Thanks to developments in the field of electronic hardware, in terms of miniaturization and cost reduction, it is possible nowadays to populate everyday environments (e.g., home, office, car, etc.) with “smart” devices for controlling and automating various tasks in our daily lives.

In the dawn of the ubiquitous computing era, an even larger number of everyday objects is expected to become computationally enabled, while micro/nano sensors will be embedded in most engineered artefacts, from the clothes we wear to the roads we drive on. All of these devices will be networked using wireless technologies like Bluetooth, Zigbee or IEEE 802.11 for short range connectivity. Furthermore, the omnipresence of the Internet via phone lines, wireless channels and power lines facilitates ubiquitous networks of smart devices that will significantly change the way we interact with (information) appliances and can open enormous possibilities for innovative applications.

The Merriam-Webster OnLine dictionary defines the word ecology as the interrelationship of organisms and their environments and the word ambient as existing in the surrounding area. We use the ambient ecology metaphor to conceptualize a space populated by connected devices and services that are interrelated with each other, the environment and the people, supporting the users’ everyday activities in a meaningful way. Everyday appliances, devices, and context aware artefacts are part of ambient ecologies. A context-aware artefact uses sensors to perceive the context of humans or other artefacts and sensibly respond to it. Adding context awareness to artefacts can increase their usability and enable new user interaction and experiences. Given this fundamental capability single artefacts have the opportunity to participate in artefact-based service orchestration ranging from simple co-operation to developing smart behavior. Smart behaviour, then, either in individual or collective levels, is possible because of the artefacts’ abilities to perceive and interpret their environment (peer artefacts being themselves a part of an artefact’s environment).

Integrating such systems will not only enable ambient ecologies, but the ecology can also partially drive members’ interactions. For example, given a collocated set of grocery items, an application might search for recipes and display them on a kitchen screen; once the user confirms the recipe, various appliances could be preset according to the cooking instructions. So, the same ecology enables actions on appliances and artefacts based on the contexts of appliances, artefacts, and users. Through the ecology, appliances and artefacts become aware of each other. In general, context information that the system uses in reasoning can concern a particular device, appliance, or user, or a collection of such entities. In turn, an entity might be aware only of its own context or that of a group of entities. Furthermore, an entity can respond individually to its perceived context or the group’s, or a higher level application might coordinate a response among various devices.

You may also take a look at the ATRACO poster presented at the FET Conference 2009.