Location-aware services and interfaces in smart homes using multiagent systems

Computer systems are fully capable of providing\ud customized interfaces for users. Every time we log on to an ecommerce\ud website we have used before, the interface changes\ud in order to fit our most probable interests. Some sophisticated\ud vehicles adjust the seat position, rearview mirror orientation and\ud other parameters to match the preferences of the drivers when\ud they enter the car -provided that they belong to the set of known\ud drivers-. However, this kind of service customization has not yet\ud reached the home environment. In the same way as computer\ud systems with productivity, the smart home must prevent the user\ud from performing routine and tedious tasks to achieve comfort,\ud security, and effective energy management. In this paper we\ud propose an architecture for building a smart home environment\ud using multiagent systems, and we demonstrate its effectivenes\ud with an application example where multimedia contents follow\ud the user movements throughout the house

A conceptual framework for interactive virtual storytelling

This paper presents a framework of an interactive storytelling system. It can integrate five components: management centre, evaluation centre, intelligent virtual agent, intelligent virtual environment, and users, making possible interactive solutions where the communication among these components is conducted in a rational and intelligent way. Environment plays an important role in providing heuristic information for agents through communicating with the management centre. The main idea is based on the principle of heuristic guiding of the behaviour of intelligent agents for guaranteeing the unexpectedness and consistent themes

A Semantic Grid Oriented to E-Tourism

With increasing complexity of tourism business models and tasks, there is a clear need of the next generation e-Tourism infrastructure to support flexible automation, integration, computation, storage, and collaboration. Currently several enabling technologies such as semantic Web, Web service, agent and grid computing have been applied in the different e-Tourism applications, however there is no a unified framework to be able to integrate all of them. So this paper presents a promising e-Tourism framework based on emerging semantic grid, in which a number of key design issues are discussed including architecture, ontologies structure, semantic reconciliation, service and resource discovery, role based authorization and intelligent agent. The paper finally provides the implementation of the framework.Comment: 12 PAGES, 7 Figure

A framework for the development and maintenance of adaptive, dynamic, context-aware information services

This paper presents an agent-based methodological approach to design distributed service-oriented systems which can adapt their behaviour according to changes in the environment and in the user needs, even taking the initiative to make suggestions and proactive choices. The highly dynamic, regulated, complex nature of the distributed, interconnected services is tackled through a methodological framework composed of three interconnected levels. The framework relies on coordination and organisational techniques, as well as on semantically annotated Web services to design, deploy and maintain a distributed system, using both a top-down and bottom-up approach. We present results based on a real use case: interactive community displays with tourist information and services, dynamically personalised according to user context and preferences.Preprin

Separating Agent-Functioning and Inter-Agent Coordination by Activated Modules: The DECOMAS Architecture

The embedding of self-organizing inter-agent processes in distributed software applications enables the decentralized coordination system elements, solely based on concerted, localized interactions. The separation and encapsulation of the activities that are conceptually related to the coordination, is a crucial concern for systematic development practices in order to prepare the reuse and systematic integration of coordination processes in software systems. Here, we discuss a programming model that is based on the externalization of processes prescriptions and their embedding in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). One fundamental design concern for a corresponding execution middleware is the minimal-invasive augmentation of the activities that affect coordination. This design challenge is approached by the activation of agent modules. Modules are converted to software elements that reason about and modify their host agent. We discuss and formalize this extension within the context of a generic coordination architecture and exemplify the proposed programming model with the decentralized management of (web) service infrastructures

An Analysis Architecture for Communications in Multi-agent Systems

Evaluation tools are significant from the Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) point of view. Defective designs of communications in Multi-agent Systems (MAS) may overload one or several agents, causing a bullying effect on them. Bullying communications have avoidable consequences, as high response times and low quality of service (QoS). Architectures that perform evaluation functionality must include features to measure the bullying activity and QoS, but it is also recommendable that they have reusability and scalability features. Evaluation tools with these features can be applied to a wide range of MAS, while minimizing designer’s effort. This work describes the design of an architecture for communication analysis, and its evolution to a modular version, that can be applied to different types of MAS. Experimentation of both versions shows differences between its executions