Ambient Intelligence Vision: A Perspective
J.UCS Special Issue
José Bravo
(MAml Research Lab, Castilla La-Mancha University, Ciudad Real, Spain
Jose.bravo@uclm.es)
Diego López-de-Ipiña
(MoreLab, University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain
dipina@eside.deusto.es)
It is time to put in practice the old visionary scenarios of AmI
through real achievements. For that, it is necessary to concentrate in
detailed and particular domains on solving all the past promises.
UCAmI is an AmIcommunity that has been organizing AmI events in Spain
for the last 6 years. In such events, researchers from Spain and other
countries such as Germany, Italy, France, USA, Portugal, Mexico,
Chile, Finland and others, have taken part. MAmI Research Lab at
Castilla-La Mancha University, Spain has organized all these
events. From this community, ten papers have been selected to
represent this multidisciplinary field of research. In this special
issue, authors show their advances in aspects like Ambient Assisted
Living or academic conference environments. Other authors deal with
more general AmI concepts, such as middleware, augmented objects or
ubiquitous end-user interfaces. Finally, the concept of "Motion
Intelligence" is examined. The special issue begins with an
introductory paper that puts in context the aspects addressed by the
other works and foresees the evolution of the still promising AmI
paradigm.
"Ambient
Intelligence: Beyond the Inspiring Vision", José et
al., reffect about the movement from AmI foundational vision to new
trends around of its core concepts and, particularly, the notion of
intelligence. These trends provide a more holistic view of AmI
representing important contributions for achieving a real social
impact.
"An Agent-based
Architecture for Developing Activity-Aware Systems for Assisting
Elderly", Garc&iaacute;a-Vázquez et al., propose an
integration of AmI into AAL scenarios by activity-aware
computing. These smart environments are adapted to the human
activities through autonomous agents for achieving an activity-aware
system. Such system infers activities of the elderly, particularly,
the management of medication.
"An Ambient
Assisted Living Platform Integrating RFID Data-on-Tag Care Annotations
and Twitter", López-de-Ipiña et al, explore the
potential of storing and accessing to RFID care data through mobile
phone. In this work, authors describe a NFC platform for supporting
elderly caretaking with two main contributions: distributed
mobile-mediated collection and propagation of care related data in
caretaking scenarios and residents relatives reporting through
current Web 2.0 status notification services.
"A Context Model
based on Ontological Languages: a Proposal for Information
Visualization", Hervás et al., present a formalized
context model for offering visualization services to the users
depending of their situation, needs and preferences. The proposed
model is based on four ontologies: users, devices, environment and
services, describing concepts of intelligent environments and their
relationships. Finally, this work presents a prototype for supporting
academic conferences.
"Context-Awareness
for Collaborative Learning with Uncertainty Management",
Messeguer et al., explore the problem of automating group awareness in
CSCL applications by estimating group arrangements from location
sensors and the history of interaction. Authors derive the
requirements for context-awareness in collaborative learning from case
studies, focusing on the jigsaw technique supported by mobile
devices.
"PICTAC: A Model for
Perceiving Touch Interaction through Tagging Context", Chavira
et al., present a model to perceive contact interaction by NFC-enabled
mobile devices. This technology allows users to interact with the
tagged context obtaining services with a simple and intuitive
interaction: a touch. For that, the idea of tagging context is
examined bearing in mind a previous context definition in which the
idea of entity is relevant (user, places, object and application).
"Configuration
Process of a Software Product Line for AmI Middleware",
Fuentes & Gámez, promote the use of middleware platforms for
supporting low-level software and hardware resources. Authors argue
that is very important to use minimal middleware with a strict and
required functionality. For that, authors propose a middleware
platform for AmI by using a Software Product Line engineering
approach. In it, a minimal set of high-level parameters needs is
specified.
"Developing
Augmented Objects: A Process Perspective", Guerrero et al.,
present a software process for supporting the development of augmented
objects. It is based on authors previous experiences in software
engineering practices. Also, two study cases using a proposed guide
for the development are presented.
"Towards a
Ubiquitous End-user Programming System for Smart Spaces",
García-Herranz et al., present a rule-based agent mechanism as the
kernel of a ubiquitous end-user UI-independent programming
system. With it, end-users can control their environment in a uniform
and independent way. A real system describing this approach is
evaluated.
"Mobile
Intelligence", Cai analyzes the human motion in buildings
through a model of a mobile and interactive sensing platform for smart
environments. To do that, a biologically inspired robot can follow the
moving person around, memorize the motions and detect unexpected
events. Finally, an interactive sensing algorithm to detect falling
people on the floor is discussed.
The editors wish to thank Professor Hermann Maurer (Managing
Editor) for providing us with the opportunity to edit this special
issue. Also, we would also like to give our thanks to Ms. Dana Kaiser
(Assistant Editor) of the Journal of Universal Computer Science
(J.UCS) for all her kind help in the preparation of this issue.
José Bravo (MAmI Lab)
Diego López-de-Ipiña (MoreLab)
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