Overview

Most environments are passive: deaf, dumb and blind, unaware of their inhabitants and unable to assist them in a meaningful way. However, with the advent of ubiquitous computing—ever smaller, cheaper and faster computational devices embedded in a growing variety of "smart" objects—it is becoming increasingly possible to create active environments: physical spaces that can sense and respond appropriately to the people and activities taking place within them.

As computers increasingly move away from the desktop and are embedded into other artifacts within the spaces we occupy, we see a new paradigm of human-computer interaction emerging, wherein people are not so much seen as users of computers but as inhabitants of environments. Furthermore, computer applications will increasingly migrate from the foreground of our attention, providing tools that help us accomplish our tasks, into the background, affecting aspects of our environment at the periphery of our attention.  

A number of researchers are investigating how environments can sense and respond to individuals, e.g., desktop computer applications (such as screen savers) that react to the presence or absence of their owners. However, we spend much of our time together with others with in shared environments; the Active Environments research agenda stands apart in its focus of exploring how physical spaces can sense and respond to groups of inhabitants.