TCS Innovation Labs - Kolkata  

Lab Head: Debasis  Bandyopadhyay

We seek to achieve a convergence of applications/content across media such as voice, video, and data over new-age information systems. Research at the lab also involves the application of sensor networks towards connecting distributed sources of information. Assets and solutions developed at the lab are centred on infotainment, multimedia and analytics.

Key activities carried out by the lab include:

• Collaboration research with academic and industrial partners
• Solution development across industry verticalsGeneration of IPRs and reusable assets
• Research publications in journals and conferences
• Participation at industry forums and involvement with standards organizations.
  

The lab's focus areas are:

• Ubiquitous Home Gateway
• Ubiquitous Car Gateway
• Real-time Analytics for Context Awareness
• Low-cost Open-source StorageHome & Car Infotainment

Research Areas

Research at the TCS Innovation Labs-Kolkata is broadly classified across the following themes:  

Ubiquity

Ubiquitous computing is a paradigm shift where technology becomes virtually invisible in our lives.

Imagine a world with hundreds of wireless computing devices of different sizes in the same room. In order to bring this type of computing out into the environment, among the things we need to rethink are user interfaces, displays, operating systems, networks, and wireless communications. Since ubiquitous computing exists in the user’s environment, the technology is sustainable if it is invisible to the user and does not intrude the user’s consciousness. We at TCS constantly strive to converge the computing devices and seamlessly integrate the same with the user environment.

Focused researchis being done keeping in view the following:

• Interoperability
• Context Awareness and Adaptability
• Privacy and Security
• Robustness
• User Experience

Recent advances in mobile, ubiquitous, social, and tangible computing technologies have moved human computer interaction (HCI) into practically all areas of human activity. This has led to a shift away from usability engineering to a much richer scope of user experience, where user's feelings, motivations, and values are given as much, if not more, attention than efficiency, effectiveness and basic subjective satisfaction.

Positive user experience is a key differentiator for businesses today. User delight depends chiefly on ease of use, speed, and sensory appeal of products. And at TCS, we believe that enriching user experience is not a last mile, cosmetic deliverable. We understand the excitement and challenges our customers encounter in contending with information and communication technology explosion across channels. We are therefore exploring concepts for enriching user experience for our customers and our customer’s customer, even before we design applications, at the TCS Innovation Labs.

Solutions and Tools

Home Infotainment Platform (HIP): TCS Home Infotainment Platform (HIP) is a application consisting of embedded components that accepts video feed from any source (analog or digital) and provides an uplink and downlink for interactivity and other value added interactive video based services via GSM, CDMA and 3G.  

Smart TV - TCS’ Smart TV offers a widget based interactive television viewing experience by providing personalized web content even as you watch your favorite program – introducing the concept of interactivity on live TV. 

Home Gateway - Home Gateway solution aims to achieve interoperability between connected devices with respect to protocol and application semantics. Solution objective is to provide any service on any device on any access network to users. The solution addresses the security and privacy needs of the home network on one hand and provides context aware smart application and analytics on the other.

It also adapts itself based on the QoS needs. It caters to home infotainment, surveillance, monitoring and multi-platform services needs. 

Car Gateway  – A platform for connected vehicles, the solution would ensure efficient driving, safety, security and overall user experience.  It would bring in the concept of context awareness thereby improving the safety and security aspect. Using advanced communication and embedded techniques, the solution would leverage the various car related applications to great heights.

Open Storage - Open Storage solution is based on Open Source software, operating systems, volume managers and file systems, and uses commodity hardware components that can be sourced from any reputed hardware OEM. Use of standard hardware eliminates the risk of vendor lock-in, which most proprietary technologies demand. Open Source software eliminates expensive storage software license costs.

Complex Event Processing - Complex Event Processing (CEP) is an emerging technology which can be used to detect interesting patterns amongst events being received in real time. CEP aims to deliver architectures, software stack and algorithms that would enable TCS to deliver unique solutions to complex problems using CEP techniques.