Ambient intelligence

The EC Information Scociety Technologies Advisory Group in a vision of the Information Society, Ambient Intelligence emphasises on greater user-friendliness, more efficient services support, user-empowerment, and support for human interactions. In this vision, people will be surrounded by intelligent and intuitive interfaces embedded in everyday objects around us and an environment recognising and responding to the presence of individuals in an invisible way by year 2010.


Since the 1999 IST Program Advisory Group (ISTAG) vision statement for Framework Programme 5 challenging to create an Ambient Intelligence (AmI) landscape for seamless delivery of services and applications in Europe, it rapidly became widely embedded in the work programme for years 2000-2001. AmI is also recognised as one of the key concepts related to Information Society in the Framework Programme 6 and as we can see from the multitude of articles in this issue, ERCIM members are already well on this track. For a more detailed intro, our first contact with AmI is envisioned in a report by ISTAG (ISTAG. Scenarios for Ambient Intelligence in 2010. using a set of scenarios depicting different potential futures with four fictitious users.


Ambient Intelligence builds on three recent key technologies: Ubiquitous Computing, Ubiquitous Communication and Intelligent User Interfaces – some of these concepts are barely a decade old and this reflects on the focus of current implementations of AmI (more on this later on). Ubiquitous Computing means integration of microprocessors into everyday objects like furniture, clothing, white goods, toys, even paint. Ubiquitous Communication enables these objects to communicate with each other and the user by means of ad-hoc and wireless networking.


An Intelligent User Interface enables the inhabitants of the AmI environment to control and interact with the environment in a natural (voice, gestures) and personalised way (preferences, context). Making AmI real is no easy task: as it commonly takes place with a new technology, soon after high-flying visions we are demonstrated with the first pieces of hardware for the intelligent environment. However, making a door knob able to compute and communicate does not make it intelligent: the key (and challenge) to really adding wit to the environment lies in the way how the system learns and keeps up to date with the needs of the user by itself. A thinking machine, you might conclude – not quite but close: if you rely on the intelligent environment you expect it to operate correctly every time without tedious training or updates and management. You might be willing to do it once but not constantly even in the case of frequent changes of objects, inhabitants or preferences in the environment.

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.


Ambient intelligence is closely related to the long term vision of an intelligent service system in which technologies are able to automate a platform embedding the required devices for powering context aware, personalized, adaptive and anticipatory services. A typical context of ambient intelligence environment is a Home environment.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.

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 (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 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.