Intelligent Environments are populated with numerous devices and have multiple occupants. They inherently exhibit increasingly intelligent behavior, support consistent functionality and human-centric operation (humans, as opposed to mere users, have increased requirements from a system, including, for example, intuitive interaction, protection of privacy, fault-tolerance, etc.), and provide optimized resource usage. The development of Intelligent Environments is considered the first and primary step towards the realization of the Ambient Intelligence vision and requires input from research and contributions from several scientific and engineering disciplines, including computer science, software engineering, artificial intelligence, architecture, social sciences, art and design. The series of IE conferences has been consistently creating a unique blend of researchers in these disciplines, fostering cross-disciplinary discussions, debate and collaborations.
The 21st International Conference on Intelligent Environments was held on June 23–26, 2025, in Darmstadt (Germany). The general chairs were: Arjan Kuijper (Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany) as General Chair; Hirozumi Yamaguchi (Osaka University, Japan) and Stephan Sigg (Aalto University, Finland) as Program Chairs, and Florian Kirchbuchner (Fraunhofer IGD, Germany) as Local Organizing Committee Chair. This article presents a report of the conference.
The first edition of this event was hosted at the University of Essex, UK (in 2005) and all subsequent editions since then have been held on a yearly basis in different countries of the American, European, African, and Asian continents. The event is structured into two days of Workshops and Tutorials followed by two days of conference which includes various tracks: full/short papers, video/demo presentations and doctoral colloquium. The event also includes an Industrial Forum.
Workshops
The following workshops were held:
- 5th International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Emerging Topics (ALLEGET ’24) organized by Dr. Andrés Muñoz (Universidad de Cadiz, Spain), Dr. Raquel Martínez-España (Universidad de Murcia, Spain), Dr. Fernando Terroso (Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Spain), and Dr. Andrés Bueno-Crespo (Universidad Católica de Murcia, Spain);
- 14th International Workshop on the Reliability of Intelligent Environments (WORIE ’24) organized by Dr. Aditya Santokhee (Middlesex University, Mauritius), Dr. Carlos Rodriguez-Dominguez (University of Granada, Spain), Prof. Juan Carlos Augusto (Middlesex University London, UK);
- 14th International Workshop on Intelligent Environments Supporting Healthcare and Well-being (WISHWell 2024) organized by Dr. Anton Gradišek (Institut Jožef Stefan, Slovenia) and Prof. Juan Carlos Augusto (Middlesex University London, UK).
These workshops are established within the IE conference series, providing a focused forum for open discussion and cross-fertilization of ideas on emerging and multi-disciplinary topics. The proceedings of the workshops are published as an Open Access volume by IOS Press. We invite colleagues to submit proposals for additional workshops in future editions.
Tutorials
Concurrently with the Workshops program, the following tutorials were held:
- “Which Missing Feature Should I Acquire If My Data Is Streaming? – An Introduction to Active Feature Acquisition on Data Streams” by M.Sc. Christian Beyer (Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany)
- “Introducing a Quality Enhanced Process for Developing Intelligent Environments” by Dr. Aditya Santokhee (Middlesex University Mauritius)
- “Tutorial on Explainable and Robust AI for Industry 4.0 & 5.0 (X-RAI)” by Dr. Sepideh Pashami (Halmstad University, Sweden), Dr. Grzegorz J. Nalepa (Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland), Dr. Joao Gama (University of Porto, Portugal) and Dr. Rita P. Ribeiro (University of Porto, Portugal)
These tutorials were well aligned with the current technical trends and domains, were very well received and are an asset for the conference, becoming a fixed feature of the event. We invite colleagues to submit proposals for future editions.
Conference Papers and Sessions
Regarding the conference, this year 21 papers were accepted and presented through two days avoiding parallel tracks. The areas of work which were most often referred to in this edition and formed sessions were: Human Activity Recognition, Smart Health, Sensing Techniques, Intelligent Transportation, and Smart Spaces. All accepted papers (17 long and 4 short) were included in the conference proceedings, which were published in digital format by IEEE.
Keynote Lectures
The conference program also included four distinguished keynote lectures:
- “Role of Edge Computing in Age of Machine Learning and Resource Constraints” by Prof. Klara Nahrstedt (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
- “An Innovative Space Communication System for Expanding CPS into Space” by Prof. Sumio Morioka, Senior Fellow (Interstellar Technologies Inc., Japan)
- “Scalable and Energy-Efficient Distributed Machine Learning” by Prof. Dirk Kutscher (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Guangzhou, Hong Kong)
Awards
In each edition we reward quality. In this edition the following awards were given:
- Best full paper award: “Leveraging Edge Resources for Indoor Localization for Improved Accuracy” by Meka Naga Nandini Devi, MD Muzakkir Hussain, S.H. Laskar and Firoj Gazi
- Beatrice Worsley award: “Protecting Endangered Birds with Edge-AI: Real-Time Detection of Invasive Cats in Natural Parks” by Floreal Acebrón, Erika Rosas, Juan Carlos Cano, Pietro Manzoni, Esther Sebastian and José María Cecilia
- Award for the most influential paper in the last 5 years: “A CNN-LSTM Deep Learning Classifier for Motor Imagery EEG Detection Using a Low-invasive and Low-Cost BCI Headband” by FM García-Moreno, M Bermúdez-Edo, MJ Rodríguez-Fórtiz and JL Garrido
- Best short paper award: “CNN-Swin Backbones in Radar Object Detection for Autonomous Vehicles using Raw ADC Signals” by Iqbal Banwait, Niclas Zeller and Javad Alirezaie
- Best presentation award (female): Zolboo Damiran
- Best presentation award (male): Gabriel Guerrero-Contreras
Conclusion
The conference was hosted in hybrid mode as has become more common after the pandemic. Nearly 100 delegates from five different continents attended the event. These included representatives from academia and industry, and from specialties including software engineering, artificial intelligence, human factors, architecture, pervasive computing, and even psychology, art and design.
This year the conference was endorsed as usual by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. The 22nd International Conference on Intelligent Environments will take place in June 2026 in Lisbon, Portugal (see https://ie2026.pt/ for more details).
Short Biographies
Dr Juan Carlos Augusto (Licenciate in Computer Science-1992, Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence- 1998, M.Sc. in Higher Education – 2009) is Professor of Computer Science at Middlesex University, London, UK. He is the Head of the Research Group on Development of Intelligent Environments. His personal research is focused on the improvement of the intelligence, interfaces and development process of Intelligent Environments. He has contributed to the research community with more than 280 publications, is co-editor in chief of journals addressing the development of sensing systems, their reliability and their application in Smart Cities. He has provided invited keynotes for several scientific events and also chaired several events. He has been a reviewer for the EU and several National Funding organizations in other countries. He is also an IEEE, ACM, AAAI and BCS member.
Florian Kirchbuchner is Head of the research group “Smart Living & Biometric Technologies” at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD in Darmstadt, Germany, and Principal Investigator at the National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity ATHENE. He holds an M.Sc. in Computer Science from Technische Universität Darmstadt (2015). He works in numerous national and EU-funded projects, contributes to standardization activities within DIN and ISO, and serves as a reviewer for scientific journals and funding organizations. His research focuses on human-centered computing, ambient intelligence, machine learning, and privacy-aware systems. As a young researcher, he has co-authored more than 90 publications and, according to Google Scholar, has received over 3,600 citations with an h-index of 35 (i10-index: 71) in recent years.
Prof. Dr. Arjan Kuijper holds a chair in “Mathematical and Applied Visual Computing” at TU Darmstadt and is at Fraunhofer IGD responsible for dissemination of scientific results. He obtained a MSc. in applied mathematics from Twente University and a PhD from Utrecht University, both in the Netherlands. He was assistant research professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and senior researcher at RICAM (Austrian Academy of Sciences) in Linz, Austria. He obtained his habitation degree from TU Graz, Austria.
He is author of over 400 peer-reviewed publications, associate editor for CVIU, PR, and TVCJ, Past-President of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR). He serves as reviewer for many journals and conferences, and as program committee member and organizer of conferences. His research interests cover all aspects of mathematics-based methods for computer vision, biometry, graphics, imaging, pattern recognition, interaction, and visualization.