The INGENIOUS development process has deployed an agile and participatory process that brings First Responders (FRs) as equals in the implementation process throughout the entirety of the project. Co-design, early testing and validation of the project will ensure that INGENIOUS will deliver robust and effective tools to the first responders with minimum effort and resources.
The first and second rounds of the Laboratory and Integration Tests (LITs) of the Social Media Application, which is being developed by our partners from CERTH, took place on the 30th of October 2020 and the 28th of May 2021. Both of them consisted of three parts. First, the presentation of the Social Media Application framework (Figure 1) and the progress on its development. Secondly, a live demonstration and, finally, an open discussion, where the attendees could ask for clarifications or leave some comments.
LIT#7 took place on October 1, 2020, during which the Multi-source Information Fusion Engine and Expert Reasoning and Data Exploitation (responsible partners: CERTH, CS, EXUS) components of INGENIOUS were tested. The specific use cases that were demonstrated were:
LIT#6 Victim triaging took place virtually on September 28, 2020, and was organised by ICCS in the framework of the first round of Laboratory Integration Tests (LITs) of the INGENIOUS project. The LIT#6 was conducted virtually, like all the rest of the same round lab tests, due to travel restrictions were in place during September 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Laboratory Integration Tests (LIT) are activities that shall help interaction among technical and non-technical partners to support the development of the various components.
LIT#4 for testing the INGENIOUS K9 Vest was conducted on September 8, 2020, and was organised by ICCS in the framework of the first round of Laboratory Integration Tests (LITs). This LIT took place virtually, like all the rest of the same round lab tests, due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions in force in September 2020.
One of the main items that support the INGENIOUS Smart First Responder concept is the Intelligent Uniform device that is currently under development by TEKNIKER partner.
Laboratory Integration and Testing #2 and #11 (LIT#2 and LIT#11) have been conducted remotely in November 2020 and May 2021, respectively, at Alpes Lasers (Switzerland) and Technische Universität Wien, TUW (Austria) premises with the purpose to show the progress made regarding the development of a fully fiber coupled gas sensor based on the concept of interferometric cavity-assisted photothermal spectroscopy (ICAPS). The mid-IR quantum cascade laser (QCL) developed by Alpes Lasers is an important component of the gas sensor to be developed by TUW.
The purpose of the Laboratory Integration and Testing #1 (LIT#1) was for the end users to test available functionalities of the INGENIOUS Augmented Reality Services. Due to the COVID-19 situation, a virtual meeting was set-up in October 2020 and remote demonstrations were performed with the device screen being shared and pre-recoded videos being played showing the available features in use. During this LIT, our partners from CS-GROUP introduced the Augmented Reality (AR) to the end users and what an AR application is. They presented, then, the selected AR devices (ORA-2 and HoloLens 2), the capabilities offered by each, and the considered roadmap for the release of the features. The demonstrations highlighted the key features relevant for the First Responder (FR) uses cases:
A novel testing, training and experimentation programme of 27 Laboratory Integration and Testing sessions (LITs), 18 Small Scale Field Tests (SSTs) and 2 Full Scale Field Validation Exercises (FSXs) will be realised within the lifecycle of the project. Technical partners and end users will follow closely the laboratory testing activities, realise field tests of the initial versions of functional prototypes towards benchmarking and ultimately operate the Toolkit as a whole in two large field validation activities to be held in M34 and M41 of the project.
