Evolving Ambient Intelligence

The metaphor of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) tries to picture a vision of the future where all of us will be surrounded by 'intelligent' electronic environments, and this ambient has claims to being sensitive and responsive to our needs. Ambient Intelligence without invasion of privacy represents a long-term vision for the EU Information Society Technologies Research programme. A strong multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach is a key requirement for large-scale technology innovation and the development of effective applications. Up to now, most of the books and papers related to AmI focus their analysis on the technology potential only. An important feature of this volume is the link between the technology - through the concepts of ubiquitous computing and intelligent interface - and the human experience of interacting in the world - through a neuro-psychological vision centred on the concept of 'presence'. Presence - the sense of being there - is the experience of projecting one's mind through media to other places, people and designed environments. The combination of recent discoveries in cognitive neuroscience - which make it possible to acquire a better understanding of the human aspects of presence, and the breakthroughs at the level of the enabling technologies make it increasingly possible to build novel systems based on this understanding. The goal of this volume is to assess the technologies and processes that are behind the AmI vision, in order to help the development of state-of-the-art applications. More in detail, this volume aims at supporting researchers and scientists, interested in the understanding and exploiting the potential of AmI.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the workshops co-located with the 4th International Joint Conference on Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2013, held in Dublin, Ireland, in December 2013. The 33 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions to the following workshops: 5th International Workshop on Intelligent Environments Supporting Healthcare and Well-being (WISHWell’13) 3d International workshop on Pervasive and Context-Aware Middleware (PerCAM’13), 2nd International Workshop on Adaptive Robotic Ecologies (ARE'13), International Workshop on Aesthetic Intelligence (AxI'13), First International Workshop on Uncertainty in Ambient Intelligence (UAmI13). The papers are organized in topical sections on intelligent environments supporting healthcare and well-being; adaptive robotic ecologies; uncertainty in ambient intelligence; aesthetic intelligence; pervasive and context-aware middleware.

As a socially disruptive technology, Ambient Intelligence is ultimately directed towards humans and targeted at the mundane life made of an infinite richness of circumstances that cannot fully be considered and easily be anticipated. Most books, however, focus their analysis on, or deal largely with, the advancement of the technology and its potential only. This book offers a fresh, up–to–date, and holistic approach to Ambient Intelligence. As such, it addresses the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary aspects of the rapidly evolving field of Ambient Intelligence by seamlessly integrating and fusing it with artificial intelligence, cognitive science and psychology, social sciences, and humanities. It is divided into two main parts: Part 1 is about different permutations of enabling technologies as well as core computational capabilities, namely context awareness, implicit and natural interaction, and intelligent behavior. It details the existing and upcoming prerequisite technologies, and elucidates the application and convergence of major current and future computing trends. Part 2 is an accessible review and synthesis of the latest research in the human-directed sciences and computing and how these are intricately interrelated in the realm of Ambient Intelligence. It deals with the state–of–the–art human–inspired applications which show human-like understanding and exhibit intelligent behavior in relation to a variety of aspects of human functioning – states and processes. It describes and elaborates on the rich potential of Ambient Intelligence from a variety of interrelated perspectives and the plethora of challenges and bottlenecks involved in making Ambient Intelligence a reality, and also discusses the established knowledge and recent discoveries in the human–directed sciences and their application and convergence in the ambit of Ambient Intelligence computing. This seminal reference work is the most comprehensive of its kind, and will prove invaluable to students, researchers, and professionals across both computing and the human-directed sciences.

Ambient Intelligence Perspectives contains selected papers from the first international Ambient Intelligence Forum AmIF 2008 in Hradec Kraacute;loveacute;, Czech Republic. The forum is intended as the beginning of a series of rather broadly oriented discussion opportunities for discussing interdisciplinary, if not transdisciplinary aspects of rapidly evolving areas of Ambient Intelligence. Its aims were to review and discuss recent advances and promising research trends in AmI technology, intelligent environments, methods, middleware development, as well as applications in areas such as healthcare, product lifecycle and transport services. The intention to provide an opportunity of a very broad interaction among a wide rank of A01s coming from different surroundings means a great enrichment to all participants and gives ground to the success of the conference. Finally it led towards an interesting choice of three invited and twenty-five contributed papers, which are published in this book. All papers were carefully reviewed by the international program committee. Participants from twelve countries contributed to the scientific program and established a fruitful discussion atmosphere.

This book focuses on ambient intelligence and addresses various issues related to data management, networking and HCI in this context. Taking a holistic view, it covers various levels of abstraction, ranging from fundamental to advanced concepts and brings together the contributions of various specialists in the field. Moreover, the book covers the key areas of computer science concerned with the emergence of ambient intelligence (e.g. interaction, middleware, networks, information systems, etc.). It even goes slightly beyond the borders of computer science with contributions related to smart materials and ethics. The authors cover a broad spectrum, with some chapters dedicated to the presentation of basic concepts and others focusing on emerging applications in various fields such as health, transport and tourism.

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is an integrating technology for supporting a pervasive and transparent infrastructure for implementing smart environments. Such technology is used to enable environments for detecting events and behaviors of people and for responding in a contextually relevant fashion. AmI proposes a multi-disciplinary approach for enhancing human machine interaction. Ambient Intelligence: A Novel Paradigm is a compilation of edited chapters describing current state-of-the-art and new research techniques including those related to intelligent visual monitoring, face and speech recognition, innovative education methods, as well as smart and cognitive environments. The authors start with a description of the iDorm as an example of a smart environment conforming to the AmI paradigm, and introduces computer vision as an important component of the system. Other computer vision examples describe visual monitoring for the elderly, classic and novel surveillance techniques using clusters of cameras installed in indoor and outdoor application domains, and the monitoring of public spaces. Face and speech recognition systems are also covered as well as enhanced LEGO blocks for novel educational purposes. The book closes with a provocative chapter on how a cybernetic system can be designed as the backbone of a human machine interaction.

"This book covers the cutting-edge aspects of AMI applications, specifically those involving the effective design, realization, and implementation of a comprehensive ambient intelligence in smart environments"--

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is a recent paradigm emerging from Artificial Intelligence (AI), where computers are used as proactive tools assisting people with their day-to-day activities, making everyone’s life more comfortable. Another main concern of AmI originates from the human computer interaction domain and focuses on offering ways to interact with systems in a more natural way by means user friendly interfaces. This field is evolving quickly as can be witnessed by the emerging natural language and gesture based types of interaction. The inclusion of computational power and communication technologies in everyday objects is growing and their embedding into our environments should be as invisible as possible. In order for AmI to be successful, human interaction with computing power and embedded systems in the surroundings should be smooth and happen without people actually noticing it. The only awareness people should have arises from AmI: more safety, comfort and wellbeing, emerging in a natural and inherent way. ISAmI is the International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence and aiming to bring together researchers from various disciplines that constitute the scientific field of Ambient Intelligence to present and discuss the latest results, new ideas, projects and lessons learned, namely in terms of software and applications, and aims to bring together researchers from various disciplines that are interested in all aspects of this area.