Artificial Intelligence Goes Mobile

One trend in computer technology over the last decades was definitely that of devices becoming smaller and personal. Monolithic main-frame systems with many users are almost extinct and personal computers were the first milestone in this evolution. But the PC was not the end of the line. The personal computer is still getting smaller and portable computers such as powerful laptops and less powerful but lighter personal digital assistants (PDAs) are now getting extremely popular. But even this is not the end of this process. The next step are wearable computers that are carried by the user like cloths and where new display technologies like head-mounted displays, allow new ways of augmenting the user’s reality. The preliminary end of this development seems to be the disappearing computer where computers are not perceived as technical devices any more, but rather form a computing environment in the user’s world, embedded into cloths, cars, items like TV sets, but also into microwave ovens and even milk bottles. According to the vision of the pioneers of these new computerized infrastructures, people may be reminded to buy milk when they come along the dairy shelf in the supermarket, because of a message that has been sent to the user’s wearable computer from the refrigerator that has monitored its content. There are many other scenarios where users can receive personalized information adapted to the actual situation.