EMBASSI: Electronic Multimedia and Service Assistance

EMBASSI is the name of a project, which began in summer 1999 with the cooperation of several industrial partners, SMEs, research institutes and universities. As a so-called Leitprojekt or focus project, EMBASSI is funded by the German government (BMBF) and addresses innovative methods of man-machine interaction. EMBASSI is less technology driven, focusing more on an incorporation of individual abilities and skills. Thereby, the definition and design of different device user interfaces are based on psychological and ergonomic studies. Innovative interaction technology is achieved through the development of intelligent assistance and anthropomorphic interfaces. Telecommunication and network infrastructure is used in order to provide an added value opponent to stand-alone systems, with regard to usability and functionality. Although the foreseen achievements of EMBASSI can be applied to devices in industrial and office environments, the scope of EMBASSI is directed towards the private sector, including home, car and public terminal applications. Due to the enormous size of the market, which is addressed by the EMBASSI technology, EMBASSI becomes a kind of pacemaker in advanced man-machine interface technology. A primary objective of the project is to establish a kind of EMBASSI standard. In addition to the unification of use paradigms, a further objective is to enable the interaction between different kinds of EMBASSI systems and devices, due to the definition and standardization of an open and extensible semantic protocol.