About THESEUS

Every day the Internet provides new information. As the amount of data grows, however, the challenge is to find ways of providing users with simple and efficient access to this enormous store of knowledge.  Partners from the academic sphere and the business community are working together within the framework of THESEUS, currently Germany’s largest IT research program, to meet this challenge.

Just as the legendary figure of Theseus in Greek mythology succeeded in escaping from the Minotaur’s labyrinth, the research program of the same name has developed ways to navigate through the increasing quantities of data found on the Internet. Under the THESEUS umbrella, some 60 research partners from academia and the business world have come together to develop new technologies and applications. Their goal is to facilitate access to information, combinedata to form new kinds of knowledge and lay the groundwork for new services on the Internet.

The technologies being developed within the THESEUS program are preparing the way for a future Internet of Services. This will make it possible for services that are now available on the Web only separately, such as online shopping, flight bookings and research support, to be combined and linked with one another. If a user were then to tell his computer: “I want to move from Berlin to Hamburg,” the program would identify and coordinate the appropriate resources for finding housing, organizing the move and registering with the authorities.

The first step: Semantic technologies

To make this vision a reality, THESEUS is developing new semantic technologies that will be able to analyze, classify and link information based on content. Not only will computers find information with the help of key words or content fragments, as they do today, but they will also determine its significance, draw connections to other information, model it as a classification system and employ certain rules to draw logical conclusions.

THESEUS researchers are working on innovative procedures for automatically producing metadata. Research and development are also under way on other basic technologies for processing multimedia documents more quickly
and designing new graphic user interfaces more efficiently.

Trials in application scenarios

To ensure that new products and services are created as quickly as possible with the help of the basic technologies, the partners participating in the project are putting them to the test in the following six application scenarios. These scenarios show how the technologies can be used for innovative tools, services and business models.

In the ALEXANDRIA application scenario, the Web 2.0 approach – which involves linking users in virtual communities and attaching greater importance to user-generated content – is expanded to include innovative approaches to knowledge management. For example, a search can be easily run on historical events or current affairs based on famous people, specific developments or interesting places. With ALEXANDRIA, users can more easily access content on the Internet to suit their individual needs.

CONTENTUS uses semantic technologies to digitalize cultural assets in the form of texts, images and audio and video recordings. The goal is to better preserve cultural assets for future generations and to facilitate swift and comprehensive access to this knowledge through a variety of media. For example, CONTENTUS provides important technologies that are being used in establishing a German Digital Library (Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, DDB), a joint initiative of the Federal Government, Länder and local authorities. The goal of the DDB is to provide universal access to the resources of over 30,000 cultural and scientific institutions through a national online access portal based on the most current semantic methods.

Within PROCESSUS, researchers are exploring how the knowledge available in a company can be used to better advantage. To that end, a platform is being developed that integrates resource planning and business process management while also making it easier to compare products, solutions and business partners. As a result, companies can reduce costs and optimize all of their business processes.

MEDICO improves the quality of medical diagnoses with the help of imaging procedures. Semantic technologies help physicians recognize abnormalities in medical images quickly and confidently, and improve their diagnoses and therapeutic decisions by rapidly analyzing image databases and specialized literature.

ORDO concentrates on developing innovative approaches and technologies for organizing digital information, on both the Internet and company intranets. Its research is geared to developing tools that organize information automatically, making it easier to handle and analyze large quantities of data. Anyone who works with large, difficult-to-manage datasets will benefit from such tools.

To ensure that these resources on the future Internet of Services can be used in an open, yet secure environment, researchers involved in the TEXO application scenario are developing an integrated platform for providing, managing and combining Internet-based services.

Promoting Germany as a business location

The research conducted as part of the THESEUS program is creating new technologies for the Internet of Services, and particularly for mapping complex knowledge. The participating researchers are making it easier to use the knowledge available on the Internet and are laying the groundwork for the development of top-quality services, ranging from innovative semantic searches for the future digital library to new service offerings such as cloud computing. In this way, Germany is not only strengthening its position in the area of Internet research, but is also ensuring that German companies will help to shape the Internet of Services by providing innovative products and services, and will benefit from this market of the future.

The first success stories of this strategy can already be reported. Although not even two years old, the research program has already spun off four startup companies: The software enterprise SemVox develops user interfaces to simplify human-computer communication. TIQQER offers a Web service for analyzing Internet forums in order to rate products, for instance. Innoraise provides a flexible search application for social networks, enabling the automatic identification of experts on specific subjects, while Original 1 develops methods to make it easier to recognize counterfeit products.

When utilizing the results of the THESEUS program, a primary goal is to provide open interfaces and to develop standards. To this end, ORDO has initiated the “Semantic Information Logistic Architecture” (SMILA) open source project that provides the developer community with possible solutions – which can be tested and refined - for designing information logistics in service-oriented architectures.

With the “Extensible Multimodal Annotation” (EMMA) project, THESEUS has helped develop a new standard for multimodal input and output. EMMA enables the development of Web applications which users can operate by text, speech or gestures, and control with a wide range of computer equipment.

The “Integrated Service Engineering-Workbench” (ISE) open source project began as part of the TEXO application scenario for the simple and efficient development of Internet-based services. Furthermore, with the “Universal Service Description Language” (USDL), TEXO has also proposed a standard language to describe services, allowing them to be clearly identified on the Internet, and easily linked and combined.

The results of THESEUS research have already won awards at high-profile international competitions, such as ICDAR and Image Cleef.

A program that integrates different stakeholders and fosters international collaboration

The THESEUS program includes talented young scientists, outside experts, entrepreneurs and, in particular, small and medium-sized businesses in the research activities so they can take advantage of the research results at an early stage. THESEUS is also involved in European and international initiatives geared towards shaping the Internet of the future. For example, THESEUS played a key role in the European Commission’s CHORUS program, which aimed to coordinate and combine European projects and initiatives focusing on multimedia search technologies. The international THESEUS symposium - “Internet of Services” - received global attention and underlined Europe’s strong position in the field of semantic technologies. In this way, THESEUS has had a significant bearing on the European Commission’s “Future Internet Public Private Partnership” initiative.

THESEUS was launched at the end of 2007 for a term of five years. It is receiving some €100 million in funding from the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. Another €100 million is being contributed by partners from the spheres of industry and research, making a total of about €200 million that is being invested in this groundbreaking research work, which will produce technologies to benefit the Internet of Services and Germany as a business location.