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AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE: AN INDUSTRIAL VIEW
IFAC MCPL 2007 The 4th International Federation of Automatic Control Conference on Management and Control of Production and Logistics September 27-30, Sibiu - Romania
AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE: AN INDUSTRIAL VIEW Hartmut Raffler Siemens AG, Corporate Technology, Information & Communications
Abstract: Ambient Intelligence (AmI) refers to the presence of a digital environment that is sensitive, adaptive and responsive to the presence of people. AmI will encompass our home, our car, our work and the public spaces. AmI is going to support people in their daily life in a non-intrusive way. ICT will become part of the environment in which people fulfil their tasks and in which people live. Ambient Intelligence Environment will effectively support us in the completion of our daily tasks. This definition has to be extended to the industrial and business environment. The importance of Ambient Intelligence will be described. Copyright © 2007 IFAC Keywords: ambient intelligence, digital environment
1. AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE: A DEFINITION
Software engineering plays a major role alongside microelectronics. An increasing amount of system functionality is provided by software. Software implementation already accounts for 80% of the R&D costs involved in developing communication systems. There are scarcely any system components that do not include software. Mastery of processes especially for developing embedded software is a key for the competitiveness of industry players.
Ambient Intelligence (AmI) refers to the presence of a digital environment that is sensitive, adaptive and responsive to the presence of people. AmI will encompass our home, our car, our work and the public spaces. AmI is going to support people in their daily life in a non-intrusive way. ICT will become part of the environment in which people fulfill their tasks and in which people live. Today’s User Interfaces will disappear. But there is another view of Ambient Intelligence: Ambient Intelligence will also assist technical systems to accomplish tasks autonomously.
Beside microelectronics and software engineering communication networks are essential for Ambient Intelligence. They provide the infrastructure for ubiquitous communications for all devices and components which are part of an AmIenvironment. Especially mobile radio networks such as Bluetooth, Zigbee or Wireless LAN have a special role to play. While the term mobility is often only seen in the context of wireless networks, it in fact includes personal mobility and the mobility of applications, data, and devices. Networks supporting mobility are wireless or wired networks that provide the specific information and applications needed by users and devices in whatever scenario at any location and at any time. To support mobility in an AmIenvironment, mechanisms for ad-hoc communications, self-organization and energyefficient communications are of importance.
2. INFLUENCING FACTORS Microelectronics and software engineering will remain the important key technologies for Ambient Intelligence in the years ahead. Computing power and storage capacity have seen a thousand-fold increase over the past 15 years. The trend in microelectronics will continue. If we extrapolate into the future, computers will be commercially available in 2020 that will have the same number of transistors as our brains have neurons. Any miniaturized system can be fitted out with computing power and storage capacity. They then become intelligent and will be able to communicate. 9
3. APPLICATIONS
4. FRAMEWORK FOR AMI
Information and communication technologies will become part of our surroundings. We will interact with a host of devices such as sensors, actuators and microcomputers. User interfaces as we know them today will disappear. Voice, gestures, and emotions will be part of our interactions with this intelligent environment. So in the future, communicating with systems will be accommodated to human forms of communication. User interfaces will have to
The framework for AmI-applications has to fulfil functional requirements like
• • •
We have also to think of non-functional requirements, for example scalability interoperability, security, privacy and expandability. Considering these requirements, the most important components of a framework must be modelling, perceiving and understanding, reasoning and acting. Cross layer components are security, adaptability and communications.
•
• • • •
conceal a system’s complexity take account of users’ capabilities offer functionality that is appropriate to a specific situation and task ensure that using the system is a pleasant experience.
That is the way to turn man-machine interaction into man-machine cooperation. Ambient Intelligence environments will give us effective support in carrying out our tasks. Many of these, routine tasks in particular, can be entrusted to agents. Agents are autonomous units that can perceive their environment and will attempt to achieve a specified goal within it, flexibly and automatically. Apart from the software variety, agents also include service robots. Service robots will autonomously transport goods, for instance, or clean up rooms, mow the lawn or harvest fruit. Software agents can obtain information, plan your day for you, see to all your journey planning, and act on your behalf in electronic auctions. In multi-agent systems, agents cooperate to complete a complex task together using the division-of-labor principle.
context awareness information fusion, that means the integration of different information flows prediction of states to assist users and systems in an appropriate way autonomous behavior to solve tasks without interaction with the user.
5. CONCLUSIONS Ambient Intelligence affects infrastructures, services, applications and user interaction. We are faced with some challenges: standardization, knowledge representation, context awareness, user interfaces, learning and the management of highly distributed systems. Ambient Intelligence will offer new business opportunities in industry, automation, health, wellness, smart homes and buildings and in information and communications. AmI is going to assist people and technical systems. 6. REFERENCES Aarts, Emile & Marzano, Stefano: The New Everyday: Views on Ambient Intelligence. 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2003, ISBN 90-6450-5002-0. M. Berger, F. Fuchs, M. Pirker: Agent Technologies for Ambient Information Systems. In: Proceedings of the Workshop ‚Software-Agents in Information Systems and Industrial Applications (SAISA)’, FhG ITB, Karlsruhe, February 2006 van Dam, Andries: User Interfaces: Disappearing, Dissolving, and Evolving. In: Communications of the ACM, Vol. 44, Number 3, 2001. Feldafinger Kreis: Research for the Internet Society: Trends, Technologies, Applications: FhG, BDI, http://w4.siemens.de/ct/de/activities/inet_symp/ei nleitung.html Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, http://www.fipa.org Haykin, Simon: Neural Networks, A Comprehensive Foundation. Prentice Hall, 2nd edition, ISBN 013-273350-1 H. Raffler: The Future of Information and Communications. In: The Standard Edge: Future Generation. The Bolin Group. ISBN 0-8648-3897, 2005.
Agents are equipped with intelligence, meaning they are capable of learning and will adjust to specific user’s preferences. Learning is based on, for instance, neural networks, entailing very simple mapping of the functioning of the brain onto mathematical models. Software agent technology will usher in a new paradigm, eliminating the classical division between servers and clients. Software agents are co-equal. As a prerequisite for inter-agent interaction it is necessary to have standardized interfaces for representing aims and tasks, for instance, of the kind specified by the FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) and elsewhere. Agents employ familiar standards such as XML, JXTA, and, at the semantic level, RDF and DAML, or Semantic Web. AmI - applications range from personal assistance like travel management to the support of workflows or to the operation and maintenance of industrial systems. AmI is going to assist people and technical systems. 10
AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE: AN INDUSTRIAL VIEW Hartmut Raffler Siemens AG, Corporate Technology, Information & Communications
Abstract: Ambient Intelligence (AmI) refers to the presence of a digital environment that is sensitive, adaptive and responsive to the presence of people. AmI will encompass our home, our car, our work and the public spaces. AmI is going to support people in their daily life in a non-intrusive way. ICT will become part of the environment in which people fulfil their tasks and in which people live. Ambient Intelligence Environment will effectively support us in the completion of our daily tasks. This definition has to be extended to the industrial and business environment. The importance of Ambient Intelligence will be described. Copyright © 2007 IFAC Keywords: ambient intelligence, digital environment
1. AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE: A DEFINITION
Software engineering plays a major role alongside microelectronics. An increasing amount of system functionality is provided by software. Software implementation already accounts for 80% of the R&D costs involved in developing communication systems. There are scarcely any system components that do not include software. Mastery of processes especially for developing embedded software is a key for the competitiveness of industry players.
Ambient Intelligence (AmI) refers to the presence of a digital environment that is sensitive, adaptive and responsive to the presence of people. AmI will encompass our home, our car, our work and the public spaces. AmI is going to support people in their daily life in a non-intrusive way. ICT will become part of the environment in which people fulfill their tasks and in which people live. Today’s User Interfaces will disappear. But there is another view of Ambient Intelligence: Ambient Intelligence will also assist technical systems to accomplish tasks autonomously.
Beside microelectronics and software engineering communication networks are essential for Ambient Intelligence. They provide the infrastructure for ubiquitous communications for all devices and components which are part of an AmIenvironment. Especially mobile radio networks such as Bluetooth, Zigbee or Wireless LAN have a special role to play. While the term mobility is often only seen in the context of wireless networks, it in fact includes personal mobility and the mobility of applications, data, and devices. Networks supporting mobility are wireless or wired networks that provide the specific information and applications needed by users and devices in whatever scenario at any location and at any time. To support mobility in an AmIenvironment, mechanisms for ad-hoc communications, self-organization and energyefficient communications are of importance.
2. INFLUENCING FACTORS Microelectronics and software engineering will remain the important key technologies for Ambient Intelligence in the years ahead. Computing power and storage capacity have seen a thousand-fold increase over the past 15 years. The trend in microelectronics will continue. If we extrapolate into the future, computers will be commercially available in 2020 that will have the same number of transistors as our brains have neurons. Any miniaturized system can be fitted out with computing power and storage capacity. They then become intelligent and will be able to communicate. 9
3. APPLICATIONS
4. FRAMEWORK FOR AMI
Information and communication technologies will become part of our surroundings. We will interact with a host of devices such as sensors, actuators and microcomputers. User interfaces as we know them today will disappear. Voice, gestures, and emotions will be part of our interactions with this intelligent environment. So in the future, communicating with systems will be accommodated to human forms of communication. User interfaces will have to
The framework for AmI-applications has to fulfil functional requirements like
• • •
We have also to think of non-functional requirements, for example scalability interoperability, security, privacy and expandability. Considering these requirements, the most important components of a framework must be modelling, perceiving and understanding, reasoning and acting. Cross layer components are security, adaptability and communications.
•
• • • •
conceal a system’s complexity take account of users’ capabilities offer functionality that is appropriate to a specific situation and task ensure that using the system is a pleasant experience.
That is the way to turn man-machine interaction into man-machine cooperation. Ambient Intelligence environments will give us effective support in carrying out our tasks. Many of these, routine tasks in particular, can be entrusted to agents. Agents are autonomous units that can perceive their environment and will attempt to achieve a specified goal within it, flexibly and automatically. Apart from the software variety, agents also include service robots. Service robots will autonomously transport goods, for instance, or clean up rooms, mow the lawn or harvest fruit. Software agents can obtain information, plan your day for you, see to all your journey planning, and act on your behalf in electronic auctions. In multi-agent systems, agents cooperate to complete a complex task together using the division-of-labor principle.
context awareness information fusion, that means the integration of different information flows prediction of states to assist users and systems in an appropriate way autonomous behavior to solve tasks without interaction with the user.
5. CONCLUSIONS Ambient Intelligence affects infrastructures, services, applications and user interaction. We are faced with some challenges: standardization, knowledge representation, context awareness, user interfaces, learning and the management of highly distributed systems. Ambient Intelligence will offer new business opportunities in industry, automation, health, wellness, smart homes and buildings and in information and communications. AmI is going to assist people and technical systems. 6. REFERENCES Aarts, Emile & Marzano, Stefano: The New Everyday: Views on Ambient Intelligence. 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2003, ISBN 90-6450-5002-0. M. Berger, F. Fuchs, M. Pirker: Agent Technologies for Ambient Information Systems. In: Proceedings of the Workshop ‚Software-Agents in Information Systems and Industrial Applications (SAISA)’, FhG ITB, Karlsruhe, February 2006 van Dam, Andries: User Interfaces: Disappearing, Dissolving, and Evolving. In: Communications of the ACM, Vol. 44, Number 3, 2001. Feldafinger Kreis: Research for the Internet Society: Trends, Technologies, Applications: FhG, BDI, http://w4.siemens.de/ct/de/activities/inet_symp/ei nleitung.html Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents, http://www.fipa.org Haykin, Simon: Neural Networks, A Comprehensive Foundation. Prentice Hall, 2nd edition, ISBN 013-273350-1 H. Raffler: The Future of Information and Communications. In: The Standard Edge: Future Generation. The Bolin Group. ISBN 0-8648-3897, 2005.
Agents are equipped with intelligence, meaning they are capable of learning and will adjust to specific user’s preferences. Learning is based on, for instance, neural networks, entailing very simple mapping of the functioning of the brain onto mathematical models. Software agent technology will usher in a new paradigm, eliminating the classical division between servers and clients. Software agents are co-equal. As a prerequisite for inter-agent interaction it is necessary to have standardized interfaces for representing aims and tasks, for instance, of the kind specified by the FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents) and elsewhere. Agents employ familiar standards such as XML, JXTA, and, at the semantic level, RDF and DAML, or Semantic Web. AmI - applications range from personal assistance like travel management to the support of workflows or to the operation and maintenance of industrial systems. AmI is going to assist people and technical systems. 10