Ambient Intelligence: A Perspective of Granular Computing

Ambient intelligence (AmI) is an user‐centric multidisciplinary paradigm that grounds its origins in the works of Wiser and Norman on ubiquitous and disappearing computing. Basically, it refers to adding intelligence in devices to make our surrounding environment sensitive, responsive, adaptive, and smart. An important feature that AmI applications need to achieve is the capability of applying human representations and reasoning. Humans represent the reality with hierarchies and abstractions, look at real problems from different perspectives, analyze a cognitive target with capabilities of granulation. Granular computing (GrC) is a suitable paradigm to design and develop AmI systems with capabilities of human representations, reasoning, and decision‐making. In this article, we offer an overview of how current GrC results are positioned with respect to the enabling technologies of AmI, and present a comprehensive view of how GrC can enforce AmI with human‐oriented perception, representation, reasoning, and decision‐making. This comprehensive view is based on a new computational model, namely, the Granular situation awareness.