Rapid Prototyping of an AmI-Augmented Office Environment Demonstrator

Abstract

Abstract. This paper presents the process and tangible outcomes of a rapid prototyping activity towards the creation of a demonstrator, showcasing the potential use and effect of Ambient Intelligence technologies in a typical office environment. In this context, the hardware and software components used are described, as well as the interactive behavior of the demonstrator. Additionally, some conclusions stemming from the experience gained are presented, along with pointers for future research and development work.

Architectures, methods and tools for creating ambient intelligence environments

“…With varying subsets of the aforementioned traits as their defining features, ambient intelligence applications have been applied to many different domains such as: health monitoring and assistance [26], [27], energy management [28], transportation [29], [30], disaster management [31], [32], education [33], entertainment [34], [35], interactive exhibitions [36] and commerce [14], [37]. Moreover, AmI applications have been used for reimagining and implementing aspects of different physical locales such as the home [20], [38], [39], the hospital [40], the classroom [13], [41], [42], and the workplace [43], [44]. It is important at this point to make the distinction between individual AmI applications that implement a set of well-defined operations within the context of a particular domain (e.g., health monitoring, education, etc.)…”

“…In this example we will outline the implementation of the AmI environment described in [44] using smart objects programmed in Akkadian and an external smart object, modeling the user's mobile phone. Our purpose for discussing this implementation is to draw direct comparisons between our approach and generalized classes of service-oriented AmI systems that implement their applications in high-level general-purpose programming languages without having clearly defined abstractions for modeling applications.…”

“…The original Smart Office environment, described in detail in [44], constitutes an ideal test case for the following reasons: (a) it implements a comprehensive fully working smart office environment with non-trivial, interesting interactions, (b) it was implemented in a high-level, well-designed and efficient general-purpose programming language (C# under .NET), (c) its architecture clearly separates the implementation of the functionality of the system from its utilized resources, and (d) although it utilizes functionality implemented as TCP/IP synchronous request/response servers, it fully wraps their low-level message exchange mechanics into .NET classes that enables their utilization from client code as if they were local language objects.…”

“… Start a videoconferencing session on the big screen  Start an email application on the desk  Start a game on the big screen These last three applications are not tightly integrated into the system and support interaction only through keyboard and mouse events that are synthesized in the context of the current application through external wired buttons and translation of the infrared pen's movements as low-level operating system mouse events (see also [44]).…”