Ambient intelligence

In computing, ambient intelligence (AmI) refers to electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. Ambient intelligence is a vision on the future of consumer electronics, telecommunications and computing that was originally developed in the late 1990s for the time frame 2010–2020. In an ambient intelligence world, devices work in concert to support people in carrying out their everyday life activities, tasks and rituals in easy, natural way using information and intelligence that is hidden in the network connecting these devices (see Internet of Things). As these devices grow smaller, more connected and more integrated into our environment, the technology disappears into our surroundings until only the user interface remains perceivable by users.

The ambient intelligence paradigm builds upon ubiquitous computing and human-centric computer interaction design and is characterized by systems and technologies that are:

• embedded: many networked devices are integrated into the environment
• Context awareness: these devices can recognize you and your situational context
• personalized: they can be tailored to your needs
• adaptive: they can change in response to you
• anticipatory: they can anticipate your desires without conscious mediation.

Overview

An (expected) evolution of computing from 1960-2020.

More and more people make decisions based on the effect their actions will have on their own inner, mental world. This experience-driven way of acting is a change from the past when people were primarily concerned about the use value of products and services, and is the basis for the experience economy. Ambient intelligence addresses this shift in existential view by emphasizing people and user experience.

The interest in user experience also grew in importance in the late 1990s because of the overload of products and services in the information society that were difficult to understand and hard to use. A strong call emerged to design things from a user's point of view. Ambient intelligence is influenced by user-centered design where the user is placed in the center of the design activity and asked to give feedback through specific user evaluations and tests to improve the design or even co-create the design together with the designer (Participatory design) or with other users (End User Development).

In order for AmI to become a reality a number of key technologies are required:

• Unobtrusive hardware (Miniaturisation, Nanotechnology, smart devices, sensors etc.)
• Seamless mobile/fixed communication and computing infrastructure (interoperability, wired and wireless networks, service-oriented architecture, semantic web etc.)
• Dynamic and massively distributed device networks, which are easy to control and program (e.g. service discovery, auto-configuration, end-user programmable devices and systems etc.).
• Human-centric computer interfaces (intelligent agents, multimodal interaction, context awareness etc.)
• Dependable and secure systems and devices (self-testing and self repairing software, privacy ensuring technology etc.)

History

The early developments in Ambient Intelligence took place at Philips. In 1998, the board of management of Philips commissioned a series of internal workshop to investigate different scenarios that would transform the high-volume consumer electronic industry from the current “fragmented with features” world into a world in 2020 where user-friendly devices support ubiquitous information, communication and entertainment. In the years after, these developments grew more mature. In 1999, Philips joined the Oxygen alliance, an international consortium of industrial partners within the context of the MIT Oxygen project [1], aimed at developing technology for the computer of the 21st century. In 2000, plans were made to construct a feasibility and usability facility dedicated to Ambient Intelligence. This HomeLab [2] officially opened on 24 April 2002. Along with the build up of the vision for Philips, a parallel track was started to open up the vision. Following the advice of the Information Society and Technology Advisory Group (ISTAG), the European Commission used the vision for the launch of their sixth framework (FP5) in Information, Society and Technology (IST), with a subsidiary budget of 3.7 billion euros. The European Commission played a crucial role in the further development of the AmI vision. As a result of many initiatives the AmI vision gained traction. During the past years several major initiatives were started. Fraunhofer Society started several activities in a variety of domains including multimedia, microsystems design and augmented spaces. MIT started an Ambient Intelligence research group at their Media Lab [3]. Several more research projects started in a variety of countries such as USA, Canada, Spain, France and the Netherlands. In 2004, the first European symposium on Ambient Intelligence (EUSAI) was held and many other conferences have been held that address special topics in AmI.

Example scenario

Ellen returns home after a long day's work. At the front door she is recognized by an intelligent surveillance camera, the door alarm is switched off, and the door unlocks and opens. When she enters the hall the house map indicates that her husband Peter is at an art fair in Paris, and that her daughter Charlotte is in the children's playroom, where she is playing with an interactive screen. The remote children surveillance service is notified that she is at home, and subsequently the on-line connection is switched off. When she enters the kitchen the family memo frame lights up to indicate that there are new messages. The shopping list that has been composed needs confirmation before it is sent to the supermarket for delivery. There is also a message notifying that the home information system has found new information on the semantic Web about economic holiday cottages with sea sight in Spain. She briefly connects to the playroom to say hello to Charlotte, and her video picture automatically appears on the flat screen that is currently used by Charlotte. Next, she connects to Peter at the art fair in Paris. He shows her through his contact lens camera some of the sculptures he intends to buy, and she confirms his choice. In the mean time she selects one of the displayed menus that indicate what can be prepared with the food that is currently available from the pantry and the refrigerator. Next, she switches to the video on demand channel to watch the latest news program. Through the follow me she switches over to the flat screen in the bedroom where she is going to have her personalized workout session. Later that evening, after Peter has returned home, they are chatting with a friend in the living room with their personalized ambient lighting switched on. They watch the virtual presenter that informs them about the programs and the information that have been recorded by the home storage server earlier that day.

Criticism

[Note: The term 'AmI' needs definition. Recommendation: Replace all references to 'AmI' with 'Ambient intelligence".] The AmI vision is not without criticism [See, for example, Wright, David, Serge Gutwirth, Michael Friedewald et al., Wright, David, Serge Gutwirth, Michael Friedewald et al., Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence, Springer, Dordrecht, 2008]. Its immersive, personalized, context-aware and anticipatory characteristics, developed before the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11 2001, bring up societal, political and cultural concerns about the loss of consumer privacy, power concentration in large organizations, fear for an increasingly individualized, fragmented society and hyperreal environments where the virtual is indistinguishable from the real (hyperreality). Several research groups and communities are investigating the social-economical, political and cultural aspects of ambient intelligence. New thinking on Ambient Intelligence distances itself therefore from some of the original characteristics such as adaptive and anticipatory behaviour and emphasizes empowerment and participation to place control in the hands of people instead of organizations.

The social and political aspects of ambient intelligence

The ISTAG advisory group suggests that the following characteristics will permit the societal acceptance of ambient intelligence:

• AmI should facilitate human contact.
• AmI should be orientated towards community and cultural enhancement.
• AmI should help to build knowledge and skills for work, better quality of work, citizenship and consumer choice.
• AmI should inspire trust and confidence.
• AmI should be consistent with long term sustainability - personal, societal and environmental - and with life-long learning.
• AmI should be made easy to live with and controllable by ordinary people.

Business models for ambient intelligence

The ISTAG group acknowledges the following entry points to AmI business landscape:

• Initial premium value niche markets in industrial, commercial or public applications where enhanced interfaces are needed to support human performance in fast moving or delicate situations.
• Start-up and spin-off opportunities from identifying potential service requirements and putting the services together that meet these new needs.
• High access-low entry cost based on a loss leadership model in order to create economies of scale (mass customisation).
• Audience or customer’s attention economy as a basis for ‘free’ end-user services paid for by advertising or complementary services or goods.
• Self-provision – based upon the network economies of very large user communities providing information as a gift or at near zero cost.

Research groups

Several research groups have been founded to tackle the question of the manifestations of ambient intelligence - what can be done and what will the actions most probably result in:

• Alcatel-Lucent Research&Innovation. Ambient Services Group. [4]
• AmIVital. Spanish project to develop intelligent services for elderly and disabled. [5]
• Autonomous University of Madrid - AmiLab. [6]
• Carnegie Mellon University. CyLab - Ambient Intelligence Lab. [7]
• University of Deusto, MoreLab -- Mobility Research Lab. [8]
• Fraunhofer Institute. Ambient Assisted Living, [9]
• Fraunhofer Institute. InHaus [10]
• Kingston University London, Ambient Intelligence Research Group. [11]
• MAmI -- Modelling Ambient Intelligence -- UCLM, Spain. [12]
• MERL. Ambient Intelligence for Better Buildings. [13]
• MIT Media Lab. Ambient Intelligence group. [14]
• NTT Research. Ambient Intelligence Research Group [15]
• Philips Research. Ambient Intelligence Research in ExperienceLab. [16]
• University of Reading, Ambient & Pervasive Intelligence Research group. [17]
• SERENITY Security & Dependability in AmI, [18]
• SWAMI: Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence. [19]
• Tampere University of Technology, New AMbient Multimedia Research (NAMU) Lab. [20]
• Tampere University of Technology, Department of Electronics, Personal Electronics Group (PEG). [21]
• GECAD - Knowledge Engineering and Decision Support Research Center [22]
• CETpD - Technical Research Center for Dependency Care and Autonomous Living [23]
• LST - Life Supporting Technologies [24]

Sources and Further Material

• Malcolm McCullough, Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing, MIT Press, 2005
• Artur Lugmayr [25] - first definition for ambient media
• Emile Aarts, Rick Harwig and Maarten Schuurmans, chapter Ambient Intelligence in The Invisible Future: The Seamless Integration Of Technology Into Everyday Life, McGraw-Hill Companies, 2001
• Adam Greenfield, Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, New Riders Publishing, 2006
• Emile Aarts and José Encarnação, True Visions: The Emergence of Ambient Intelligence, Springer, 2006
• Peter Morville, Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become, O'Reilly Media, 2005
• Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, Knopf, 1995
• Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, Basic Books, 2002
• Tom Igoe and Dan O’Sullivan. Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers, Course Technology PTR, 2004
• Joseph Pine and James Gillmore, The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage, Harvard Business School Press, 1999
• Bryon Reeves and Clifford Nass, The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places, University of Chicago Press, 1996
• Mark Weiser, "The Computer for the Twenty-First Century," Scientific American, pp. 94-10, September 1991 [26]
• Giuseppe Riva et al. Ambient Intelligence: The Evolution of Technology, Communication and Cognition towards the Future of Human-Computer Interaction, IOS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2005
• Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, Harper Collins, San Francisco CA, USA, 1999
• Yang Cai and Juli Abascal (eds.), Ambient Intelligence in Everyday Life" Springer Lectures Notes in Computer Science (LNAI 3864), 2006
• Yang Cai and Juli Abascal (eds.), Ambient Intelligence for Scientific Discovery: Foundations, Theories, and Systems, Springer Lectures Notes in Computer Science (LNCS 3345)

• Jürgen Bohn e.a. Social, Economic and Ethical Implications of Ambient Intelligence and Ubiquitous Computing [27].
• ISTAG Scenarios for Ambient Intelligence in 2010 [28]
• ISTAG Ambient Intelligence: from vision to reality [29]
• JRC/IPTS-ESTO Healthcare Technologies Roadmapping [30]

• AmbientIntelligence.org [31] – Website for Ambient Intelligence, e-Health, virtual reality and future technologies in healthcare
• Amiblog [32]– Weblog about Ambient Intelligence, experience design, co-creation
• Architectradure [33] – Weblog on architecture and design
• awareIT [34]– News blog about Ambient Intelligence, Ubiquitous Computing and intelligent devices.
• Digital Experience [35]- Blog on interaction and experience design.
• Information Aesthetics [36]– Weblog on information visualization
• Pasta and Vinegar [37]- Weblog about emerging technologies usage/research/ foresight
• Putting People First [38] – News on user experience, experience design and people-centred innovation
• José Encarnação (Ed.) et al.: Ambient Intelligence - The New Paradigm for Computer Science and for Information Technolgy. Special Topic of Journal it - Information Technology, Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich. Vol.50(2008) Issue 1.
• Wright, David, Serge Gutwirth, Michael Friedewald et al., Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence, Springer, Dordrecht, 2008.

External links

• AmI-07 - European Conference on Ambient Intelligence
• Sensami - a congress on ambient intelligence.