In computing, ambient intelligence (AmI) refers to electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. Ambient intelligence is a projection of the future of consumer electronics, telecommunications, and computing, originally developed in the late 1990s by Eli Zelkha and his team at Palo Alto Ventures for the time frame 2010–2020. This concept is intended to enable devices to work in concert with people in carrying out their everyday life activities, tasks, and rituals in an intuitive way by using information and intelligence hidden in the network connecting these devices (for example: The Internet of Things). It is theorized that as these devices grow smaller, more connected, and more integrated into our environment, the technological framework behind them will disappear into our surroundings until only the user interface remains perceivable by users.
The ambient intelligence paradigm builds upon pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing, profiling, context awareness, and human-centric computer interaction design. It is characterized by systems and technologies that are:
- Embedded: many networked devices are integrated into the environment
- Context aware: 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.
A typical context of the ambient intelligence environment is home, but it may also be extended to workspaces (offices, co-working), public spaces (based on technologies such as smart streetlights), and hospital environments.
Overview
Ambient intelligence is primarily interesting because of its relationship and advancement in sensor technology and sensor networks. The interest in user experience grew its importance in the late 1990s as a result of the increasing volume and importance of digital products and services that were difficult to understand or use. In response, the user experience design emerged to create new technologies and media around the user's personal experience. 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 with the designer (participatory design) or with other users (end-user development).
Ambient intelligence requires several vital technologies to exist. These include hidden, user-friendly hardware such as miniaturization, nanotechnology, and smart devices, as well as human-centric computer interfaces (intelligent agents, multimodal interaction, context awareness, etc.). These systems and devices operate through a seamless mobile/fixed communication and computing infrastructure characterized by interoperability, wired and wireless networks, and service-oriented architecture.
To implement ambient intelligence 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.), these systems and devices must also be dependable and secure, which may be achieved through self-testing and self-repairing software and privacy ensuring technology.
History and invention
In 1998, the management board of Philips commissioned a series of presentations and internal workshops organized by Eli Zelkha and Brian Epstein of Palo Alto Ventures. Zelkha, together with Simon Birrell, coined the term 'ambient intelligence' to investigate different scenarios that would transform the high-volume consumer electronics industry of the 1990s, which they described as "fragmented with features", into an industry where user-friendly devices supported ubiquitous information, communication, and entertainment by 2020. While developing the ambient intelligence concept, Palo Alto Ventures created the keynote address for Roel Pieper of Philips for the Digital Living Room Conference in 1998. The group included Eli Zelkha, Brian Epstein, Simon Birrell, Doug Randall, and Clark Dodsworth. These plans continued to develop throughout the 1990s, and in 2000, plans were made to construct a feasibility and usability facility dedicated to ambient intelligence. This HomeLab officially opened on 24 April 2002. In 2005, 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.
Along with developing the vision at Philips, several 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 further developing the AmI vision. As a result of many initiatives, the AmI vision gained traction. During the past few years, several significant initiatives have been started. The Fraunhofer Society started several activities in a variety of domains, including multimedia, micro-system design, and augmented spaces. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology started an ambient intelligence research group at their Media Lab. Several more research projects started in a variety of countries such as the US, Canada, Spain, France, and the Netherlands. Since 2004, the European Symposium on Ambient Intelligence (EUSAI) and many other conferences have been held that address special topics in AmI.
Criticism
As far as the dissemination of information on personal presence is out of control, the ambient intelligence vision is subject to criticism (e.g., David Wright, Serge Gutwirth, Michael Friedewald, et al., Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence, Springer, Dordrecht, 2008). Any immersive, personalized, context-aware, and anticipatory characteristics bring up societal, political, and cultural concerns about the loss of privacy. The example scenario above shows the positive and negative possibilities ambient intelligence offers. Applications of ambient intelligence do not necessarily have to reduce privacy to work.
Power concentration in large organizations, a fragmented, decreasingly private society, and hyper-real environments where the virtual is indistinguishable from the real are the main topics of critics. Several research groups and communities are investigating the socioeconomic, political and cultural aspects of ambient intelligence.
Social and political aspects
The ISTAG advisory group suggests that the following characteristics permit the societal acceptance of ambient intelligence. Ambient intelligence should:
- Facilitate human contact.
- Be oriented 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—personal, societal, and environmental—and with lifelong learning.
- Be made easy to live with and controllable by ordinary people.
Business models
The ISTAG group acknowledges the following entry points to the 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 to create economies of scale (mass customization).
- 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 huge user communities providing information as a gift or at near-zero cost (e.g., social networking applications).
- Combining multiple and diverse datasets in a platform for sense-making and understanding consumer behavior (e.g., Near).
Technologies
A variety of technologies can be used to enable ambient intelligence environments, such as:
- Bluetooth Low Energy
- RFID
- Microchip implant
- Sensors: Ambient light sensor (photodetector), thermometers, proximity sensors, and motion detectors
- Software agents
- Affective computing
- Nanotechnology
- Biometrics
Computing
This means of computing links all pieces of technology together. This also allows the device to have the capability to remember past requests.
Uses in fiction
- Minority Report (2002 film): One scene illustrates adaptive advertising in the future-consumers are identified via retinal scans and receive targeted ads.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: The doors have emotion and express this when people use them.
- The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson: It depicts a world completely changed by the full development of nanotechnology that is present everywhere.
- Her (2013 film): The opening scene depicts the protagonist commuting home. Upon arriving, the various lights throughout the apartment are turned on as the character moves through the rooms (automated lighting control). A later scene shows that an artificial entity can also control these systems, changing a song in the background to lighten a situation and for humorous effect.
