Ubiquitous Computing And Ambient Intelligence Sensing Processing And Using Environmental Information

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence, UCAmI 2015, held in Puerto Varas, Chile, in December 2015. The 36 full papers presented together with 11 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 62 submissions. The papers are grouped in topical sections on adding intelligence for environment adaption; ambient intelligence for transport; human interaction and ambient intelligence; and ambient intelligence for urban areas.

This LNCS double volume LNCS 10069-10070 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence, UCAmI 2016, which includes the International Work Conference on Ambient Assisted Living (IWAAL), and the International Conference on Am-bient Intelligence for Health (AmIHEALTH), held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, in November/December 2016. The 69 full papers presented together with 40 short papers and 5 doctoral consortium papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 145 submissions. UCAmI 2016 is focused on research topics related to ambient assisted living, internet of things, smart cities, ambient intelligence for health, human-computer interaction, ad-hoc and sensor networks, and security.

Relatively new research ?elds such as ambient intelligence, intelligent envir- ments, ubiquitous computing, and wearable devices have emerged in recent years. These ?elds are related by a common theme: making use of novel technologies to enhance user experience by providing user-centric intelligent environments, - moving computers from the desktop and making computing available anywhere and anytime. It must be said that the concept of intelligent environments is not new and beganwithhomeautomation. Thechoiceofnameforthe?eldvariessomewhatfrom continent to continent in the English-speaking world. In general intelligent space is synonymous to intelligent environments or smart spaces of which smart homes is a sub?eld. In this collection, the terms intelligent environments and ambient int- ligence are used interchangeably throughout. Such environments are made possible by permeating living spaces with intelligent technology that enhances quality of life. In particular, advances in technologies such as miniaturized sensors, advances in communication and networking technology including high-bandwidth wireless devices and the reduction in power consumption have made possible the concept of intelligent environments. Environments such as a home, an of?ce, a shopping mall, and a travel port utilize data provided by users to adapt the environment to meet the user’s needs and improve human-machine interactions. The user information is gathered either via wearable devices or by pervasive sensors or a combination of both. Intelligent environments brings together a number of research ?elds from computer science, such as arti?cial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, and robotics as well as engineering and architecture.

Ambient intelligence is the vision of a technology that will become invisibly embedded in our natural surroundings, present whenever we need it, enabled by simple and effortless interactions, attuned to all our senses, adaptive to users and context-sensitive, and autonomous. High-quality information access and personalized content must be available to everybody, anywhere, and at any time. This book addresses ambient intelligence used to support human contacts and accompany an individual's path through the complicated modern world. From the technical standpoint, distributed electronic intelligence is addressed as hardware vanishing into the background. Devices used for ambient intelligence are small, low-power, low weight, and (very importantly) low-cost; they collaborate or interact with each other; and they are redundant and error-tolerant. This means that the failure of one device will not cause failure of the whole system. Since wired connections often do not exist, radio methods will play an important role for data transfer. This book addresses various aspects of ambient intelligence, from applications that are imminent since they use essentially existing technologies, to ambitious ideas whose realization is still far away, due to major unsolved technical challenges.

Modern devices, from phones and cars to houses and the appliances within them, are being designed with formidable computational power and expanded functionality. To be truly effective, these smart devices must effectively process data from their environment and experiences and make decisions based on that information. Recent Advances in Ambient Intelligence and Context-Aware Computing investigates the functionality of ubiquitous computational systems and how they may adapt to their environment to improve the quality of interaction for the end-user. This reference book will be of value to under- and post-graduate students, professionals, and researchers in networking, computer science, communications, and other information technology disciplines.

This book reports a set of novel research initiatives on ambient intelligence and ubiquitous computing that help researchers and practitioners identify recent advances, as well as the frontiers in these study domains. During the last two decades, both study areas have gained great interest in industry and academia due to the benefits of using smart solutions in various application domains, such as health care, ambient-assisted living, personal security and privacy, citizen participation, provision of urban services, and precision agriculture and farming. The articles included in this book report solutions and provide empirical results on their suitability to address problems and opportunities in these application domains. The articles also include discussions on how the proposals and their evaluation results inform the design of the next generation of ubiquitous and smart systems. Researchers, practitioners, and graduate students take advantage of this knowledge to address innovation and engineering aspects of smart and ubiquitous solutions for the next decade.

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.

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.