Singapore is well-positioned to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the emergence of sentient technologies with its existing research capabilities in fields as diverse as materials research, communications and behavioral sciences.

Sentient technologies have been described as ?the next wave of change? in the Infocomm Development Authority?s (IDA) 10-year Infocomm Technology Roadmap. ?The goal of sentient computing is to make machines and applications perform better by giving it the ability to collect information about its surroundings, its context and for it to make judgments based on this information,? said IDA.

According to DS3 & LightWave Advisors, the market for distributed sensor networking will be worth US$18 billion in 2008. This will include context aware and personalized systems with sensor networks, small software and collaborative agents. Harbor Research, another industry analyst firm, is projecting the existence of 1.2 billion devices in the smart sensor category by 2005.

It is an area where there are still a lot of opportunities, ?almost like a green field?, said Professor Lawrence Wong, executive director, Institute for Infocomm Research. ?Our strength right now is that we are early enough in the game, given that we have some of these core capabilities that already exist in universities or research institutes. We can coalesce all these together to work in a converged or unified direction, and we can come up with an exciting framework and architectures that cut across different disciplines.?

The sentient technology chain ranges from the sensors to the networks that transport sense information to the collection and processing of such information. And for the information to be useful, it has to be able to actuate certain devices and control certain environments. ?There is a whole chain ranging from information capture to the point where the information is useful for some application. Along that chain, different institutes have different competencies to contribute,? said Wong.

For example, the Data Storage Institute is working on advanced storage technologies such as microsystems and nanosystems and network storage technologies; the Institute of High Performance Computing is looking into immersive virtual technology and supercomputing; the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and the Institute of Microelectronics are conducting research into sensors, displays and new smart materials while the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology has done work on robotics, sensor, actuators, haptics and hardware packaging.

The universities and polytechnics are also in the game, with capabilities ranging from quantum cryptography and semantic web to biosensors and bioMEMs.

On its part, I2R focuses on communications as well as data and information processing. ?What we try to do is to come up with applications scenarios to help us focus on the technologies that are needed,? said Wong. Examples of these scenarios include the smart home environment or the work environment.

At the IDA launch of the Infocomm Technology Roadmap, I2R showcased the deployment of smart systems in the care of the elderly.

For example, such systems could sense and remind elderly patients at home to take their medication. They can also monitor the elderly at home and detect abnormal behavioral changes through telematic systems enabled by communication technologies, sensor networks, tracking systems, biosensors and wearables.

Wong gives the example of smart systems which can detect an elderly occupant entering the bathroom and his or her utilization of water. ?If a certain pattern of usage is expected, and that pattern is violated, perhaps something has happened.?

?Smart systems use information in an intelligent way, and expect certain outcomes based on certain rules of social behavior,? said Wong. ?They bring together technologies of other disciplines, not just IT type of disciplines but also areas like behavioral sciences, to understand the context of the application.?

The ability to understand the context of the application and to represent information in a meaningful way is one of the current challenges facing the deployment of sentient technologies.

?What we have are raw data numbers coming in, but when we talk about smart environments, we have to go beyond raw numbers. They have to be conceptualized and abstracted to arrive at some meaning.?

Ultimately, to deliver the vision of the sentient era, islands of intelligence will also have to be integrated into a smart information infrastructure.

?Ten years from now, there will definitely be the presence of many more intelligent devices ? I think that?s a given. And there is a high likelihood that these devices will be able to talk to one another,? said Wong.

?Given the fact that they have some intelligence, and are able to talk to each other, they begin to form a framework or infrastructure that senses its surroundings?and when you access to that sensed information and you have an architecture that brings all these together, potentially, you can create an environment that is sensitive to the needs of the occupants in that environment.?