Smart devices

Smart devices will support interaction between CyberMonde and the environment: it is their main task; but also they will facilitate the internal evolution of CyberMonde and why not the environment itself. Indeed, CyberMonde, if it lives periodically in a closed area, needs to be built or to be reconstituted according to its own rules; also, the environment is subjected to conditions (forced or enrichments), free or not, which modify its own parameters.

In reference to the proposals (incomplete at the date of writing), the role of smart devices appears diversified, made up however of more or less unifying poles of interest:

• management of its primary needs: that is a very basic role, but necessary to be maintained in life and to be able to fulfil the external requests for which the object is intended. The survival of the device should not depend on its capacities to feed (to increase its energy) or to carry out its own maintenance, but this must be decided on if it would become useless.

• letter box; the situation of the passive device or the device which fills, without fail, always the same functionality. Increased use can possibly occur, but it is known in advance. In this category, one will find probably sensors of information, displays, switches.

• at a higher level, the tool for specialised storage carries out classification of the data and information which will require greater software power and the setting in place of protocols, dialogues and indexing procedures, with human supervision.

• decentralisation of the processing capacities of information answers other problems and even corresponds to a certain vision of the organisation of the system, but this track becomes possible thanks to the performances related to the memories, the software developments of architecture and management, etc. This field develops, depending of technological progress and scientific projections, and will allow better adaptation to the specifications.

• a higher level step: attention carried to context. One finds the functions presented there previously, but also of the capacities of fusion of data and interactivity. The standard example is the physical localisation of a user . But one will easily imagine the need to obtain from it the identification and thus the identity. The access to local information also forms part of the context.

• more subtle will be the device which will succeed in perceiving the environment, but not only the physical environment or the data-processing links. To perceive the environment requires to be alert to an unspecified event, but also to analyse data which predict relations between communicating entities and especially the way in which each one perceives the other. This introduction of the relational fields is not without reference to the first steps of work on emotion.

• an additional element of the smart device will be its potentiality to carry out a behavioural analysis of the devices and environment which surround it. This analysis will bring an obvious advantage since it is a question of communicating, to co- operate , co-ordinate, connect, and therefore to connect and to interact.

These topics come up more and more frequently, but undoubtedly not yet enough. There is surely a gain in taking as a starting point the mono and multi- agents models.

• the device, companion of the communicating entity which is the individual, has the characteristics of its master and puts in place capacities of selection of information (at entry) and recopy (at exit) to assist and accompany the individual;

• to finish, but undoubtedly is not yet one of prime importance, one will evoke intelligence. But what intelligence for a device? Undoubtedly, software agents are an answer.

Elements, in particular chapters dealing with semantic and emotional aspects, will appear elsewhere. Other fields deserve to be studied, for example, the autonomy and the decision-making power of an object, the takeover of an action, proactivity, etc.

Is it false to think that current efforts are not centred on these last subjects? Or is this an ignorance of the work of laboratories?

Is a smart device only physical?