Traditionally home automation, consumer electronics, mobile communications and personal computing were strictly separate domains all having their own industrial companies, with their own business plans, standardization efforts and form factors. By introducing the networked home, also called the connected home, this traditional separation of activities is no longer valid. In such a home, several pieces of equipment are connected by using the same infrastructure, the technology is completely integrated into the environment and people can freely and interactively use it.

Home networking has already emerged in specific applications such as PC-to-PC communication and home entertainment systems. But, the lack of interoperability between different manufacturers’ equipments and the absence of compelling user services are hampering market development.

The Amigo project develops middleware that dynamically integrates heterogeneous systems to achieve interoperability between services and devices. For example, home appliances (heating systems, lighting systems, washing machines, refrigerators), multimedia players and renderers (that communicate by means of UPnP) and personal devices (mobile phones, PDA’s) are connected in the home network to work in an interoperable way. This interoperability across different application domains can also be extended across different homes and locations. The Amigo project is a joint effort of fifteen European companies and research organizations in mobile and home networking, software development, consumer electronics and domestic appliances.

Focus on Users

Living in such a connected environment is very difficult to perceive and imagine for users. Let alone that they can explicitly specify their requirements and express their appreciation for such an intelligent environment. Furthermore, these requirements will change and evolve over time as people are becoming more familar with connected environments. The Amigo project adopted a user-centered design process for working with these dynamics of evolving user requirements. Throughout the Amigo project a usage scenario is being used as the central representation to facilitate this process (ref. video of this scenario is on YouTube ref. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wey94w-pNVI).

Amigo Applications

The project develops applications in different domains to show the potential for end-users and the benefits of the service oriented-middleware architecture for application developers.

These applications are: “Home Care and Safety”, “Home Information and Entertainment”, and the “Extended Home Environment” – in which multiple homes are connected. A major goal is to provide end-users with services that enable them to share activities and experiences in an easy and personalized way. They can socialize and visit from their personal environment, for example, their home, with friends and relatives, or other social parties who are at other locations. It is, for example, possible for parents who are on a business trip to still share daily activities with their children at home, to tell them their bedtime stories (fig 1, fig 2), to watch TV together, to look at pictures or to play a game with them. That is, they can share their presence independent of location and devices, using TV with PC, TV with hotel-TV, or mobile with TV, etc. Another example is to use a personal device, for example a mobile, in somebody else’s home network for using the services in one’s own home. Such a device enables users to access services which are operating in their own home from other domains, for example, a friend’s home, cinema, or office. This computing device travels with the user and can ‘bind’ a visited domain to a home domain. It thereby tries to create a feeling of being at home even when the user is away!

Figure 1	Figure 2

Acknowledgement

The Amigo project is funded by the European Commission as an integrated project (IP) in the Sixth Framework Programme under the contract number IST 004182.