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EUSAI (Ambient Intelligence) 2004
By John Latta, WAVE 0503 1/21/05

Eindhoven, The Netherlands
November 9 - 10, 2004

Ambient Intelligence is a step beyond Ubiquitous Computing. There is an explicit focus on individuals in an environment. As we look across Wearable Computers and this event there is a shift taking place. Tom Rodden, University of Nottingham, UK, put it bluntly - for 40 years our thoughts have been dominated by the PC, keyboard and mouse. This has actually been a diversion away from finding out what “will be our every day relationship with computing.” One of the most important changes is the social context and awareness that permeates the use of computers in every day life. The shift is profound: So far the individual has had to adapt to what the computer could do for the person; now with ambient intelligence the computer must adapt to the individual. These are implications that are only becoming evident.

The Technical University of Eindhoven, where the conference is being held, was showing an Electronic Paper Prototype with Visual Interaction with Windows. This is based on a large tablet, 36”+ diagonal that can be manipulated by a stylist or pen. Projected onto the surface are multiple objects which represent applications. These window frames can be manipulated with a small cursor box which is above the frame. The impressive aspect is that the objects, i.e., the windows of applications can be rotated just like a piece of paper. Even ordinary paper can be placed on the surface and a corresponding virtual paper can be rotated with these objects. The way that all of this works is that the objects are projected onto the tablet surface and the detection of what is happening on the surface is done by a camera which looks at the same surface. The objects on the surface are actually applications windows which are mapped as a texture on an OpenGL surface. Yes, this is not easy to explain without pictures. This is one of the most effective emulations of a desktop surface which uses computing windows we have seen.

EUSAI – Shaping the Future of How Computing is Used

This is the second European Symposium on Ambient Intelligence. The last one was sponsored by Philips and this one by the University of Technology, the Netherlands, also here in Eindhoven. There is no coincidence that much of this is centered here in Eindhoven, the headquarters of Philips. It has made a major commitment to Ambient Intelligence. There are 100 at the conference and most from Europe with a few from Asia. By every indication we have collected, the Europeans are well ahead of other parts of the world.

There are many definition of Ambient Intelligence and we offer some of the components:

Computing devices are everywhere in one’s environment;

Mobility of the individual(s) is assumed and that they have some type of electronic identification and/or other devices on them; and

The environment is aware of the presence of the individual(s), is context sensitive and provides something for the individual(s).

This is quite broad but opens a new dimension on the relationship of the individual with their environment.

This conference is exploring in multiple tracks: Ubiquitous Computing, Context Awareness, Intelligence and Natural Interaction. We would broadly describe the presentations as

- either dealing with the technical issues of creating the environments or the human side of what these environments mean, or

- how individuals participate in these event.

Equator – Making Ambient Intelligence Real

Tom Rodden, University of Nottingham, UK, is director of Equator. The project is described as:

Equator is a six-year Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) supported by EPSRC that focuses on the integration of physical and digital interaction. The IRC brings together researchers from eight different institutions and a variety of disciplines that address the technical, social and design issues in the development of new inter-relationships between the physical and digital.

A series of experience projects engage with different user communities to develop new combinations of physical and digital worlds, how explore these (possibly exploit) and enhance the quality of everyday life.

A series of research challenges explore new classes of devices that link the physical and the digital, research into adaptive software architectures and new design and evaluation methods that draw together approaches from social science, cognitive science and art and design. Now in its third year, it involves over 60 researchers, with a range of expertise that encompasses computer science, psychology, sociology, design and the arts.

Equator aims to forge a clearer understanding of what it means to live in an age when digital and physical activities not only coexist but also co-operate. This is the age we are now entering, and it promises radical change in how we communicate, interact, work and play - that is, how we live. But fulfilling that promise requires more than new technology. We need equally new ways of thinking about technology, and thus also about ourselves.

What stood out in his presentation was the drive to take the technology into the “wild.” That is, he feels that to make the concept of ambient intelligence work it is essential to work with individuals. As a result, he described ways in which the technology has been used that were unforeseen.

His talk discussed five examples from Equator:

City

Can You See me now – game within a city

Ambient Wood – learning in the outdoor setting

Uncle Roy all Around You

Drift Table

City was a museum project to show the city of Glasgow, Scotland. This mixes a physical visitor a museum with a VR Visitor and a web visitor. This brought a deeper visit experience and the video was interesting to see how the visitors interacted with others.

“Can you see me now” is an online game played in city streets. The objective was to locate the individual in the city. This uses GPS for position updates but there are errors due to masking. This significantly enhances the value of the game play and shows how sophisticated the players have become.

Ambient Wood is a children’s experience in the woods. It also uses technology in a number of ways to allow for exploration of the environment and biology. The woods were wired with WiFi. Children could probe the physical world and hand held devices were a part of this exploration.

An extension of the drift table, described at CHI, is the key table. This is a surface where individuals can drop items as they enter the house. The hypothesis is that the state of an individual’s emotion is reflected on how hard they deposit items on the table when entering the home. This is reflected in a picture on the wall which rotates based on the action one takes onto the key table. This picture frame had a dog in it. An unforeseen consequence of this test in one family’s home is that the family, and especially the mother, became very attached to the dog in the picture, and the emotions they felt were expressed in how the frame rotated.

After the presentation, the WAVE asked Tom why he did not show “more serious” applications of the technology. Yes, they do have such efforts and there are three under the Equator called digital care. One deals with Agoraphobia. Tom described that the involvement with health care as being an eye opener. One of the major issues is – what if the treatment is successful. This is not so easily dropped at the end of the experiment. As a result the art department has had to develop an ethics policy on how it will handle patients. In this case ambient intelligence is similar to drug care in a testing situation.

http://www.equator.ac.uk/

Ambient Intelligence – Difficult Realities Surface

Ambient Intelligence is infrastructure associated with individuals. By implication it is every where, it is sensitive to presence and responsive. The WAVE saw some of the hard realities rise to the surface: where will the power come from for all these devices and what will it do for individuals?

Philips Research = Ambient Intelligence

No company is more committed to ambient intelligence than Philips. Some of its writings made available at the conference highlighted that focus and explained the position of the company.

“The ability to implement ubiquitous computing, a situation where processing power is embedded into everything is certain to arrive within the next ten to fifteen years. When it does, Philips will be able to fully realize its vision of ambient intelligence, using technology that is embedded into the fabric of our surroundings to create an environment that is sensitive and responsive to our presence and sympathetic to our needs. In the long term, what ordinary people will want from ambient intelligence is far less certain, but is nevertheless a subject for intensive work in Philips HomeLab, in the mean time, Philips Research is already exploiting key characteristics of ambient intelligence to develop product concepts that will allow us to experience some of the benefits of much sooner.”

Key attributes include:

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.”

Personalized:

There is a very high level of personalization required “...and the ability to emanate a digital aura that invites and enhances the opportunity for new experiences are both key characteristics Ambient Intelligence.”

Immersive:

“If the 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.”

Adaptive:

Context awareness, personalization and immersion are some of the important steps toward Ambient Intelligence that are beginning to appear in consumer products. The next major challenge for Philips Research is to add the ability for environments to become highly adaptive – “...a characteristic that relates very much to how people will interact with Ambient Intelligence.”

An important element in the Philips vision of Ambient Intelligence is a connected world of which seamless connectivity is very important. Philips sees that there are two parts to this:

Worldwide Coverage of Communications:

Geographically, ubiquitous connectivity is already Here, thanks to the worldwide proliferation of cellular systems. In the cellular phone world, the concept of ubiquitous connectivity extends far beyond voice, e-mail and Internet browsing, however. Anticipated convergence between mobile phones and wireless local area networks (WLAN) technology is expected to result in new generations of mobiles with WLAN functionality. Philips Research is actively developing integrated multi-standard radio solutions that automatically reconfigure themselves to the standard required.

Home-Centered Connectivity:

A cornerstone of Philips’ Ambient Intelligence vision is home-centered ubiquitous connectivity, which encompasses not only entertainment and communications but also the proactive responses of the environment itself to people.

“Ambient Intelligence promises a world where technology will disappear below the level of our consciousness, leaving us free to enjoy the experiences that it can delivery. Nobody, however, expects that world to arrive tomorrow, or that we will all rush out and buy ‘ambient intelligence in a box.’ When it does, the vision must materialize gradually building on what is available today and growing with us a we become more aware and more confident of what it has to offer.”

Conference - Super-distributed RFID Tag Infrastructure

The Institute of Pervasive Computing of ETH in Zurich Switzerland described how it would be possible to use RFID tags on a mass scale. Passive RFID tags can be deployed which are highly redundant and over large areas or object surfaces. They call their approach “super-distributed RFID tag infrastructure. SDRI.”

This allows for the discrete partitioning of the physical space. In the case of a regular grid pattern it is possible to have uniquely addressable cells and this can translate into a regular occupancy grid. This in turn, can support robot navigation. Thus, SDRI enables devices to interact with their environment. For example, it is possible to have an object move on a floor which has many such tags, and trace a virtual path on the floor.

“An SDRI can be regarded as a scalable shared medium with (almost) unlimited, independent, and highly distributed physical ‘access points.’ Further, if RFID tags support read-write operations, then they enable mobile devices to support a certain amount of data directly into the physical tags themselves.”

One mobile robot was developed using Lego Mindstorms. This was done to demonstrate the concept of an autonomous location-aware vacuum cleaner.

Overall, an innovative piece of work.

Shaping the Ambience of Homes with Domestic Hypermedia

Marianne Petersen of the Center for Interactive Spaces, ISIS Katrinebjerg, reported on how we are seeing an explosion of domestic media from digital photos to home videos and more. She examined surfaces at home, such as tables and book shelves and categorized these. Home boards have information that is “one click” away. Then this was examined in terms of digital solutions. The analysis considered how both the physical spaces, i.e., the surfaces in the home, could be merged with digital media. The result was domestic hypermedia. This was termed – infrastructure for home materials. A MediaTable was outlined which became a collaborative and spatial organization of domestic material. This was actually displayed as a table. Also shown was a MediaWall. The talk was concluded with a next step that a MediaTable and connected surfaces would be placed in a real home for a 3 week trial.

Excellent analysis.

Conference Discussions

A number of issues came up in conference, mostly during the questioning period. We summarize these:

How are these mobile or distributed devices going to be powered?

Will consumers want what is being developed here?

This captures many of the thoughts we have had over the period of the conference. Some of the concepts, such as the MediaTable and the demonstrations in the Equator project, get close to making sense, from a consumer perspective. In fact, Tom Rodden, University of Nottingham said in his keynote that a number of companies have expressed an interest in commercializing the drift table. Yet, creating appealing products and profitable ones is not a given.

WAVE Comments

This is the only conference dedicated to Ambient Intelligence and thus a unique opportunity to evaluate the technology and status.

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is a major step forward. Even if the net result of the focus of Ambient Intelligence is transitory before shifting to another technology, AmI causes institutions to change their thinking about the role of technology and individuals. This was very clear at EUSAI.

AmI is also about scale – the impacts of the technology are everywhere when it seeks to help the individual. The result is far reaching. The dimensions of AmI thus span Sociology, Psychology, Physiology and Well Being. But, it does not stop there. The technology also encompasses Philosophy, Evolution, the Life Cycle, Environment and Adaptation

Ambient Intelligence or Ambient Life?

We suggest that Ambient Intelligence is misnamed; it should be Ambient Life. The reasons are given above. The problem, as reflected at EUSAI, is that there is still too much emphasis on the computing or intelligence of the environments. Intelligence is one step beyond IT and IT is not where the thinking should be.

Thus, Ambient Life, as we are calling this, is about making technology with a higher purpose. It is a matter of thinking about products. It is at the center of where we go beyond the PC.

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Page updated 1/24/07
Copyright 4th Wave Inc, 2007