Abstract
Ambient Intelligence is the concept that technology will become a part of everyday living and assist users in multiple tasks. It is a combination and further development of ubiquitous computation, pervasive computation, and multimedia.The technology is sensitive to the actions of humans and it can interact with the human or adjust the surroundings to suit the needs of the users dynamically. All of this is made possible by embedding sensors and computing components inconspicuously into human surroundings. This paper discusses the middleware needed for dynamic ambient intelligence networks and the ambient intelligence network architecture. The bottom-up middleware approach for ambient intelligence is important so the lower layers of all ambient intelligence networks are interchangeable and compatible with other ambient intelligence components. This approach also allows components to be programmed to be compatible with multiple ambient intelligence networks. The network architecture discussed in this paper allows for dynamic networking capabilities for minimal interruptions with changes in computer components.
TopBackground
Ambient intelligence is a further development of the field of ubiquitous computation, pervasive computation, and multimedia. Ambient intelligence research covers complete platforms, development methods, and many other features (Vasilakos and Pedrycz, 2006; Bartelt et al., 2005; Funk, Kuhmunch and Niedermeier, 2005). The research field of ambient intelligence starts to spread rapidly and first applications are on their way (Noguchi, Mori and Sato, 2003; Jammes and Smit, 2005; Kahn, Katz and Pister, 2000; Kirk and Newmarch, 2005). For example, an intelligent refridgerator communicates to a consumer in the supermarket on which food is needed to cook a certain dish. The ambient intelligient system consists of many services: an online shop which provides cooking recipes, networking which enables communication between different components, RFID (Radio-frequency identification) readers in the refridgerator which are used to search for the right food and guide the consumer to the corresponding locations. The consumer can simply interact with a monitor on his shopping car (Lugmayr, 2006) to accomplish the smarting shopping process.
Key Terms in this Chapter
ISTAG: Information Society Technologies Advisory Group is an advisory body to the European Commission in the field of Information and Communication Technology. It developed the ambient intelligence concept. The members are appointed as individuals rather than to explicitly represent the interests of a single group, although it could still be argued that its members largely represent big companies and research institutions.
Middleware architecture: The organization of the software layer that lies between the operating system and the applications on each site of the system.
Network Architecture: The entire framework for the network’s physical components and their functional configuration, including operational principles and procedures.
Node: A device attached to a computer network or other telecommunications network, such as a computer or router, or a point in a network topology at which processes intersect or branch.
Hardware architecture: The identification of the physical components and their interrelationships, which allows hardware designers to understand how their components fit into a system architecture and provides software component designers important information needed for software development and integration.
RFID: Radio-frequency identification is the use of an object (typically referred to as an RFID tag) applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves.
PDA: Personal Digital Assistant is a mobile device, also known as a palmtop computer. An important function of PDAs is synchronizing data with a computer system. Today the vast majority of all PDAs are smartphones.