Ambient intelligence

CONTENT
Page no.

Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1 what is ambient intelligence 4 1.2 The technological dimension 1.3 Objectives of AmI Chapter 2. History

5 5 6

Chapter 3. Basic architecture 3.1 Sensors, actuators and middleware 3.2 Artificial intelligence 3.3 Human computer interaction

7 9 10 11

Chapter 4. Ambient Intelligence environment

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Chapter 5. Ambient Intelligence applications 5.1 Smart home 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Health-related applications. Public transportation sector. Education services Emergency services

14 14 15 15 15 16 16

5.6 Production-oriented places.

Chapter 6. Ambient Intelligence characteristics 6.1 Context awareness 6.2 Immersive 6.3 Adaptable 6.4 Personalize
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Conclusion

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Appendix List of figures

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References

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Chapter 1 Introduction
The idea of ambient intelligence has existed for a period of time. The limitations to the computing capabilities and costs of possessing computers hindered the advancement of Ambient Intelligence. The recent evolution of computing technology changed the way people possess and use computers. Initially, computers were expensive, hard to operate, and very often shared amongst a group of people, see figure 1. These groups of people are usually the professionals in the area. In other words, computers were generally not accessible to the general public. It is not until the development of Personal Computers (PC) that changed the ratio to one user per computer and enabled individuals that were not professionals to own computers and operate them. The world now sees further advancements of technology and enabled users to possess multiple computers. With the reduction in production costs, people are gaining possession of mobile computers like laptops, cell phones, and PDAs. These devices spread rapidly into peoples daily lives and soon become an inevitable part of their daily function. Many of these mobile devices also contain sensors that allow capture and storage of reality data (e.g., location, image, and voice).

Figure 1. The change in people to computer ratio.

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The basic idea behind Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is that by enriching an environment with technology (e.g., sensors and devices interconnected through a network), a system can be built such that acts as an electronic butler, which senses features of the users and their environment, then reasons about the accumulated data, and finally selects actions to take that will benefit the users in the environment. We are now capable of enriching an environment (homes, rooms, trains, etc.) with technology due to the high affordability of computers. The primary task in Ambient Intelligence now resides in developing the suitable system.

1.1 What is Ambient Intelligence?

Ambient Intelligence (AmI)is a striking and to some extent provocative vision of the future society. Ambient Intelligence (AmI) refers to electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. Ambient intelligence is a promise to the future of consumer electronics, telecommunications and computing that was originally developed in the late 1990s for the time frame 2010-2020. Here are some definitions of this term:

Ambient Intelligence is a distributed network of intelligent devices that provides us with information, communication and entertainment.

Ambient Intelligence is a network of hidden intelligent interfaces that recognize our presence and mould our environment to our immediate needs.

Ambient Intelligence refers to an exciting new paradigm in information technology, in which people are empowered through a digital environment that is aware of their presence and context and is sensitive, adaptive and responsive to their needs, habits, gestures and emotions.

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1.2 The technological dimension

Ambient Intelligence is based on the key technologies: Ubiquitous Computing, Ubiquitous Communication, Unobtrusive Hardware, Secure System & Devices and Intelligent User Interfaces. Ubiquitous Computing: means the integration of microprocessors into everyday objects like furniture, clothes or toys. Ubiquitous Communication: should enable these objects to communicate with each other and with the user. Unobtrusive Hardware implemented using miniaturization, nano technology, smart devices, senses etc. Secure System & Devices consists of self testing and repairing software, privacy ensuring technology, etc. Intelligent User Interface enables the inhabitants of the AmI to control and interact with the environment in a natural (voice, gestures) and personalized way (preferences, context).

1.3 Objectives of AmI:

facilitate human contact; be orientated towards community and cultural enhancement; help to build knowledge and skills for work, better quality of work, citizenship and consumer choice; inspire trust and confidence; be consistent with long term sustainability both at personal, societal levels; be controllable by ordinary people - i.e. the off-switch should be within reach (these technologies could very easily acquire an aspect of them-controlling-us!). and environmental

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Chapter 2 History
In 1998, the board of management of Philips commissioned a series of presentations and internal workshops, organized by Eli Zelkha and Brian Epstein 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. While developing the Ambient Intelligence concept, Palo Alto Ventures created the keynote address for Roel Pieper of Philips for the Digital Living Room Conference, 1998. The group included Eli Zelkha, Brian Epstein, Simon Birrell, Doug Randall, and Clark Dodsworth. 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 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 officially opened on 24 April 2002. Along with the development of the vision at Philips, a number of parallel initiatives started to explore ambient intelligence in more detail. 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 (FP6) 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 few years several major initiatives have been 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. 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.

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Chapter 3 Basic architecture

What are the essential components of an AmI system? Basically an AmI system has a real environment and occupants that interact with that environment in some typical way for those combination environment/occupants.

Fig 2. Interaction in between AmI and other disciplines

Hence we can define an AmI system as follows: AmI System = <E; IC; I> such that: E: is the environment for example a house, a hospital, a factory, a street, a city, an airplane, a train or a bus.

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IC: is a set of interaction constraints. It specifies the possible ways in which elements of E and I can interact with each other. Some elements that can be typically further specified here are (S, A, C, IR) where: S is set of sensors, A is set of actuators, C is a set of contexts of interests and IR is a set of interaction rules. Sensor captures the information from

environment, Actuators allow the system to act upon and influence the environment. The set of contexts of interest distinguish those situations where we expect the system to act. The set of interaction rules establishes the protocol on how the system put all the previous elements together to make decisions and trigger actions. I: is a set of Interactors (usually beneficiaries, it can be people, pets or robots). They can interact with the system in various ways; IR should capture the ways this interaction is conducted.

Figure 3.Generic architecture of AmI system Figure highlights the flow of information and how the different components of an AmI system interact with each other gathering information from the real world, understanding it taking decisions and using those decisions to interact with the world again.

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3.1 Sensors, Actuators, and Middleware

A distinctive feature of the systems we are addressing in this article is that they are immersed in the real, physical, world. As such they have to interact directly with an

environment. These systems have to gather information of that environment in real-time through sensing devices and after some reasoning they usually have to act. Given the importance of sensing/actuating devices this area for research and development is very actively pursuing the production of new sensing devices or the expansion of the capabilities of current devices. There are nowadays sensors that can detect wide range of situations and measure a variety of substances. The most widely known is probably infrared sensors that can detect movement as it has become fairly common to have anti-burglar alarms which are based in that technology. The possibility to identify objects or individuals is one of the most popular sensing options. They combine an ID tag and a tag reader which can detect the ID tag based on proximity. Other sensors allow can detect weight, the presence chemicals, gases, humidity, brightness or temperature. Other devices can read physiological data like blood pressure or blood sugar levels which can then be used for healthcare. Sensors can be physically connected to a network or wireless, each option with advantages and disadvantages, for example, the first ones are more reliable but the second ones offer a more flexible architecture. actuators bring their own problems for system implementation. Sensors and

First there is a cost

associated. Then, all of them are, to different degrees, unreliable. There are problems of compatibility between sensors produced by different manufacturer and they require substantial maintenance effort. And in any case they can generate vast amounts of data that has to be somehow stored, filtered, merged and interpreted.

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3.2 Artificial Intelligence

One of the most exciting technical aspects of a system exhibiting Ambient Intelligence is the capability to act autonomously in the benefit of humans. This implies both a hard challenge and a tremendous responsibility. There are several aspects that will have a strong influence in the intelligence a system can exhibit: 1. Learning and Activity Recognition: It means the system is capable to analyze the vast amount of data produced by sensor triggering and out of that it and can make sense of the events that happen in a particular environment. It means the system should be able to group together events as recorded by the sensors into conceptual clusters. For example, from the movement and RFID sensors installed in the kitchen and in other objects like cups, kettles, cupboard, water taps, etc., the system identifies that a person is preparing coffee, which in term is part of making breakfast, etc. 2. Context-awareness: all Ambient Intelligence systems take place in an environment. What we do in this area is to smarten up the environment deploying hardware and software that links the environment with a computing system which is supposed to operate in the interest of a human or group of humans. To operate successfully such systems must understand the context and the evolution of that context, i.e. its dynamics. 3. Reasoning: cognitive inference is essential for the system to infer whether it has to act or not and what action(s) should be taken. A variety of methods exist here, ranging from systems which are more rule-based to those based in biologically inspired models. 4. Multiagents: have an important role in providing a flexible paradigm to model the different levels of autonomy and dependency that each component can have in a Smart Environment. One problem so far which is preventing full exploitation of the multi agent technology is that what has been used so far is merely forcing the diverse needs of AmI systems to pass through the sieve of traditional agents. More effort has to be put on

developing the type of multiagent architectures that are needed to develop AmI systems. 5. Robots: provide a valuable tool both as an interface and as an actuator within a smart environment. Robots can provide an element of socialization. They can also be disguised in the way of a tool that users can benefit from like an intelligent wheelchair which can help navigate a house to users with mobility challenges.
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3.3 Human-Computer Interaction

Weises initial vision was very emphatic on the requirement that technology only will be successful if it becomes adapted to the extent of not being noticed, very much the way we use a fridge or a washing machine nowadays. Humans should be able to use devices in a way that does not demand vast amounts of training and specialization. Needles to say most of what it is on offer today in the areas of AmI fall short in this aspect. It is also fair to say that there is a significant part of the community which is doing interesting progress and is working extremely hard to achieve this aim. Gesture recognition, gaze tracking, facial expression recognition, emotion recognition and spoken dialogue, either isolated or combined to form multi-modal interfaces, are some of a range of options becoming available to facilitate communication between humans and the system in a natural way. Images also help assess a situation where safety can be

compromised. The Wireless Sensor Networks Lab at Stanford University uses a network of video cameras to infer a sequence of body postures and hence detect possible hazards like a fall.

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Chapter 4 Ambient intelligence environment

Figure4.AmI environments In the context the AmI Programme, the research activities will focus on six thematic areas. The selected thematic areas represent both private/restricted and public environments and include: Home: Intelligent living room Work: Intelligent Office Education: Intelligent classroom

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Transportation: Intelligent transportation Commerce: Intelligent exhibition Leisure: Intelligent playground Each thematic area will be equipped with basic AmI infrastructure components (e.g., sensors, actuators, screens, speakers, networks), as well as with special-purpose equipment required for the specific simulated environment, supported user activities and deployment scenarios (e.g., home electronics and healthcare equipment for the home). Additionally, a control center will be created, which will incorporate all the necessary equipment (e.g., servers and routers, chargers, video recorders) to effectively operate and monitor all the thematic areas. A structural representation of the AmI Laboratory is depicted below.

Table.1 Programme.

Structural overview of the foreseen laboratory facilities for the AmI

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Chapter 5 AmI Applications

5.1. Smart Homes

Figure 5 . Generic layout of a Smart home enriched with sensors and devices Figure 4 depicts the basic layout of a house which can operate intelligently. The figure depicts movement sensors (Passive Infra Red detectors), a pullchordswitch, a thermostat, a smoke detector, a doorbell indicator, pressurepads, on-off switch detectors, a

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phone for external contact and a medical device (e.g. blood pressure monitor, or heart monitor). An example of an environment enriched with Ambient Intelligence is a smart home". Several artifacts and items in a house can be enriched with sensors to gather information about their use and in some cases even to act independently without human intervention. Some examples of such devices are electrodomestics (e.g., cooker and fridge), household items (e.g.,taps, bed and sofa) and temperature handling devices (e.g., air conditioning and radiators). Expected benefits of this technology can be: (a) increasing safety (e.g., by

monitoring lifestyle patterns or the latest activities and providing assistance when a possibly harmful situation is developing (b) comfort (e.g., by adjusting temperature automatically), an (c) economy (e.g., by controlling the use of lights). This is a popular use of many

technologies such as active badges and indoor positioning systems

5.2.Health-related applications.
Hospitals can increase the efficiency of their services by monitoring patients health and progress by performing automatic analysis of activities in their rooms. They can also increase safety by, for example, only allowing authorized personnel and patients to have access to specific areas and devices. Health can be decentralized and made accessible at home through telecare and telehealth services in what it is commonly termed Ambient Assisted Living

5.3.Public transportation sector.

Public transport can benefit from extra technology including satellite services, GPSbased spatial location, vehicle identification, image processing and other technologies to make transport more fluent and hence more efficient and safe.

5.4. Education services.

Education-related institutions may use technology to create smart classrooms where the modes of learning are enhanced.

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5.5. Emergency services.

Safety-related services like fire brigades can improve the reaction to a hazard by locating the place more efficiently and also by preparing the way to reach the place in connection with street services. The prison service can also quickly locate a place where a hazard is occurring or is likely to occur and prepare better access to it for security personnel.

5.6. Production-oriented places.

Companies can use RFID sensors to tag different products and track them along the production and commercialization processes. This allows identifying the product path from production to consumer and helps improving the process by providing valuable information for the company on how to react to favourable demand and unusual events like products that become unsuitable for sale. Smart offices has been also the centre of attention and some

interesting proposals aim at equipping offices with ways to assist their employees to perform their tasks more efficiently.

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Chapter 6 Characteristics of AmI

6.1. Context awareness
One of the key characteristics of devices in an Ambient Intelligence environment is that they must know the context in which they are being used. Screens, for example, become very general-purpose devices, capable of displaying highquality video and graphics when needed, or transforming themselves into transparent windows or mirrors. To configure themselves correctly without user intervention, they must know what they are being used for.

6.2. Immersive
If one role of Ambient Intelligence is to make the delivery and sharing of experiences much easier, another role is to enhance the quality of the experience itself. And being in the mood for something goes a long way to making the experience truly enjoyable. Mood, however, is not something that is created entirely within us. It can also be invoked by our surroundings, in the form of lighting levels, the colours and smells around us, the vibrations that we feel and the sounds that we hear. For Ambient Intelligence to heighten our experiences by reflecting or invoking our moods, it must therefore be able to control our environment.

6.3. Adaptable
Capable of reacting to all kinds of abnormal exceptional situations in a flexible way without disruption of their service. A characteristic that relates very much to how people will interact with Ambient Intelligence. One of the main themes of Philips Researchs current work is to make this interaction more natural, by developing technologies that will allow us to use modalities such as speech and gesture.

6.4. Personalized
This very high level of personalization and the ability to emanate a digital aura that invites and enhances the opportunity for new experiences are both key characteristics of Ambient Intelligence. For mobile devices, however, they must be implemented in a way that allows free interaction in the same way that people on the move make acquaintances and share experiences in a largely spontaneous way
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Conclusion

Ambient Intelligence is establishing fast as an area where a confluence of topics can converge to help society through technology. Ambient intelligence is a vision on the future of consumer electronics, telecommunications and computing There are still many challenges ahead and improvements are needed at all levels: infrastructure, algorithms and human-computer interaction for AmI systems to be widely accepted and more important of all, be useful to society. We are conscious that the realization of AmIs aims is not easily reachable but the field is gaining momentum. Many important elements are advancing and we are optimistic that this will bring the synergy that is needed to materialize the goal of Ambient Intelligence.

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APPENDIX

Figure 1. The change in people to computer ratio. Figure 2. Interaction in between AmI and other disciplines Figure 3.Generic architecture of AmI system Figure4. AmI environments

3 7 8 12

Figure5.Generic layout of a Smart home enriched with sensors and devices 13

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References
1. Ambient intelligence: Technologies, Applications and J.cook, Juan C.Augusto, and Vikramadithya R. Jakkula 2. Ambient intelligence: a multimedia perspective:Nevenka Dimitrova,Philips Research, Multimedia IEEE, Jan.-March 2004 ,Volume 11 , 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_intelligene oppurtunities. :Diane

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