An emerging trend in ambient intelligence: Large-scale outdoor applications

Abstract

The area of Ambient Intelligence recently seems to be matured enough and widely accepted as one of the basic supporting technologies and approaches for human living environment enhancement. There are many interesting applications of wireless sensor networks coupled with ambient intelligence applications, mainly for the creation of indoor intelligent spaces. However, there are just a few of them aiming at the enhancement of outdoor environments in order to support human activities typical for wide-area spaces in open natural environments. There are also a number of useful applications of wireless sensor networks aiming at environmental monitoring, however, just a few of them, if any, are taking advantage of recent achievements of Ambient Intelligence. In our paper, we intend to go further with the ideas of how the Ambient Intelligence used in a wide manner in connection with wireless sensor networks throughout the open natural environment could be beneficial not only for early warning in case of possible disasters, but also as an important supporting tool for people located in outdoor areas due to various reasons, e.g. hitchhikers, hikers on difficult mountains tracks, or even workers in exacting outdoor workplaces (i.e., a coal mine). An idea of a large-scale Ambient Intelligence system based on a wide area wireless sensor network is presented, where the system should be able to monitor the environment, evaluate the collected data and, if necessary, inform the workers in the environment about possible threats and also give some hints for their rescue, using various communication devices.