ABSTRACT
Technological advances have made it conceivable to build and deploy dense wireless networks of heterogeneous nodes collecting and disseminating wide ranges of environmental data [1]. An inspired reader can easily imagine a multiplicity of scenarios in which these sensor and actuator networks might excel. To mention just a few: environmental control in office buildings, robot control and guidance in automatic manufacturing environments, warehouse inventory, integrated patient monitoring, diagnostics and drug administration in hospitals, interactive toys, the smart home providing security, identification and personalization, and interactive museums. The overwhelming opportunities emerging from this technology
indeed give rise to new definitions of distributed computing and user interface. Regardless of the specific application, however, they all rely on a network of ubiquitously distributed sensor, compute, and actuation nodes, which are integrated and embedded into the fabrics of our daily living environment. This explains why the name “ambient intelligence” is often attributed to such environments [2].
