Imagine a world where your mobile device not only interacts with you, but also understands who you are and what you need. You're at the airport scrambling to catch a connecting flight when you hear a buzz and it's your phone, alerting you that your flight is delayed. It then notifies you as to which gate it is scheduled to arrive in, tells you how to get there, and reminds you that your favourite coffee shop is along the way. 

 

Context-aware computing uses location services combined with environmental and situational information to inform and offer specific, enriched content that is catered specifically to the user. In simpler terms, your mobile device provides relevant information directly to you before you ask for it. In many ways your smartphone can already do this, but these are separate applications that require you to search or be logged in to multiple sources of data. Context-aware computing does the legwork for you—and the future of this technology is here in Toronto. 

 

Dr. Hossein Rahnama is known for a lot of things, but it is his work in context-aware computing that is really leaving its mark. Rahnama is an award-winning entrepreneur recognized by MIT as one of the top innovators under 35, and recently appointed as a new member of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. He is the research and innovation director at Ryerson University's Digital Media Zone, an assistant professor at the RTA School of Media, the managing director of Ryerson's Centre for Cloud and Context-Aware Computing (RC4) and, finally, the CEO and founder of the award-winning startup Flybits. 

 

Flybits specializes in bringing context-aware applications to life through a unique platform that allows anyone to create "zones." These zones are smart spaces that can be mapped out using coordinates to cover, for example, a specific building or an entire city block in an effort to provide information to users who are accessing that very space. Flybits hopes that every brand, company and entity will link to a Flybits icon, just as they do Twitter or Facebook.

 

"Our goal is that each of these entities will start to introduce their zones. By connecting to a brand or entity's zone, you will be able to see services and information that is relevant to you and you can control and interact with that environment in a more effective way," Rahnama says.

 

A true innovator, 33-year-old Rahnama has the ability to understand the potential of a technology before it exists. After realizing much of the work in context-aware computing consisted of research papers, he responded by putting together a small research group to begin creating some form of tangible technology. Two years later, the research group spun off into the company that would become Flybits, now based out of Ryerson's Digital Media Zone. 

 

A graduate of Ryerson himself, Rahnama hand selects the school's top computer engineering students, whom he personally teaches, and works with them in the creation of these novel applications. They typically start as co-op students, then become research assistants, and eventually are hired on to work for Flybits full-time upon graduation. 

 

"About 90 per cent of our developers hired by Flybits are Ryerson graduates," Rahnama says. These students represent the strengthening relationship between academic talent pools and young startup companies. Former students such as Steven D'Costa are now taking the lead on cutting-edge projects that are changing not only the way we interact with spaces, but with entire cities.

 

D'Costa was the lead developer on Flybits' most recent project: an undertaking that uses the Flybits platform to turn the city of Ottawa into a smart city. For as significant as it is for the platform to connect people with spaces, the future and hope of Flybits is to turn entire cities, provinces, countries and eventually the world into one connected and interactive system. 

 

"Smart cities matter because there's this great wealth of data and information out there that can make the lives of citizens much easier," D'Costa says. "Unfortunately, this information has historically been hard to find. We have been able to make this content front and centre. Information is now there when it's most relevant to you, without having to deal with data overload and, most importantly, this is verifiable information straight from the source (the city)."

 

Coined Ottawa Nav, the platform provides real-time information to users including construction updates, collision information, and speed limit notifications in construction and school zones. By connecting municipal services and infrastructure information directly to users, Flybits aims to help cities operate better and smoother. Ottawa was chosen because it's the nation's capital and, from an infrastructure standpoint, is a smaller and more manageable city than Toronto.

"The more information we have, [the more] we can enable the province and the city to communicate with each other using one standard," Rahnama says. Flybits will bring hundreds of apps together so they operate on one layer, so airport, transit and traffic information, for example, is synced with one another. "Most of our work is on the back end enabling municipalities. It's up to them to decide how they want to deliver their information to their citizens."

 

Flybits' plan to infiltrate the international market is already in place. The company opened a second office in London, England more than a year ago, choosing to break into the EMEA (Europe, Africa and Middle Eastern) market first rather than the American market. So far they've worked on several pilot projects with football clubs and fashion events.  At London Fashion Week, participants were able to hold up their smartphones to scan runway outfits for information about each item on the catwalk, including purchasing and model information. The information was overlaid so as not to interrupt other applications such as Twitter or Instagram. 

 

"Before, this only could have happened if someone built an app for you," Rahnama says. "Now the technology allows, let's say, the people who are providing the stadium or fashion show experience to come up with these immersive experiences on their own and become very creative without worrying about the complexities of context-aware computing." 

 

Rahnama says Flybits is not competing with developers, but instead enabling developers and partners to make their apps more accessible. For users who are concerned about privacy, Rahnama says the app will only know what you allow it to know. It may understand that you're a female within a certain age group that likes to shop at certain places, but it will not know your name or any identifying information. Flybits is instead concerned about connecting users to information and experiences within specific spaces and cities. 

 

"We can create an ecosystem that can be a great example of how Canadian cities are becoming more digitally connected. We are not imposing any infrastructure changes in these cities, we don't want them to put more towers in place or to purchase specific software or hardware, we are actually enabling them to make their cities smart rather than selling them a solution," Rahnama says. 

 

Flybits' first public product will be available in the early months of 2014. Details will be announced in the first quarter and will include, among others, large sporting events and retail shopping malls. As Rahnama says, the system is designed for users so that "the right information will find them when they need it." Though visions of The Matrix might dance in your head, context-aware computing isn't the future; it's already here.