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 "Destination elevators, which whisk passengers directly, or almost directly, to their desired floors, have made their debut in Massachusetts at One Federal Street in Boston, the first building in the state to install them. . ... Using artificial intelligence and complex computer algorithms, the elevators group passengers by destinations, minimizing the number of stops each car makes. By monitoring traffic flow, the system can learn a building's traffic patterns, use them to predict when and where peak usage will be, and respond accordingly in the future."
ReadyBot. "Headquartered in Silicon Valley, the Readybot Challenge is a non-profit club, composed of senior engineers and designers from the networking, motion control, ergonomics, and software industries. Our mission: to build a robot that can clean a kitchen."
An open approach to smarter homes. ICT Results (November 29, 2007). "Homes today are filled with increasing numbers of high-tech gadgets, from smart phones and PCs to state-of-the-art TV and audio systems, many of them with built-in networking capabilities. Combined, these devices could form the building blocks of the smart homes of the future, but only if they can be made to work together intelligently. European researchers are addressing the challenge. ... There are two fundamental obstacles to realising the vision of the intelligent networked home: lack of interoperability between individual devices and the need for context-aware artificial intelligence to manage them. And, to make smart homes a reality, the two issues must be addressed together. The EU-funded Amigo project, coordinated by [Maddy Janse, a researcher for Dutch consumer electronics group Philips], is doing just that, creating a middleware software platform that will get all networkable devices in the home talking to each other and providing an artificial intelligence layer to control them. “With the Amigo system, you can take any networkable device, create a software wrapper for it and dynamically integrate it into the networked home environment,” Janse explains. The project, which involves several big industrial and research partners, is unique in that it is addressing the issues of interoperability and intelligence together and, most significantly, its software is modular and open source. ... A video [embedded in article & available via link below] created by the project partners underscores their vision for the future in which homes adapt to the behaviour of occupants, automatically setting ambient lighting for watching a movie, locking the doors when someone leaves or contacting relatives or emergency services if someone is ill or has an accident. ... In October, it launched the Amigo Challenge, a competition in which third-party programmers have been invited to come up with new applications using the Amigo software."
Providing for Older Adults Using Smart Environment Technologies. By Diane J. Cook. IEEE-USA Today's Engineer (May 2007). "Can the technology sector help older adults live independently at home? A solution may be found in health-assistive technologies. Convergence of technologies in pervasive computing, artificial intelligence, and sensor networks is now making smart environments a reality, and this technology can tremendously impact and facilitate the desire of adults to age in place. We define a smart environment as an intelligent agent that is able to acquire and apply knowledge about the environment and its residents in order to improve their quality of life in that environment [fn]. Physical implementations of these smart environments can be found in projects such as MavHome, the Gator Tech Smart House, the iDorm, the Georgia Tech Award Home, the Adaptive Home, and the Home Depot Smart Home." Advance of the homebot - US inventors of personal robots reveal how close their homebots are to providing help in the home. Click, BBC's technology programme, presented by Spencer Kelly (August 10, 2007). "Countries like Japan and South Korea are synonymous with robots. There, domestic machines have started to make inroads. In the West, the homebot industry is years behind. But there are people with a mind to change that. 'I think you'll see more robots in the service industry, more things in handicapped and elderly care,' said Bob Allen of OLogic. ... Mr Allen has demonstrated his prototypes at various shows, hoping to get big business to back his ideas. He has already persuaded one genius to join him - 15-year-old home-schooled coding ace Tony Pratkanis. ... While Mr Allen may one day prove that robots like his deserve a place at the right hand of humans, the guys at the Stupid Fun Club in Berkley are studying how man is likely to react to that premise. ... The club is the brainchild of Will Wright, creator of the games SimCity and The Sims. For a long time he has been fascinated with the way humans and technology could and should interact, he explained. An example is his microwave and fridge, or Hotsy and Mr Cool, as he calls them. 'We basically gave them a personality and intelligence,' said Mr Wright. 'They have voice recognition and you have to talk to and interact with them for them to operate. The fridge won't open unless you have a conversation with it. Eventually they develop relationships with you depending upon how you have treated them. They may decide they like or dislike you. And when you leave they can actually talk to each other and gossip."
Smart House - Your So-Called Sci-Fi Life. By Daniel H. Wilson. Popular Mechanics Technology News (May 7, 2007). "So what is the secret to teaching an old house new tricks? One approach is to adopt a do-it-yourself mind-set and add futuristic skills like speech recognition (instead of a new patio). There is an entire home automation industry ready to supply gadgets that can be integrated to form a soulless automatic home. On the other hand, artificial intelligence can breathe life into a robotic home, allowing it to get to know its inhabitants enough to predict their activities and proclivities. Sinking smart robotics technology into the infrastructure of a home (or spaceship) is called ubiquitous computing. ... While there is nothing novel about a remote-controlled house, intelligent environments are another matter. ... Instead of interacting with a box on a table, occupants of the future will interact with a helpful, intelligent and friendly robotic home. ... Smart houses are a reality, but most cutting-edge research is designed to make them into babysitters for the elderly." A sense of security. The Engineer Online (January 30, 2007). "An intelligent sensing system will use wireless technology, GPS and a suite of sensors for real-time monitoring of independent elderly people at home. The €1.85m (£1.2m) EU-funded Complete Ambient Assisted Living Experiment (CAALYX) project will develop and test a light, mobile device to monitor a number of vital signs and transmit the information to an intelligent data-logging system. ... Limerick University is to develop the fall detection accelerometers, which will also be able to predict falls. Most fall sensors use cameras that must first learn a person's 'normal' movements to be effective. These new sensors will be able to predict falls just before they happen and be adaptable enough for use anywhere so will give the wearer a greater degree of confidence even outside the home, said [Dr Maged] Boulos. ... The device will use algorithms that can pick up on any dangerous change in the person's vital signs or if one of the sensor feeds falls outside of acceptable parameters. If this occurs the system locates his or her position using GPS then triggers an alarm to alert the emergency services."
Some articles from AI in the news
A motivated room. TRN Reserch News Roundup (December 5, 2005). "Intelligent rooms aim to track movement, recognize gestures and understand spoken commands in order to control lights, project information on the walls and tell you who called while you were out. ... Intelligent rooms will never be practical if they require a team of technicians to adjust them every time someone moves a camera or behaves in a way the room doesn't expect. ... Researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia have come up with a scheme that uses artificial intelligence software dubbed intrinsically motivated learning agents to make intelligent environments more intelligent." [See article for link to the related paper: Intrinsically Motivated Intelligent Rooms.] 1st Workshop on "Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Ambient Intelligence" (AITAmI'06), a co-located event of ECAI 2006. "Background and Goals: Imagine a future where human environments respond to human preferences and needs. In this world, devices equipped with simple intelligence and the abilities to sense, communicate, and act will be unremarkable features of our world. We will expect the car to warn us of hazards, track our location and provide timely route advice. We will speak to simple machines and hold conversations with more complex systems, such as intelligent homes that will help us monitor conditions, track routine tasks, and program the behaviour of the heat, the lights, the garden watering and the entertainment centre. Analogous systems at work will make simple decisions in our stead ranging from scheduling meetings to negotiating for common services over the web. Such systems will also acquire, and adapt to our preferences over time. In sum, we will come to view simple software intelligence as an ambient feature of our environment. The infrastructure for ambient intelligence is fast coming on line. Computational resources are cheap and becoming cheaper, while ubiquitous network access has started to appear. Market forces will soon produce applications. We take the view that ambient intelligence is imminent and inevitable, and that the time is ripe to take stock. This workshop will provide that opportunity by gathering researchers in a variety of AI subfields together with representatives of commercial interests to explore the technology and applications for ambient intelligence."
Smart Spaces - If These Walls Could Talk. They may do that and more if the promise of smart spaces is ever realized. The technology is available, but cost and other factors remain obstacles. By Gary Anthes. Computerworld (November 27, 2006). "It’s fun to think about these scenarios, but we rarely encounter them in the real world. Who besides Bill Gates lives in an environment in which IT senses and responds to the behavior of the people in it? Your PC knows you haven’t touched it for 30 minutes, so it turns on the screensaver. That’s about it. Yet the technology to make our environments smarter and more responsive to our needs largely exists. Sensors of all types, actuators, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, large touch-screen displays, digital cameras, personal software agents, machine-learning algorithms, voice- and image-recognition software, even robots these aren’t just the dreams of science fiction writers anymore. The impediments to the widespread deployment of smart spaces lie elsewhere -- in the form of problems related to cost, interoperability, accuracy and reliability. And there are the social and cultural challenges. ... Still, progress is being made. For example, researchers at Stanford University have invented a collaboration space called the iRoom, or 'interactive room.'" Elevators get smart - End of lobby rage: Latest models add taxi's convenience to high-rise necessity. By Sacha Pfeiffer. The Boston Globe (October 9, 2006). "Destination elevators, which whisk passengers directly, or almost directly, to their desired floors, have made their debut in Massachusetts at One Federal Street in Boston, the first building in the state to install them. The $4 million computer-dispatched system has no up or down buttons. Instead, after keying in the floors they want to go to, passengers are assigned to specific cars, which deliver them to their requested floor with no, or only a few, stops along the way. ... Using artificial intelligence and complex computer algorithms, the elevators group passengers by destinations, minimizing the number of stops each car makes. By monitoring traffic flow, the system can learn a building's traffic patterns, use them to predict when and where peak usage will be, and respond accordingly in the future. ... 'Once the public becomes used to them, they're very, very efficient,' said Edward A. Donoghue, managing director of the National Elevator Industry Inc., a trade group. 'And the appeal to building owners is that you can get away with fewer elevators, because the ones you have can be loaded up and dispatched more efficiently.'" Rethinking the Computer - Project Oxygen is turning out prototype computer systems. By Lisa Scanlon. Technology Review (July/August 2004). "[Howie] Shrobe's computerized office is just one of dozens of pervasive-computing technologies being developed as part of Project Oxygen, the lab's five-year, $50 million effort to design computer systems that are as ubiquitous as the air we breathe and as easy to communicate with as other people. The end result, as originally envisioned by Michael Dertouzos, PhD '64, the late director of the Laboratory for Computer Science, is expected to be a collection of technologies embedded in workplaces and homes working together seamlessly-and often behind the scenes-to help us go about our daily lives. ... Now in its fourth year, the project is turning out working prototypes, including workspaces that adjust themselves according to their inhabitants' habits, location-aware sensors that help people find their way around buildings, and computer chips that configure themselves to best suit different applications. In the process, the project has brought together researchers from many disciplines who may not have otherwise collaborated, often with unexpected results. When Project Oxygen began in 2000, one of its first undertakings was to further Shrobe's prior work on an intelligent conference room that helps people run more efficient meetings. The latest version of the room can, when prompted by spoken commands, show agenda items on a wall display, transcribe and save participants' comments, or find pertinent video clips from previous meetings. ... 'One of the things about Oxygen is that it's not trying to develop [stand-alone] technologies in networking, speech, and vision,' says [Victor] Zue. 'Increasingly, it's the integration of these technologies.'" Domestic bliss through mechanical marvels? By Kevin Maney. USA Today (September 1, 2004). "Never mind the humanoid Automated Domestic Assistants walking rich people's pets in the movie I, Robot, or the accordion-armed Robot B9 in TV classic Lost in Space warning of danger on lonely planets. The real force driving the development of personal robots -- and what will eventually create demand for them in the marketplace -- is aging baby boomers. That's the secret among robotics researchers and budding robot companies. As the horde of boomers become old, they increasingly will be unable to care for themselves or their homes. They'll face a social and medical system straining to help them. But they'll be comfortable with technology." The gentle rise of the machines. Robotics - The science-fiction dream that robots would one day become a part of everyday life was absurd. Or was it? The Economist Technology Quarterly (March 11, 2004). "Since 1939, when Westinghouse Electric introduced Electro, a mechanical man, at the World's Fair in New York, robot fans have imagined a world filled with tireless robotic helpers, always on hand to wash dishes, do the laundry and handle the drudgery of everyday tasks. So far, however, such robots have proliferated in science fiction, but have proved rather more elusive in the real world. But optimists are now arguing that the success of the Roomba and of toys such as Aibo, Sony's robot dog, combined with the plunging cost of computer power, could mean that the long-awaited mass market for robots is finally within reach. 'Household robots are starting to take off,' declared a recent report from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Are they really? ... [R]obots have had their greatest impact in factories. Industrial robots go back over 40 years, when they first began to be used by carmakers. Unimate, the first industrial robot, went to work for General Motors in 1961. ... Industrial robotics is a $5.6 billion industry, growing by around 7% a year. But the UNECE report predicts that the biggest growth over the next three years will be in domestic rather than industrial robots. ... While prices drop and hardware improves, research into robotic vision, control systems and communications have jumped ahead as well." Face of the future? Some scientists think robots will do domestic tasks and be as common as TVs. By Robin McKie and David Smith. The Observer (July 18, 2004). "Among those who enthusiastically endorse the imminence of the robot age is the industry analyst, Future Horizons, which has noted that applications currently under discussion include the development of baby robots for mother training, robots for house cleaning, support for the old, disaster rescue, fast-food serving staff, nursing, opponents in board games, security, and window cleaning. The report predicts that total robot revenue will grow from $4.4 billion (£2.3bn) in 2003 to $59.3bn in 2010. 'A robot will be like a TV or a washing machine - almost every home will have one,' said Malcolm Penn, chairman of Future Horizons. 'They are clumsy now but it won't be long before the technology marches on. In five to 10 years you'll have a robot doing chores like dispensing medicine, feeding the cat, making cups of tea, taking food out of the freezer and cooking it in a microwave. We could see the first humanoid robot football match in five years' time'. Jonathan Elvidge, founder of The Gadget Shop chain, agrees. He travels the world to sample cutting-edge technology for consumers. 'Next year we can expect miniature robots that wander around your desk, or a robot head you can talk to and which talks back to you. 'In the future you might have a robot that can follow you around and you can ask it to pay bills or ask what time a film is on and get it to order your tickets.' ... Household chores are the domain of domestic appliance robots such as self-navigating lawnmowers or vacuum cleaners. Sales reached 39,000 units in 2003 and are forecast to hit 20 million by 2008." Room Service, AI Style. Edited by Haym Hirsh. IEEE Intelligent Systems. March/April 1999. "Can a room be intelligent? This month's 'Trends and Controversies" presents the thoughts and work of four people who not only believe the answer is yes, but are working towards making this happen."
The Robots Among Us - If robotics technology now stands where computing did in the '70s, what can we expect in the future? By Tom Abate. San Francisco Chronicle (December 7, 2007). "It may seem like a science fiction leap to go from the dust-sucking Roomba to the walking, talking machines of movie and television fame. But David Calkins, 39, director of the San Francisco State University Robotics Institute, says it isn't so much that the robots are coming as that they are already working for us under different names. 'Why do we call a Roomba a robot and not a dishwasher?' asks Calkins, arguing that we already rely on increasingly clever special-purpose devices and programs such as search engines, which use rudimentary artificial intelligence to answer queries and rank replies. ... 'It's a problem of definitions,' says Calkins. 'People use the r-word to mean so many different things.'" Robots: Today, Roomba. Tomorrow... iRobot CEO Colin Angle says the robotic vacuum cleaner "is insanely cool because it retails for $200" -- and more products like it are on the way. BusinessWeek Online (May 6, 2004). "Angle recently talked to Adam Aston, BusinessWeek's Industries editor, about what iRobot has learned from the Roomba and what the future holds for its descendants."Q: What comes next in household robots? A: I can't talk about specifics, but they're coming. We want to make housework a choice. We believe there are many tasks within the home that are ripe for automation.... Q: Will future robot innovations come from appliance makers or from robot makers? A: ... The Roomba is a first step. It's not intimidating. And it works. People find that surprising. The Roomba has gotten more people to accept the idea that robots can be useful. Maybe it could be a home-maintenance system, where your floors are forever clean...." Talking washing machine hits India. BBC (April 4, 2002). "Electrolux will launch a talking washing machine, known as the Washy Talky, in India later this month. The top-loader speaks in a soft, Indian middle-class female accent and uses 90 different phrases in Hindi and English, gently giving instructions like 'drop the detergent, close the lid and relax'. ... The washer does more than just talk. It can also make decisions. Using a type of artificial intelligence called 'fuzzy logic', the machine senses the load weight and chooses the optimum programme." Lawn Mowing for Lazybones. By Mark Baard. Wired News (April 2, 2004). "First came the wave of robot vacuum cleaners, led by Roomba from Burlington, Massachusetts-based iRobot. Now engineers in the fast-growing consumer robotics market are selling autonomous machines designed to give residential lawns that professionally manicured look, which only professional landscapers could offer in the past." The Age of Assisted Cognition. By Mark Baard. Wired News (August 15, 2002). "Pervasive computing's earliest adapters will be old people, according to medical experts and AI gurus at a conference here hosted by Intel Research. Speakers at 'Computing, Cognition and Caring for Future Elders' discussed infrared badges that track patients, mirrors that spot suspicious moles, accelerometers that detect falls, and computers that remind the incontinent to visit the toilet at regular intervals." Gadgets help baby boomers navigate old age. By Fred Bayles. USA Today (November 17, 2003). "Now, with a boomer turning 50 every seven seconds, researchers and marketers are developing everything from simple gadgets to complex computer systems to ease a generation into old age. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AgeLab and dozens of other research centers around the country, scientists are working on inventions that seem destined to transport the Golden Girls into the world of Star Trek...." Overly smart buildings. By Ted Smalley Bowen. Technology Research News (April 20 / 27, 2005). "The notion of buildings as 'machines for living in, 'as pioneering modernist architect Le Corbusier put it in the 1920s, morphs to fit the technologies and issues of the day. In the '70s, it was energy efficiency. In the '80s, computer technology spawned 'smart' buildings sporting automated controls and pre-configured information systems. The latest crop of technologies [footnotes] include microelectromechanical systems that combine sensors and actuators, wireless sensor networks, and fuzzy logic control schemes, and has the makings of a sophisticated nervous system." Intelligent Environments - papers from the 1998 AAAI Spring Symposium. Michael Coen, Program Chair. Technical Report SS-98-02. Published by The AAAI Press, Menlo Park, California. Abstracts available online. Cooperating with People: The Intelligent Classroom. By David Franklin. In Proceedings of the Fifteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (1998), 555 - 560. Menlo Park, Calif.: AAAI Press. "People frequently complain that it is too difficult to figure out how to get computers to do what they want. However, with a computer system that actually tries to understand what its users are doing, people can interact in ways that are more natural to them. We have been developing a system, the Intelligent Classroom, that does exactly this. The Intelligent Classroom uses cameras and microphones to sense a speaker’s actions and then infers his intentions from those actions. Finally, it uses these intentions to decide what to do to best cooperate with the speaker. In the Intelligent Classroom, the speaker need not worry about how to operate the Classroom; he may simply go about his lecture and trust the Classroom to assist him at the appropriate moments."
Robot in Every Home - The leader of the PC revolution predicts that the next hot field will be robotics. By Bill Gates. Scientific American (January 2007). "[T]he emergence of the robotics industry, which is developing in much the same way that the computer business did 30 years ago. ... Meanwhile some of the world's best minds are trying to solve the toughest problems of robotics, such as visual recognition, navigation and machine learning. And they are succeeding. ... I can envision a future in which robotic devices will become a nearly ubiquitous part of our day-to-day lives. I believe that technologies such as distributed computing, voice and visual recognition, and wireless broadband connectivity will open the door to a new generation of autonomous devices that enable computers to perform tasks in the physical world on our behalf. We may be on the verge of a new era, when the PC will get up off the desktop and allow us to see, hear, touch and manipulate objects in places where we are not physically present." Be sure to see the 3 sidebars. Where Sensors Make Sense - Siemens aims to turn your thermostat into a 'comfortstat' -- and create a viable market for wireless sensor networks. By Kate Greene. Technology Review (December 15, 2005). "The idea of tiny, ubiquitous computers monitoring us and our environments from every nook and cranny might alarm a few civil libertarians -- but this is exactly the concept driving researchers who are trying to perfect networks of smart, wireless sensors. They envision sensors sprinkled across a battlefield to warn of an enemy advance, or attached to pill bottles to alert caregivers to when an elderly patient takes (or doesn't take) his or her medication. They imagine faulty equipment in manufacturing plants that reports its own failures. In short, they see a pervasive grid of smart sensors that monitor, analyze, and network the bits and bytes of life. ... But [Deborah Estrin, director of UCLA's Center for Embedded Networked Sensing] says the challenge with such multisensor networks, especially as the sensors become more versatile, is sorting through all the data collected at each sensor, and ultimately at the hub. [Osman Ahmed, senior principal engineer at Siemens Building Technologies] agrees that people shouldn't have to deal with the raw data from large networks of sensors. 'The whole idea is to not really throw out a bunch of sensors, but to actually create value,' he says. To accomplish that, his team is working on data-mining algorithms that can pick out useful information, as well as machine learning algorithms that can predict which information will be useful based on prior data." Ralph: The Home Assistant. By Debbie Hardy. Post-Polio Health (Fall 2004; Vol. 20, No. 4). "Do you ever wish you had a personal butler, valet or concierge at your beck and call? The reality is you may be able to purchase one in the form of an automated technology system for your home. The system, known as Ralph, is a voice-commanded control, monitoring and supervisory system. It uses voice recognition to take commands from the home’s occupants and talks back to them with speech synthesis. For those who prefer not to use the voice command system, a pushbutton control is available. Ralph helps people live independently in their own homes by doing small things they cannot do for themselves. The system was originally developed to help Don Holbert. Don, who is paralyzed below the waist...." (Also see this related article below.)
Smart fire detector could slash false alarms. By Kurt Kleiner. NewScientist.com news (October 25, 2005). "A fire detector that can tell the difference between burning toast and a burning building could save money, annoyance, and possibly even lives, by cutting down on false alarms. ... The detector uses four sensors and a neural network to determine if the smoke and heat it's detecting are from a fire or are just part of the normal room environment. ... Most home alarms are designed to go off when smoke in the air exceeds a certain concentration. ... Some commercial systems are more sophisticated, feeding data from a number of different sensors to a central computer and letting the computer decide whether the readings indicate a fire.The Siemens detector is different, [Andrew] Morgan says, because it builds artificial intelligence into each individual detector, using custom-designed integrated circuits."
An AI-Based Approach to Destination Control in Elevators. By Jana Koehler and Daniel Ottiger. AI Magazine 23(3): Fall 2002, 59-78. "Not widely known by the AI community, elevator control has become a major field of application for AI technologies. Techniques such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, fuzzy rules and, recently, multiagent systems and AI planning have been adopted by leading elevator companies not only to improve the transportation capacity of conventional elevator systems but also to revolutionize the way in which elevators interact with and serve passengers. In this article, we begin with an overview of AI techniques adopted by this industry and explain the motivations behind the continuous interest in AI. We review and summarize publications that are not easily accessible from the common AI sources. In the second part, we present in more detail a recent development project to apply AI planning and multiagent systems to elevator control problems." Voice Recognition for Home Control. By David Milward, CTO of Linguamatics Ltd. HiddenWires (March 1, 2006). "Voice control and spoken dialogue is starting to become commonplace in cars, not just in top-of-range models. So what is the potential in the home, what are the component technologies, and what is needed for it to become equally commonplace?" Robots That Suck - Have they finally come out with a robot for the rest of us? By George Musser. Scientific American (February 2003). "For generations, tinkerers have been pointing out how much their projects will lighten the load of housework. For generations, spouses and parents have failed to be impressed by these claims. When I built my first robot seven years ago, people kept asking, 'So what does it do?' I explained that it would eventually vacuum the floor." The walls have eyes - and ears and ... . By Kimberly Patch and Eric Smalley. Boston Globe (July 20, 1998). "'The original work on the intelligent room came out of a proposal to do new types of human-computer interaction,' [Michael] Coen says. 'We wanted to enable people to interact with machines the way they do with other people: by talking, by moving, pointing, gesturing. I like to think of this as not designing computer interfaces for people, it's designing people interfaces for computers. It's allowing computers to understand people on [people's] terms.'" Home, Smart Home - An automated house is a wonderful idea, but there's also something about it that creeps people out. The Practical Futurist column by Michael Rogers. Newsweek Web Exclusive (November 12, 2002) from MSNBC. "But what is it that makes some people nervous about a house that knows their name and adjusts their lighting? I pondered the question last month as I toured Microsoft's remarkable Home of the Future prototype at the company's massive Bellevue, Wash., campus. Was there anything here to be nervous about?" Technology is talking to us. By Bryan Rourke. The Providence Journal (October 3, 2006). "Your computer questions your writing. Your car distrusts your driving. And your kitchen thinks you’re fat. It’s a brave new interactive world. Technology talks to you. Actually, it’s been saying things for sometime. Now, however, our contraptions are becoming positively loquacious and downright demanding, according to Donald Norman, a professor of electrical engineering, computer science, cognitive science and psychology at Northwestern University. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Brown University’s department of cognitive and linguistic science, which celebrates with a public lecture series. It begins today with Norman, who talks about 'Cautious cars and cantankerous kitchens: the design of future things.' 'They are coming,' he says. 'Our products are getting more intelligent and more demanding.' ... What’s more, Norman says, the day may come when our appliances not only talk to us, but about us to each other. 'Cautious kitchens don’t exist,' Norman says. 'But there has been a lot of discussion about kitchens that could watch our eating habits. There’s even discussion that your refrigerator could talk to your scale and your toilet, which could do a urine analysis and say,"‘Your weight or your sugar level is too high."'" Ambient Intelligence. By Nigel Shadbolt. IEEE Intelligent Systems (July/August 2003: pages 2 - 3). "Films portraying the future often contain visions of homes of the future. Fitted out with an array of intelligent devices, these homes can anticipate your every need. They are usually depicted as existing within wider smart infrastructures. These infrastructures boast intelligent transportation systems and seamlessly integrate services from health to shopping and from entertainment to law enforcement. This probably differs just a little from our everyday experience of public services. But help is at hand -- numerous research efforts are underway that aim to deliver environments rich in what the Europeans call ambient intelligence. Ambient intelligence involves the convergence of several computing areas." State of the Art Smart Spaces - Application Models and Software Infrastructure. By Ramesh Singh, Preeti Bhargava, and Samta Kain. Ubiquity (September 26 - October 2, 2006: Volume 7, Issue 37). "'Smart spaces' are ordinary environments equipped with visual and audio sensing systems that can perceive and react to people without requiring them to wear any special equipment. Pervasive devices, sensors, and networks, provide infrastructure for context-aware smart spaces that sense ongoing human activities and respond to them. Here, we present an overview of the technologies integrated to build Smart Spaces, the various scenarios in which Smart Spaces can be incorporated, software infrastructure for programming and networking them, and interaction with them." Looking for a Few Good Bots: Robots for Work and Play. The present and future of automated household machines programmed to do your bidding. By Daniel Tynan. PC World (November 2005). "We're not quite there yet, but the age of household bots has arrived. There are robotic vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, and floor scrubbers, plus a boatload of robotic toys. I decided to see what the modern robotic lifestyle was like." "Cybertecture" represents future for design around world. Xinhua News Agency (October 14, 2004). "Interactive architecture is the future of design in China and around the world, said James Law, the only Chinese nominee for the 2004 Asia Innovation Award. Law, chief 'cybertect' of a global consultancy based in Hong Kong specializing in the design and strategy formation of cybertecture projects, was nominated for his excellent design of the world's first artificial intelligence media laboratory in Hong Kong. ... Cybertecture environments are hybrids designed from the inside out and using technology to give the space intelligence needed to interact with its users. Cybertecture is aimed to enhance and improve the quality of life by harnessing the power of technology, according to Law...."
Agent-based Intelligent Reactive Environments - a Research Group at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. "aire is dedicated to examining how to design pervasive computing systems and applications for people. To study this, aire designs and constructs Intelligent Environments (IEs), which are spaces augmented with basic perceptual sensing, speech recognition, and distributed agent logic." Ambient Intelligence Lab (AIL), a Carnegie Mellon CyLab research facility. "At AIL, research is conducted on remote sensing, pattern recognition, and mobile computing. ... We discover knowledge through the windows of our senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, which not only describe the nature of physical reality but also connect us to it. Our knowledge is shaped by the fusion of multidimensional information sources: shape, color, time, distance, direction, balance, speed, force, similarity, likelihood, intent and truth. Ambient Intelligence is not only interaction but also perception. We do not simply acquire knowledge but rather construct it with hypotheses and feedback." Ambient Intelligence research at Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands.
Aware Home Research Initiative at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "Is it possible to create a home environment that is aware of its occupants whereabouts and activities? If we build such a home, how can it provide services to its residents that enhance their quality of life or help them to maintain independence as they age? The Aware Home Research Initiative (AHRI) is an interdisciplinary research endeavor at Georgia Tech aimed at addressing the fundamental technical, design, and social challenges presented by such questions." "The Counter Intelligence (CI) project at the MIT Media Lab. "[O]ur kitchens are far from complete and perfect. They remain dangerous and messy places and in world that is increasingly vying for our attention, we are abandoning the hearth for a meal on the run. Our goal is to reverse this trend--to make the kitchen the center of family life by providing technologies that improve functionality and engage us cognitively and socially. Specifically, we are focusing on the technologies of context sensing, material science, machine learning, and computer-supported cooperative work, with product and scenario design at the heart of our query."
Duke Smart House, operated by Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering. Projects include: ICOST2006, the 4th International Conference on Smart Homes and Health Telematics. "After three successful editions held in France (2003), Singapore (2004), and Canada (2005), ICOST2006 aims to continue to develop an active research community dedicated to explore how Smart Homes and Health Telematics can foster independent living and offer an enhanced quality of life for ageing and disabled people." "The Intelligent Environments Resource Page was established at Microsoft Research in 1998 to provide a clearinghouse for WWW links related to the budding field of Intelligent Environments." PROFIT: Potential pRofit Opportunities in the future ambient InTelligence world. A EURESCOM Project. "The radical changes of the Information Society driven by the boost in information and communication technologies and its adoption has opened a fast path towards the vision of 'Ambient Intelligence' (AmI). This offers tremendous business opportunities and challenges to telecommunications operators and service providers. Also the user roles and identities are changing dramatically. It is important to analyse the new scenarios, roles and identities, and to identify the opportunities and challenges for Telcos arising from this. The concept of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) provides a vision of the Information Society where the emphasis is on greater user-friendliness, more efficient services support, user-empowerment, and support for human interactions. People are surrounded by intelligent intuitive interfaces that are embedded in all kinds of objects and an environment that is capable of recognising and responding to the presence of different individuals in a seamless, unobtrusive and often invisible way."
Smart House from AgentLand. "Fantasy you say? Certainly not, this smart house is not as futuristic as one might believe: the technologies already exist and the companies developing them are keen to enter this attractive and interesting market." Smart Medical Home at the University of Rochester's Center for Future Health. "The Center's overall goal is to develop an integrated Personal Health System, so all technologies are integrated and work seamlessly. This technology will allow consumers, in the privacy of their own homes, to maintain health, detect the onset of disease, and manage disease. The data collected 24/7 inside the home will augment the data collected by physicians and hospitals. The data collection modules in the home will start with the measurement of traditional vital signs (blood pressure, pulse, respiration) and work to include measurement of 'new vital signs', such as gait, behavior patterns, sleep patterns, general exercise, rehabilitation exercises, and more." Stanford Interactive Workspaces Project "is exploring new possibilities for people to work together in technology-rich spaces with computing and interaction devices on many different scales. ... This cross-disciplinary project is staffed by faculty and students from the Interactivity Lab, Software Infrastructures Group, and Graphics Lab."
Other References OfflineBattelle News Release: New York City Housing Authority to Test Battelle's Artificial Intelligence System for Boilers to Yield Energy and Dollar Savings. November 30, 1999. "The same Decision Support for Operations and Maintenance (DSOM) system, which was installed at a U.S. Marine complex, saving substantial amounts of money, will be installed in the Smith Houses boiler system to improve its operating efficiency. ... DSOM has the capacity to identify problems before they arise. It anticipates the onset of potential breakdowns and notifies staff before malfunctioning equipment has an opportunity to cause a reduction in the performance of the system. The result is that the system extends the life of the heating plant beyond its design criteria.DSOM relies on artificial intelligence to monitor central heating plant operations. Equipment installed on the plant's boilers and pipes relays real-time temperature and pressure data and other measurements to the DSOM computer. This 'engineer in a box' allows a plant operator to receive the information at a central computer allowing the system to either 'fix itself' or informing the operator as to possible repairs or replacement of parts." Gleick, James. When the House Starts Talking to Itself. The New York Times (November 16, 2003; no fee reg. req'd.). "The 'smart helpmeets' are on their way: our homes, our offices, our cars and our clothes. They are meant to be aware, not dumb; proactive, not inert. They are meant to be understanding. If that sounds Frankensteinian -- well, get over it. ... To make them work, we will have ubiquitous sensors -- microphones and cameras embedded in walls -- and computers learning to interpret speech, gestures and facial expressions. ... Intelligence cuts two ways. We might want our homes to take care of us, but we don't want our virtual helpmeets to make us feel inadequate. We certainly don't want them to have opinions of their own. Yet the Smart House, even in its first, crude incarnation, often seems to have a personality -- a will of its own." Krarti, Moncef. An overview of artificial intelligence-based methods for building energy systems. Journal of Solar Energy Engineering 125(3): August 2003, 331-342. Abstract: "An overview of commonly used methodologies based on the artificial intelligence approach is provided with a special emphasis on neural networks, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithms. A description of selected applications to building energy systems of AI approaches is outlined. In particular, methods using the artificial intelligence approach for the following applications are discussed: Prediction energy use for one building or a set of buildings (served by one utility), Modeling of building envelope heat transfer, Controlling central plants in buildings, and Fault detection and diagnostics for building energy systems." O'Brien, Dick. Energy conservation firm wins UCD award. ElectricNews.net (December 2, 2003). ""Lightwave Technologies, a firm that designs system to cut office energy costs, has scooped the top award from NovaUCD's Entrepreneurship Programme. ... Lightwave Technologies uses artificial intelligence techniques to make efficient decisions for controlling energy usage in commercial buildings with the objective of saving up to 30 percent of energy costs for clients. In order to meet this objective, Lightwave Technologies is developing a system called ICE (Intelligent Control of Energy), which adds intelligence to existing building management systems, learns how buildings react from past experiences and makes effective decisions on how to save energy. ... The system is designed to be predictive rather than reactive, anticipating environmental changes and altering energy use to match these patterns."
Shelton, Deborah L. Virtual helper makes independence a reality. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (July 12, 2003). "Open the drapes. Brew the coffee. Prepare the shower. Ralph's routine is ordinary enough. But Ralph has an impressive work ethic, laboring 24 hours a day, seven days a week - year in, year out. Ralph moved in with Don Holbert, of Sedalia, Mo., over a year ago. Holbert, 59, contracted polio when he was 5. Though paralyzed below the waist, Holbert was able to manage for himself until his wife, Barbara, died in May 2001. Without her, even some of the simplest tasks around the home, like opening the blinds, became impossible. That's where Ralph comes in. Ralph now adjusts the thermostat, turns lights on and off and reads stories from the newspaper. Ralph is a helper. A housemate. A talkative companion. Ralph is a computer. To be more precise, Ralph is a voice-operated computer and home automation system, programmed to function using artificial intelligence. ... Ralph ... is an acronym for Real Assisted Living for the Physically Handicapped. ... Ralph has been programmed to carry on a conversation ... Ralph also can be philosophical. ... 'I'm living in a closet, but the entire house is my body.'" (Also see this related article above.) Youngblood, Michael G., Diane J. Cook, and Lawrence B. Holder. 2005. A Learning Architecture for Automating the Intelligent Environment. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference, 1576. Menlo Park, Calif.: AAAI Press. Abstract: "Developing technologies and systems for perception and perspicacious automated control of home and workplace environments is a challenging problem. We present a complete agent architecture for learning to automate the intelligent environment and discuss the development, deployment, and techniques utilized in our working intelligent environments. Empirical evaluation of our approach has proven its effectiveness at reducing inhabitant interactions by 72.2%." |
