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CPI envisages a future society comprising adaptive, calm and intelligent homes, communities and work environments, where everyday objects and surfaces around us respond and adapt to our presence and needs. Hidden and embedded devices will perform tasks for us without active manipulation and so unobtrusively that we would notice only their effects and indirect presence. CPI and One NorthEast¡¦s aim is to position the region to take advantage of the expected needs for new micro and nano electronics and devices that will be essential for realising adaptive calm environments.
Ambient Intelligence
People are expressing a need to be in a comfortable space, where technology affects their environment without intruding and the connectivity offered by wireless technologies and the Internet can act as a driver for Ambient Intelligence products and solutions ¡V shifting the focus away from technology to function.
Homes and work environments designed through the concepts of the ambient intelligence paradigm are build upon a number of key technologies areas including:
- Flexible functional materials
- Ubiquitous embedded computing
- Wireless communication
- Sophisticated interoperable software and open protocols
- Miniaturised sensors and actuators
- Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems (NEMS)
- Microfluidic channels and devices
- Intelligent ¡§natural feeling¡¨ interfaces
- Flexible & interactive displays
- Photonics and molecular electronics
Many of these technologies are already on CPI radar via programmes such as the Plastic Electronics Technology Centre (PETeC), the Photonics Materials Institute and the Centre for Electronic Nano-Systems. However, fully deployed ambient intelligent environments are probably decades away. Its implementation is likely to differ from what futurologists currently predict due to technical challenges and social implications, such as privacy concerns.
Partial implementation is likely to occur in the near to mid future: and include:
- Improving business performance
- New novel consumer services
- Smart homes
- Asset Management
Improving Business Performance
Improving business performance by enhancing the efficiency of manufacturing, distribution, transport and logistics processes using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and greater levels of integration. For instance, commercial telematics devices for container or vehicle tracking, or better management of goods returned to the warehouse
New Novel Consumer Services
New novel consumer services with embedded computers and RFID tags incorporated into products for simplifying the sales of high value products as well as offering customers greater levels of after sales service such as fridges that can order groceries, household appliances that can be controlled remotely via the Internet or even pay-as-you-go car insurance and road tax
Smart Homes
Smart homes with devices interconnected through a network and linked to the Internet, for example, enhancing the autonomy and quality of life of elderly and disabled people by simplifying their interactions with devices at home, or improving our living space by incorporating embedded networked computers in our home appliances and entertainment devices reducing visible clutter and forming a personal area network (PAN) around us
Asset Management
Asset Management monitoring buildings and engineering structures such as bridges, pipelines and commercial assets; improved public transportation infrastructure; monitoring ecological systems for detecting pollutants and researching migration of wildlife using smart wireless networked devices, sensors and miniature motes that are both wirelessly interconnected and linked to a computer network
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