Ambient Intelligence

The metaphor of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) tries to picture a vision of the future where all of us will be surrounded by "intelligent" electronic environments, and this ambient has claims to being sensitive and responsive to our needs. A strong multi-disciplinary and collaborative approach is a key requirement for large scale technology innovation and the development of effective applications. An important feature of this volume is the link between the technology and the human experience of interacting in the world - through a neuro-psychological vision centered on the concept of "presence". Presence, the sense of being there, is the experience of projecting one's mind through media to other places, people and designed environments. The combination of recent discoveries in cognitive neuroscience and the breakthroughs at the level of the enabling technologies make it increasingly possible to build novel systems based on this understanding. The goal of this volume is to assess the technologies and processes that are behind the AmI vision to help the development of state-of-the-art applications.