For [Michael] Coen, the question is not whether people will take to intelligent environments - but when. "If you look at the history of indoor plumbing and indoor electricity, these are technologies...that met with opposition. People thought they were frivolous. And look at how they've revolutionized how we live," he says. - from The walls have eyes - and ears and ...

Good Places to Start

Some articles from AI in the news:

• Remote, I Want Control. The Economic Times (July 24, 2005).
• I, Roommate - The Robot Housekeeper Arrives. By Mark Allen. The New York Times (July 14, 2005; registration req'd.).
• The leader of the robot pack. By Michael Kanellos. CNET News.com (July 7, 2005). Interview with Colin Angle, CEO of iRobot.
• Making SMART Homes Smarter. AZoBuild (June 2, 2005).
• Imagining homes of the future. BBC News (June 1, 2005).
• 'Smart' homes not far away. By Julie Clothier. CNN (May 31, 2005).

-> Additional articles can be found in the General Index to AI in the news by Topic. (Try starting with: Applications, Interfaces, and Systems.)

Rethinking the Computer - Project Oxygen is turning out prototype computer systems. By Lisa Scanlon. Technology Review (July/August 2004). "[Howie] Shrobe's computerized office is just one of dozens of pervasive-computing technologies being developed as part of Project Oxygen, the lab's five-year, $50 million effort to design computer systems that are as ubiquitous as the air we breathe and as easy to communicate with as other people. The end result, as originally envisioned by Michael Dertouzos, PhD '64, the late director of the Laboratory for Computer Science, is expected to be a collection of technologies embedded in workplaces and homes working together seamlessly-and often behind the scenes-to help us go about our daily lives. ... Now in its fourth year, the project is turning out working prototypes, including workspaces that adjust themselves according to their inhabitants' habits, location-aware sensors that help people find their way around buildings, and computer chips that configure themselves to best suit different applications. In the process, the project has brought together researchers from many disciplines who may not have otherwise collaborated, often with unexpected results. When Project Oxygen began in 2000, one of its first undertakings was to further Shrobe's prior work on an intelligent conference room that helps people run more efficient meetings. The latest version of the room can, when prompted by spoken commands, show agenda items on a wall display, transcribe and save participants' comments, or find pertinent video clips from previous meetings. ... 'One of the things about Oxygen is that it's not trying to develop [stand-alone] technologies in networking, speech, and vision,' says [Victor] Zue. 'Increasingly, it's the integration of these technologies.'"

Domestic bliss through mechanical marvels? By Kevin Maney. USA Today (September 1, 2004). "Never mind the humanoid Automated Domestic Assistants walking rich people's pets in the movie I, Robot, or the accordion-armed Robot B9 in TV classic Lost in Space warning of danger on lonely planets. The real force driving the development of personal robots -- and what will eventually create demand for them in the marketplace -- is aging baby boomers. That's the secret among robotics researchers and budding robot companies. As the horde of boomers become old, they increasingly will be unable to care for themselves or their homes. They'll face a social and medical system straining to help them. But they'll be comfortable with technology."

The gentle rise of the machines. Robotics - The science-fiction dream that robots would one day become a part of everyday life was absurd. Or was it? The Economist Technology Quarterly (March 11, 2004). "Since 1939, when Westinghouse Electric introduced Electro, a mechanical man, at the World's Fair in New York, robot fans have imagined a world filled with tireless robotic helpers, always on hand to wash dishes, do the laundry and handle the drudgery of everyday tasks. So far, however, such robots have proliferated in science fiction, but have proved rather more elusive in the real world. But optimists are now arguing that the success of the Roomba and of toys such as Aibo, Sony's robot dog, combined with the plunging cost of computer power, could mean that the long-awaited mass market for robots is finally within reach. 'Household robots are starting to take off,' declared a recent report from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Are they really? ... [R]obots have had their greatest impact in factories. Industrial robots go back over 40 years, when they first began to be used by carmakers. Unimate, the first industrial robot, went to work for General Motors in 1961. ... Industrial robotics is a $5.6 billion industry, growing by around 7% a year. But the UNECE report predicts that the biggest growth over the next three years will be in domestic rather than industrial robots. ... While prices drop and hardware improves, research into robotic vision, control systems and communications have jumped ahead as well."

Face of the future? Some scientists think robots will do domestic tasks and be as common as TVs. By Robin McKie and David Smith. The Observer (July 18, 2004). "Among those who enthusiastically endorse the imminence of the robot age is the industry analyst, Future Horizons, which has noted that applications currently under discussion include the development of baby robots for mother training, robots for house cleaning, support for the old, disaster rescue, fast-food serving staff, nursing, opponents in board games, security, and window cleaning. The report predicts that total robot revenue will grow from $4.4 billion (£2.3bn) in 2003 to $59.3bn in 2010. 'A robot will be like a TV or a washing machine - almost every home will have one,' said Malcolm Penn, chairman of Future Horizons. 'They are clumsy now but it won't be long before the technology marches on. In five to 10 years you'll have a robot doing chores like dispensing medicine, feeding the cat, making cups of tea, taking food out of the freezer and cooking it in a microwave. We could see the first humanoid robot football match in five years' time'. Jonathan Elvidge, founder of The Gadget Shop chain, agrees. He travels the world to sample cutting-edge technology for consumers. 'Next year we can expect miniature robots that wander around your desk, or a robot head you can talk to and which talks back to you. 'In the future you might have a robot that can follow you around and you can ask it to pay bills or ask what time a film is on and get it to order your tickets.' ... Household chores are the domain of domestic appliance robots such as self-navigating lawnmowers or vacuum cleaners. Sales reached 39,000 units in 2003 and are forecast to hit 20 million by 2008."

Room Service, AI Style. Edited by Haym Hirsh. IEEE Intelligent Systems. March/April 1999. "Can a room be intelligent? This month's 'Trends and Controversies" presents the thoughts and work of four people who not only believe the answer is yes, but are working towards making this happen."

• The future of human-computer interaction, or how I learned to stop worrying and love my intelligent room, by Michael H. Coen.
• An intelligent environment must be adaptive, by Michael C. Mozer.
• Needed: A common distributed-object platform, by Richard Hasha.
• Autodirective sound capture: towards smarter conference rooms, by James L. Flanagan.

Readings Online

Robots: Today, Roomba. Tomorrow... iRobot CEO Colin Angle says the robotic vacuum cleaner "is insanely cool because it retails for $200" -- and more products like it are on the way. BusinessWeek Online (May 6, 2004). "Angle recently talked to Adam Aston, BusinessWeek's Industries editor, about what iRobot has learned from the Roomba and what the future holds for its descendants."Q: What comes next in household robots? A: I can't talk about specifics, but they're coming. We want to make housework a choice. We believe there are many tasks within the home that are ripe for automation.... Q: Will future robot innovations come from appliance makers or from robot makers? A: ... The Roomba is a first step. It's not intimidating. And it works. People find that surprising. The Roomba has gotten more people to accept the idea that robots can be useful. Maybe it could be a home-maintenance system, where your floors are forever clean...."

Talking washing machine hits India. BBC (April 4, 2002). "Electrolux will launch a talking washing machine, known as the Washy Talky, in India later this month. The top-loader speaks in a soft, Indian middle-class female accent and uses 90 different phrases in Hindi and English, gently giving instructions like 'drop the detergent, close the lid and relax'. ... The washer does more than just talk. It can also make decisions. Using a type of artificial intelligence called 'fuzzy logic', the machine senses the load weight and chooses the optimum programme."

Lawn Mowing for Lazybones. By Mark Baard. Wired News (April 2, 2004). "First came the wave of robot vacuum cleaners, led by Roomba from Burlington, Massachusetts-based iRobot. Now engineers in the fast-growing consumer robotics market are selling autonomous machines designed to give residential lawns that professionally manicured look, which only professional landscapers could offer in the past."

The Age of Assisted Cognition. By Mark Baard. Wired News (August 15, 2002). "Pervasive computing's earliest adapters will be old people, according to medical experts and AI gurus at a conference here hosted by Intel Research. Speakers at 'Computing, Cognition and Caring for Future Elders' discussed infrared badges that track patients, mirrors that spot suspicious moles, accelerometers that detect falls, and computers that remind the incontinent to visit the toilet at regular intervals."

Gadgets help baby boomers navigate old age. By Fred Bayles. USA Today (November 17, 2003). "Now, with a boomer turning 50 every seven seconds, researchers and marketers are developing everything from simple gadgets to complex computer systems to ease a generation into old age. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AgeLab and dozens of other research centers around the country, scientists are working on inventions that seem destined to transport the Golden Girls into the world of Star Trek...."

Overly smart buildings. By Ted Smalley Bowen. Technology Research News (April 20 / 27, 2005). "The notion of buildings as 'machines for living in, 'as pioneering modernist architect Le Corbusier put it in the 1920s, morphs to fit the technologies and issues of the day. In the '70s, it was energy efficiency. In the '80s, computer technology spawned 'smart' buildings sporting automated controls and pre-configured information systems. The latest crop of technologies [footnotes] include microelectromechanical systems that combine sensors and actuators, wireless sensor networks, and fuzzy logic control schemes, and has the makings of a sophisticated nervous system."

Blobs, Pods and People. By Linda Hales. The Washington Post (March 25, 2001). "[T]hanks to computer-aided design and a host of information age innovations, far-out fantasy houses are coming closer to reality. .... Add the potential of artificial intelligence, biometric sensing, robotics and mass customization, and it's little wonder that designers are imagining a new generation of houses in which people rule their environment, rather than submit to them. ... [Kent] Larson envisions a house so wise and helpful that it would know whether an elderly resident living alone was staying in bed too long, or walking differently ...."

Ralph: The Home Assistant. By Debbie Hardy. Post-Polio Health (Fall 2004; Vol. 20, No. 4). "Do you ever wish you had a personal butler, valet or concierge at your beck and call? The reality is you may be able to purchase one in the form of an automated technology system for your home. The system, known as Ralph, is a voice-commanded control, monitoring and supervisory system. It uses voice recognition to take commands from the home’s occupants and talks back to them with speech synthesis. For those who prefer not to use the voice command system, a pushbutton control is available. Ralph helps people live independently in their own homes by doing small things they cannot do for themselves. The system was originally developed to help Don Holbert. Don, who is paralyzed below the waist...." (Also see this related article below.)

• Visit Ralph's web site.

Smart fire detector could slash false alarms. By Kurt Kleiner. NewScientist.com news (October 25, 2005). "A fire detector that can tell the difference between burning toast and a burning building could save money, annoyance, and possibly even lives, by cutting down on false alarms. ... The detector uses four sensors and a neural network to determine if the smoke and heat it's detecting are from a fire or are just part of the normal room environment. ... Most home alarms are designed to go off when smoke in the air exceeds a certain concentration. ... Some commercial systems are more sophisticated, feeding data from a number of different sensors to a central computer and letting the computer decide whether the readings indicate a fire.The Siemens detector is different, [Andrew] Morgan says, because it builds artificial intelligence into each individual detector, using custom-designed integrated circuits."

• Also see: All Fired Up About Intelligent Detectors. Siemans' Research and Innovation Magazine (January 1999). "Thanks to developments in smoke and fire detection technologies, buildings are becoming increasingly automated. Artificial intelligence is a key factor."

Robots That Suck - Have they finally come out with a robot for the rest of us? By George Musser. Scientific American (February 2003). "For generations, tinkerers have been pointing out how much their projects will lighten the load of housework. For generations, spouses and parents have failed to be impressed by these claims. When I built my first robot seven years ago, people kept asking, 'So what does it do?' I explained that it would eventually vacuum the floor."

The walls have eyes - and ears and ... . By Kimberly Patch and Eric Smalley. Boston Globe (July 20, 1998). "'The original work on the intelligent room came out of a proposal to do new types of human-computer interaction,' [Michael] Coen says. 'We wanted to enable people to interact with machines the way they do with other people: by talking, by moving, pointing, gesturing. I like to think of this as not designing computer interfaces for people, it's designing people interfaces for computers. It's allowing computers to understand people on [people's] terms.'"

Home, Smart Home - An automated house is a wonderful idea, but there's also something about it that creeps people out. The Practical Futurist column by Michael Rogers. Newsweek Web Exclusive (November 12, 2002) from MSNBC. "But what is it that makes some people nervous about a house that knows their name and adjusts their lighting? I pondered the question last month as I toured Microsoft's remarkable Home of the Future prototype at the company's massive Bellevue, Wash., campus. Was there anything here to be nervous about?"

Ambient Intelligence. By Nigel Shadbolt. IEEE Intelligent Systems (July/August 2003: pages 2 - 3). "Films portraying the future often contain visions of homes of the future. Fitted out with an array of intelligent devices, these homes can anticipate your every need. They are usually depicted as existing within wider smart infrastructures. These infrastructures boast intelligent transportation systems and seamlessly integrate services from health to shopping and from entertainment to law enforcement. This probably differs just a little from our everyday experience of public services. But help is at hand -- numerous research efforts are underway that aim to deliver environments rich in what the Europeans call ambient intelligence. Ambient intelligence involves the convergence of several computing areas."

"Cybertecture" represents future for design around world. Xinhua News Agency (October 14, 2004). "Interactive architecture is the future of design in China and around the world, said James Law, the only Chinese nominee for the 2004 Asia Innovation Award. Law, chief 'cybertect' of a global consultancy based in Hong Kong specializing in the design and strategy formation of cybertecture projects, was nominated for his excellent design of the world's first artificial intelligence media laboratory in Hong Kong. ... Cybertecture environments are hybrids designed from the inside out and using technology to give the space intelligence needed to interact with its users. Cybertecture is aimed to enhance and improve the quality of life by harnessing the power of technology, according to Law...."

Related Web Sites

Agent-based Intelligent Reactive Environments - a Research Group at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. "aire is dedicated to examining how to design pervasive computing systems and applications for people. To study this, aire designs and constructs Intelligent Environments (IEs), which are spaces augmented with basic perceptual sensing, speech recognition, and distributed agent logic."

Ambient Intelligence research at Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands. What is Ambient Intelligence? ... '[O]ur vision of 'Ambient Intelligence': people living easily in digital environments in which the electronics are sensitive to people's needs, personalized to their requirements, anticipatory of their behaviour and responsive to their presence."

• Extensive Background: In the near future our homes will have a distributed network of intelligent devices that provides us with information, communication, and entertainment. Furthermore, these systems will adapt themselves to the user and even anticipate on user needs. ... Ambient intelligence refers to the presence of a digital environment that is sensitive, adaptive, and responsive to the presence of people. Within a home environment, ambient intelligence will improve the quality of life of people by creating the desired atmosphere and functionality via intelligent, personalized inter-connected systems and services. Ambient intelligence can be characterized by the following basic elements: ubiquity, transparency, and intelligence. ... Intelligence refers to the fact that the digital surroundings exhibit specific forms of intelligence, i.e., it should be able to recognize the people that live in it, adapt themselves to them, learn from their behavior, and possibly show emotion."
• EU-backed group researches digital home. By John Blau. IDG News & PC Advisor (September 3, 2004). "Perhaps the quickest and most efficient way to achieve end-to-end operability of networked devices in the home is to open the development of middleware to as many participants as possible. That's the aim of a research project, called Amigo, which is being sponsored by the European Union (E.U.). ... [Harmke] De Groot talked about the role of 'ambient intelligence.' Ambient intelligence, according to a link published on De Groot's Amigo Web page, is characterized by four basic elements: ubiquity, awareness, intelligence and natural interaction. ... A total 15 companies are participating in the Amigo project...."

Aware Home Research Initiative at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "Is it possible to create a home environment that is aware of its occupants whereabouts and activities? If we build such a home, how can it provide services to its residents that enhance their quality of life or help them to maintain independence as they age? The Aware Home Research Initiative (AHRI) is an interdisciplinary research endeavor at Georgia Tech aimed at addressing the fundamental technical, design, and social challenges presented by such questions."

"The Counter Intelligence (CI) project at the MIT Media Lab. "[O]ur kitchens are far from complete and perfect. They remain dangerous and messy places and in world that is increasingly vying for our attention, we are abandoning the hearth for a meal on the run. Our goal is to reverse this trend--to make the kitchen the center of family life by providing technologies that improve functionality and engage us cognitively and socially. Specifically, we are focusing on the technologies of context sensing, material science, machine learning, and computer-supported cooperative work, with product and scenario design at the heart of our query."

• Cooking up a digital future. By Ian Hardy. BBC News (August 31, 2004). "Counter intelligence usually conjures up images of MI5, the CIA or James Bond. But at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, it is the name given to an entire department which invents new gadgets and gizmos for the kitchen. ... 'My most exciting example of that is a spoon that literally teaches you how to cook, by watching and tasting, and noticing the temperature of the thing you're mixing' [said MIT's Director of Counter Intelligence Research, Ted Selker]. ... Kitchens of the future will keep track of all kinds of things, according to the MIT researchers. ... A fridge with a video camera and a computer that monitors the entire contents could alert you if the butter has run out the fridge, and automatically add it to the shopping list."

Inspire - Infotainment managment with speech interaction via remote-microphones and telephone interfaces. Knowledge S.A.. consortium co-ordinator. "The ever-increasing complexity of home appliances and services, combined with the difficulties encountered by a great portion of the population to handle complex equipment or the inability of elderly and disabled people to use them, renders the creation of intelligent, intuitive and flexible interfaces, facilitating human-machine interaction, an endeavour of paramount importance. This can be achieved by e.g. the integration of leading edge speech technologies. Emerging voice-controlled consumer electronics will be introduced in the near future as standalone devices. With INSPIRE we aim at the integration of a multilingual, interactive, natural, speech dialogue-based assistant for wireless command and control of home appliances (e.g. consumer electronics)."

"The Intelligent Environments Resource Page was established at Microsoft Research in 1998 to provide a clearinghouse for WWW links related to the budding field of Intelligent Environments."

"The MavHome Smart Home project is a multi-disciplinary research project at the University of Texas at Arlington focused on the creation of an intelligent home environment. Our approach is to view the smart home as an intelligent agent that perceives its environment through the use of sensors, and can act upon the environment through the use of actuators. The home has certain overall goals, such as minimizing the cost of maintaining the home and maximizing the comfort of its inhabitants. In order to meet these goals, the house must be able to reason about and adapt to provided information."

PROFIT: Potential pRofit Opportunities in the future ambient InTelligence world. A EURESCOM Project. "The radical changes of the Information Society driven by the boost in information and communication technologies and its adoption has opened a fast path towards the vision of 'Ambient Intelligence' (AmI). This offers tremendous business opportunities and challenges to telecommunications operators and service providers. Also the user roles and identities are changing dramatically. It is important to analyse the new scenarios, roles and identities, and to identify the opportunities and challenges for Telcos arising from this. The concept of Ambient Intelligence (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. People are surrounded by intelligent intuitive interfaces that are embedded in all kinds of objects and an environment that is capable of recognising and responding to the presence of different individuals in a seamless, unobtrusive and often invisible way."

• BT working on ‘ambient’ future study. By John Tilak. Digital Media Europe News (October 28, 2004). "BT is working alongside the University of Essex, and other partner organisations on a research project [PROFIT: Potential pRofit Opportunities in the Future ambient InTelligence world] that examines the socio-economic implications of ‘always on, everywhere’ or ‘ambient’ intelligence. Ambient intelligence is an idea of the future in which people are surrounded by electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to people. Such technologies are expected to combine concepts of ubiquitous computing and intelligent systems."
• The socio-economic dimensions of Ambient Intelligence. Eurescom mess@ge (2004). "The radical changes in the Information Society driven by progress in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their adoption has opened a fast path towards a vision of Ambient Intelligence (AmI). This article describes work undertaken to examine the socio-economic dimensions of AmI and to develop a scenario and potential migration paths for its future users and providers."

Room of the Future at Accenture Technology Labs "demonstrate[s] how existing technology can provide practical solutions to some of the issues facing our growing aging population. Prototypes we have developed include: Activity Monitoring: Uses sensors and video cameras to track the movements of a typical home user alongside artificial intelligence to interpret and act on situations that occur, as well as create insight into long-term behavioural variations. Caring Plant: A ‘smart’ plant equipped with motion sensors and the ability to communicate, collect, store and analyze information. ..."

Smart House from AgentLand. "Fantasy you say? Certainly not, this smart house is not as futuristic as one might believe: the technologies already exist and the companies developing them are keen to enter this attractive and interesting market."

Smart Medical Home at the University of Rochester's Center for Future Health. "The Center's overall goal is to develop an integrated Personal Health System, so all technologies are integrated and work seamlessly. This technology will allow consumers, in the privacy of their own homes, to maintain health, detect the onset of disease, and manage disease. The data collected 24/7 inside the home will augment the data collected by physicians and hospitals. The data collection modules in the home will start with the measurement of traditional vital signs (blood pressure, pulse, respiration) and work to include measurement of 'new vital signs', such as gait, behavior patterns, sleep patterns, general exercise, rehabilitation exercises, and more."

Stanford Interactive Workspaces Project "is exploring new possibilities for people to work together in technology-rich spaces with computing and interaction devices on many different scales. ... This cross-disciplinary project is staffed by faculty and students from the Interactivity Lab, Software Infrastructures Group, and Graphics Lab."

Related Pages

• Assistive Technologies
• General Index to AI in the news: Applications and Interfaces
• Biometrics (@ Image Understanding)
• Interfaces
• Natural Language Processing
• Robots
• Systems

Franklin, David and Joshua Flachsbart, Kristian Hammond. The Intelligent Classroom. IEEE Intelligent Systems (1999). 14 (5): pp. 2 - 5. "In the Intelligent Classroom, we are enabling new modes of user interaction through multiple sensing modes and plan recognition."

Gleick, James. When the House Starts Talking to Itself. The New York Times (November 16, 2003; no fee reg. req'd.). "The 'smart helpmeets' are on their way: our homes, our offices, our cars and our clothes. They are meant to be aware, not dumb; proactive, not inert. They are meant to be understanding. If that sounds Frankensteinian -- well, get over it. ... To make them work, we will have ubiquitous sensors -- microphones and cameras embedded in walls -- and computers learning to interpret speech, gestures and facial expressions. ... Intelligence cuts two ways. We might want our homes to take care of us, but we don't want our virtual helpmeets to make us feel inadequate. We certainly don't want them to have opinions of their own. Yet the Smart House, even in its first, crude incarnation, often seems to have a personality -- a will of its own."

Pentland, Alex P. Smart Rooms. Scientific American. April 1996. "In creating computer systems that can identify people and interpret their actions, researchers have come one step closer to building helpful home and work environments.

Shelton, Deborah L. Virtual helper makes independence a reality. St. Louis Post-Dispatch (July 12, 2003). "Open the drapes. Brew the coffee. Prepare the shower. Ralph's routine is ordinary enough. But Ralph has an impressive work ethic, laboring 24 hours a day, seven days a week - year in, year out. Ralph moved in with Don Holbert, of Sedalia, Mo., over a year ago. Holbert, 59, contracted polio when he was 5. Though paralyzed below the waist, Holbert was able to manage for himself until his wife, Barbara, died in May 2001. Without her, even some of the simplest tasks around the home, like opening the blinds, became impossible. That's where Ralph comes in. Ralph now adjusts the thermostat, turns lights on and off and reads stories from the newspaper. Ralph is a helper. A housemate. A talkative companion. Ralph is a computer. To be more precise, Ralph is a voice-operated computer and home automation system, programmed to function using artificial intelligence. ... Ralph ... is an acronym for Real Assisted Living for the Physically Handicapped. ... Ralph has been programmed to carry on a conversation ... Ralph also can be philosophical. ... 'I'm living in a closet, but the entire house is my body.'" (Also see this related article above.)