Towards a Platform for Widespread Embedded Intelligence - ERCIM

Ecology is defined by EASE as research
of the dynamic interaction system
between environment (eg technology in
general) and people, in any relation to
this technologically augmented environment.
Users' actions with the smart
applications shape the environment, and
the smart environments produce effects
on the users and the usage which may
even be reflected outside the actual
usage environment. The practise of this
dynamic relationship is in continuous
transition although it seeks stability.
Future computerised smart environments
are a challenging design target.
This issue is especially tricky when
designing public places and multi-user
environments. Private or semi-private
spaces (ie, work, car, home) can be
adjusted more easily according to individual
users or a certain user group. It is
also easier to compose common rules
and regulations for workplaces than for
public spaces, for example. One of the
great challenges and opportunities would
be to integrate the designer and the user
again and give control over his computerised
environment back to the user.
The technical development and consideration
of technological issues of smart
environments is going to be a huge job
for our global society. Equally important
is to consider cultural (including social
and ethical) issues related to the technological
progress of future computerised
environments. User involvement and
contextual studies of human technologyinteraction
in general are going to be a
largely accepted curriculum of society in
the near future. The great challenge is to
maintain a holistic or ecological
approach as a part of this curriculum, due
to its multi-disciplinary nature.
We want to test our approach in multifaceted
environments where contexts are
overlaid, interruptions in simultaneous
tasks are more regulation than exception
and where various user groups, with different
skills and technologies, want to
accomplish their primary and secondary
goals. Usually, the only valid way to
Ambiance: A Platform for Macroprogramming
Personalised Ambient Services
by Reza Razavi
A key enabling technology for Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is Wireless Sensor
Networks (WSNs). Macroprogramming WSNs by non-programmer end-users is
being studied as a step towards an omnipresent World Wide Web interface for
the provision of personalised ambient services.
A key enabling technology for AmI is
networks of large numbers of wirelesslyconnected
small, low-powered computers.
Such a system is called a
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) and
each node, a mote. WSNs can serve as an
infrastructure for the provision of personalised
ambient services. However,
WSNs face very limited processing,
memory, sensing, actuation and communication
ability of their motes.
Programming such networks means
those limitations need to be addressed.
Unfortunately, current methods for
WSN programming have led developers
to mix serious concerns, such as quality
of service requirements, with low-level
concerns like resource management,
synchronisation and routing. This makes
developing software for WSNs a costly
and error-prone endeavour, even for
expert programmers.
Macroprogramming is a new technique
which is being developed with the aim of
allowing programmers to capture the
operation of the sensor network as a
whole.
In this research, we focus on simplifying
sensor network programming by devel-
SPECIAL THEME: Embedded Intelligence
evaluate the concept is in the real-life
longitude studies and follow-up studies.
The timeframe of the project is January
2005 to December 2006 and it is funded
through the Finnish Funding Agency for
Technology and Innovation (Tekes),
VTT (Technical Research Centre of
Finland) and TTL (Finnish Institute of
Occupational Health). Other project
partners are the University of Lapland,
Tampere University of Technology,
University of Tampere, University of
Oulu, Helsinki University of
Technology and University of Art and
Design Helsinki. The project is coordinated
by VTT. The steering group of the
project consists of a wide range of enterprises
and organizations.
Link:
http://www.vtt.fi/proj/ease/
Please contact:
Veikko Ikonen
VTT - Technical Research Center of Finland
Tel: +358 20 722 3351
E-mail: Veikko.Ikonen@vtt.fi
oping a platform which supports macroprogramming
by non-professional programmers.
Our aim is to minimise the
required programming knowledge,
empowering ordinary users to interact
with the network so that they can intuitively
formulate the expected services.
Our architecture also supports an open,
concurrent system – requests may come
in asynchronously from uncoordinated
end-users. They are formulated using an
intuitive and omnipresent World Wide
Web interface. They are served ubiquitously
and in parallel.
Architecture of the Ambiance
Platform
To achieve the above goals, we are
working on extending the Adaptive
Object-Model (AOM) architectural style
with Actor-based concurrent computa-
ERCIM News No. 66, July 2006 33