Philips Research - Technologies

Ambient Intelligence

Changing lives for the better

This year (2003), philips’ vision of ambient intelligence reached its fourth birthday. it is the vision of a world in which technology, in the form of small but powerful silicon chips, will be integrated into almost everything around us, from where it will create an environment that is sensitive to the presence of people and responsive to their needs. an ambient intelligence environment will be capable of greeting us when we get home, of judging our mood and adjusting our environment to reflect it or soothe it. such an environment is still a vision, but it is one that has already struck a chord in the minds of researchers around the world and become the subject of several major industry initiatives. one such initiative that has already paid valuable dividends is philips’ homelab – a test bed for ambient intelligence that is more like a real home than a laboratory.

Gaining momentum
The vision of Ambient Intelligence first proposed by Philips Research back in 1999 is now, in some shape or form, a significant part of scientific research around the world. It has been an important theme in Philips Research’s collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in particular in MIT’s Oxygen project, which is developing technology for the computer of the 21st century. Another alliance with INRIA and Thomson Multimedia has resulted in the initiation of a special project called Ambient Intelligence Research and Development, which is developing software platforms for Ambient Intelligence applications in the home.

In addition to these initiatives, Ambient Intelligence has also won significant financial backing from the European Union. During a series of workshops organized by the Information Society and Technology Advisory Group (ISTAG), which serves as an influential advisory board to the European Union, Philips’ vision of Ambient Intelligence was adopted in 2001 as the leading theme for the Sixth Framework on IST Research in Europe. This will result in a European research programme, with a budget of 3.7 billion Euros over the coming four years and dedicated to the topic.

Philips’ own commitment to Ambient Intelligence is typified by its investment in HomeLab – a home that is also a laboratory, not a laboratory that is also a home. HomeLab has real living spaces in which the technology is as well hidden from view as it will be when Ambient Intelligence comes to us all, and several Philips Research establishments throughout the world currently contribute to the programmes that run there.

Many of the identifiable characteristics of Ambient Intelligence and the technological solutions that have been developed in HomeLab and other parts of Philips Research to implement them you will find discussed elsewhere in this issue of Password. Ultimately however, Ambient Intelligence is not about technology but about people, because it is not Ambient Intelligence that will shape the future of ordinary people, it is ordinary people who will shape the future of Ambient Intelligence – by making decisions on how they want their lives to be changed. Some of the most vital research in HomeLab is therefore aimed at gaining important psychological clues as to what those decisions might be.

Privacy and trust
In the same way that HomeLab is as close as possible to a real home, the human guinea pigs that are selected to live in it are as close as possible to ordinary people. They are selected from members of the general public by an independent selection agency, the only criteria being that they fit certain profile parameters such as age and interests.

Not surprisingly, when these people first enter HomeLab they are highly inquisitive about the environment. Although they are aware that it is a technologically advanced home, technology in the form they have been used to is nowhere to be seen. Instead of conventional TV sets, for example, there are merely screens with none of the usual controls.

A typical first response is to seek out the technology, up-ending chairs and other items of furniture in the belief that they will find technology in everything. While some of this inquisitiveness is probably due to natural curiosity, it is also based in a deep-rooted mistrust of a technology that they know must continuously monitor their activities in order to do its job properly. Thoughts of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ are probably not too far from their minds.

In practice, this issue of trust (or mistrust) is one of the main areas of concern for scientists at Philips Research and it is why HomeLab project teams typically include one or more experimental psychologists as well as engineers and scientists. With its firm commitment to improving the quality of people’s lives, Philips is only too aware that no matter how advanced its technology and how exciting the scenarios in which it is used, people will not accept it if they do not trust it. The results of its research so far have shown that simply giving consumers access to and control over the data that the system collects about them is often sufficient to allay there fears, even if they do not choose to exercise that ability.

This question of trust is closely linked to another social issue that is addressed in HomeLab – namely the issue of privacy. For a long time, video telephony has been hailed as one of the next killer applications for the connected home, but nearly always in the context of the way existing voice calls are made – the phone rings and you choose whether or not to answer it. In an Ambient Intelligence environment, however, one of the main applications for such links is seen as creating a continuous feeling of togetherness so that you can share specific experiences or everyday living with friends and relations who are physically separated from you.

Experiments in HomeLab have shown that ‘full-motion’ video links that show every movement and facial expression of each group member can actually be quite disturbing, because participants have the uneasy feeling of being watched. A better feeling of togetherness was created when the visual information available from remote sites was limited to a sketch-like outline of each person. This is a typical example of how experiments within HomeLab have proven that intuitive solutions are not always the correct ones.

Researchers in HomeLab have also investigated ways in which this feeling of togetherness can be engendered as a continuous background task rather than being confined to specific activities such as watching a football match together. When you live with people in the same house, you pick up a lot of contextual clues about who is at home and what they are doing – for example, the shoes that you see in the hallway when you arrive home, the sound of running water in the bathroom or the smell of cooking from the kitchen.

Philips Research is therefore looking at ways in which some of this contextual information can be communicated between homes in a way that does not intrude on individual privacy. One idea is that the level of activity on utility feeds such as gas, water and electricity could be monitored and transmitted to the homes of friends or family members in order to provide such clues.

A key advantage of HomeLab is that it is a fully working home as well as a laboratory, which means that participants can easily live in it continuously for several days. This has two important advantages. Firstly, it gives them time to forget that they are being observed, not only by the sensors that are built into the Ambient Intelligence systems but also by Philips’ researchers from behind one-way mirrors. Secondly, it allows them to become familiar with the environment and to settle down into daily routines that closely resemble those that apply in their own homes.

This second phase, when participants have overcome the wow-factor and become oblivious to the cameras, is the one that yields the results Philips Research is looking for. During this time, the activities, postures, facial expressions and the social and user-system interactions of participants are all recorded so that they can be analysed to identify system improvements and new applications.

After more than a year in which several projects have run in HomeLab, several important facts have already come to light. Once people realize the benefits of new technology, they begin to trust it. Once they trust it, they become comfortable with it. And once they become comfortable with it, it changes their lives.

A culture of cooperation
For those fortunate enough to have been human guinea pigs in Philips’ HomeLab, Ambient Intelligence will have already changed their lives, if only for a few short hours or days. Given a glimpse of what the future might look like, it is highly probable that in some small way it will have altered their perspective on technology forever. However, it is not only the lives of HomeLab’s guinea pigs that Ambient Intelligence has already affected. It has also changed the lives of a large number of people within Philips.

For practical reasons of human communication and cooperation, large companies such as Philips, are actually made up of many small companies, each with its own business plan, product development roadmap and marketing strategy. Truly successful companies are the ones that can unite these component companies into a common goal.

When you look at the current structure of Philips, which has now been in place for the best part of two decades, it is clear that its separate divisions all operate with the common goal of improving the quality of people’s lives. Its Consumer Electronics division is committed to improving the quality of our leisure experiences, its Medical Systems division to improving our state of health, and its Lighting and Domestic Appliances & Personal Care divisions to extending the hours available to us for enjoyment. Stemming from the very top ranks of Philips, an initiative called TOP (Transforming into One Philips) has already been put in place to leverage synergies between these divisions to create new product concepts and user experiences.

In the world of Ambient Intelligence few things operate stand-alone. Lighting, sound, vision, domestic-appliance and personal-healthcare products all play a part in creating a total environment that is sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. Ambient Intelligence therefore fits extremely well into the TOP programme, helping to spread a culture of communication and cooperation throughout the entire company. Such cooperation was the source of "The New Everyday", a 350-page comprehensive book on all aspects of Ambient Intelligence, published jointly by Philips Research and Philips Design.