Contains selected papers from the second international Ambient Intelligence Forum - AmIF 2009, held in Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. This book aims to point to a multifaceted nature of ambient intelligence. It presents ambient intelligence in five different perspectives.

Ambient Intelligence Perspectives contains selected papers from the first international Ambient Intelligence Forum AmIF 2008 in Hradec Kraacute;loveacute;, Czech Republic. The forum is intended as the beginning of a series of rather broadly oriented discussion opportunities for discussing interdisciplinary, if not transdisciplinary aspects of rapidly evolving areas of Ambient Intelligence. Its aims were to review and discuss recent advances and promising research trends in AmI technology, intelligent environments, methods, middleware development, as well as applications in areas such as healthcare, product lifecycle and transport services. The intention to provide an opportunity of a very broad interaction among a wide rank of A01s coming from different surroundings means a great enrichment to all participants and gives ground to the success of the conference. Finally it led towards an interesting choice of three invited and twenty-five contributed papers, which are published in this book. All papers were carefully reviewed by the international program committee. Participants from twelve countries contributed to the scientific program and established a fruitful discussion atmosphere.

Ambient intelligence (AI) refers to a developing technology that will increasingly make our everyday environment sensitive and responsive to our presence. The AI vision requires technology invisibly embedded in our everyday surroundings, present whenever we need it that will lead to the seamless integration of lighting, sounds, vision, domestic appliances, and personal healthcare products to enhance our living experience. Written for the non-specialist seeking an authoritative but accessible overview of this interdisciplinary field, True Visions explains how the devices making up the AI world will operate collectively using information and intelligence hidden in the wireless network connecting them. Expert contributions address key AI components such as smart materials and textiles, system architecture, mobile computing, broadband communication, and underlying issues of human-environment interactions. It seeks to unify the perspectives of scientists from diverse backgrounds ranging from the physics of materials to the aesthetics of industrial design as it describes the emergence of ambient intelligence, one of today’s most compelling areas of innovation.

The concept of an intelligent agent - a computational system capable of performing certain tasks autonomously - derived from the growing potential of digital computers in the mid 20th century and had been widely adopted by the early 1990s. Partly in parallel with this concept, the perspective of ambient intelligence (AmI) emerged in the late 1990s. Agent technology and AmI have many similarities, and the main purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art of the scientific area that integrates these two. The book addresses a wide variety of topics related to agents and AmI, including theoretical, practical, design, implementation, ethical and philosophical issues. The 12 chapters are arranged in four sections. The first consists of three chapters discussing ethical and philosophical issues; the second part explores various approaches that can be used to develop agent-based AmI Systems; the third part contains three chapters that share the goal to endow AmI systems with useful properties like intelligence and adaptivity and the last section presents concrete applications of agent-based AmI systems. This book provides an insight into recent achievements and future challenges at the intersection of agent technology and ambient intelligence and will assist the development of more intelligent, flexible, effective and user-friendly systems as well as posing critical questions about the future of the role of agents within the AmI perspective.

"This book covers the cutting-edge aspects of AMI applications, specifically those involving the effective design, realization, and implementation of a comprehensive ambient intelligence in smart environments"--

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is a recent paradigm emerging from Artificial Intelligence (AI), where computers are used as proactive tools assisting people with their day-to-day activities, making everyone’s life more comfortable. Another main concern of AmI originates from the human computer interaction domain and focuses on offering ways to interact with systems in a more natural way by means user friendly interfaces. This field is evolving quickly as can be witnessed by the emerging natural language and gesture based types of interaction. The inclusion of computational power and communication technologies in everyday objects is growing and their embedding into our environments should be as invisible as possible. In order for AmI to be successful, human interaction with computing power and embedded systems in the surroundings should be smooth and happen without people actually noticing it. The only awareness people should have arises from AmI: more safety, comfort and wellbeing, emerging in a natural and inherent way. ISAmI is the International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence and aiming to bring together researchers from various disciplines that constitute the scientific field of Ambient Intelligence to present and discuss the latest results, new ideas, projects and lessons learned, namely in terms of software and applications, and aims to bring together researchers from various disciplines that are interested in all aspects of this area.