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Computational Intelligence and Applications

Introduction to Ambient Intelligence

In last few decades, technical fields and devices have rapidly developed, and
today, it’s almost impossible to imagine a day without using them. With that said,
human need for improvement has brought them to the point where the technology
is tried to be implemented in every single aspect of life. Some of the most recent
trends in last few years are terms so-called artificial intelligence and machine
learning. Those terms are used to define machines that have decision-making
capabilities which can be used to improve human life. The concept of
implementing this technology in our environment and everyday objects is known
as ambient intelligence, and it was introduced back in 1999 by ISTAG Group
according to Bick and Kummer (2010). Although different scientists are defining
Ambient Intelligence in various ways, Landau (2013) says that ambient
intelligence can be thought about as an environment that adapts to and supports
the people located in it. To be more precise, it’s a massive network of different
computers, actuators, and sensors which continuously communicate and work
together to fulfil their only objective which is making the inhabitant life easier.
Those devices are fitted inside of microchips which can be completely
unnoticeable and put in the objects human use one daily basis (e.g. clothing).
Ambient intelligence systems also need to be user-friendly, intelligent, embedded
and most of all personalised. That means the customisability and adaptivity are
the fundamental characteristics necessary to achieve the goal of making
someone’s life easier.

Applications

Today, those systems are most widely used inside of buildings and houses, and
they are often called smart homes. They are the perfect example of ambient
intelligence systems, and they show how far the computational intelligence has
developed. People inside of those homes are constantly surrounded by many
devices that are capable of recognising their presence and tracking their actions.
Hagras et al. (2004) were one of the first ones to research this idea and bring the
smart homes to life. They had an intent to create a room that would be completely
autonomous and could customise itself in response to human behaviour. One of
the main characteristics of ambient intelligence systems is that they are invisible,
unnoticeable and should not distract the humans in any possible way. With that in
mind, some of the first and most important challenges researchers faced were
creating a place that does not look any different than the ordinary bedroom and
hiding all of the devices needed for the system to work. To make the room as
supporting as possible, they had to join a variety of different sensors and actuators
together to accomplish their goal. In the simplified version of the smart room,
they embedded light, temperature, humidity and similar sensors all over the room
and used them to capture and send the data to the central computer. Depending on
the system complexity and number of sensors and actuators they use
microcontrollers and microcomputers to process and save the captured data. After
processing the data, the controlling signals are sent to different actuators and in
most rooms as in the one researchers created they used dimmable lights, fan
heaters, fan coolers, desk lamps and automatic blinds... All of these devices are
interconnected into a single network, and they can be connected by cable, WI-FI
or Bluetooth. The whole system is modular and customisable which means new
tracking devices can be added at any given time. When the entire system is
connected, the computer processes the input signals using the fuzzy logic systems.
Erdei and Borlan (2011) claim that those systems are designed to handle complex
controlling problems using the fuzzy logic heuristic models and mathematics,
instead of mathematical models derived from differential equations that basic
controlling systems use. According to Mahmoud, Lofti and Langensiepen (2016),
fuzzy logic-based systems can be used to model uncertain data collected from
sensor networks just as in this room. The primary goal of this method is to predict
the user needs by receiving the data from the sensors and adjusting the actuators
according to the needs anticipated by the system. This system is designed to learn
over the time rather than having constant data values embedded inside of it. When
enabled, the system will read the values from the sensors, e.g. temperature, and
adjust the heating and cooling actuators to keep the room temperature stable and
adapt it to the user needs. The system will also keep track of the time of the day
and sync it with different sensors. For example, the time tracking and light
tracking is used to adjust the blinds and room lighting. The possibilities are almost
endless, the more sensors and actuators are added the more modern and user-
friendly the room will be. If the user is not satisfied with the user parameters, he
has full control of the actuators and can adjust them by controlling the values from
the application which is directly connected with the microcontroller and fuzzy
system.

The Impact of Ambient Intelligence

In the experimental results, the system was able to learn a lot of the rules in only
a few days. The more actions the user has performed, the more laws the system
was able to learn. If the user were, for example, switching on the light each time
he got in the room at a specific time of the day, the system would learn it and do
it automatically next time he comes in. The process is not all straightforward, and
there are a lot of present challenges that can affect the performance of the systems.
Sensors and actuators imprecision, the large number of sources and lack of
adequate models of some processes can cause huge problems with the system
performance (Hagras et al. 2004). Today, ambient intelligence systems like these
have a massive impact on our society and development. The trend of smart homes
is widely popular today, and most of the modern built environments feature some
sort of ambient intelligence inside of it. However, some people still have a lot of
concerns about this technology. Ambient intelligence systems are expected to
bring huge benefits to the society but they come with some concerns and
drawbacks. Most common and essential ones are privacy and security. Not any of
the networks on this planet can be completely secure, and that implies to the
ambient intelligence networks as well. Since they are always collecting a massive
amount of user data in order to be as personalised as they can, there are risks that
collected data can be abused. It can be used to monitor the user and even control
some aspects of his life by intentionally connecting to the user's ambient
intelligence network and interfering with the systems. Wright (2005) states that
each year there are more than 10 million identity thefts in America and expansion
of ambient intelligence systems is expected to increase those numbers drastically.
Attacks like those are becoming more numerous and more sophisticated every
year which brings enormous area for improvement for the ambient intelligence
systems. Privacy problem has been detected in very early development of the area,
and it encouraged many groups across all over the world to develop safeguards
which can become protocols and standards for ambient intelligence networks. To
raise the awareness and ensure the information security, many organisational
steps are taken in the companies to improve user knowledge about the need to
protect their information. Despite all of this work, there is still a large percentage
of consumers that are unaware of these dangers, and they take their ambient
intelligence systems for granted.

Conclusion

Each day technology is more involved in our lives whether we notice it or not.
Computing and technology fields are rapidly developing which leads to devices
getting smaller and smarter. The scientists had an idea of using those devices to
support the everyday human life without being noticeable. This plan is highly
implemented in any modern environment today, and it’s recognisable by a term
of smart homes. Those systems are very complex today, and they can include up
to hundreds or even thousands of sensors and actuators working together to
achieve their goal. Sensors and actuators are all interconnected in one network so
they can all communicate together when needed. In many cases, systems are
designed to use multiple sensors of the same type for security reasons because a
simple one sensor failure could lead to fatal results. Ambient Intelligence idea is
still far away from the perfect as many of the privacy concerns are raised because
of it. Computer networks can’t be 100% secure, and the same applies to the
ambient intelligence networks. If someone successfully breaches into the system,
he would be able to track the user and control his environment completely.
However, those problems have been addressed early in the development, and
many organisational steps are taken to improve the security and encourage groups
to build the ambient intelligence safeguards for the ambient intelligence networks.

References

Hagras, H., Callaghan, V., Colley, M., Clarke, G., Pounds-Cornish, A., Duman,
H., (2010). Creating an ambient-intelligence environment using embedded agents
[online] Available at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1363729/ [Accessed 1
Dec. 2017].

Landau, R., 2013. Ambient intelligence for the elderly: hope to age respectfully?
[online] Available at:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/1460457471/fulltext/3723CF367AAD40A
3PQ [Accessed 1 Dec. 2017].

Erdei, Z. and Borlan, P., 2011. Fuzzy logic control. [online] Available at:
https://doaj.org/article/7fb6f70222eb4184a72b298625e68110 [Accessed 1 Dec.
2017].

Mahmoud, S., Lotfi, A. and Langensiepen, C., 2016. User activities outliers
detection; Integration of statistical and computational intelligence techniques.
[online] Available at:
http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/19341/1/PubSub983_Lotfi_EP19341_03022017.p
df [Accessed 1 Dec. 2017].

Wright, D., 2005. The dark side of ambient intelligence. [online] Available at:
https://search.proquest.com/docview/274905392/fulltext/9734160D49C248D9P
Q [Accessed 1 Dec. 2017].

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