Preface; Face to face collaborative interfaces; Computer vision interfaces for interactive art; Ubiquitous gaze: Using gaze at the interface; Exploiting natural language generation in scene interpretation; The language of action: A new tool for human-centric interfaces; Robust speech recognition under noisy ambient conditions; Speaker recognition in smart environments; Machine learning approaches to spoken language understanding; The role of spoken dialogue in user-environment interaction; Speech synthesis in ambient intelligence environments; Tangible interfaces for ambient augmented reality applications; Physical browsing and selection: Easy interaction with ambient services; Non-symbolic gestural interaction for ambient intelligence; Evaluation of multimodal interfaces for ambient intelligence; New frontiers in machine learning for predictive user modeling; Games and entertainment in ambient intelligence environments; Natural and implicit information seeking cues in responsive technology; Interaction in intelligent environments; Deploying context-aware home health technology: Human-centric challenges; Epilogue: Applications outlook

To create truly effective human-centric ambient intelligence systems both engineering and computing methods are needed. This is the first book to bridge data processing and intelligent reasoning methods for the creation of human-centered ambient intelligence systems. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book covers topics such as multi-modal interfaces, human-computer interaction, smart environments and pervasive computing, addressing principles, paradigms, methods and applications. This book will be an ideal reference for university researchers, R&D engineers, computer engineers, and graduate students working in signal, speech and video processing, multi-modal interfaces, human-computer interaction and applications of ambient intelligence.

Hamid Aghajan is a Professor of Electrical Engineering (consulting) at Stanford University, USA. His research is on user-centric vision applications in smart homes, assisted living / well being, smart meetings, and avatar-based social interactions. He is Editor-in-Chief of "Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments", has chaired ACM/IEEE ICDSC 2008, and organized workshops/sessions/tutorials at ECCV, ACM MM, FG, ECAI, ICASSP, CVPR.

Juan Carlos Augusto is a Lecturer at the University of Ulster, UK. He is conducting research on Smart Homes and Classrooms. He has given tutorials at IJCAI'07 and AAAI'08. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Book Series on "Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments" and the "Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments". He has co-Chaired ICOST'06, AITAmI'06/07/08, and is Workshops Chair for IE'09.

Ramón López-Cózar Delgado is a Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science and Telecommunications of the University of Granada, Spain. His research interests include speech recognition and understanding, dialogue management and Ambient Intelligence. He is a member of ISCA (International Speech Communication Association), SEPLN (Spanish Society on Natural Language Processing) and AIPO (Spanish Society on HCI).

• Integrates engineering and computing methods that are essential for designing and implementing highly effective ambient intelligence systems
• Contains contributions from the world's leading experts in academia and industry
• Gives a complete overview of the principles, paradigms and applications of human-centric ambient intelligence systems