Characteristics

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is characterized by three main aspects:

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 personalized way (preferences, context).

Since AmI is recognized as one of the key concepts related to Information Society in Europe for the future, an Ambient Intelligence (AmI) landscape for seamless delivery of services and applications in Europe should be fostered. However, the development of Ambient Intelligence systems is a challenging inter-disciplinary task that demands many different skills and technologies and hence requires the cooperation of scientists from many different backgrounds, such as Micro-electronics, Human-Computer Interaction, and Software Engineering.

In order to address aspects such as ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous communication, intelligent user interfaces, Ambient Intelligent systems have to be embedded, mobile, and distributed. They heavily rely on environmental information and should be able to communicate with humans autonomously and in a natural way. In addition, those systems should be highly adaptive in terms of the services they offer, their internal architectures, and the way they communicate with their surrounding environment and other nodes.

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