Cognitive Systems Approach to Smart Cities
This addresses the need for more human-centric smart city technologies, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing IoT and cognitive science concepts without introducing a new breakthrough.
The paper tackles the challenge of developing smart city services that require seamless, personalized interactions by examining how cognitive systems, which integrate AI with cognitive sciences, can meet these demands, using examples from projects and literature to illustrate potential solutions.
In our connected world, services are expected to be delivered at speed through multiple means with seamless communication. To put it in day to day conversational terms, 'there is an app for it' attitude prevails. Several technologies are needed to meet this growing demand and indeed these technologies are being developed. The first noteworthy is Internet of Things (IoT), which is in itself coupled technologies to deliver seamless communication with 'anywhere, anytime' as an underlying objective. The 'anywhere, anytime' service delivery paradigm requires a new type of smart systems in developing these services with better capabilities to interact with the human user, such as personalisation, affect state recognition, etc. Here enter cognitive systems, where AI meets cognitive sciences (e.g. cognitive psychology, linguistics, social cognition, etc.). In this paper we will examine the requirements imposed by smart cities development, e.g. intelligent logistics, sensor networks and domestic appliances connectivity, data streams and media delivery, to mention but few. Then we will explore how cognitive systems can meet the challenges these requirements present to the development of new systems. Throughout our discussion here, examples from our recent and current projects will be given supplemented by examples from the literature.