AmbientIntelligencein HomeLab

© 2002 Royal Philips Electronics

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Ambient Intelligence in HomeLab

is published by Philips Researchfor the occasion of the openingof HomeLab on April 24, 2002.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFEmile Aarts

EDITORBerry Eggen

PHOTOGRAPHYSam Bazelmans (Philips Research)

Frank van Beek (Capitol Photos)

Michel Klop (freelancer)

COPYWRITINGCees Jan Mol

Jan Sommerdijk

DESIGN,ART DIRECTION AND PREPRESSNeroc Eindhoven B.V.

MORE INFORMATIONPhilips Research Public Relations

Prof. Holstlaan 4

5656AA Eindhoven

The Netherlands

tel. +31-40-27 42204

fax +31-40-27 44947

E-MAILresinfo@natlab.research.philips.com

© 2002 Royal Philips Electronics

COLOPHON

AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE

The invisible experience 2

Excellence through technological leadership 3

Ambient Intelligence - experience technology 4

The culture of Ambient Intelligence 7

HomeLab - advanced feasibility research lab 9

HomeLab - technology for people 12

The Oxygen Partnership Alliance 15

HomeLab - behind the scenes 16

EU research efforts in Ambient Intelligence 18

In good company 19

In good company - Georgia Tech Aware Home 20

In good company - MIT House_n 21

In good company - Microsoft Concept Home 22

Le Poème Electronique - the first immersive media experience 23

Ambient Intelligencein HomeLab

3HomeLab will serve a great purpose in theintegration and deployment of Ambient

Intelligence-related technologies in novelapplications and at the same time will be usedto better understand human interaction withthis entire new world we try to create. It is aunique facility, well equipped and well positio-ned to exhibit our commitment to furthertechnologies that enhance people’s lives. The realization of the Ambient Intelligencevision can only be achieved by combining abroad range of technologies with innovativeproduct and service design. In a true AmbientIntelligence environment, all electronic featu-res and functions are integrated into people’sbackgrounds. This requires full control over awide spectrum of enabling technologies, ran-ging from micro-sized radio devices with auto-nomous power support, via all kinds of porta-

ble, wirelessly interconnected devices for personal communication, vast amounts ofdistributed storage functions, up to large wall-sized displays that support virtual and multi-modal interaction. In the ultimate AmbientIntelligence environment, these componentsand systems are seamlessly integrated in such away that they can be combined with extremeand opposite performance characteristics, so asto provide very large bandwidths using wire-less connections or extremely high processingspeeds at ultra-low power. These challengesvery much fit the breadth and depth of ourtechnology basis. This provides Philips withan almost unique opportunity to assumingleadership in this new domain of applicationsand to building a strong position in the manynew markets that will be opened up by thedevelopments in Ambient Intelligence. ➜

EXCELLENCE THROUGHtechnological leadership

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As we are driven to enhancepeople’s lives, we want to

know and fully understand howpeople interact with technology.We want to learn from them sowe can make sure our innova-tions work for them. TheHomeLab is a proof point for our dedicationto this in the context of our AmbientIntelligence vision. The tremendous advancesin wireless connectivity, speech technology anddesign enable us to bring advanced intelligenttechnologies into people’s homes while beingfully integrated in their personal environment.Ambient Intelligence is the vision that Philipsuses to denote this new paradigm in consumerelectronics, which completely changes the waywe communicate and live. We view ourselvesas one of the industry shapers that will turnthis vision into reality. Philips has a long tradi-tion in ambient intelligence. At the 1958World Fair, we presented the very first multi-media presentation ever: Le PoèmeElectronique, created by the world-famous

architect Le Corbusier, futurist Iannis Xenakisand composer Edgar Varèse. They envisioneda world striving for ‘newness and harmony’using multimedia – at the time a brand newway for creative artists to express themselves.The three artists took it even a step further by integrating all the electronics into the pavi-lion’s walls, making the experience ‘ambient’and revolutionary for its day and triggering awhole new way of communicating ideas. I amsure that HomeLab will become the seminalresearch facility to help us understand better‘the moments people touch technology’. At thesame time, it will act as native soil for manytechnological innovations that will lead to theultimate invisible experience enhancing andenriching the lives of people. ➜

The invisibleEXPERIENCE

Gerard Kleisterlee,

CEO Philips

Ad Huijser, CEO

Philips Research,

CTO Philips

Maximum enjoyment Ambient Intelligence aims at enhancing ourleisure experiences and enriching the qualityof our lives. From choosing to record the TVprogramme that it knows we like to watch,to monitoring the efficiency of an exerciseworkout in order to improve our athleticperformance, Ambient Intelligence systemswill operate quietly in the background tomake the experience more enjoyable. Unlikethe paradigm of the desktop computer,

which knows little more about us than ourlog-in name and password, AmbientIntelligence systems must know who we areand in which context we operate them.When we turn on our PC, for example, ithas no way of knowing whether we areangry, sad or elated. And for most of thethings that we do with our PC it does notmatter. But for an Ambient Intelligencesystem that greets us when we get home,selects suitable background music and ligh-ting, or advises us on the state of our health,

recognizing what sort of mood we are in willbe vitally important. The system must knowwhen to keep quiet and when to speak up,what to say and what not to say, and it mustrecognize those times when we need to beleft alone with our thoughts.

From vision to realityAlthough turning this vision of AmbientIntelligence into reality involves some formi-dable challenges, Philips is in an ideal posi-

tion to provide many of the solutions. Forexample, Philips is rapidly establishing itselfas the world leader in set-top box techno-logy for interactive TV. And it is the set-topbox that will almost certainly evolve into the‘home beacon’ that will use broadband com-munication channels to connect theAmbient Intelligence within our homes tothat in the outside world. Philips is also aworld leader in the RF communicationstechnology required for wireless-based in-home digital networks, having developed

4 The paradigm As a result of the ongoing miniaturization ofelectronic circuits and the correspondingexponential increase in embedded computa-tional power, we have reached the pointwhere it has become possible to integrateelectronics into people’s environments.However, the way we experience that com-puting power is about to change. The awe-some buttons and menu options of present-day equipment will disappear, to be replacedby intelligent systems that we operatethrough user interfaces that are an extensionof our natural speech and movements,through touch panels, heat and weight sensors, and intelligent cameras that trackour eyeball movements. The intelligentsystem responds to and even anticipates ourneeds by the sound of our voice, the gestures

of our hands and the expressions on ourface. The corresponding paradigm is calledAmbient Intelligence and it refers to electro-nic environments that are sensitive and res-ponsive to the presence of people. It impro-ves the quality of life by creating the desiredatmosphere and functionality via intelligent,personalized interconnected systems andservices. Ambient Intelligence environmentsare characterized by their ubiquity, transpa-rency and intelligence. Ubiquity because theuser is surrounded by a multitude of inter-connected embedded systems. Transparencybecause the equipment is invisible and inte-grated into the background of the user’s sur-roundings. Intelligence because the system isable to recognize the people that live in it,adapt itself to them, learn from their behavi-our, and even show emotion.

Ambient Intelligence - EXPERIENCE TECHNOLOGY

Emile Aarts

➜

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7A new modernityThe intelligent technologies emerging todayare ‘light’. Miniaturized and almost intangi-ble, they can merge seamlessly into our envi-ronment: homes, offices, cars, streets, clo-thing – even ourselves. This means, forinstance, that the home of tomorrow willlook more like the home of yesterday thanthe home of today. The bulky boxes contai-ning today’s ageing technologies will disap-pear. Instead, the functions we need will behidden in timeless objects, those that havebeen and always will be present: surfaces tosit on or put things on, containers, orna-ments, and the walls, floors and roof thatprotect us from the elements.

Our environment will come ‘alive’ withintelligence. Objects that were formerly

inanimate, passive spectators will becomeanimate ‘subjects’, interacting with us andother objects in intimate and highly perso-nalized relationships. The task of design is to ensure that these relationships are as enriching and as fulfilling as possible for thepeople served by these ‘objects-become-subjects’.

Enhancing cultural relationshipsRelationships lie at the heart of human cul-ture, but their preferred forms vary.Understanding what kinds of relationshipspeople around the world will value requirescareful study, not only of cultural needs andpatterns, but also of aesthetic and othercommunicative codes. What functions willpeople want embedded in their environ-ment, and what functions will they keep

The culture ofAMBIENT INTELLIGENCE

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low-cost silicon solutions for DECT (DigitalEnhanced Cordless Telephony) andBluetooth. And for the display-centric envi-ronment of Ambient Intelligence, Philipshas solutions ranging from LCD modulesfor handheld devices to large-area flat-paneldisplays that can be built into the walls of aroom. There are also new and unsolved chal-lenges imposed by Ambient Intelligence. Interms of the computer science, issues such asquality of service, graceful degradation andload balancing need to be addressed.Protocols need to be established for peer-to-peer communication between computingnodes in self-configuring networks, algo-rithms need to be developed for resourcelocation and management, and ‘intelligentagent’ technology needs to be developed sothat applications can move around freely to locate resources and follow the user fromone location to another.

A social system Naturalizing the human interface poses evengreater challenges. Not only must the tech-nologies of speech, gesture and handwritingrecognition be refined far beyond their cur-rent status, they must also be integrated intomulti-modal models that combine informa-tion on gesture, voice intonation and facialexpression to determine the semantics ofconversational dialogues. Even the way wereact to and use Ambient Intelligence, toge-ther with its social implications, will requireconsiderable research. To investigate thepractical, psychological and social implica-

tions of Ambient Intelligence, PhilipsResearch will use its HomeLab, which islocated at the Philips High Tech Campus inEindhoven, The Netherlands. Comprising afully equipped home, complete with living,sleeping and kitchen facilities, HomeLabwill be equipped with a distributed embed-ded infrastructure in which AmbientIntelligence can be developed and investiga-ted. As a window on how the home of thefuture might look, one thing is certain: it issure to be an exciting place to live and workover the coming years. ➜

Stefano Marzano,

CEO Philips Design

➜

9New system concepts HomeLab has been designed to allow stu-dies of novel system concepts, which todaymay still require a lot of equipment to rea-lize, but which can be expected to becomecompact enough to disappear in the back-ground in the near future. It allows studiesof distributed home networking systemswhich require connecting different roomsand floors as found in a real-home environ-ment. By prototyping such systems inHomeLab, researchers can discover andsolve the issues that emerge in such actualuse environments.

Situational awareness Ambient Intelligence systems are envisionedto be supportive, because they are aware ofthe users, and can adapt to their habits and

wishes. Therefore, such systems need toinclude methods to discover the identity andlocation of users, devices and objects.Research projects are ongoing to developoptimal technologies, e.g. by investigatingthe behaviour of radio waves and ultrasoundwaves in an actual home environment,where furniture and moving people cause amuch more complex reflection and transmission behaviour than in an outdoor environment.

Natural interaction Speech is often considered one of the mostnatural modalities for interaction betweenusers and ambient systems. Thus far, howe-ver, improvement of recognition rates innatural language dialogues, and even in themore limited command and control

HOMELAB - advancedfeasibility research lab

Evert van Loenen and Vic Teeven

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on display? Functions prized in one culturemay be felt irrelevant in another. Whatobjects should ‘host’ the new intelligentsystems? Obvious candidates in one culturemay be quite inappropriate in another. And what form should such objects take?

A look in a furniture shop abroad is enoughto remind us that aesthetics is often as mucha matter of cultural preference as of indivi-dual preference. We also need to consider

which materials these new ‘hosts’ should bemade of. Although these objects may looktraditional, their new functions may requirethem to be made of new materials, whoseappearance must nonetheless be culturallyacceptable.

But more important than appearance ormaterials is the issue of how the new objectswill behave in relation to us and each other,and what communicative codes they willneed to use. Unlike humans, these objects

will not ‘grow up’ gradually. They will beexpected, like a butler, to arrive fully trained(although allowed a little time to get toknow their specific ‘masters’). So we willneed to ‘educate’ our new objects. To do that, we need to know what sorts ofbehaviour different cultures prefer, and whatindividual preferences the objects couldexpect to encounter. The behaviour of ourobjects as they dynamically interact withusers will need to be designed just as much

as their technology and appearance.Intelligence without culture and culture without intelligence – both are equallyundesirable. By exploring people’s culturalexpectations with respect to functions, formsand behaviour, we can ensure that AmbientIntelligence really does improve people’squality of life experience, respecting andenhancing their cultural identity and crea-ting a balanced environment in which theyfeel both psychologically and physically ‘at home’. ➜ ➜

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Optimal systems will likely consist of a com-bination of such technologies, most ofwhich operate in the same frequency band.HomeLab offers a realistic environment totest effects like mutual interference and theinfluence of walls and ceilings, and to study,for example, security mechanisms and brid-ging of networks in home.

Ubiquitous sound and visionThe key output modalities needed are sound(music, speech) and vision (images).Whereas today the latter is typically concen-trated in one TV screen in the living room,future homes will have display solutions inany space where that is appropriate (kitchen,bedroom, etc.). They will range from smalldisplays for messages to full-wall-sized dis-plays for movies. Entirely new technologieswill be required to realize such visions inactual home situations, e.g. where people donot have the room required for existingback-projection solutions, or the money forcurrent large-flat-display technologies.Again, HomeLab offers Philips the opportu-nity to already create the experiences todaythat such future technologies will bringtomorrow.

Separating functions from boxesOnce the information is fully digital, andubiquitous connectivity has been realized, itbecomes possible to separate the functionsactually desired by users (images, sounds)from the boxes that are needed to producethem, thus providing users with a much gre-

ater freedom. Users can, for example, chooseto place the TV tuners or PCs out of thefield of view, and eventually to let themdisappear in the background. Many issuesemerge when trying to realize such solutionsin real-life circumstances, and HomeLab is arather unique environment for learning howto solve them: in its ‘user spaces’ it providesall the actual elements found in a real house(e.g. walls blocking the infrared remote con-trol), whereas through its ‘research spaces’ambient solutions that require further mini-aturization before they can be madeambient, can already be realized today.

Feasibility researchIn the months up to the opening, HomeLabhas already proven to be a valuable tool tostudy and demonstrate the feasibility of thenovel system concepts developed in severalResearch projects, and to collect the feed-back of visitors and users. Many more pro-jects will populate HomeLab in the comingyears. ➜

interactions, is hampered by echos and back-ground noise in real environments, forcingusers to wear microphones close to theirmouths. Novel technologies are being devel-oped to solve these problems, and HomeLaballows such solutions to be tested in a real-home environment. Similar problems areencountered when introducing other moda-lities, like gesture recognition. Gesturerecognition is typically realized using videoimage processing. Again, whereas nice

examples can be demonstrated in specialrooms with well controlled light conditions,gesture recognition in a real-home environ-ment, where doors open and close, peoplewalk around, reflections occur from shinysurfaces and light conditions change conti-nuously, requires the development of morefundamental solutions.

Mobile assistantsMastering speech and gesture recognitionallows studies into exciting further user

interaction concepts, such as mobile, roboticpersonal assistants. These studies are alsoconducted in HomeLab. HomeLab providesthe actual conditions that such mobileassistants have to be able to cope with, likestaircases, multiple rooms and families withchildren.

ConnectivityThe Ambient Intelligence systems aim atproviding users with the freedom to choose

what kind of information or entertainmentthey want when and where, e.g. on portablescreens they can take with them as theymove through the house. This means thatsuch systems typically rely on ad-hoc wire-less networking of devices. Depending onthe type of device (mobile phone, PDA,portable PC, webtablet) and content (pho-tos, films, messages), an appropriate wirelessconnection is applied, e.g. WLAN (802.11bor 802.11a) for large bandwidth, andBluetooth or Zigbee for ultra-low power.

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it is expected that people, initially, only par-ticipate in interactive HomeLab sessions thattypically only last a couple of hours. Duringthese sessions, researchers can directly inter-act with the participants and the systemsunder investigation, or people can explorethe Ambient Intelligence environment ontheir own while unobtrusively being obser-ved by researchers that make use of theHomeLab observation facilities.

HomeLab is well equipped to support bothtypes of user behaviour research. The inte-rior decoration and the possibilities to flexi-bly re-arrange or move furniture around thehouse makes it easy to adapt the house tomatch the particular lifestyle of intendedtarget groups, making the ‘inhabitants’ ofHomeLab feel safe, happy, at ease, and sti-mulated. HomeLab has two observationrooms which in combination with 34 came-ras, distributed over the house and control-led by the HomeLab control system, providethe right infrastructure for doing observatio-nal user studies. The type of user studiesthat can be facilitated ranges from observa-tions of user (and system) behaviour to ‘tra-ditional’ usability tests. Below some imagi-nary examples are described.

Wizard-of-OzBob and Linda have been invited toHomeLab to experience how a future livingroom might support the planning of theiryearly summer holiday. After a tour aroundHomeLab, which surprisingly well matched

claims should be validated by evaluating theanticipated user benefits before a selection ismade to bring certain concepts into asecond research and design cycle. In a nextiteration cycle, more detailed user require-ments need to be uncovered and fed into thegeneration and implementation of concretedesign solutions. Next, the utility and usabi-lity of the proposed solutions can be chec-ked by conducting carefully planned usertests. This iterative process which is carried

out by multi-disciplinary teams and inwhich user involvement plays a crucial roleis called user-centred research. HomeLab isdesigned to become the place where resear-chers and designers can team up with end-users to realize a shared and tangible visionof the future of in-home electronic systems.

User involvement Although HomeLab provides a fully-functioning home environment where people could live for a longer period of time, ➜

12 offers a unique environment that is optimi-zed to conduct research in these areas.Multi-disciplinary teams of researchers toge-ther with potential end-users explore theadvantages and disadvantages of prototypesof future electronic systems in a realistichome setting.

User-centred research Nowadays, the technological possibilities toenhance home life are vast; to quote the pro-totypical engineer, “tell us what you wantand we can make it”. But, what do peoplereally want? Once we better understand theneeds and desires of people, the output of astructured idea generation process is expec-ted to yield product or system concepts thatshow an increased potential to truly enhanceliving and being at home. Of course, such

Multi-disciplinary approaches Advanced technology is readily advertised to enhance the quality of future home life.For example, the introduction of networktechnology in the home is said to reduce thefunctional redundancy found in currenthomes and increase efficiency and ease ofuse to save time do the things one reallywants to do (quality time). But, how arefuture electronic products going to use thesenetworks to achieve the anticipated userbenefits, and what user-system interactionknowledge is required to realize a true para-digm shift from ‘operating devices’ toenhanced and new ‘interactive experiences’?To find answers to these questions we needto study the physical, social and culturalcontext in which technology will be usedand its implications on daily life. HomeLab

HOMELAB -technology for people

Berry Eggen, Boris de Ruyter and Vic Teeven

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The Oxygen Partnership Alliance

Rodney Brooks, Director of the Artificial

Intelligence Laboratory and Professor of

Computer Science and Engineering of the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Oxygen project aims to create a system that brings

abundant computation and communication, as pervasive

as free air, naturally into people’s lives. Intelligent spaces,

like the Artificial Intelligent Laboratory’s Intelligent

Room, will serve its occupants as transparant points of

interaction. In the Intelligent Room, robotics and vision

technology are combined with speech-understanding

systems and agent-based architectures to provide ready

at hand computation and information services for peo-

ple engaged in day-to-day activities, both on their own

and in conjunction with others.

Rodney Brooks:“Only through living with our technolo-

gies can we discover which ones really improve our

lives and which ones only sound good as proposals.”

Members of the Oxygen Partnership Alliance include

Acer Group, Delta Electronics, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia,

NTT and Philips.

control system to score the various actionsBoris needed to carry out to complete thetask. After the experiment, Steffen canimmediately inform Jettie about the numberof times Boris used the query-by-hummingfunctionality as compared to the spoken-commands option. He even can show Jettiean ‘on-the-fly’ compilation of video sequen-ces of situations where Boris explicitely for-mulated his enthousiasm for the hummingfeature.

Social interactions The Jones family has tremendously enjoyedtheir stay at HomeLab. Over the weekend,they have gotten a glimpse what living in thefuture could be like. Now they are discus-sing with the Philips Research crew howthey think Bello, the virtual HomeLab pet,could do even better in anticipating and ser-ving their saturday night entertainmentneeds. Actually, Kevin, the 12-year old son,says he does not like the way Bello seems tofavour his Dad when it comes to fetchingmusic programmes they both should like.By reviewing the video material that wascaptured over the weekend, Dad and Elmo,the project leader from Philips Research,have to admit that Kevin has a point here. Together, the three of them are able to spotsimilar examples of Bello’s behavour in thevideo material and after a good discussionthey decide that it seems an important design guideline for any future AmbientIntelligence system not to take position insocial interactions among family members. ➜

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of their visit to HomeLab, Bob and Lindaare given a tour backstage.

This is where they learn about the Wizard-of-Oz type of experiment in which they hadbeen involved. It turned out that the intelli-gent behaviour of the room was not genera-ted by an electronic system but by a groupof researchers who had been watching, liste-ning and interpreting their activities toselect, present and direct the actual media

interaction experience in which Boband Linda had been immersed. Aftersome initial disappointment that thesystem was not yet for sale, theirenthousiasm returns: Bob and Lindawould love to live in the AmbientIntelligence environment they hadbeen experiencing at HomeLab.

Usability testing Boris has settled on the couch in theHomeLab living room. Jettie, the testleader has instructed him to compile

an mp3 playlist from the huge music collec-tion present in the HomeLab jukebox. Hequickly selects his top 5 by just telling hisdisplay the song titles. Now, he tries toremember that song he liked so much lastfriday at Judy’s. He doesn’t know the exacttitle, so, for the first time, he tries to hum itsmelody. It works just like Jettie explained tohim. After some time Boris decides he isdone and satisfied with his playlist. WhileBoris was completing the music compilationtask, Steffen has been using the HomeLab

the picture of what they would consider an‘ordinary’ home, they settle at the dinnertable and start to browse the holiday bro-chures lying around. After a while, theybegin to realize that the room seems to listento their conversations, as pictures and movieclips started to appear on the wall that matches the actual holiday destinations theyare discussing. Things get even more inte-resting when the colour of the lighting ofthe environment adjusts to the Tuscany pic-

tures they are looking at. The experience iscomplete when they notice the soft Italianmusic that was playing in the background.

After Bob and Linda selected their dreamholiday, they join the research team to dis-cuss the way they experienced the AmbientIntelligence room. They both tell the teamthey are impressed by the smartness of theroom and the smooth way interesting mediawere displayed in the room only when it see-med appropriate and meaningful. At the end

Studying human behaviour The possibility to observe participantsduring their stay in HomeLab is one of itsprimary functions. A tailor-made HomeLabcontrol system has been developed in-houseto collect and analyse observational data.The system controls the cameras and therouting of the video and audio signals.Human activities, postures, facial expressions, social interactions and user-system interactions can be recorded and

digitally stored to study patterns, trends andrelationships. Results will be used toimprove products, to eliminate imperfecti-ons and to explore new applications.The main observation room offers a placefor an observation leader and four observers.The observation leader is responsible for thedata collection and will be the director ofthe HomeLab interactive session. The observation leader modifies camera set-ups, routes video and audio signals, andmonitors the capture stations. The main task

for an observer is to concentrate on monito-ring the behaviour of the participants. Thiscan be done by looking directly into thehome through a one-way mirror, or by vie-wing a video monitor that can be connectedto any of the 34 cameras in the house. Thebehaviour of a participant is ‘scored’ interms of events that characterize the obser-ved scene. The scored events are time-stam-ped and appended to the video data. In thisway, the HomeLab control system both

implements an accurate and efficient sup-port tool for doing observations and facilita-tes a flexible system for exploration and ana-lysis of the acquired data.

Technical infrastructure HomeLab has more to offer. BroadbandInternet facilities enable various ways toconnect parts of the HomeLab infrastruc-ture to the Philips High Tech Campus net-work or even to the outside world. A wire-less Local-Area Network (LAN) offers the

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The HomeStanding in front of one of the new buil-dings at the Philips High Tech Campus, youwill notice a part that clearly differs from therest. It has a front door in glass, signed withthe letters ‘HomeLab’, it is built in a diffe-rent style and has a different appearance.Going through the front door you will discover something that you would notexpect: you enter the hall of a normal house.It is a completely furnished environment,including the objects found in real homes.Families can stay here, even for a longerperiod of time, and interact with conceptdemonstrators of future in-home electronicsystems developed by researchers and designers. The two-stock house has a living,a kitchen, two bedrooms, a bathroom and astudy. Interior decorators have created anatmosphere that matches a modern one-family home as closely as possible. At a firstglance, the home does not show anythingspecial, but a closer look reveals the black

domes at the ceilings that are hiding camerasand microphones. These cameras and micro-phones form an integral part of the houseand are designed to quickly disappear in thebackground of people’s mind.

The Lab Adjacent to the Home, and separated by one-way mirrors, there are two observationrooms. From the main observation room youhave a direct view into the living. Additi-onally, the signals captured by the cameras,can be monitored on any of the 20 videoscreens that are available in the observationroom. Another, smaller, observation room islocated at the second floor of HomeLab.Through one-way mirrors it gives a direct viewinto the bathroom. It can be used to observepeople during shaving, hear drying or toothbrushing. Alternatively, the one-way mirrors inthe bathroom can also be used as ‘smart mir-rors’, for example to show the actual news, thetraffic situation, or your weight.

HOMELAB -behind the scenes

Vic Teeven and Berry Eggen

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possibility to connect people in HomeLabwithout running cables. However, if cablesare required, double floors provide nicehiding places. Corridors, adjacent to therooms in HomeLab, accommodate theequipment that researchers and developersneed to realize and control their systems andto process and render audio and video sig-nals for the large flat screens in HomeLab. A power control system features remote con-trollable light settings and power switches.

But it still leaves the possibility for partici-pants to simply turn on and off the lights byusing ‘ordinary’ switches. Future intelligentsystems that aim to enhance people’s emo-tions and experiences by means of lightingwill be able to interface with the HomeLabpower control system. ➜

EU research efforts in AmbientIntelligence

Erkki Liikanen, Member of

the European Commission for

Enterprise and Information

Society

The world of Ambient Intelligence

will, gradually but surely, emerge from research in

the Information Society Technologies (IST)

programme of the European Community.

It puts people at the centre of the development of

future IST, i.e. ‘design technologies for people and

not make people adapt to technologies’. It aims at

making technology invisible, embedded in our natural

surrounding and present whenever we need it (e.g.

electricity) and at making interaction with the tech-

nology simple, effortless and using all our senses.

Erkki Liikanen:“HomeLab is an excellent example

of a natural surrounding where normal ‘man and

woman on the street’ can join members of the

research community, from industry and academia,

to pull together their effort and build coherent

approaches to realize the Ambient Intelligence

vision.”

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HomeLab offers a unique environment,both physically and intellectually, for

researchers and their partners inside andoutside Philips to give concrete form to theAmbient Intelligence vision. By developingand integrating advanced technologies in theareas of display, storage, signal processingand conncectivity, HomeLab promises tobecome one of the true corner-stones ofAmbient Intelligence, where people canexperience in reality how future technologywill enhance their living and being at home.

Currently, a number of companies and aca-demic institutions are active in conductingresearch into pervasive, human-centredcomputing. Some of them have joined partof their research efforts in strategic allianceslike the MIT Oxygen Partnership Alliance,of which Philips is a founding member toge-ther with Acer Group, Delta Electronics,Hewlett-Packard, NTT and Nokia. Otherslike Intel, Motorola, Mitsubishi, Procter andGamble, LEGO and Royal Ahold, are spon-soring related research projects at renowneduniversities.

Philips is also an active member of twoEuropean initiatives in the field of AmbientIntelligence. As a member of the ISTAG

(Information Society Technologies AdvisoryGroup) it is helping to advise the EuropeanCommission on the role of AmbientIntelligence within Europe’s 6th FrameworkProgramme (FP6). And as part of the ITEA(Information Technology for EuropeanAdvancement) AMBIENCE project it is hel-ping to define the architectures, methodsand tools required in the development of‘context-aware’ ambient intelligence envi-ronments.

INRIA, Philips, and Thomson Multimedia,identified the opportunity of joining forcesin the field of the Ambient Intelligence technologies and establish a stable structurethat allows long-term research issues to beaddressed in a satisfactory manner for all theparties involved. It was agreed to launch aJoint Research Initiative under the nameAIR&D (Ambient Intelligence Research andDevelopment) in which the parties involvedcollaborate on a project basis.

Some companies and universities have cometo realize that their visions on the future ofcomputing and consumer electronics canonly be explored to their full potential whenalong the way results of their research anddevelopment efforts are integrated andtested in a real environment and evaluatedwith real people under real-life conditions.Philips is one of these companies andHomeLab is the first tangible examplewithin Philips of this notion. Other exam-ples are described in the following pages. ➜

In good company

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IN GOOD COMPANY -MIT House_n

Kent Larson, Director of the Changing Places Lab: a Joint MIT Media

Laboratory and Department of Architecture Consortium

House_n is a multi-discipli-nary consortium of resear-

chers and companies that havecome together to reconsider thehome: how it is designed, how itis built, and how new systems,services and technologies can

prepare our places of living to better meet thechallenges and opportunities of the future.

A single-family prototype house has been designed for an MIT-owned lot inCambridge, Massachusetts. The facility willbe used to evaluate design and digital/physical infrastructure concepts and toaccommodate ongoing research as a ‘LivingLab’. The Living Lab is designed to allowlong-term, scientific studies of occupants andtheir relationships to their environment and

the technology of the home. Kent Larson: “Responsive technologies may profoundly alterthe places that people inhabit, but we have notyet found answers to the central question: Howcan complex and ever-changing systems bemade accessible and useful in the context ofthe highly varied and continuously evolvingactivities that take place in the home? My hopeis that the Philips HomeLab and the MITChanging Places Lab will become key compo-nents of an international community of research facilities to develop and test newtechnologies in the context of life.”

House_n Consortium members includeInternational Paper (Building MaterialsGroup), Owens Corning, Salt River Project,State Farm Insurance, Procter and Gamble,Bentley Systems Inc., and Invensys. ➜

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The Aware Home of Georgia Institute ofTechnology serves as a living laboratory

for research in ubiquitous computing foreveryday activities. The goal is to developthe requisite technologies to create a homeenvironment that can both perceive andassists its occupants. The scope of the pro-jects carried out at the Aware Home rangesfrom fundamental technical development tocognitive and ethnological studies that assessthe most appropriate and compelling tech-nological strategies.

Gregory Abowd: “Building a living labora-tory to investigate the impact of ubiquitoustechnologies in the home is critical for theunderstanding of how technology impactsour domestic life. It not only allows us toinvestigate feasibility but also providesinsights into the desirability of the augmen-ted home life. And for an advancing popu-lation, the investigation of technologies forsuccessful ageing are paramount.”

Aware Home is sponsored by Intel Research,Motorola Labs, Hewlett-Packard andVisteon Corporation. ➜

IN GOOD COMPANY -Georgia Tech Aware Home

Gregory Abowd, Director of the Aware Home Research Initiative and Associate

Professor in Georgia Tech’s College of Computing

23The Philips Pavilion At the World Fair in Brussels in 1958,Philips demonstrated its technology andvision in a special Philips Pavilion. Nearlytwo million visitors experienced a mediashow, totally different from a typical displayof consumer products. What they saw, was adazzling demonstration of cutting-edgetechnology in the service of the arts. Philipspresented a fully automated, 480-secondprogramme of colour, voice, sound and ima-ges that was broadcast within a space of war-ped concrete shells. The building was initia-ted by Philips’ artistic director L.C. Kalffand designed by Le Corbusier and YannisXenakis to set an exceptional stage for thefirst immersive media experience: Le PoèmeElectronique. In the scenario of Le PoèmeElectronique, Le Corbusier brought together

the music composed by Edgar Varèse with aseries of images illustrating evolution fromthe dawn of humanity to the atomic age,not without some critical remarks, and aplenty of visual and sound effects fitted intothe extraordinary architecture.

The Philips Pavilion aimed to make a state-ment about the harmony between humanvalues and technology, a central theme of Le Corbusier. The structure consisted of amathematical figure combined with ahuman form: a shell structure of hyperbolicparaboloids rose above a floor plan in theshape of a human stomach.

An experience was created with stochasticmusic and sound effects (musique concrète)that would not have been recognized as

LE POÈME ELECTRONIQUE -the first immersive mediaexperienceAndré Meyer

➜

22 The Microsoft Home is a prototypehome located at Microsoft’s main

Redmond campus. This concept familyhome is designed to present the company’svision of better living through technology as that technology becomes more personaland useful. The home brings together newscenarios and technologies to make daily lifeeasier, safer, and more fun for all familymembers. The original Microsoft Homeopened in 1994.

Craig Mundie: “Microsoft congratulatesPhilips on the opening of their HomeLab.We are excited to see their commitment toresearching and prototyping technologies toenhance consumer experiences.” ➜

IN GOOD COMPANY -Microsoft Concept HomeCraig Mundie, Senior Vice-President of Consumer Strategy, Microsoft

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music at the time. Projected images weremodified and enhanced with coloured lightthat supported the flow through the buil-ding, an early example of liquid architecture.Le Poème Electronique reminded visitors of amusée imaginaire with its collection of refe-rences to all sorts of global cultures.

A seminal experienceMarc Treib, professor at the Department of Architecture (University of California),studied the Philips Pavilion and brought itback to life in his visually compelling bookcalled ‘Space Calculated in Seconds:

The Philips Pavilion, Le Corbusier, Edgard Varèse’ (1996, Princeton UniversityPress). In his opinion, the Philips Pavilionshould be seen as a landmark multimediaproduction: “… the Philips project […] can be viewed as a pioneering quest into theproduction of modern art, or even as a pro-totype of virtual reality.” Athough the pavi-lion was dismantled after the World Fair, thememory of this fascinating project, thisimportant achievement in the history ofPhilips and this pioneering attempt to har-monize innovative technology with people’svalues is kept alive. ➜

Related siteswww.philips.com/research/ami/www.design.philips.com/smartconnections/www.extra.research.philips.com/euprojects/ambience/oxygen.lcs.mit.edu/www.cordis.lu/ist/istag.htmwww.innovations.gatech.edu/awarehome/architecture.mit.edu/house_n/www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/01-06mshome.asp

ISBN 90-74445-55-1