At the time of the introduction of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) concept many scenarios where considered to be visionary or even science fiction. Enabled by current technology, many aspects of these scenarios are slowly but inexorably becoming true. However, we are still facing important challenges that need further investments in research and industrialization. Current software engineering techniques and tools are not prepared to deal with the development of applications for what we could call AmI ecosystems, lacking a fixed architecture, controlled limits and even owners. The comfortable boundaries of static architectures and well-defined limits and owners are not existent in these AmI ecosystems. In its second year AmI.d again shows the heterogeneity of research challenges related to Ambient Intelligence. Many disciplines are involved and have to co-ordinate their efforts in resolving the strongly related research issues.

Held in Sophia Antipolis (France) from September the 20th to September the 22nd 2006, the first edition of the AmI.d conference tackled the latest research challenges within AmI ecosystems, presented AmI applications as well as security solutions. This volume gathers all the papers selected by the Program Committee. Authors from renowned universities and industry research centres contributed to draw a comprehensive state-of-the-art in AmI applications and security research.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First European Symposium on Ambient Intelligence, EUSAI 2003, held in Veldhoven, The Netherlands in November 2003. The 32 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for presentation in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on ubiquitous computing, context awareness, intelligence, and natural interaction. Ambient intelligence refers to a world in which people are surrounded with electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to people. More specifically this means that electronic devices are bound to disappear into people's backgrounds by integrating them into the environment extending their functionality to provide ubiquitous communication, information, and entertainment through inobtrusive and natural interaction with the user.

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.

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.

In a world supported by Ambient Intelligence (AmI), various devices embedded in the environment collectively use the distributed information and the intelligence inherent in this interconnected environment. A range of information from sensing and reas- ing technologies is used by distributed devices in the environment. The cooperation between natural user interfaces and sensor interfaces covers all of a person’s s- roundings, resulting in a device environment that behaves intelligently; the term “Ambient Intelligence” has been coined to describe it. In this way, the environment is able to recognize the persons in it, to identify their individual needs, to learn from their behavior, and to act and react in their interest. Since this vision is influenced by a lot of different concepts in information proce- ing and combines multi-disciplinary fields in electrical engineering, computer science, industrial design, user interfaces, and cognitive sciences, considerable research is needed to provide new models of technological innovation within a multi-dimensional society. Thus the AmI vision relies on the large-scale integration of electronics into the environment, enabling the actors, i.e., people and objects, to interact with their surrounding in a seamless, trustworthy, and natural manner.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third European Conference on Ambient Intelligence, AmI 2009, held in Salzburg, Austria, in November 2009. The 21 revised full papers and 10 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on sensing, reasoning and sensing, ambient technology, ambient assisted living, applications and studies, methods and tools and reasoning and adaption.