Intelligent Environments (IE) are spaces with embedded systems and information and communication technologies creating interactive spaces that bring computation into the physical world and enhance occupants experiences. "Intelligent environments are spaces in which computation is seamlessly used to enhance ordinary activity. One of the driving forces behind the emerging interest in highly interactive environments is to make computers not only genuine user-friendly but also essentially invisible to the user". IEs describe physical environments in which information and communication technologies and sensor systems disappear as they become embedded into physical objects, infrastructures, and the surroundings in which we live, travel and work. The goal here is to allow computers to take part in activities never previously involved and allow people to interact with computers via gesture, voice, movement, and context.
Origins
The idea of having an artificial intelligence capable of managing an environment, recollect data, and respond in consequence is older than we would expect. In the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968, long before the microcomputers revolution, you have the fictional character HAL 9000, a computer capable of controlling the different sensors and systems of the environment and using them as extensions of itself. The character Proteus from the 1973 novel Demon Seed also portrays the same characteristics of an artificial intelligence controlling an embedded environment. By the time these two novels were released, the idea of a computer controlling the environment that surrounds us was not broadly accepted by the community since both characters played the role of evil machines whose only objectives included the control over humans. The term 'Intelligent environments' is a concept and expression originally created by Peter Droege for his homonymous Elsevier publication of 1997, a project that commenced in 1986. The 1986 project was his winning entry into the Campus City Kawasaki competition in Japan, seeking to apply the benefits of information technology and advanced telecommunications to an entire city, its societal empowerment, trans-industrial prosperity and, above all, its environmental redemption. It is not until 1991 with the introduction of ubiquitous computing by Mark Weiser when we start seeing an inclination from the scientific community to study the area of computing outside of the typical machine with a keyboard and a screen. It became something that could be potentially implemented into anything that surrounds us, proposing casual access to computing to any user. In 1996 Hashimoto Laboratory at the University of Tokyo developed the first research on intelligent spaces. J.-H. Lee and H. Hashimoto designed a room with a homemade three-dimensional tracking sensor and mobile robots, all this connected to a network. The idea was for the robots to support the person in the room with different tasks with the help of vision cameras and computer sets, becoming one of the first intelligent environment. At first, intelligent spaces were designed with the only objective to help people with physical tasks. Robots included in the room would help people to grab objects as well as support people with disabilities to do certain jobs. This idea started shifting into the concept we have today of intelligent environments, not only an environment to support people but also robots. The intelligent space became a platform that extends the censorial capacity of anything connected to it. If we start designing products, either software or hardware around this intelligent environments, the effort needed to complete all kinds of tasks would be drastically reduced.
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