Ambient Intelligence: Towards Smart Appliance Ensembles ⋆ Thomas Kirste December 2004 Dept. Computer Science, Rostock University, Germany tk@informatik.uni-rostock.de Abstract. The vision of Ambient Intelligence is based on the ubiquity of infor- mation technology, the presence of computation, communication, and sensorial capabilities in an unlimited abundance of everyday appliances and environments. Today’s experimental smart environments are carefully designed by hand, but fu- ture ambient intelligent infrastructures must be able to configure themselves from the available components in order to be effective in the real world. We argue that enabling an ensemble of devices to spontaneously act and cooper- ate coherently requires software technologies that support self-organization. We discuss the central issues pertaining to the self-organization of interactive appli- ance ensembles and outline potential solution paradigms: Goal-based interaction and distributed event processing pipelines. 1 Introduction The vision of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) [1, 3, 10] is based on the ubiquity of infor- mation technology, the presence of computation, communication, and sensorial capa- bilities in an unlimited abundance of everyday appliances and environments. “Ambient Intelligence”, a term coined by the European Commission’s Information Technologies Advisory Group (ISTAG) and Philips, is the vision of a world, in which we are surrounded by smart, intuitively operated devices that help us to organize, struc- ture, and master our everyday life. The notion “Ambient Intelligence” specifically char- acterizes a new paradigm for the interaction between a person and his everyday envi- ronment: Ambient Intelligence enables this environment to become aware of the human that interacts with it, his goals and needs. So it is possible to assist the human proac- tively in performing his activities and reaching his goals.—If my car stereo tunes in to exactly the station I just listened to at the breakfast table, then this is a simple example for such an aware, pro-active environment; just as the mobile phone that automatically redirects calls to my voice mail in case I am in a meeting, or the bathroom mirror that reminds me of taking my medications. Hitherto, it is the user’s responsibility to manage his personal environment, to op- erate and control the various appliances and devices available for his support. But, the more technology is available and the more options there are, the greater is the challenge ⋆ This work has been partially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research under the grant signature BMB-F No. FKZ 01 ISC 27A.