MULTI-POS · Multi-technology positioning professionals

The global navigation market (products and services) is expected to grow to more than 160 billion EUR revenue by 2015 with significant growth being driven by mobile terminals. The pillars of the future wireless society will be the trustworthiness of the wireless positioning device (e.g., what user can get in terms of location integrity, availability, privacy) and eco-friendliness of the transmission-reception process (e.g., long battery life, energy saving devices, high levels of integration, low interference to others). These are triggered by the user needs, preferences and targeted applications, and by the type of the environment where navigation takes place. A link is still missing between these user needs/environment awareness (or application layer) and the physical layer where the wireless device is actually designed. It is our belief that the missing link can be created by cognitive approaches, borrowed on one hand from cognitive human behavior, and on the other hand from cognitive computing. Building a cognition stage between the application and physical layers would create a myriad of new possibilities for flexible location-based services and positioning-based applications, and possibly a new paradigm in wireless location research. MULTI-POS will bridge the gap between the lower technology layer and upper application layer involved in wireless mobile location. In addition, MULTI-POS will offer comprehensive training to young fellows in the broad field of wireless location, will create novel technologies and business models for the future location-enabled wireless devices, will promote the exchange of fellows in mixed academic-industrial R&D trajectories and in multiple European cultures, and will initiate an educational and research framework that unifies the currently fragmented research activities on technological and applications aspects of wireless navigation. There is strong involvement of industrial partners in the network to accomplish this.