This paper describes a modeling framework that facilitates and streamlines the process of creation, design, construction and deployment of technological solutions in the context of AAL assuring that they are accessible and usable for senior citizens. The framework supports the design of the Human Interaction aspects of an AAL solution in all the stages of a user centered design methodology, putting in practice the guidelines for the verification and validation of the accessibility and usability facets. Two environments are defined: The authoring environment allow the definition of the user, environment and service models. The simulation environment is composed by software and hardware components that constitute a physical ensemble that in conjunction allow the ICT designer to implement actual Virtual Reality scenarios of AAL. It will be used to verify interaction designs and validate the accessibility of the AAL products by means of immersing the users in 3D virtual spaces.

This article presents an overview of the integrated project WASP that deals with the research and development of Wirelessly Accessible Sensor Populations. WASP is a European project of the Embedded Systems Strategic Objective in Framework Programme 6 of the European Union. WASP is covering the complete technology chain from sensor node hardware to the implementation of applications. The article illustrates the integrated approach of WASP by subsuming the variety of research and development issues that are addressed to reach the ambitious project goal: the provision of a complete system view for building large populations of collaborating objects.

The paper presents the BERNIE prototype that realizes health assistance within super markets based on RFID technology. By storing the list of ingredients of each individual good, BERNIE is able to support shoppers in an unobtrusive and anonymous fashion. The paper ends with the description of the quantitative results of a 7-days field trial that was conducted at the CeBIT 2007 exhibition.

Zusammenfassung Ambient Intelligence leitet einen Paradigmenwechsel sowohl in der Herangehensweise bei der Entwicklung von Geräten und Applikationen und darauf aufbauenden Umgebungen als auch in der Anforderung zugrunde liegender Technologien und Architekturen ein. Nach einer Analyse bestehender Lösungen für intelligente Umgebungen und deren Bewertung werden in diesem Artikel die sich aus Ambient Intelligence ergebenden Paradigmenwechsel beschrieben und die daraus resultierenden Forschungsschwerpunkte identifiziert. Diese sind Motivation für Arbeiten im EU-IST-Projekt PERSONA. Hier werden auf Basis von Anwendungsfällen die Anforderungen an die technische Basis von intelligenten Umgebungen identifiziert und Kriterien für deren Bewertung definiert. Zuletzt wird in diesem Artikel ein Vorschlag für eine funktionale Architektur gegeben, die eine Basis für die Umsetzung der PERSONA-Szenarios bilden wird.

This paper presents some intermediate results of the EU-IST project WASP that aims to develop an integrated model for implementing applications using wireless sensor networks. In this paper we present our approach to programming sensor networks. The main contribution concerns the separation of three abstraction levels leaving more room for standardization than with current practices. In addition, we propose to program the network from an overall perspective rather than programming individual nodes. For doing this we present two programming models that complement one another. The proposed programming model is event-based, corresponding closely to the nature of wireless sensors. The paper shows our approaches by giving several examples and ends with a description of wireless sensor networks related services and gives an outlook on future work.

A middleware for real ad-hoc cooperation of distributed device ensembles must support self-organization of its components. Self-organization means that the independence of the ensembles' components is ensured, that the ensemble is dynamically extensible by new components and that real distributed implementation is possible. Furthermore the data-flow of messages within the ensemble may not be statically determined. This article presents the distributed implementation of the SodaPop model for distributed device ensembles of physical heterogeneous devices as well as the distributed handling of conflict resolution strategies that guarantee the data-flow even if there are competing components. The proposed approach relies on the principle of device representatives. Here physical devices host their components and disburden them from communication and service composition strategies.

A middleware for real ad-hoc cooperation of distributed device ensembles must support self-organization of its components. Self-organization means that the independence of the ensembles' components is ensured, that the ensemble is dynamically extensible by new components and that real distributed implementation is possible. Furthermore the data-flow of messages within the ensemble may not be statically determined. This article presents the application of the SodaPop model for distributed device ensembles to physical heterogeneous devices as well as the distributed implementation of conflict resolution strategies that guarantee the data-flow even if there are competing components. The proposed approach relies on the principle of device representatives.

The vision of Ambient Intelligence is based on the ubiquity of information technology, the presence of computation, communication, and sensorial capabilities in an unlimited abundance of everyday appliances and environments. But enabling an ensemble of devices to spontaneously act and cooperate coherently requires software technologies that support self-organization.We discuss the salient properties of such a software infrastructure and propose a solution to these challenges, the "SodaPop" middleware. SodaPop uses a two-stage approach to structuring multi-agent systems and provides unique facilities for coordinating the activities of competing agents. Furthermore we describe the application of SodaPop to realize a smart conference room. Here we introduce a principle component topology dynamically extensible with new devices. The articles ends with the description of some resolution strategies and the description of an application programmers interface, that is available from our project site. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper describes the user interface and interaction model of a system for Personal Environment Control -- the PECo System. The Personal Environment Controller (PECo) is a digital assistant system that provides the user with a unified facility for organizing and accessing the different media repositories at his disposal and for direct manipulation of his physical environment (projectors, TV sets, hi-fi systems, Lights, shutters, etc.).

The vision of ambient intelligence is based on the ubiquity of information technology, the presence of computation, communication, and sensorial capabilities in an unlimited abundance of everyday appliances and environments. While today's experimental smart environments are carefully designed by hand, future ambient intelligent infrastructures must be able to configure themselves from the available components in order to be effective in the real world. But enabling an ensemble of devices to spontaneously act and cooperate coherently requires software technologies that support self-organization. The salient properties of such a software infrastructure are analyzed and a potential solution to these challenges is proposed, the "SodaPop" middleware. In contrast to other approaches, SodaPop uses a two-stage model for structuring multi-agent systems and provides unique facilities for coordinating the activities of competing agents through domain specific conflict resolution strategies. The use of SodaPop is illustrated by realizing a smart conference room whose capabilities may be extended ad hoc through dynamically added devices

The vision of Ambient Intelligence is based on the ubiquity of information technology, the presence of computation, communication, and sensorial capabilities in an unlimited abundance of everyday appliances and environments. While today’s experimental smart environments are carefully designed by hand, future ambient intelligent infrastructures must be able to configure themselves from the available components in order to be effective in the real world. But enabling an ensemble of devices to spontaneously act and cooperate coherently requires software technologies that support self-organization. In this paper, we outline the SODAPOP middleware, which aims at addressing the challenges raised by such environments. In contrast to other approaches, SODAPOP uses a two-stage model for structuring multi-agent systems and provides unique facilities for coordinating the activities of competing agents through domain specific conflict resolution strategies. The use of SODAPOP is illustrated by realizing a smart conference room whose capabilities may be extended ad hoc through dynamically added devices.

In this article we identify the general communication patterns of physical. devices and define all interfaces and conflict resolution strategies that are present in any ensemble. Based on this approach we define a generic component topology applicable for Ambient Intelligent scenarios. We validate our interface framework by showing the application of two smart scenarios: the smart conference room and the smart living room and the possibility to move applications and devices from one ensemble to the other. Our approach guarantees the fully extensibility of device ensembles with new devices.

Within the project e-Qualification Framework, a compound project of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, a learning platform is build. This learning platform should be able, that institutes with different backgrounds can offer their specific courses within different subjects. Inside their domains and branches is it very important that they could simply be classified, found and accessed. The main aspect of this paper is to present a domain structure that faces the requirements above as well as systems of assistance working with it. In the first section we describe the motivation for domain structuring and the pattern we developed. The second section discusses the development and implementation of an education consultant, guiding the learner through the domain structure to a suitable course. This usage should be an example for many possibilities for assistance based on a standardised domain structures. Motivation: Courses of Different Providers and Automated Assistance Within an e-learning platform a teacher and/or education consultant could hardly cope with all the enquiries submitted by learners referring to their choices of suitable courses. Therefore, it needs assisting technology to support both: the teacher to give advice via a virtual education consultant when needed and the learner to get suitable courses matching their individual attributes in a convenient way. But first courses have to be structured in an appropriate way. Nowadays, several standards are in discussion (e.g. IEEE WG 12; SCORM, 2002). Most of them deal with sorts of internal course structure, meta-data and course construction definition. The aim of all this effort is to provide a simple and useable model that enables content providers to structure the course in an appropriate way. Therefore in theory the course provided by one content provider is structured nearly in the same manner as the course of a second and a third content provider. The main advantage that can be seen here is the reusability and interchangeability of course of different providers.

This paper describes the approach and the application of a generic set of user variables within the EMBASSI project. Within three application areas – home infotainment, automobile electronics, and public PoS – we collected the demands on variables for user profiling. The concrete set of the generic user variables are presented as well as the application of a User Profile Assistant within an agent framework for multimodal environments. The application of the generic set of user variables is shown by means of the application of a virtual character. We recommend the presented generic user variables as basis for multimodal environments.

This paper describes the application and evaluation of an Adaptive TV Program Agent System with adaptive active and passive assistant functionalities. To evaluate the functionalities of the passive recommendation functions a user-test was conducted to compare different variants of adaptive assistance for the selection of movies. Based on a personal user-profile each participant was offered suggestions that were generated by an Adaptive TV Program Agent System according to different rules. Subjects' task was to choose the movies they would actually intend to watch. To measure the acceptance of these different variants of adaptive assistance it was recorded in log files how many suggestions were accepted per rule. Results show that suggestions based on information about genre, country, year and mood of movies, that appear combined in the profiles reached an acceptance rate of 90 %.

EMBASSI (Multimodal Assistance for Infotainment and Service Infrastruc- tures) (1) was one of the focus pro- jects dealing with human-computer interaction that investigates tech- nologies for the creation of systems to assist the user in the interaction with his personal environment. The main focus of EMBASSI relied on assistance systems belonging to info- tainment within the home and cars and on service infrastructures like terminals, with a special respect to handicapped people. This article gives an overview about the multiple research and development activities of the INI-GraphicsNet insti- tutes and their departments involved within the EMBASSI project and it should outline their scientific excellence within the field of multimodal infras- tructures and assistance technologies. EMBASSI faced the challenge that computers become more and more ubiquitous, moving from the desktop into the infrastructure of our every day lives and thus influencing the way we interact with our personal environment. An ensemble of devices and applications fuses into a system many users are overstrained in using all of the functionalities that become possible. Thus the interaction with natural speech or gestures becomes more and more important as well as the system's ability to recognize user goals and the ability to develop strategies to transfer those user goals into strategies able to change the personal environment matching the wishes and the preferences of the user. Picture 1 should outline this vision: As the user points to the tele- vision set and says »louder please«,