BIONETS self-evolution capable services by Nokia until 2015

Nokia’s vision of 2015? Nokia is already working on BIONETS self-evolution capable services to make it happen
When I was watching Nokia’s “The way we live next” vision of 2015 video, they key theme – the ability of Nokia services and devices to self adapt to user, needs based on usage patterns – sounded somewhat familiar.

I checked my notes, and yes, indeed – it was a familiar topic. The visions of 2015 was not just a promotional video of cool things that will somehow come about in 6 years.

It is actually a visualization of the stuff Nokia research labs, and some of it’s partners, are working hard to bring about. They have been doing it from 2006, at least. And have the patent apps to prove that.

One of them, called “BIONETS architecture for building services capable of self-evolution” became public recently .
It describes:
“… the development of one or more flexible architectures that can support service creation/development and provisioning in addition to self-evolution. Therefore, various embodiments allow for continued self learning, customization and adjustment of BIONETS services to the needs and expectations of users in accordance with characteristics such as those exhibited by biological organisms, for example, the ability to continuously adopt itself to an ever-changing environment “
The basic idea behind BIONETS architecture, is to split the actual services into a small components called “service primitives”. Those service primitives are combined into an actual service by “Expert/Decision making manager” module. Mobile devices have a BIONETS enabled client software which tracks service usage by individual users.
The tracking includes the steps user made to access the service, activities he performed just prior to it, the duration it took to perform the operations, whether the action was completed, etc;. Aggregating this data from a big number number of devices, the Expert/Decision making module can derive optimal service usage patterns and underperforming service primitives. Then it can automatically reconfigure the service primitives used to provide the actual service to fit user needs better. Or even create new services from observing the people use their devices, without intervention of the service provider.
One simple example of such a service could be a stock ticker application:
“User may utilize a “stock ticker” service that provides the user with periodic or constant updates which inform the user of a particular stock’s value at a given time. The stock ticker service may evolve by monitoring the user’s interaction with the stock ticker service. For example, it may be noticed that the user oftentimes will execute a calculator application in parallel with the stock ticker service and utilize that calculator to multiply stock values by a certain number (e.g., the number of stocks held by the user). After observing this behavior of executing the calculator application in parallel with the stock ticker service a pre-determined number of times, the stock ticker service can undergo self-evolution by deciding to improve the services it provides by embedding calculator functionality and a corresponding UI in its stock ticker service. Moreover, the stock ticker service may by default, automatically multiply a given stock’s value by the earlier observed value representing the number of stocks held by the user, thus preempting the need for the user to manually perform the multiplication operation herself.”
That’s just one, and relatively simple application. Combining self-evolution capable services with a widely spread passive and active sensors, and millions of exceedingly capable mobile devices, might lead us to that future of those “truly unique user experiences, from highly local traffic reports, to global weather trends..” Nokia was talking about in 2015 video.
But that’s for 2015.
For 2010 I’ll settle for a real improvement of OVI services, so all of them are well integrated, work seamlessly and intuitively on my next Nokia device.
The BIONETS architecture is a part of a bigger 6.9 million EUR BIONETS research project financed by European Comission Framework program, that has been running since 2006. It involves multiple partners, including Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Telecom Italia and a number of European research institutes and Universities.