Ambient Intelligence (AmI) envisions a future where humans will be surrounded by intelligent computing and networking technologies unobtrusively embedded in their surroundings, that will naturally interact with humans, answer people's needs, and even anticipate people's behaviours. This concept results from four converging technologies:
- Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: focused on integration of hardware (microprocessors) and software (services) elements into everyday objects like furniture, clothing, white goods, toys, even paint.
- Ubiquitous Communications: providing to these objects the way to communicate between each other and with the user by means of wireless communication infrastructure and protocols (ad-hoc, access-point networking).
- Intelligent User Interfaces: which enables peoples users of the AmI environment to interact with the environment in a natural (voice, gestures) and personalized way (preferences).
- Smart Architectures: allowing a dynamic link between the different services, communications and interfaces in order to integrate, deploy and manage them by achieving specifi c properties (compatibility, dependency, security, privacy, autonomy).
The CITI addresses communication and software architecture for ambient intelligent environment and smart devices.