Ambient Intelligence in the Production and Retail Sector : Emerging Opportunities and Potential Pitfalls Carsten

evolution of information and communication technology and illustrates its usage in the work domain. The paper is subdivided into two parts. The first part gives an overview over the different phases of information processing in the work domain. It starts by charting the past and present usage of computers in work environments and shows current technological trends, which are likely to influence future business applications. The second part starts by briefly describing, how the usage of computers changed business processes in the past, and presents first Ambient Intelligence applications based on identification and localization information, which are already used in the production and retail sector. Based on current systems and prototype applications, the paper gives an outlook of how Ambient Intelligence technologies could change business processes in the future. I. FROM MAINFRAME COMPUTERS TO INTELLIGENT OBJECTS HE role of computers within the workplace has dramatically changed within the last decades. The increase in processing power and availability did not only influence the way people use computers for their daily office tasks, it also gave rise to fundamentally new forms of work organization within, and also between companies. A. Information Processing in Work Environments Only 30 years ago, a company usually had a single mainframe computer, which cost several millions, needed a whole computing center to be operated, and was jointly used by all employees of the company [52, 56]. With smaller and more affordable computers becoming available in the early eighties, the age of personal computing began. Computers became widespread office tools in most companies, and over the years each user was working on his own personal computer. Today, the initial numerical relation between users and computers has inversed [58]. Each user has a least one personal computer and uses a number of additional microprocessors embedded in everyday objects, like telephones and cars. This age of ubiquitously available computing devices was identified by Weiser [94] already in the early 1990s as the third wave of computing. He envisioned a transition towards calm technologies that recede into the background of our lives and assist us in our everyday activities. Waves of Computing Characteristics 1960 ~ 1980 (first wave) mainframe era one computer, many people 1980 ~ 2000 (second wave) personal computing era one person, one computer since 2000 (third wave) ubiquitous computing era one person, many computers Networking probably brought the most significant change in the usage of personal computers during …