Ambient Intelligence: Impact on Embedded System Design

Hugo de Man Professor Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Senior Research Fellow IMEC The steady evolution of hardware, software and communications technology is rapidly transforming the PC- and dot.com world into the world of Ambient Intelligence (AmI). This next wave of information technology is fundam- tally different in that it makes distributed wired and wireless computing and communication disappear to the background and puts users to the foreground. AmI adapts to people instead of the other way around. It will augment our consciousness, monitor our health and security, guide us through traffic etc. In short, its ultimate goal is to improve the quality of our life by a quiet, reliable and secure interaction with our social and material environment. What makes AmI engineering so fascinating is that its design starts from studying person to world interactions that need to be implemented as an int- ligent and autonomous interplay of virtually all necessary networked electronic intelligence on the globe. This is a new and exciting dimension for most elect- cal and software engineers and may attract more creative talent to engineering than pure technology does. Development of the leading technology for AmI will only succeed if the engineering research community is prepared to join forces in order to make Mark Weiser's dream of 1991 come true. This will not be business as usual by just doubling transistor count or clock speed in a microprocessor or increasing the bandwidth of communication.

"This book is truly an eye-opener as it is the first book that relates the dream scenarios of Ambient Intelligence quantitatively to the technical challenges and requirements of the huge distributed and interoperable embedded systems needed to implement AmI systems in the real world. This book is strongly recommended to a wide spectrum of engineers interested to embark in this rapidly emerging and fascinating technology."
(From the foreword by Hugo De Man, Professor K.U. Leuven and Senior Research Fellow IMEC)

Contenu
Omnia Fieri Possent.- Embedded System Design Issues in Ambient Intelligence.- Ambient Intelligence: A Computational Platform Perspective.- Ambient Intelligence and the Development of Embedded System Software.- Preparation of Heterogeneous Networks for Ambient Intelligence.- The Butt of the Iceberg: Hidden Security Problems of Ubiquitous Systems.- Emerging Challenges in Designing Secure Mobile Appliances.- The Domestic Robot - A Friendly Cognitive System Takes Care of your Home.- QoS-Based Resource Management for Ambient Intelligence.- Terminal QoS: Advanced Resource Management for Cost-Effective Multimedia Appliances in Dynamic Contexts.- Scalability and Error Protection - Means for Error-Resilient, Adaptable Image Transmission in Heterogeneous Environments.- Metaprogramming Techniques for Designing Embedded Components for Ambient Intelligence.- Application-Domain-Driven System Design for Pervasive Video Processing.- Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks.- Energy-Efficient Communication for High Density Networks.- Application Re-Mapping for Fault-Tolerance in Ambient Intelligent Systems.