Juan Carlos Augusto – författare

Our homes anticipate when we want to wake up. Our computers predict what music we want to buy. Our cars adapt to the way we drive. In today’s world, even washing machines, rice cookers and toys have the capability of autonomous decision-making. As we grow accustomed to computing power embedded in our surroundings, it becomes clear that these ‘smart environments’, with a number of devices controlled by a coordinating system capable of ‘ambient intelligence’, will play an ever larger role in our lives. This handbook provides readers with comprehensive, up-to-date coverage in what is a key technological field. . Systematically dealing with each aspect of ambient intelligence and smart environments, the text covers everything, from visual information capture and human/computer interaction to multi-agent systems, network use of sensor data, and building more rationality into artificial systems. The book also details a wide range of applications, examines case studies of recent major projects from around the world, and analyzes both the likely impact of the technology on our lives, and its ethical implications.

With a wide variety of separate disciplines all conducting research relevant to this field, this handbook encourages collaboration between disparate researchers by setting out the fundamental concepts from each area that are relevant to ambient intelligence and smart environments, providing a fertile soil in which ground-breaking new work candevelop.

This Handbook presents a comprehensive and rigorous overview of the state-of-the-art on Smart Cities. It provides the reader with an authoritative, exhaustive one-stop reference on how the field has evolved and where the current and future challenges lie. From the foundations to the many overlapping dimensions (human, energy, technology, data, institutions, ethics etc.), each chapter is written by international experts and amply illustrated with figures and tables with an emphasis on current research.

The Handbook is an invaluable desk reference for researchers in a wide variety of fields, not only smart cities specialists but also by scientists and policy-makers in related disciplines that are deeply influenced by the emergence of intelligent cities. It should also serve as a key resource for graduate students and young researchers entering the area, and for instructors who teach courses on these subjects. The handbook is also of interest to industry and business innovators.

The area of smart homes is fast developing as an emergent area which attracts the synergy of several areas of science. This volume offers a collection of contributions addressing how artificial intelligence (AI), one of the core areas of computer science, can bring the growing area of smart homes to a higher level of functionality where homes can truly realize the long standing dream of proactively helping their inhabitants in an intelligent way.

After an introductory section to describe a smart home scenario and to provide some basic terminology, the following 9 sections turn special attention to a particular exemplar application scenario (provision of healthcare and safety related services to increase the quality of life) exploring the application of specific areas of AI to this scenario.