Natural interaction in ambient intelligent environments

Abstract

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) constitutes an evolution of Information and Communication Technologies which responds to the current increasing demand for anytime anywhere availability of information and electronic services. AmI technologies integrate sensing capabilities, processing power, reasoning mechanisms, networking facilities, applications and services, digital content, and actuating capabilities distributed the environment. While a wide variety of different technologies is involved, the goal of AmI is to either entirely hide their presence from users or to smoothly integrate them within the surrounding context as enhanced environment artifacts, rather than as technological gadgets. The pervasiveness of interaction AmI environments requires the elaboration of new interaction concepts that extend beyond the current user interface concepts like the desktop metaphor and menu driven interfaces. AmI will therefore bring about new interaction techniques, as well as novel uses and multimodal combinations of existing advanced techniques, such as, for example, gestures and localisation. Additionally, interaction is embedded everyday objects and smart artifacts. This concept refers to interfaces that use physical artifacts as objects for representation and interaction, seamlessly integrating the physical and digital worlds. Interaction AmI environments inherently relies on multimodal input, implying that it combines various user input modes, such as speech, pen, touch, manual gestures, gaze and head and body movements, as well as more than one output modes, primarily the form of visual and auditory feedback. In this context, adaptive multimodality is prominent to support natural input a dynamically changing context-of-use, adaptively offering to users the most appropriate and effective input forms at the current interaction context.The ICS-FORTH Ambient Intelligence Programme is an on-going horizontal interdisciplinary RTD Programme aiming to develop and apply pioneering human-centric AmI technologies and Smart Environments, capable of understanding and fulfilling individual human needs. This Programme constitutes a systematic effort towards addressing the challenges which arise the context of AmI, by providing natural forms of interaction and access to information and communication. In this context, a wide variety of AmI applications and services have been developed for various environments and domains, including home and everyday living, office work, culture and museums, exhibitions and public spaces, education, and health. These developments constitute showcases for demonstrating practice AmI technologies and their potential and benefits different aspects of everyday life and activities. Some of them have been deployed in vivo and are available and used real environments, such as, for example, the exhibition of AmI artifacts Macedonia from fragments to pixels deployed at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. The new ICSFORTH AmI Research Facility, due to be completed by the end of 2011, will comprise simulated AmI-augmented environments and their support spaces, laboratory spaces for developing and testing related technologies, and will provide an appropriate environment for the pilot deployment and user-based evaluation of the developed AmI technologies under conditions very similar to real life.