Untitled AMI THROUGH EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Emerging Technologies has become a term which considers the convergence of such areas as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, cognitive science, robotics, and artificial intelligence. While previous FIDIS deliverable such as D7.7 (‘Report on AmI, profiling and RFID’) have explored how we can actually apply artificial intelligence techniques to large datasets to ‘find’ new information, here we look at the fundamental technologies which may be used in an AmI scenario for capturing and handling the data from which this knowledge may be drawn. Such technologies appear to stem from this idea of domain fusion, meaning that AmI may actually be an application area made possible through this new emerging technology phenomenon. 

Simple Sensors

Typically, sensors are simple devices which monitor single variables. They are not ‘smart’ as such, and thus produce data (i.e. numbers and values) rather than information (i.e. what the numbers and values actually mean in their context). However, the combined pool of data from multiple sensors can be used to infer new information. For example, knowing one physiological attribute of a person may lead to several interpretations of that person’s current psychological state. However, the combined resources of multiple types of sensor, perhaps reading heart rate, body posture, hormone levels, skin temperature and galvanic resistance may lead to more accurate estimation of emotional state. This in essence is at the heart of technologies such as affective computing (see section ) which can self-adapt based on the user’s attitude and mental state.

By augmenting an environment with simple sensors, the ‘pool’ of data is increased. Technology developments, especially in the field of material science, are making a new generation of simple and low cost sensors a reality, and indeed augmentation of these devices through nano, information and communication technologies will lead to a new wave of smart sensor devices. 

Radio Frequency Identification

Although currently utilised in many incarnations, RFID technology has far from reached maturity. The workings and some of the associated issues of RFID have been discussed at length in several other FIDIS deliverables (for example see D3.6, D3.7, D7.7 and D12.3) so will not be re-iterated here. However, RFID has undoubtedly become inherently associated with AmI as an enabling technology because it fulfils several of the key requirements, most notably those of cost and power, meaning highly redundant numbers of unobtrusive devices can be located within an environment. In brief, RFID tags wirelessly communicate data to reader devices, from which typically the power is supplied wirelessly to the tag. The data, in the simplest devices, is a unique code which identifies the tag, and thus the object, if known, to which it is attached. 

One of the key advantages to RFID is the prospect that such tags will be embedded in all objects within an environment because there are varying advantages to doing so. These range from ease of stock taking, logistics, product shipping to security and indeed simply identification. Thus if one buys a product that is equipped with an RFID tag for shop security purposes, then unless it is destroyed on purchase, the tag makes the product a uniquely identifiable object within an environment. Moreover, if the AmI is able to conclude what a new object is through the context in which it is interacted with, then this is additional information further exploitable by the dynamic environment.