EU funds innovative European ambient intelligence infrastructure

EU funds innovative European ambient intelligence infrastructure

With the technological development of 'intelligent' devices progressing rapidly, information and communications technologies (ICT) experts are getting closer to developing a working example of the first ever structured ambient intelligence infrastructure available to all.



A futuristic concept, ambient intelligence will, in the relatively near future, provide individuals with user-friendly and intelligent support through the use of ICTs. In practise, this will increasingly result in the replacement of desktop computers with technological devices embedded in everyday objects and environments. 'Rooms will be able to recognise and respond to the presence of a particular individual, and support them in an intelligent and unobtrusive way. Data will be collected with minimal human input required; users will spend less time entering and recording data and more time being intelligently informed by their environment,' explains the eu-DOMAIN consortium service, which, with the support of the European Commission, is hoping to develop this concept at European level.



'The eu-DOMAIN project aims to interconnect people, devices, buildings and information content in an open, flexible, intelligent network,' explain the consortium partners in a statement.



'eu-DOMAIN will enable mobile workers to access their 'virtual user profile' wherever they need to work, intelligently accessing the services and devices they need. It will allow content providers to offer advanced 'augmented reality' services to such users, creating new ways of collaborative working. These services will be transparently delivered across mixed networks and devices with different capabilities' they add.



The project aims to adopt the objectives of the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF) created by Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia, and Siemens in 2001 with the objective of developing future strategic research directions in the wireless field.



The project, by embracing the best state of the art technologies available and developing a new European ambient intelligence mobile platform, will lead to innovative business structures. It is hoped those new business models, linking content and service providers in collaborative systems, will provide frameworks for identifying potential future business opportunities.

I'm not crazy when I say this is all leading somewhere, am I? I think I prefer this term, ambient intelligence, to 'pervasive computing' and some of the others that describe this type of thing. Check out Echelon if you want to get into networking everyday devices.