From left to right: Toon Vanparys (CEO at Sentiance), Frank Verbist (CTO at Sentiance) and Prof. Sidharta Gautama (i-KNOW, Ghent University)

Sentiance is excited to announce that it will be entering a research and operational alliance with the Innovation Centre i-KNOW of Ghent University, that will combine their expertise in mobile sensing, machine learning and intelligent mobility to create a partnership that is an innovation leader in next-generation technology solutions in the mobility, health, retail, safety and assisted ambient living industries.

Acquisition of MOVE IP & Platform boosts Sentiance's Mobility Management Offering

With the acquisition of i-KNOW’s MOVE intellectual property (IP) and platform specialized in spatio-temporal intelligence, Sentiance enhances its existing sensing and profiling technologies. The MOVE software, know-how and patents will broaden the capabilities of the Sentiance Context Suite to deliver intelligent insights for smart city applications.

The acquisition is intended to complement Sentiance’s mobile sensing and context-aware behavioral profiling solution and extends the company’s reach into the vast market of future living worldwide.

Industrialization of RouteCoach trip recommender

Sentiance takes over development and industrialization of MOVE’s RouteCoach trip recommender, and will expand and commercialize the mobile application as a smart and human-centric mobility solution for fleet, transport and mobility management.

An example of data RouteCoach can take into account: distance to a location in biking time, and usual transport modes to a certain place, here shown for Leuven Station.

It will allow for actual travel time and multimodal route planning and will give personalized trip suggestions that allow you to lose calories, or save time, money and the environment. Existing transport behavior patterns, your mobility attitude and preferences, flexible working times or parenting schedules and even stress can be factored in as well.

Smart mobility focuses on the consumer

“Together with Sentiance, we will place the consumer central in mobility,” says Prof. Sidharta Gautama.

“The system learns how different groups of people really behave and allows us to build personalized mobility solutions. On the other end, cities and organizations get real-time insight into how consumer groups gain or lose time in different transport modes, why and how they travel to certain places and which type of activities they prefer to combine."

Prof. Gautama continues: "These insights allow to build modern mobility systems close to the consumer’s needs. However, the platform goes beyond simple observations. It is one of the first ICT-platforms to support citizen participation in policymaking. This is the exciting bit of the technology. A city serves its suggestions to citizens, who can act or choose not to act on it, and together they shape what a city should look like. This dialogue is what truly makes a city smarter.”

Beyond Mobility: Future Living

Beyond mobility management, Sentiance and i-KNOW plan cooperation on pilot projects regarding consumer intelligence and customer shopping behavior, elderly and patient home care, measuring and stimulating different types of physical activity and extending existing safety securities with passively and actively capture smartphone data.

Under the alliance, i-KNOW will be able to run these research projects on the Sentiance platform, offering its partners an industrial-grade, efficient and continuous solution for data collection, processing and disclosing.

Press contact for Sentiance is Toon Vanparys. For i-KNOW this is Prof. Sidharta Gautama.