1. Ambient Awareness in wireless information and communication services
Herma van Kranenburg (eds.)
Telematica Instituut, the Netherlands

2. Active Contributors Stefan Arbanowski Fraunhofer Fokus, Germany
Erwin Postmann & Christian Feichtner Siemens AG, Austria
Johan Hjelm Ericsson, Sweden
Johan de Heer (+ myself) Telematica Instituut, The Netherlands
Acknowledgements to: Norman Sadeh (Carnegie Mellon University), Juhani Latvakoski and Petri Maatta (VTT Electronics), Wouter Teeuw and Henk Eertink (Telematica Instituut), Axel Busboom (Ericsson Research, Germany), Patricia Charlton (Motorola, Paris, France), John Yanosy (Motorola, Tx, USA), Kimmo Raatikainen (Nokia, Finland), Radu Popescu- Zeletin (Fraunhofer FOKUS).

3. Introduction
Starting point = I-centric architectural framework and Ubiquitous Attentiveness:
ubiquitous computing,
exchanging information between communication systems and.
pro-active responsiveness of the ubiquitous environment.
A (wearable) system is ubiquitous attentive when it is wakeful and alert to meaningfully interpret the possibilities of the contemporary human communication space and intentionally induces some (behavioural/system) action(s).
Ubiquitous attentiveness ~ context awareness.
The ambient or situation is a transection of context.

4. Definitions
Ambient in I-centric computing defines the ambient or situation the actor is in given his communication space at a fixed moment in time. It includes spatial, environmental and physiological information.
Ambient Awareness denotes the functionality provided by an I-centric system to sense and exchange the situation in which the individual is in at a certain moment in time

5. Acquiring ambient information
Sensors in network, in devices or in the environment
Human-machine-interfaces
Actors themselves
Wide area positioning technologies range from Cell-ID to enhanced GPS
Short-range wireless technologies, eg IEEE or Hiperlan-II
Position, inertial, motion sensors
Body sensors
Terminal-activity sensors
Camera’s

6. Crunching (Interpreting)
Aggregating in relation to known reference
Communicating and relating to additional situational information
Different weight & ordering of the processing influence rightful interpretation
Multi-modality

7. Interactions of humans and machines in processing ambient information
To deduce situational state humans use:
Non-verbal info
(Ir-) rational decision-making
Common sense reasoning
Info about abstract & non-physical relationships
Need to get this info transparant & made explicit
H-M: sequential exchange of input & output data
Res.Q: interpersonal interaction rules & strategies

8. Standardisation efforts & supporting technologies
ISO/TC211, ISO SQL3/MM, OGC
GIS (Geographical Information Systems), Open Location Services (OpenLS), Location-interoperability Forum (LIF), Mobile Location Protocol (MLP), geography Markup Language (GML), NaVigation Markup Language (NVML), Point Of Interest exchange language (POIX), National marine Electronics Association’s (NMEA) interface and data protocol NMEA-0183, Simple text Format for the Spatial Location Protocol (SLoP), GMML: XML-based geographical information, Geospatial-eXtensible markup Language (G-XML).
Magic Services API
Geographic Location/Privacy (geopriv) - IETF

9. Conclusions
Many research questions to be solved around ambient awareness on a global scale across heterogeneous networks and technologies conforming to an appropriate open inter-working architecture
Advances in sensor technology
Combine and express (semantics) position information from different acquiring technologies
Partial information
Multiple readings from one single device
Rightful evaluation of ambient indicators (aggregation in relation to a known reference, Communicating and relating to additional situational information, Proper weight and ordering of the processing of the relevant ambient indicators
Sensory modelling & Requirements for cross-modality
Privacy protection & policies on ambient information access and exchange
Interpersonal interactions rules and strategies 
Standardisation specs

10. Interested? Join! http://www.uet.e-technik.uni-kassel.de/wwrf-wg2/