Grand challenges for ambient intelligence and implications for design contexts and smart societies

Abstract

This paper highlights selected grand challenges that concern especially the social and the design dimensions of research and development in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) and Smart Environments (SmE). Due to the increasing deployment and usage of 'smart' technologies determining a wide range of everyday life activities, there is an urgent need to reconsider their societal implications and how to address these implications with appropriate design methods. The paper presents four perspectives on the subject grounded in different approaches. First, introducing and reflecting on the implications of the 'smart-everything' paradigm, the resulting design trade-offs and their application to smart cities. Second, discussing the potential of non-verbal communication for informing the design of spatial interfaces for AmI design practices. Third, reflecting on the role of new data categories such as 'future data' and the role of uncertainty and their implications for the next generation of AmI environments. Finally, debating the merits and shortfalls of the world's largest professional engineering community effort to craft a global standards body on ethically aligned design for autonomous and intelligent systems. The paper benefits from taking different perspectives on common issues, provides commonalities and relationships between them and provides anchor points for important challenges in the field of ambient intelligence.

Internet of Things for enabling smart environments: A technology-centric perspective

“…This whole process requires considering the human aspect, since the human is in fact, either directly or indirectly, the main subject of smart environments [20]. However, designing smart environments involves grand societal challenges, from both technical and social points of view, that will require the efforts of the community in upcoming years [87].…”

“…Smart cities are one of the richest and most complex scenarios for smart environment (if not already the most complex) [86,87]. It crosses several domains including the environment, economy, mobility, energy, planning, governance among others (see Fig.…”

Artificial intelligence and ambient intelligence

“…However, the progress will likely not be straightforward as several challenges indicate in terms of design contexts and societal changes [64]. In addition, the AmI term problem is related to the distribution of the field, in particular the near-synonyms "pervasive computing" and "ubiquitous computing".…”

Internet of Things for Smart Spaces: A University Campus Case Study

“…Therefore, there is a strong demand to embed not only privacy and security mechanisms, but also ethical data management and processing, as a formal part of system development [6]. For instance, the ethical design is put forward in IoT [45] and intelligent systems for healthcare [46].…”