Moreover, in each of the 12 other partner regions, one regional winner was chosen. The prizes were awarded by Rainer Grohe, former Executive Director of Galileo Joint Undertaking.

The Swedish-Israeli start-up company, Road-Guard, impressed the Bavarian jury with "GreenDrive", a mobile phone-based "guide" about ecological driving and obtained second place overall. The "Horizon Prediction" technology patented by Road-Guard founders Alex Ackerman and Yossef Shiri predicts the routes ahead and recommends to the driver the most economical speed in each case within the given speed limit. The objective of this mobile driver assistant system is to minimise the influence of the driving style on fuel consumption and thus to reduce consumption by 15-25 percent.

Third place in the international finals was shared by the regional winners of South Holland and Queensland. The Dutchmen Alex Beek, Jan van Rossum and Maarten Uyterlinde from Food Process Innovations BV have been awarded for a freehand registration system that completely documents the production of agricultural produce in an error-free and timely manner. The system, called "AgriBase", significantly reduces the administrative work of farmers, creates more transparency and thus consumer confidence and provides for completely new cooperation models within the production chain of agricultural produce. Dr. Charles Worringham from Queensland University of Technology and Bruce Satchwell from Alive Technologies developed together a remote monitoring system for the rehabilitation of patients with heart disease, who would hardly have any opportunities, due to time reasons or extreme distances, for example patients living in Australia, to participate in a cardiac rehabilitation programme.

The forth place went to the second non-European region – Taiwan. Terence T. Huang, Alan C.-Y. Lin and Ted. C.-Y. Chang from Quanta Computer impressed the regional experts with their Web 2.0 platform "YouCast", which provides location-based videos in real time.


Even more regional winners were acknowledged for process optimisations in transport and logistics. The winner from Baden-Württemberg, Erich Franke from Afusoft, connects the signals of satellite navigation, mobile telephony and RFID tags to a secure surveillance network for warehouses and transportation and protects valuable freight and dangerous goods against theft and avoids incorrect loading. The Italian regional winner from the company Allix was awarded for a tracking platform that facilitates the very precise surveillance of fleets by combining low-cost standard GPS receivers with EGNOS and has already been used in the transport of toxic waste. The winning idea from Niedersachsen "LogiLoc" by Frank Brennecke from the company, OECON, is a hybrid container management system that integrates satellite signals with GSM, RFID and WiFi in a multi-sensor box and thus allows the location of containers independent of the availability of any specific positioning technology both in open and closed spaces.

Another solution for road traffic was awarded by the Spanish experts. Pablo de Miguel and Rafael Olmedo from the Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology, INTA, in Madrid developed an "eWarning" system that informs drivers in real time of obstacles and dangers on the roads ahead before they are visible.

The regional prize from Hesse went to the Luxembourger Robert Carter and his idea "IPAYMO - I PAY MObile". The system, which is especially based on the precise time signal and position data of satellite navigation systems, increases the security of existing electronic, mobile and online-based payment systems, in order to stem fraud and data abuse.

Based on the philosophy "danger is danger, whoever causes it", the Czech regional winner, Dr. Jaroslav Jansa from the company Immobiliser Central Europe, has developed a mobile, wireless rescue service that simplifies the victim's communication with the relevant rescuers. "IHY - I Help You" can be used by people with health problems as well by people who want to protect themselves against attacks of violence.

The four-headed winning team from the Institute of Man-Machine-Interaction of RWTH Aachen was awarded by the North Rhine-Westphalian experts for its "Visual GPS" approach. Prof. Dr. Jürgen Rossmann, Dr. Michael Schluse, Arno Bücken and Petra Krahwinkler combined robotic-localisation technologies with satellite navigation data in order to increase the accuracy of using GPS in forestry to ca. 50cm, for example to enable the quick online gathering of single tree data.

Lokesh Bitra, the winner from the victorious region last year, Nice - Sophia Antipolis was awarded for his idea "Yellow Tags" which enables the marking of real objects on mobile navigation devices and GPS-able mobile phones with the help of visual-virtual tags.

The 12 regional winners, the four special prize winners and of course the GALILEO Master 2008 can still be seen until Friday October 24th at the Munich ITC trade fair, SYSTEMS. All of the awarded ideas will be on show in the "Navigation World" in Hall B1.


Press contact person:
Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen
Ulrike Daniels
Sonderflughafen Oberpfaffenhofen
Gebäude 319
D-82205 Gilching
Tel.: 08152-9099047
daniels@anwendungszentrum.de
www.galileo-masters.com



Information on the European Satellite Navigation Competition
The European Satellite Navigation Competition is an international innovation competition that awards the best ideas for innovative applications in the field of satellite navigation. Organised annually since 2004 by Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen and SYSTEMS, the ESNC is oriented toward companies, entrepreneurs, research institutes, universities, and private individuals. Since its inception, the competition has grown from including three partner regions to 13 high-tech regions of Europe: Bavaria, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Nice / Sophia Antipolis, Prague, South Holland, Madrid, Lombardy, Great Britain, and this year's new regions, Queensland / Australia, Taipei / Taiwan, Lower Saxony, and North Rhine-Westphalia.
The goal of the ESNC is to continue to strengthen the international collaboration of these regions, particularly with regard to the development of applications and services made possible by the European satellite navigation system Galileo. The ESNC is carried out under the patronage of the Bavarian State Ministry for Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport, and Technology with the support of the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
The overall winner - the GALILEO Master - will be awarded along with the special prize winners and the 13 regional winners on October 21, 2008 at a state reception to be held at the Munich Residenz. They will also have the chance to present their ideas and applications to a wide audience of ICT decision-makers from October 21-24 at this year's SYSTEMS trade show in Munich.
www.galileo-masters.com

About Navigation World
Since 2004, Europe's leading satellite navigation network has come together at the ITC trade show SYSTEMS in Munich, Germany. The Navigation World area is the quintessential B2B meeting place for decision makers in the IT, telecommunications, GIS, and satellite navigation industries. In Hall B1, Navigation World's "show within a show" and topic-specific exhibition will offer providers of software solutions, integrators, devices, components, and services an ideal platform for presenting their products and expertise. In addition, the area will combine technologies, solutions, and services in the fields of indoor navigation, telematics, location-based services and digital maps, information logistics and fleet management, precise positioning, EGNOS, mobile navigation, and GPS gaming. Representing a SYSTEMS first, major industry fixtures will also present on and discuss automotive solutions along with the aforementioned topics in a separate, exclusive conference forum on the first two days of the trade show.
www.navworld24.com
www.systems.de