Background and Goals: Imagine a future where human environments respond to human preferences and needs. In this world, devices equipped with simple intelligence and the abilities to sense, communicate, and act will be unremarkable features of our world. We will expect the car to warn us of hazards, track our location and provide timely route advice. We will speak to simple machines and hold conversations with more complex systems, such as intelligent homes that will help us monitor conditions, track routine tasks, and program the behaviour of the heat, the lights, the garden watering and the entertainment centre. Analogous systems at work will make simple decisions in our stead ranging from scheduling meetings to negotiating for common services over the web. Such systems will also acquire, and adapt to our preferences over time. In sum, we will come to view simple software intelligence as an ambient feature of our environment. The infrastructure for ambient intelligence is fast coming on line. Computational resources are cheap and becoming cheaper, while ubiquitous network access has started to appear. Market forces will soon produce applications. We take the view that ambient intelligence is imminent and inevitable, and that the time is ripe to take stock. This workshop will provide that opportunity by gathering researchers in a variety of AI subfields together with representatives of commercial interests to explore the technology and applications for ambient intelligence.

Areas of Interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Agent-based approaches to AmI
• Individual/group emotional status
• Individual/group preferences
• Mediating conflicting interests
• Intelligent interactive systems
• Non invasive sensing and interaction
• Multi-modal interfaces (voice, image and video, bio-signals, handwriting, etc.)
• Interaction with autonomous systems
• Modelling complex environments (smart homes, hospitals, museums, transportation, classrooms, etc.)
• Context awareness
• Cognitive modelling of users
• Applications (health, industry, teaching, supporting group collaboration, etc.)
• Innovative applications of AI to Ambient Intelligence
• Responsive/active architecture
• Traditional relevant areas of AI (KR, reasoning about actions, spatio-temporal reasoning, CBR, planning, uncertainty, learning, belief revision, vision, decision- making, etc.)

This workshop will complement previous events, such as the International Conference on Smart Homes and Telecare, the AAAI 2005 Spring Symposium Workshop on Persistent Assistants and the European Symposium on Ambient Intelligence. This workshop differs from other events in the area in that it will focus on the special relevance of AI technology to the goals of Ambient Intelligence, and on the most likely avenues for practical application. AITAmI'08 will provide an open forum based on a variety of presentations: research papers, keynotes, panels and industrial demos. This event will provide a continuation to AITAmI'06 held during ECAI'06 and AITAmI'07 held during IJCAI'07.

Important Dates:

April 10th: submission deadline

May 10th: notification of evaluation

May 24th: camera ready submission

General Structure of the Event: The core of the event will be the presentation of recent advances in research and applications and debates around different topics of interest. The event will have invited keynote lectures and sessions where papers and posters will be presented to report on the latest theoretical developments and applications. Presentations can also contain demos about tools and their applications. A panel will focus on various topics of interest at both academic and professional level. Interaction will be encouraged throughout the event.

Submission Details: Authors wishing to participate as speakers in this event should format their papers following the same formatting guidelines (5 pages, etc.) than for the main conference.

Papers submitted to our event have to be uploaded using easyChair. If you do not have an easyChair account then you can create one here. To submit papers (once you have an easyChair account) login and submit here.

Special Session on Vision-based Reasoning: this edition will have a session devoted to the use of networks of video cameras as intelligent sensors enabling smart environments. Contact the chair of the session Hamid Aghajan (Stanford University, USA) aghajan 'at' stanford.edu for further inquiry or see paper submission instructions.

Invited Speakers: We are very pleased to announce the following invited Keynote speakers:

Prof. Wolfgang Wahlster, German Research Center for AI, DFKI GmbH.

Title: Ambient Retail Intelligence: What's the deal? See abstract.

Prof. Sylvain Giroux, University of Sherbrooke, Canada.

Title : Some steps into the praxis of cognitive assistance. See abstract.

Prof. Hamid Aghajan, Stanford University, USA

Title: Interfacing Vision. See abstract.

Program: the overall program of activities can be seen here...

Publications: all papers accepted will be published in the proceedings of the event. As in previous years a follow up publication is planned (a Special Issue in a recognized International Journal is currently being discussed with a publisher).

Logistics: It is convenient that if the presentation requires any equipment different from the standard laptop and data projector the authors of the paper communicate this to the workshop chairs as soon as possible.

Attendance: at least one author of each accepted paper is required to attend the workshop to present the paper. Places for attendance will be awarded with preferenc e to those that have a paper accepted in the event.

Those wishing to attend the workshop without presenting a paper are invited to send to jc.augusto 'at' ulster.ac.uk a brief statement of interest and a description of their background and motivations in this area. We cannot guarantee a place in the event for those not sending this request for participation.

Registration: to register for this event please use the registration page provided by ECAI'08.

Ph.D. Grants: The organizers of this event will offer partial funding to Ph.D. students with accepted papers at our event. The quality of the submission and the financial situation of the student will be part of the selection criterion. More details on this after the papers have been selected.

The following students benefited with grants provided by our sponsors:

• Adrien Joly (Bell Labs)
• Patrice Roy (U. Of Sherbrooke)
• Andres Munoz Ortega (U. de Murcia)