| This book is about technologies and standards for smart environments. Smart
environments link computers to everyday settings and commonplace tasks. The
desire to create smart environments has existed for decades, and recent advances
in such areas as pervasive computing, machine learning, and wireless and sensor networking
now allow this dream to become a reality. In this book we introduce the
necessary technologies, architectures, algorithms, and protocols to build a smart
environment and describe a variety of existing smart environment applications.
A smart environment is a small world where all kinds of smart devices are continuously
working to make inhabitants’ lives more comfortable. A definition of
smart or intelligent is the ability to autonomously acquire and apply knowledge,
while environment refers to our surroundings. We therefore define a smart environment
as one that is able to acquire and apply knowledge about an environment and
also to adapt to its inhabitants in order to improve their experience in that environment.
A schema of smart environments is presented in Figure 1.1.
The type of experience that individuals wish from their environment varies with the
individual and the type of environment. They may wish the environment to ensure the
safety of its inhabitants, they may want to reduce the cost of maintaining the environment,
or they may want to automate tasks that are typically performed in the environment.
The expectations of such environments have evolvedwith the history of the field. |
