Since the beginning, information and communications technologies (ICT) have been characterized by cycles between centralized and personal computing. From the early mainframes to the personal computers, from the cloud to the smartphones, the focus has moved according to the technological advancements and the key technologies that have been enabling continuous paradigm shift from centralized computing to thin clients and vice versa.

The Internet of Things (IoT), one of the latest trends in ICT, is going to influence every aspect of our lives: tiny smart objects embedded in everyday things, equipped with computational and communication capabilities that are interconnected among them and with the Internet. Cross-domains applications access sensors and users-generated data and interoperate among different contexts. Such smart things will cooperate to provide valuable information to the people and contribute to increasing the potentialities of their actions and the comfort of their lives. In such a context, an emerging application and research field is the ambient intelligence, which refers to the capacity of an IoT system to sense the environment and to respond to the presence of people and builds upon pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing, profiling, context awareness, and human-centric computer interaction design.

Ambient intelligence is going to change the way technology is perceived by the users: as these devices become smaller, more connected, and more integrated into the environment, the technology gradually disappears into the surroundings until only the user interface remains perceivable by users. Users will interact directly or indirectly with the interfaces of the systems, and the system will respond to people presence, actions, and decisions, offering integrated solutions and improving their quality of experience (QoE). To this end, mobile information systems are crucial for the ambient intelligence, since the majority of the sensors and actuators rely on mobile/wireless technologies and on distributed information systems and big data to collect, store, and process the data.

Such a scenario has been enabled thanks to advancements at different layers: network

(WSAN, RFID, NFC, BLE, ZigBee, IEEE 802.11ah, and 6LoWPAN), operating systems (TinyOS, Contiki, and FreeRTOS), and service layer middleware (platform such as FIWARE and CityPulse), among others. However, in spite of several efforts, the development in the IoT has followed “vertical silos” paradigm, in which proprietary solution can hardly interoperate, thus limiting the potentialities offered by the IoT. Research and innovation are needed to address new model-centric and predictive engineering methods and tools for cyber-physical systems and “systems of systems” with a high degree of autonomy ensuring adaptability, scalability, complexity management, security, and safety and providing trust to humans in the loop.

Authors from the academia and the industry are invited to contribute original research papers as well as review articles that illustrate and stimulate the continuing effort and collaborations in the ambient intelligence.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing, profiling, context awareness, and human-centric computer interaction design
• Smart devices, sensors, and actuators
• Wireless sensor and actuator networks
• Machine learning, neuronal networks, and automatic decision
• System-wide solutions, including interfaces and users