From Devices to “Ambient Intelligence”:
The Transformation of Consumer Electronics
ROEL PIEPER
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
ROYAL PHILIPS ELECTRONICS
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
What’s Different About the Living Room?
Living
Room
Office
Office
Lean-forward mode
Laid-back mode
We are concentrating
Our guard is down
Where we’re productive
Where we relax, socialize,
and live
Value = functionality
Value =
functionality
attention required
Whatever we think, our kids will prove us wrong
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
Imagining the Destination, and Steps Today
Where we’re going:
Road signs, not a crystal ball
Experiments and prototypes
Focus on all ages, especially the younger ones
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
Envisioning the Destination:
The Unmediated Fulfillment of Needs
Degree of Conscious Mediation
Needs should
be consciously
mediated only
to the extent
that they are
out-of-theordinary, or
unpredictable
Our ordinary
needs should
be satisfied with
minimal effort
High
Write a
letter
Walk from
place to
place
Circulate
blood to limbs
Low
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
Envisioning the Destination:
Moving to an Implicit, Anticipatory Model
Anticipatory
Implicit
Instructional
Explicit
Examples:
The
Learning
Process
The
Development
of Computers
Unconsciously
riding a bicycle
Learning to ride
a bicycle
High-level
GUI
VUI
Personalized, anticipatory
need-fulfillment
Assembly and languages
machine code
Oliver Sacks: “To See and Not See”
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
Envisioning the Destination:
Ambient Intelligence
Embedded:
Many invisible dedicated devices
throughout the environment.
Personalized:
The devices know who you are.
Adaptive:
Change in response to you and
to the environment.
Anticipatory:
Anticipate your desires as far
as possible without conscious
mediation: PRE-sponsive,
not responsive.
Desktop
metaphors
Life
metaphors
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
Examples Today, and for the Future
Experiments we’ve done at Philips and elsewhere:
Great successes and striking failures
Cassette Tape, CD Player, Laser & Video Disc
CD-I, System 2000
Human needs are complex, hard to predict:
Requires substantial experimentation
and investment
But making huge strides in learning about
people, and filling individual needs, with
ambient intelligence
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
Experiments in Natural Interfaces:
Reducing the Difficulty of Mediating / Instructing
Multimodal Interfaces
Input: Speech, gesture, tactile
Feedback: Tactile, auditory, visual
...Redundancy, naturalness of use
Human-like Interaction (HUI & VUI)
The importance of voice:
speech recognition (FreeSpeech98)
Unexpected outcomes:
a voice-activated remote control
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
Experiments in Situational Awareness:
Anticipating Needs in a Changing Environment
Environment changes constantly
Devices must track and adapt
Seamless, plug-free networks
Self-configuring
Short-distance wireless, IR
Mobility, Control Wands
Sensor technology
Penny tags and smart materials
Philips control wands
GPS Intelligence
Self-positioning, Contextual adaptation
Communicating Devices
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
Experiments in Personalization:
The Environment Understands You
Adaptation to user involves understanding
Who the user is
User’s particular needs, desires, and habits
Double Agent
Biometrics: crucial to identify the user
Voice, fingerprint, face, position
Personalization: learning your explicit and
implicit needs
“Double Agent”
Security: both individual and family
Absolutely critical for market acceptance
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
Experiments in Ambient Intelligence:
Making Everyday Objects Smarter
The most radical, futuristic vision involves
the most prosaic, mundane objects
Technologies need to adapt to economic constraints
Plastic semiconductors
TriMedia Chip Architecture (Audio, Video, Data)
for Digital TV
Light-emitting Polymers
The economics of Ambient Intelligence
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
Scale: Consumer Devices, Rather Than PCs
The entire market for consumer PCs, 1998:
20 Million PCs sold to consumers
Philips alone in 1997 shipped:
11 M
Shavers
30 M
Displays (monitors, plasma, tubes)
2.4 Billion Lights
18 Billion Semiconductors
Philips covers a broad CE market with 40B in sales
and 280,000 people with a huge retail and direct
sales network
Hundreds of intelligent points-of-presence
throughout home
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE
C O N C L U S I O N
The digital living room succeeds only insofar as it
actively recognizes, builds on, and embraces our
humanity. Our homes and tools will adapt to us and
to our dynamic environments; anticipating and
fulfilling our needs.
Only when there’s a seamless integration of
technology with life, when it’s no longer a curiosity
but an ordinary and unsurprising way of satisfying
our everyday needs and desires — only then will we
have seen the beginnings of a true technological
revolution.
The Consumer Electronics industry is well
positioned to use high-volume economics and ICT
in their products
PHILIPS INTERNAL WORKING DRAFT / THOUGHT-PIECE