The future: Communication in an ambient intelligence environment

Abstract

This paper describes the principle of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and the impact on the information and communication technology. 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. In an AmI environment people are surrounded by invisible, intelligent, and intuitive interfaces which act and react in a way of an attentive butler. AmI primarily aims at the private citizen and includes elderly persons as well as persons with disabilities. Three dimensions characterise AmI and are briefly described: the technological, the social-ethical and the political dimension. In order to illustrate the impact of AmI, the European ISTAG (Information Society Technologies Advisory Group) and other research groups have created scenarios which describe the all-day situation of people in the near future and being surrounded by AmI. Some of these scenarios are presented and discussed. Then communication aspects of AmI are described which clearly show the dominant role of speech and the benefits of a multimodal presentation. Finally, examples of local and mobile applications of AmI are given and commented.