AmI-08 Key-Notes

 

Professor Joseph Paradiso
MIT Media Lab, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences Sony Corporation Career Development, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, Co-Director, Things That Think
Linking Virtual and Real Worlds Through Sensor Networks
We are witnessing the dawn of a ubiquitous networked sensor infrastructure, leveraged by the increasingly low cost of microelectronics, sensors, and wireless technologies. As these now independent application-silo systems begin to converge through common standards, the world becomes covered by a seamless electronic "nervous system," that extends across things, places, and people. One of the biggest challenges facing researchers is how to appropriately interface humans with this wealth of real-time information. Applications of such an augmented awareness are readily evident in areas like supply chain and logistics management, urban optimization (e.g., transportation and energy), factory & plant operation, etc. Taking a broad perspective, however, this transition is profound - one's interface into this environment can be envisioned as an extension of human perception, augmenting our five senses well beyond the canonical "here and now" and redefining the meaning of presence.
One way to connect people to such information is through online virtual world browsers, where sensed phenomena and features manifest as metaphoric constructs and animations, and where a user can easily shift the scale, location, and granularity of represented data. Similarly, a user in virtual space can "appear" through devices and actuators in the real world. We term the translation of sensed phenomena into the virtual space and the manifestation of virtual phenomena into the real world "Cross Reality," where sensor/actuator networks tunnel information across the real/virtual divide. Going beyond Cross Reality is "Scalable Virtuality," where the manifestation of virtual phenomena in the real world becomes a function of available and appropriate information portals, and the representation of real-world data in virtual space is dependent on dynamic privacy settings and local context.
This talk will overview recent work in embedded sensing by the author and his students in the Responsive Environments Group at the MIT Media Lab that address this broad theme. The technical areas that I will touch on include high-bandwidth, wireless multimodal sensor clusters, massively distributed, ultra-low-power "featherweight" sensor nodes, parasitic energy scavenging and dynamic power management techniques. The impact of these technologies will be illustrated through several application examples involving cross-reality, affect-driven media queires, controllers for interactive media, active RFID for logistics management, biomotion capture, smart objects, human-computer interfaces and instrumented social interaction.

Professor Dr.-Ing. Dr. h.c. mult., Dr. e.h., Hon. Prof. mult. José Luis Encarnação
INI-GraphicsNet Stiftung
"Ambient Intelligence (AmI): From Vision to Reality – Trends, Opportunities, Barriers, Applications"
First the vision of AmI and how it was developed will be briefly described. The basic technologies for AmI and their trends will then be discussed. Opportunities and barriers for AmI and related applications will be presented and analysed based on case studies and on-going research and development projects. The potential of AmI will be described and discussed based on future-oriented application scenarios and on application prototypes.

 

Invited Talks

 

Professor Mag. Dr. Alois Ferscha
Institut für Pervasive Computing, Johannes Kepler Universität Linz

Dr. Sergio Guillén
ITACA, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia
"Challenges for building effective and innovate AAL Services: PERSONA case"
Successful European projects are delivering advanced prototypes of Ambient Intelligence systems which are context-aware, modular and prepared for working in open and distributed environments. Small scale pilots and demonstrations in simulated and real environments of Ambient Assisted Living applications are in progress elsewhere. A common concern however, is how to develop business which are sustainable and profitable for companies, users, social and health care organisations and public administrations. The objective of this talk is to analyze user involvement, stakeholders participation and interests, technological challenges, innovation strategies and new business models from the perspective of the real experience in defining Ambient Assisted Living services for PERSONA EU-project.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Butz
LFE Medieninformatik, Institut fuer Informatik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet, Munich
"Physical qualities of interaction"

Petri Liuha
Nokia Research Center
Ambient intelligence or smart spaces or even internet of things are terms that can be said to refer to the different aspects of a same topic. The differences are as well in the focus as in the approach to the subject.

The topic of ambient intelligence is of natural interest to mobile applications and services as well to mobile devices as there are various environment, situations and contexts in which the mobile device can be present and interact.

Characteristics for these contexts are on one hand ad hoc nature of communication, interaction and technical composition. On the other hand the, use case situations are typically dynamic where different actors and capabilities changes in the nvironment independently of each other. And finally the overall available digital resources that are being utilized are of heterogeneous nature and follow different development paradigms, product or service lifecycles and domain expertise.

In this talk, I will discuss the background for the development this emerging wave of digital convergence and an information-based approach for application development and interoperability solution, especially from the mobile device point of views.
For ambient intelligent, the role of the devices and systems themselves will become less visible as the focus shifts towards the development of applications for a space or a particular context. Some kind of resemblance can be found in the web applications and services, but there are significantly different constraints, dynamism and legacy smart environments. And after all, the merging of digital and physical worlds is a new domain that calls for new openings in technical solutions.