MWE 2004 Opening Ceremony and Keynote Address   →Back to List   Opening Ceremony Nov 10 (Wed). 10:00-10:10 Room F205+F206 Opening Ceremony Chairman, MWE 2004 Steering Committee : Yohei Ishikawa (Murata Mfg. Co., Ltd.)   Keynote Address Nov 10 (Wed). 10:10-12:10 Room F205+F206 1. The Integration of Vehicles into a Ubiquitous Computing Environment     Naoki Tokitsu (Internet ITS Consortium) Chair : Yohei Ishikawa (Murata Mfg. Co., Ltd.) Society is becoming more and more information-oriented, at an ever-accelerating pace. Home and offices are connected to broadband networks; cell phone use is widespread. People can access the information they want at any time. Still, not all mobile units are part of this. Typical of such mobile units are vehicles, which amount to over 70 million units around the world. This problem implies that there are significant needs and huge potential markets. To seamlessly connect to and communicate with mobile units traveling at high speeds as well as to make necessary information available when needed, new technologies and a new social infrastructure development are needed. In Japan, over 100 companies from wide-ranging fields gathered to launch a new project, called "Internet ITS", in order to promote vehicle computing and networking. This is an industrygovernment-academia project with the goal of creating a new ubiquitous computing environment. The success of this Internet ITS project will lead to a global information platform that will include vehicles. Based on this platform, new ITS systems and businesses will emerge. Finally, the result will be a traffic environment that is both safer and more comfortable. This paper will provide an overview of the ITS-related activities relating to the World Congress on ITS in 2004 and the World Exposition in Aichi, Japan in 2005.   2. Evolution to Ubiquitous Mobile Communications Minoru Kuramoto (Panasonic Mobile Communications Co., Ltd.) Chair : Yohei Ishikawa (Murata Mfg. Co., Ltd.) We are now in a society that is strongly influenced by information and communication technologies. With the rapid progress of mobile systems, Internet, and multimedia applications, we will be able to get any information, anywhere, and anytime. In other words, we expect so-called "Ubiquitous Info-Communications Society" in the very near future. In the past, mobile phones were used just as portable phones. They developed into terminals that can access the Internet, handling character information. Further more, with the introduction of the 3rd generation communication service, a high-speed Internet connection has become possible which can handle even moving pictures. In short, mobile phone service has enabled you to first talk, then read and now see what you want. Now, what kind of world will be realized by the next generation (ubiquitous mobile communications) system? It will be not only the world standard, but it can also provide various multimedia applications thanks to its wide-band width. It is capable of creating a brand new world in home, office and public scenes. In this speech, a few such examples will be discussed, together with the advanced mobile communication terminal we conceive.