Middleware Architecture for Ambient Intelligence in the Networked Home

With computing and communication capabilities now embedded in most physical objects of the surrounding environment and most users carrying wireless computing devices, the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) / pervasive computing vision [28] pioneered by Mark Weiser [32] is becoming a reality. Devices carried by nomadic users can seamlessly network with a variety of devices, both stationary and mobile, both nearby and remote, providing a wide range of functional capabilities, from base sensing and actuating to rich applications (e.g., smart spaces). This then allows the dynamic deployment of pervasive applications, which dynamically compose functional capabilities accessible in the pervasive network at the given time and place of an application request. In the smart home environment, this translates into integrating today’s, still mostly distinct, four application domains of the networked home: