Technology
As the Intelligent Environments Conference (2007) points out: 'Types of Intelligent Environments range from private to public and from fixed to mobile; some are ephemeral while others are permanent; some change type during their life span. The realisation of Intelligent Environments requires the convergence of different disciplines: Information and Computer Science, Architecture, Material Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Sociology and Design. In addition, technical breakthroughs are required in key enabling technology fields, such as, microelectronics (e.g., miniaturisation, power consumption), communication and networking technologies (e.g., broadband and wireless networks), smart materials (e.g., bio-implants) and intelligent agents (e.g., context awareness and ontologies)'.
An example of such spaces is the 'Intelligent Room'; a laboratory room which supports computer vision, speech recognition, and movement tracking, based on about fifty distinct intercommunication software agents that run on interconnected computers (Cohen 1997). Another is Intelligent cities, territories that sustain innovation processes with virtual spaces and ICTs (Komninos 2002). An extremely rich source of applications and experimentations in the field is to be found in the Intelligent Community Forum (2007) and the cities selected by ICF as top intelligent communities.
The critical question is not whether we may build intelligent environments, but how we may use these environments as instruments for distributed problem-solving (Bowen-James 1997; Novak 1997).
Read more about this topic: Intelligent Environments
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