IEE Seminar on Intelligent Building Environments
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- Location: Colchester, UK
- Conference date: 28 June 2005
- ISBN: 0 86341 518 0
- Conference number: 2005/11059
- The following topics are discussed: intelligent building environments; robotics and mechatronics; embedded computing; ubiquitous computing; autonomous agent learning and control; pervasive computing; mobile computing; ambient intelligence; and user-friendly spoken dialogue systems
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Explorations in the problem of interactive systems design for `intelligent places'
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In this article the author considers why it is that so much effort has been expended in designing intelligent systems for home settings and why this effort has been in large part to no avail. The author suggests that one reason has been that what intelligence might be and what an intelligent technology might do in the home has often been modelled on assumptions that are more appropriate for other places and environments. The author shows with evidence from his own research on smart homes, that people turn technology on when they get home so as to switch themselves off, that they use technology, in other words, to make themselves more dumb. The author argues that there should be no surprise in this or shock for the researcher of smart environments: rather recognition of their own everyday and all too often forgotten experience. Yet we argue that in recognising this ordinary fact about everyday lives, new opportunities can be identified for designing systems that, when turned on, do indeed help the user to unwind, to distract themselves, and to play. Having commented on the home of the future, the author then remark that developing a sensibility for home settings can also direct us toward developing a sensibility for other environments where systems can play a more embedded, more `intelligent' role. (13 pages)
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Privacy, freedom and control in the intelligent environment
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An intelligent environment, which responds automatically to the changing physical, emotional and informational needs of individuals, offers the potential to liberate people from the mundane mechanics of life and enable them to concentrate on what is important. To do this, the system must track and monitor individuals to build up a detailed behavioural profile. But who controls the data or information generated by the technology and to what extent is the user being controlled by someone or something else. The information used to free the individual from the mundane could be used to exercise an unparalleled degree of social control. This explores the issues of privacy, freedom and control in intelligent environments, and the new institutional structures that may emerge in response. (17 pages)
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The role of embedded agents in creating ambient intelligent environments
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Embedded agents are embedded computational artefacts integrated with intelligent reasoning and learning mechanisms. The embedded agents are able to personalise themselves to the user's needs and preferences by learning from their behaviour and thus configuring and controlling the user's environments on their behalf. Thus these agents can reduce the cognitive load associated with configuring and programming ubiquitous computing environments. Due to the limited processing power and memory capacities of embedded computers, the intelligent mechanisms that are used in embedded-agents have to be computationally undemanding. Moreover, the intelligent approaches applied should have transparent internal representations such that their learnt behaviours and decisions can be represented in the form of human readable rules, which are accessible to the end user. (19 pages)
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Open systems - myth or magic
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A common protocol providing total definition of all device functionality including communications, intelligence built into sensors and final control elements. The organisation promotes integration of open multi-vendor control systems to provide interoperability design guidelines and to provide conformance testing and certification. (8 pages)
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New sensor architectures for responsive environments
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v1:15
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As processors have escalated in capability via Moores Law, electronic sensors have similarly advanced. Rather than dedicate a small number of sensors to hardwired designs that expressly measure parameters of interest, we can begin to envision a near future with sensors as commodity where dense, multimodal sensing is the rule rather than the exception, and where features relevant to many applications are dynamically extracted from a rich data stream. This article overviews recent results from several projects at the MIT Media Lab and the Responsive Environments Group that look at various embodiments of such agile sensing structures, including high-bandwidth, wireless multimodal sensor clusters, massively distributed, ultra-low-power "featherweight" sensor nodes, and extremely dense sensor networks as digital "skins". The author also touch on other examples involving new types of sensing applied to human-computer interfaces and interactive media, plus overview our work on parasitic power harvesting. (10 pages)
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Intelligent building environments
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Sadly there are far more failures than successes in delivery of systems integration, with too many clients feeling let down by the technology deliverer's. Continuing the examination of integrating legacy systems with true "vanilla" open systems. The presentation will look back for lessons to be learnt and forward to clients receiving what they have long wanted, but from a different set of delivery partners. (12 pages)
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Device to enterprise communication for buildings and the oBiX Web services standard (Abstract only)
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It is being rapidly realised that remote management of buildings is part of the fast developing M2M, machine to machine business, and that new Web services based communications standards like oBiX - Open Building Information Exchange- are important enablers for business growth. (2 pages)
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Building automation networks versus IT networks
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This presentation will look at the evolution of building automation network infrastructure, the potential for integration into existing IT network infrastructure, the issues to be considered, potential benefits with reference to "Open Standards", reliability and security. (12 pages)
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The role of wireless communications in intelligent building environments
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This paper describes the role of wireless communications in intelligent building environments. The following areas are examined: consumer electronics; personal computing; mobile automation and control; and security. (30 pages)
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Applied 'open standards' technology some examples of successfully integrated buildings
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This presentation will present a variety of projects in which 'Open Standards' technology has been applied. These include LonWorks, integrated IT networks and OPC. (11 pages)
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TWIN: A revolution in elevator construction
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Without lifts high-rise buildings would not be feasible. However, as building heights increase lifts occupy an ever increasing percentage of the building core. At some point lifts occupy so much of the core space that the economic viability of a building is jeopardized. TWIN is a lift system that permits two lifts to occupy the same shaft. This greatly reduces the amount of core space that the lifts occupy and makes taller buildings economically viable. The TWIN concept and various TWIN application schemes are explained. (14 pages)
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What are "safety critical functions" in an intelligent building? Who cares? Who is responsible? What are the risks?
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A risk based approach offers potential safety benefits but requires active risk management and new competences to achieve the safety goal. The concept of functional safety must be embraced if the potential safety benefits to be derived from emerging electronic technologies are to be realised. IEC 61508/EN 61508 is the key international and European standard for the safe application of complex electronic technologies and adopts a risk based approach. (34 pages)
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Location-aware computing and intelligent environments
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Location information is perhaps the most important element of physical context available for intelligent environments. By making use of the locations of humans, devices, and other objects, physical spaces such as homes, offices and public areas can adapt appropriately to best support their inhabitants. Recent location sensing systems have made use of a variety of media including sound and radio signals, and operate over scales ranging from centimetres to kilometres. Depending on this scale and other parameters, different intelligent environment applications can be facilitated. Room-scale location can be used for apps such as automatic configuration of lighting/heating to suit inhabitants, while centimetre-scale location enables apps based on 3D user interfaces. This article discusses the state of the art in location sensing, together with examples of applications in the area of intelligent environments. (13 pages)
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The adaptive house
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The promise of automated "smart homes" has been much touted in the press for the past quarter-century. However, few automation innovations have been adopted because home inhabitants seldom view the benefits as outweighing the costs. One significant cost of an automated home is that it has to be programmed to behave appropriately. We describe an alternative approach in which the goal is for the home essentially to program itself by observing the lifestyle and desires of inhabitants and then learning to anticipate their needs. This adaptive home operates almost transparently to the inhabitants, in contrast to the cumbersome user interfaces common in traditional automated homes. The author describes his experiences over the past decade with a system in his home that controls ambient temperature and lighting so as to simultaneously maintain a comfortable environment and conserve energy. Finally, this article reflect on the successes and limitations of the work. (41 pages)
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Mobilizing intelligent environments (Abstract only)
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v1:81
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Automobiles provide an interesting and challenging domain for research as well as applications of intelligent environment and associated technologies. Some of the ideas and concepts developed around "smart spaces" (rooms and buildings) can be extended to the automobile domain. However, the special constraints imposed by size, time, speed, criticality, and environmental variations, make this domain significantly different. In this presentation, we provide a systems-oriented framework and roadmap for examining automobile-based intelligent environments. We consider three main components of the system, driver, vehicle, and vehicle surround. We discuss various issues and ideas for developing of models for these main components as well as tasks associated with the complex task of safe driving. The presentation includes discussion of novel sensory systems and algorithms for capturing not only the dynamic surround information of the vehicle but also the state, intent and behavior patterns of drivers. (2 pages)
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Cooperative artefacts
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Cooperative artefacts are physical objects, commonly associated with purposes other than computing, but instrumented with embedded computing, wireless communication, and sensors and actuators. Thus augmented, physical objects can monitor their state, share observations with other artefacts, and collectively model their situation and react to changes in the world. This enables software processes to be tightly coupled with physical activity, and to be embedded "where the action is". This article discusses a conceptual framework for cooperative artefacts, present experience with prototyping applications demonstrating the concept, and consider the specific challenge of instrumenting artefacts with spatial awareness. (25 pages)
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Development of a programmable sensor interface for wireless network nodes
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This paper reports on the development of a programmable sensor interface board for wireless network sensor nodes to be used in the development of a solution to perform intelligent measurements of the environment in a plant-growing region. The MICA2 mote from Crossbow is selected as the wireless network node. The design of a generic sensor interface board architecture to be embedded in the wireless node is focused upon in this paper. The programmable system on a chip (PSoC) approach proposed, allows the interface to be configured using computational means. Through the development of this sensor interface layer the flexibility and adaptability of connecting both digital and analog, as well as conditioned and unconditioned sensors has been achieved. Different sensors can be connected to the mote through the PSoC interface, enabling the mote to discover any type of sensor as a plug and play device. The paper also describes a power supply board that has been designed to enable the mote to be functional for longer period of time. This board also enables sensors, which require non-standard voltage supply to be integrated into the system. (6 pages)
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Resource-aware dynamic task-allocation in clusters of embedded smart cameras by mobile agents
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This paper presents a dynamic task allocation method for smart cameras targeting traffic surveillance. Since our target platforms are distributed embedded systems with limited resources, the task allocation has to be light-weight, flexible as well as scalable and has to support real-time requirements. Therefore, surveillance tasks are not allocated to smart cameras directly, but to groups of smart cameras, so called surveillance clusters. We formulate the allocation problem as a distributed constraint satisfaction problem (DCSP) and present a distributed method for finding feasible allocations. Finally, a cost function is used to determine the optimal allocation of tasks. We have realized this dynamic task allocation using heterogeneous, mobile agents which utilize their agencies and our embedded software framework to find the most appropriate mapping of tasks in a distributed manner. The dynamic task allocation has been implemented on our smart cameras (SmartCam) which are comprised of a network processor and several digital signal processors (DSPs) and provide a complex software framework. (9 pages)
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A comparison of some data-based methods for the off-line generation of fuzzy logic controllers for an intelligent building environment
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v2:109
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Ambient intelligence is nowadays an active research field. As a key matter of this concept, learning architectures for the control of the devices in an intelligent building must be developed, where the goal is to control the environmental via a set of devices using an intelligent agent which should work in a non-intrusive manner to satisfy the preferences of the user. Mainly, we have focused our attention over fuzzy logic controllers (FLC) for the internal structure of the agent. The main motivation for the work described in this paper is to check different alternatives selecting a suitable method for the off-line data driven automatic generation of FLCs for the agent. We have performed the experiments with real data gathered from the Essex Intelligent Dormitory. (7 pages)
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Adaptive on-line co-ordination of ubiquitous computing devices with multiple objectives and constraints
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This paper presents a novel embedded agent controller architecture that uses a unique multi-objective and multi-constraint evolutionary system to co-ordinate real world ubiquitous computing devices. The devices operate in real world environments and should be able to learn the users' preferences without having the users to preconfigure them. The system of embedded agents should be fault-tolerant in the sense that it should be able to handle the agents breaking down or being added into the system. The experiments presented in this paper will test the embedded agent architecture's performance and how it adapts to sudden changes on-line. We will also show how the evolutionary system copes as the number of devices and hence the complexity of the problem increases. (9 pages)
