Ambient intelligence: Technologies, applications, and opportunities

Ambient intelligence is an emerging discipline that brings intelligence to our everyday environments and makes those environments sensitive to us. Ambient intelligence (AmI) research builds upon advances in sensors and sensor networks, pervasive computing, and artificial intelligence. Because these contributing fields have experienced tremendous growth in the last few years, AmI research has strengthened and expanded. Because AmI research is maturing, the resulting technologies promise to revolutionarize daily human life by making people’s surroundings flexible and adaptive. In this paper we provide a survey of the technologies that comprise ambient intelligence and of the applications that are dramatically affected by it. In particular, we specifically focus on the research that makes AmI technologies “intelligent”. We also highlight challenges and opportunities that AmI researchers will face in the coming years.