Intelligent devices and smart spaces

Intelligent personal devices interacting with smart spaces will create a world where your environment itself anticipates and is ready to serve your every need. Many disciplines and technologies are realizing this vision of context awareness, which was science fiction just 25 years ago. In particular, your smartphone will evolve into your “sixth” sense — autonomously alerting you to your environment and notifying your social network of your interests, concerns and goals. Research challenges include ultra-low power always-on sensing and inference technologies, near-zero overhead peer-to-peer networking, and automated reasoning. Models derived from deep learning and knowledge-based reasoners in the proximate cloud will combine to create sentient immersive spaces. Advances in low power silicon, energy harvesting and scavenging will ensure that these smart environments are sustainable. This panel brings together leading experts to tell us about what sixth-sense functions are round the corner and what further breakthroughs are needed to realize this contextual awareness vision.