Abstracts of Magazine FUJITSU 2004-7 (VOL.55, NO.4)

Special Issue : Ubiquitous

• Fujitsu's Outlook for the Ubiquitous Network Society

"Ubiquity" means the "state or capacity of being apparently everywhere at the same time." This state reflects how computer networks should be a part of our daily lives. In a ubiquitous network society, everyone can freely obtain information and receive various services through networks at anytime and anyplace (e.g., in an automobile, at home, on the street, or in a railroad station). To build a ubiquitous network society, technological developments have been made in various fields, including portable terminals, wireless LAN, RFID tags, IC cards, and security. Fujitsu considers ubiquitous networks a new social infrastructure, and intends to promote the necessary technologies classified into two major categories: traceability and office/home information appliances. We are making efforts not only to upgrade the core systems, but also to enhance the convenience and operability of terminals, improve the security of software, and provide other solutions familiar to users. Given its outlook for the ubiquitous network society of the future, Fujitsu intends to create a new chain of values for customers.

• Real-Time Notification Service Used PDAs to Tell Patients When to Take Medical Examinations

Fujitsu has provided an experimental service that uses personal digital assistants (PDAs) to notify patients when it is their turn to take a medical examination. The service was provided with the cooperation of Takamatsu Red Cross Hospital in Takamatsu City, Kagawa Prefecture and lasted for two months starting in August 2003. The aim of this experiment was to verify the effectiveness of a network service using real-time information control technology. It was part of the Surveillance Study on the Information Communication Platform Construction for the Support of Corporate IT Promotion promoted by the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications under the supplementary budget for fiscal 2002. The service applied presence control and Parlay-Web service technologies to the Fujitsu Internet Data Center platform and performed real-time notification of examination times to PDAs given to waiting patients. The patients could freely move around both inside and outside the hospital because they were notified when it was their turn. This paper describes this experiment and the technologies used in it.

• Information Service for Pedestrians

Many location-based services, which provide information based on the user's position, have been tried, for example, information services for pedestrians. Recent miniaturized, high-performance terminal equipment is making it possible to provide many new services, and the market for this field is expected to grow. Fujitsu is developing not only the terminal equipment, communication equipment, and servers that are needed to provide location-based services, but also positioning software and software for providing position-related information. In this paper we present the results of a study and experimental evaluation of a high-accuracy positioning technique for providing information to pedestrians at the appropriate time. We also describe an experiment in which we used this technique to provide information to tourists.

• Wireless-LAN Information Socket System

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport (MLIT) has set up access points called "information sockets" at important locations on the optical cable networks constructed for river and road administration. For sophisticated, efficient administration of rivers and roads, field staff of the MLIT connect a portable terminal to an information socket via optical-fiber cable to enable two-way transmission of video, voice, and other data between the monitoring site and an administrative or local office. However, these portable terminals are too big and heavy to enable initial information about an emergency situation to be quickly and easily collected and communicated. Also, there is a strong need to increase the operating efficiency of the information sockets. This paper describes a new information socket system that solves these problems by using wireless LAN technology, which is a key technology for ubiquitous networking.

• IC Card System Solutions

The ongoing trend of offering multiple services on an IC card (thus adding value to the card) is remarkable. Moreover, basic resident registration cards are now being issued as a means of personal identification (JPKI services). Since this action follows the formation of multi-application IC cards, Fujitsu has begun offering services regarding an IC card management system and such solutions as PKI that use IC cards. The online application and provision of government services have also become essential. Consequently, Fujitsu has constructed an IC card-issuing system for specific identification applications and (in cooperation with The Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry) proceeded with services for issuing IC cards that contain electronic identification information. This paper introduces the solutions being offered by Fujitsu regarding these IC card trends and user needs. The installation of a PC security system for local government and an IC card system installed at the Tokyo University of Technology are cited as examples of actual solutions.

• Middleware Technology That Supports Telematics

Telematics technology, which combines telecommunications and computing, is increasingly being applied to provide information for advanced car navigation systems. Future telematics systems are expected to upgrade existing services and expand safety-related services. Fujitsu has developed middleware needed to improve the autonomy of automobiles and effectively use in-car services in cooperation with external services. This middleware has three main functions: 1) to support communications between the driver and passengers, 2) support the telematics infrastructure that provides service contents, and 3) support the mobile wireless communication technology that connects cars with external services. This paper outlines the middleware technology that realizes these functions.

• Experimental Study on Improvement of Efficiency of Harbor Physical Distribution Using RFID

Domestic shipping by ferries and Roll on Roll off vessels has lately been drawing public attention. Compared to trucking, domestic shipping can transport huge amounts of cargo over long distances and is also advantageous in terms of environmental problems such as carbon-dioxide emission, traffic congestion, and noise. On the other hand, the pending issue concerning domestic shipping is the need to increase transportation efficiency. Transportation in domestic shipping is mostly done using chassis, so the efficiency of chassis transportation should be improved. An effective way to increase the efficiency is thought to be a parked chassis-trailer detection system that acquires information about chassis-trailer vehicles in a harbor and information about chassis-trailer parking locations by using radio frequency identification (RFID) information. This paper describes an experimental study that proved the effectiveness of RFID technology for improving the efficiency of physical distribution in a ferry terminal and produced a model for the practical application of RFID technology.

• Experimental Information Delivery Service Using Active RFID

Ubiquitous-computing technology is intended to promote a democratic IT society that is independent of servers and built using personal computers and the Internet. In this paper, based on this intention, we introduce an architecture for a concierge service to support users on the street and at home as an important service of the future. Next, we present and evaluate a new method that enables us to flexibly set position-detection information using active RFID with this architecture and show that the method is effective for position detection in a large indoor area. Lastly, we describe an experimental study of an application of this architecture in an information delivery service in a large shopping district. The experiment showed that position-dependent coupon advertising can affect consumers' buying behavior and that information about barrier-free facilities can effectively help visually impaired persons. We plan to combine this position detection system with various other ubiquitous-computing services. We also plan to apply this architecture to in-home nursing care services for an experimental study.

• "Mobile Knowledge for You" Contributing to Sales Enhancement

In today's environment of prolonged deflation, companies need to enhance their sales power so they can increase their sales. Fujitsu's "Mobile Knowledge for You" consulting service develops a strategic sales support system that increases a company's sales by using mobile terminals (e.g., Pocket PCs) and the company's intellectual property, for example, its information and know-how. The system quickly and timely sends information from the headquarters and local spots to salespeople nationwide. Our consulting service begins with a business analysis followed by the development of a business strategy and implementation plan in advance of system implementation. We collaborate with our clients to implement easy-to-use, easy-to-understand system solutions that meet the ROI needs of our clients. This paper mainly introduces an example application of Mobile Knowledge for You at Kanebo. It also describes the latest technology, achievement results, and features of this consulting service.

• IT Supporting Office in Ubiquitous Ara

Nowadays, corporate needs for reviewing current work styles to improve productivity and to speed up management have grown from the point of view of business management. Especially, movement at the time of new construction/relocation of office building has become prominent. Fujitsu has been considering how to merge the people working there, the state-of-art IT, and new office environment to establish/realize new work styles from various angles at the stage of planning of new office "FUJITSU SOLUTION SQUARE." In the new office, requirements in the office of ubiquitous era such as communication without constraint of location and easy information sharing have been realized in a tangible way. This document describes the requirements and important notices for the office in the ubiquitous era, and introduces some representative examples of actual applications of IT in "FUJITSU SOLUTION SQUARE."

• Fujitsu's Ubiquitous Technologies and Their Direction

A ubiquitous world can be described as a social environment in which the real world is closely linked to the virtual world of information space. One example of this linkage is the mapping of a real world object onto cyberspace through the use of an IC tag. The members of a ubiquitous society will be able to enjoy the benefits of IT, for example, in highly smart services that are tailored to suit the time, place, and occasion and even the hidden desires of users without making them aware of those desires. The smartness of the ubiquitous system will rely on its ability to recognize locations and understand the users' characteristics using data about their previous activities, analysis results, schedule information, input from human memory, and statistical analysis of other peoples' experiences. The technologies for realizing a ubiquitous society fall into three areas: information gathering and presentation, networks, and information storage and analysis. This paper describes these technologies and their role in realizing a ubiquitous society.

• High-Resolution PDA: Pocket LOOX v70

The personal digital assistant (PDA) was originally developed as a tool for managing personal information, including schedules and addresses. Since its communication and data processing capabilities have been upgraded and its compatibility with Windows functions has been improved, its range of application is being extending to include use as an information terminal for a ubiquitous-computing environment. However, the biggest problem with using conventional PDAs as information terminals is their low screen resolution. Fujitsu has not only solved this problem by developing a high-resolution PDA but has also improved its portability. We have already started marketing the new PDA, the Pocket LOOX v70 (FLXV7), as a new ubiquitous terminal. This paper describes the main features of this terminal.

• Viewing Mobile Phones as Ubiquitous Computing Tools

Mobile phones have progressed remarkably from mere calling machines into state-of-the-art platforms for sending and receiving e-mails, taking mega-pixel digital pictures, accessing Websites to get various kinds of information, and other purposes. Mobile phones are expected to play a significant role as anytime-anywhere tools in the coming full-scale ubiquitous age. Fujitsu has developed mobile phones (mova and FOMA) for NTT DoCoMo. Additionally, we have pioneered several types of new models, including mobile phones compatible with i-mode and i-appli, GPS locator-equipped terminals, and pedometer-equipped terminals. This paper describes how the mobile phone is evolving to meet the needs and expectations of the ubiquitous-computing society and also describes some of the new models we have developed.

• Ubiquitous Terminal Technologies and Their Directions

In line with advances in ubiquitous-computing technologies, user-centric services are becoming more widespread than the traditional company-oriented IT services that are provided to realize easy use of IT throughout society. The new user-centric society is referred to as the ".u-society." Better user interfaces should be provided in various situations so people can enjoy the benefits of IT in the .u-society without restrictions. Particularly, it is very important to develop technology for terminals that can be accessed by anybody, anytime, and anywhere. This paper describes the requirements of IT terminals in the .u-society and a prototype advanced ubiquitous terminal called ".u Pocket" that has been developed based on these requirements. It also describes technologies for replacing paper with digital paper and for a micro fuel cell that can serve as a long-life source of energy.

• LSI Chips for RFID Tags and Smart Cards

In the coming ubiquitous-computing society, advanced LSI chips will be the key devices in personal IC cards and ID tags attached to merchandise. EEPROMs have conventionally been used for the nonvolatile memory of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and smart cards. To realize the ubiquitous society, further technical innovations are needed in the field of nonvolatile memory. Fujitsu was the first maker in the world to commercially produce in high volume ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) and has already achieved satisfactory results. Based on this accomplishment, we are now developing and supplying highly integrated high-speed LSI chips. This paper describes the present status and expected future trends of the LSI chips for RFID tags and smart cards, which are being advanced using FRAM technology.

• RFID Tag Equipment Supporting Today's Ubiquitous Society

The demands for RFID tag and related equipment for supporting the ubiquitous society are intensifying. To meet these demands, Fujitsu Frontech Ltd. has enhanced its lineup of reader-writers and hand-held terminals (HHT) for RFID tags to enable easy and flexible application to various systems. We have thus prepared short-range, mid-range, and long-range reader-writers for use as RFID tag reader-writers. We have also prepared MPI (Mobile Pockt Imager) equipped with RFID tag reader-writers and MPI equipped with a loop antenna for use as hand-held terminals. This paper describes the RFID tag equipment, gives examples of system application, and discusses future problems.

• Close Cooperation between Communication and Information Services in Ubiquitous Technology

Traditionally, communication services have been heavily dependent on network carriers and vendors. As a result, communication services have not been open and rarely cooperate closely with information services. However, in the coming ubiquitous-computing society, users should be able to use any service, whether it is offered by a network carrier or an information service provider. To this end, communication services are beginning to use the same Web Services technology that has been developed for information services. This is stimulating the development of an environment in which communication and information services are unified. This paper describes the current status of communication services and the trend of Open API of the Parlay Group. Then, it describes a mechanism for achieving close cooperation between communication and information services. Lastly, this paper outlines some of the solutions that make use of such cooperation.

• Organic Storage System

In the upcoming ubiquitous-computing world, we will see massive data flows generated by trillions of ubiquitous IT components surrounding our life. At any instant, this data will form a snapshot of human activity and will be very valuable from the point of view of business and safety in society. However, the size of such a snapshot could be in the multi-petabyte region, and the management of so much data is not easy. In this paper, we describe the types of problems that will be encountered when dealing with multi-petabyte amounts of data and how we can solve them with autonomic data management technology. Then, we introduce a novel storage architecture called the organic storage system for realizing autonomic data management.

• Presence Service Infrastructure for Ubiquitous World: FLAIRINC

The term "presence" means "current condition" or "existence." A Presence Service continuously monitors presence and prompts related processes to execute the appropriate steps. It provides real-time services based on changes in the status of objects, people, information, and machines (including computers and home appliances). For instance, various communication tools are becoming available in companies such as extensions, cellular phones, IP soft-phones, Push-to-talk over Cellular (PoC) phones, and E-mail. If a caller knows the current status of the intended receiver and the best communication tool suited to the status, wasted calls can be avoided. Applying a Presence Service to the infrastructure of company operations can reduce development periods and costs more drastically than a conventional EJB-type Web service. This paper describes how Fujitsu's FLAIRINC Presence Service Product is applied to company operations using several representative models as examples.

• Task Computing - Filling the Gap between Tasks and Services

Task Computing fills the gap between the tasks to be done by the user and the services that offer feasible functions to the user. There are three stages in users' computing environments: PC, mobile, and ubiquitous. In the soon-to-be mainstream ubiquitous environment, it will be essential to dynamically find services in the environment and construct them into user tasks along with other services on the users' devices and remote environments. Task Computing based on Semantic Web technologies makes this possible. This paper describes the architecture of Task Computing and how to find, compose, execute, generate, and manage services that represent the functional resources of Task Computing. This paper also describes how Task Computing is used to implement service-task schemes in a ubiquitous environment.

• Solution for Real-Time Sales Force Automation

Ubiquitous computing enables a wide variety of devices and sensors to be connected through a network. Although ubiquitous computing makes it easy to obtain various types of data, it is difficult to handle this data because there is so much of it. As a result, businesses must carefully consider how to safely manage and analyze this data and also how to distribute services based on the analysis results. We have developed a prototype real-time SFA (Sales Force Automation) solution that uses ubiquitous technology to help salespersons in retail businesses perform their work. The features of this solution include 1) RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology to automatically detect every salesperson and customer who enters or leaves a store, 2) personalization technology so that the required customer service information can be provided when needed, and 3) biometric authentication based on the patterns of veins in people's hands to enable secure information management. This paper describes this SFA solution.

• Human Computer Interaction Technologies in Ubiquitous Computing

To make effective applications for the coming ubiquitous-computing society, it is important to select and combine the available HCI (Human Computer Interaction) technologies according to the applications' goals and environments. It is also important to establish reliable usability-engineering criteria and guidelines to ensure there will be adequate HCI. For small, mobile terminals, we have developed an effective pen-input handwriting character recognizer that has demonstrated its superiority over competitors in user testing. To realize a truly hands-free speech interface in a car or home environment, we are developing an autonomic, user-adaptive dialogue control system. We have also developed a Fujitsu TTS (Text to Speech) technology that produces natural and expressive synthesized speech. This paper introduces these Fujitsu HCI technologies.

• Counter Measure for Culture Gap of Global Project ―Practice of R&D System for Pharmaceutical Companies―

Fujitsu has many experiences of global projects, which include unique and especially valuable examples. This paper is to present one of the outstanding cases for global projects on construction of R&D system for Japanese pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies are now being exposed to the wave of a rapid globalization in tough competition with overseas mega pharmaceutical companies. Japanese pharmaceutical companies start a project of construction of global R&D system, challenging globalization from Japan which is quite different from mega overseas pharmaceutical companies in its strategy and approach. However, it may come across big walls and barriers which should be overcome in global project. One of the difficulties is a communication problem derived from "Culture Gap" and "Time Difference and Distance". This paper describes a practical approach and hints of project management on global system in Japanese pharmaceutical R&D areas.