The development of the AmI concept promises a brilliant future to the Information Society, where everything will be designed for facilitating common tasks to final users.

However, the arising of the Information Society and the digitalisation age has brought new concerns to the public. Some values that are protected by law in the real world (such as the inviolability of the own home), need to be also protected in the new digital format. The problem arises because in the digital world there are few social and legal indicators for defining what is private and what is not. This lack of indicators is not only a technological challenge but also needs a new legal and social framework that rules the new AmI environments.

Thus, the acceptance of AmI environments will depend on how much people trust these systems and how they protect users privacy and their basic rights.

Identity management is one of the most critical pieces for defining and working with the digital world. Final user must be identified in order to provide the rights of access and services deserved.

Biometric systems and digital identity are some of the specialisation lines at ROBOTIKER-INFOTECH, one of the five units at ROBOTIKER-TECNALIA , along with cognitive systems, intelligent interfaces (artificial vision, info-linguistic technologies) and semantic web.

ROBOTIKER-INFOTECH has experience in the design and development of specific architectures for stand-alone biometric systems for mobile terminals, non-collaborative biometric systems and digital identity management.

MAIN RESEARCH PROJECTS

SEGURIDAD 2020: It is a industrial research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade. Its main objective is to approach the definition of the identity in the digital territories and the ways for securing them within the Ambient Intelligence paradigm. Different elements such as technological and interoperability issues, standardisation and social and legislative aspects have to be taken into account for providing a global solution.

Several demonstrators will be developed to show how the users can manage their proximity to other people or organisations in the digital world in the same way they do in the physical one. These demonstrators will cover different application domains such as banking, transport and e-government.

This project will give an international projection in security research to Spanish industries. Most important companies, organisations and users related to ICT security will join this project to generate a complete vision of the evolution of digital territories and digital identity management.

Different technologies, methodologies, frameworks, tools and policies will be proposed for a coordinated research and technology acquisition.

This approach will guarantee the natural interoperability of proposed solutions and will give the Spanish industry with a solid position for providing their solutions worldwide.

AMIGUNE: It is a long-term collaborative Research Programme among the leading Technology Centres and Universities of the Basque Country.

The ProgrammeÔÇÖs aim is to be a worldwide reference point in key research fields of the Ambient Intelligence by means of the generation, development and training of the technology that will build the future intelligent spaces and integrated systems for the transport, the home, the health or the enterprise.

The Programme was promoted by the Basque Government, and its funding is supported, in a competitive, project basis, by research programmes of the Basque Government, the Biscay Council, the Gipuzkoa Council, the Spanish Ministry of industry, Trade and Tourism, the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and the European Union, as well as industry sponsorship.

The research strategy has a sectorial focus, in the long term, on traditional and emerging sectors associated with the transport, the home and the eServices.

Main research fields in this programme are:┬║

• Ubiquitous Connectivity

• Power and Fault Tolerant Micro-electronics

• Multi-Modal Interfaces

• SW Platforms for Collaborative Systems

• Privacy and Digital Security

ROBOTIKER-TECNALIA, www.robotiker.com, a non-profit foundation, has three facilities, two in Spain: Zamudio- headquarter- and Madrid, and one in Chile. 173 people are working at ROBOTIKER, 81% of them with high level qualifications. ROBOTIKER also has a large experience in European projects, taking part in 85 European projects in recent years. ROBOTIKER dedicates the 31% of its income to Research and Development in order to contribute to society sustainable development. ROBOTIKER is ISO-9001 certified for all processes.

ROBOTIKER-TECNALIA belongs to TECNALIA technological corporation, www.tecnalia.info, the biggest private technology corporation working in applied research in Spain and a reference point in the European Research Area . TECNALIA is formed by five technological centres, which in total constitute 26 sites, 1,100 staff, more than 3,800 clients per year and more than 100 European projects only in EC Framework Programme 6.

Contact:

Jesus Herrero PhD jesus @ robotiker.es

www.robotiker.com