Requirements engineering for intelligent environments

The field of Intelligent Environments (IE) is maturing to a level at which a range of sophisticated applications are emerging. Such systems aim to be context-aware, especially being adaptable to possibly unpredictable circumstances. An area of significant potential is that of ‘ambient assisted living’, with significant advances in fields such as smart spaces, classrooms, and assisted living space for the elderly or people with disabilities. In recent years, however, it has been recognised that numerous IE systems have been developed without adopting best practises from software engineering. The work presented here focuses on the requirements engineering stage and presents a framework for IE systems in which an intrinsic component is context-awareness. Whilst the framework is intended as a general IE model, we are currently applying it to the specific area of ambient assisted living and it is being employed on the POSEIDON project. It is anticipated that such real world application of the model will help endorse its conception and facilitate further refinement of the framework

Eliciting user requirements for ambient intelligent systems: a case study

Ambient intelligent (AmI) systems are electronic environments that are responsive and sensitive to the presence of people (Weiser, 1991). Eliciting requirements for AmI systems, like for any novel technology, is hard because of high uncertainties, such as: 1) both the users and use context are unknown; 2) there is no identified problem that needs to be solved (people cannot state in advance what they want); 3) there is no product idea; 4) it is unclear what future technology can do. There are currently no requirements engineering method for novel AmI technologies. In this short note, we present the current state of our research, which aims at defining a method for identifying requirements for AmI systems

Contingent Requirements for Artifical Intelligent Systems Development

A substantial portion of project failures are due to poorly defined requirements before enough is known about pragmatic end-item product capability, technology maturity, or development strategy. Process models either start with requirements or are weakly structured to elicit and derive actual stakeholder needs and to establish incontrovertible requirements. Existing process models are used acceptably for systems but are wholly inadequate for system and system of systems requirements that involve interactions with humans at a personal level. Problems with products and services are notable when artificial intelligent systems are put into use. Rather than establishing a technology baseline then working up requirements to advance and then use technology, a set of contingent requirements are posed to be promoted and advanced through a vetting process. From the technology chosen, a requirement is methodically planned to devise a capability, characteristic, or condition as part of the first phase of that vetting. This paper introduces a new form of requirements, termed contingent requirements. A contingent requirement stipulates the conditions for it to be modified according to the way things in fact are (or will be). From scenarios developed systematically by applying the Rand-Stanford method, technology dependencies are postulated, analyzed, and evaluated. The aim for introducing contingent requirements into the lifecycle engineering of Artificial Intelligent Systems (AIS) recognizes that technology should be considered within domains of influences, context(s), and consequences when put into use. Linear, incremental process models do not test for unforeseen consequences. Intelligent systems built on contingent requirements explore those unforeseen consequences by formally test the Intelligent Systems in various environments to explore the risks of interactions with individuals and in communities

A User-Centred Principle Based Transparency Approach for Intelligent Environments

Intelligent Environments (IEs) can enhance the experiences of their users in a variety of contexts, such as healthcare, energy management, and education. Despite these enhancements, some people do not accept IE technologies to be embedded in their living environments. Numerous studies link this lack of acceptability to users’ trust and attempt to address the trust issue by considering users’ requirements such as privacy, security and reliability. In this paper, we address the concept of trust from the perspective of transparency by adopting the existing transparency reference models designed for software requirements engineering in the context of IEs. Based on the outcome of applying these reference models, we propose a human-centred principle-based transparency framework for IEs. We hope that this framework aids the researchers and developers in the IE community, and that the suggested transparency principles provide a solid foundation for transparent IE systems

Application of auto-ID in agent-based manufacturing control

Conference Theme: Soft Computing Techniques for Advanced Manufacturing and Service SystemsSession - MA-Ha Manufacturing Technologies 1: cie177hk-1A feasibility study has been established to integrate agent and auto-ID technologies in manufacturing control applications. A multi-agent system (MAS) framework for intelligent manufacturing has been established. The intelligent MAS environment attempts to exploit the potential of Auto-ID (RFID in particular) technology in manufacturing applications. The aim is to evaluate the applications of Auto-ID, especially with RFID technology, in manufacturing control. This involves the establishment of the hardware and software interfaces to enable production and process data to be recorded and written in the Auto-ID devices. Experiments are being conducted to study the working requirements and parameters of the Auto-ID devices in the shopfloor environments. Subsequently, the RFID technology is adopted in a flexible assembly cell (FAC) to evaluate the feasibility of integrating the RFID devices in a multi-agent based manufacturing control system. A MAS infrastructure for FAC control has been developed to incorporate the coordination of the RFID devices.published_or_final_versionThe 40th International Conference on Computers & Industrial Engineering (CIE40), Awaji City, Japan, 25-28 July 2010. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering, 2010, p. 1-

Realising intelligent virtual design

This paper presents a vision and focus for the CAD Centre research: the Intelligent Design Assistant (IDA). The vision is based upon the assumption that the human and computer can operate symbiotically, with the computer providing support for the human within the design process. Recently however the focus has been towards the development of integrated design platforms that provide general support irrespective of the domain, to a number of distributed collaborative designers. This is illustrated within the successfully completed Virtual Reality Ship (VRS) virtual platform, and the challenges are discussed further within the NECTISE, SAFEDOR and VIRTUE projects

Realising intelligent virtual design

This paper presents a vision and focus for the CAD Centre research: the Intelligent Design Assistant (IDA). The vision is based upon the assumption that the human and computer can operate symbiotically, with the computer providing support for the human within the design process. Recently however the focus has been towards the development of integrated design platforms that provide general support irrespective of the domain, to a number of distributed collaborative designers. This is illustrated within the successfully completed Virtual Reality Ship (VRS) virtual platform, and the challenges are discussed further within the NECTISE, SAFEDOR and VIRTUE projects

Requirements Modeling for Multi-Agent Systems

Different approaches for building modern software systems in complex and open environments have been proposed in the last few years. Some efforts try to take advantage of the agent-oriented paradigm to model/engineer complex information systems in terms of independent agents. These agents may collaborate in a computational organization (Multi-Agent Systems, MAS) by playing some specific roles having to interact with others in order to reach a global or individual goal. In addition, due to the complex nature of this type of systems, dealing with the classical functional and structural perspectives of software systems are not enough. The organizational perspective, that describes the context where these agents need to collaborate, and the social behavior perspective, that describes the different "intelligent" manners in which these agents can collaborate, need to be identified and properly specified. Several methodologies have been proposed to drive the development of MAS (e.g., Ingenias, Gaia, Tropos) although most of them mainly focus on the design and implementation phases and do not provide adequate mechanisms for capturing, defining, and specifying software requirements. Poor requirements engineering is recognized as the root of most errors in current software development projects, and as a means for improving the quality of current practices in the development of MAS, the main objective of this work is to propose a requirements modeling process to deal with software requirements covering the functional, structural, organizational, and social behavior perspectives of MAS. The requirements modeling proposed is developed within the model-driven engineering context defining the corresponding metamodel and its graphical syntax. In addition, a MAS requirements modeling process is specified using the Object Management Group's (OMG) Software Process Engineering Metamodel (SPEM). Finally, in order to illustrate the feasibility of our approach, we specified the software requirements of a strategic board game (the Diplomacy game).Rodríguez Viruel, ML. (2011). Requirements Modeling for Multi-Agent Systems. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/11416Archivo delegad

Simulation of complex environments:the Fuzzy Cognitive Agent

The world is becoming increasingly competitive by the action of liberalised national and global markets. In parallel these markets have become increasingly complex making it difficult for participants to optimise their trading actions. In response, many differing computer simulation techniques have been investigated to develop either a deeper understanding of these evolving markets or to create effective system support tools. In this paper we report our efforts to develop a novel simulation platform using fuzzy cognitive agents (FCA). Our approach encapsulates fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM) generated on the Matlab Simulink platform within commercially available agent software. We firstly present our implementation of Matlab Simulink FCMs and then show how such FCMs can be integrated within a conceptual FCA architecture. Finally we report on our efforts to realise an FCA by the integration of a Matlab Simulink based FCM with the Jack Intelligent Agent Toolkit