Smart Environments: What is it and Why Should We Care?

Abstract

This article portrays the area of smart environments from a research perspective, defining the field and discriminating it against related fields. We position the field of smart environments within the disciplines of artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction and discuss its genuine research questions. As an application area, smart environments presents prospects on improving our everyday lives, but systems penetrating our environments also trigger crucial questions related to sociology, ethics, and privacy on an unprecedented level.