Title: PROLOGUE

To date, many research projects have been launched in the area of Ambient Intelligence (AmI). The researchers in this field often refer to the same sources and references, of which the reports of the Information Society Technology Advisory Group (ISTAG) are the most prominent. We will build on this literature and provide a first listing of relevant sources in the bibliography. In this section we aim to introduce the concept and some of the unfolding realities of AmI. We start with a simple example of a smart home, to introduce some of the basis features of an intelligent environment, after which we will look into some of the definitions provided by ISTAG and others. They will highlight salient aspects of the AmI vision, for example the fact that it is based on interactive networked environments that function like an intelligent interface between users and their contexts. In the next paragraph AmI will be described in terms of three key concepts: ambience (ubiquitous computing and communication), intelligence (or adaptiveness) and personalisation (empowerment of the user). This chapter will end with a listing of possible fields of application, as foreseen by the ISTAG.