Home automation is maturing with the increased deployment of networks and
intelligent devices in the home. Along with new protocols and devices, new
software services will emerge and work together releasing the full potential of
networked consumer devices. Services may include home security, climate control
or entertainment. With such extensive interworking the phenomenon known as
service interaction, or feature interaction, appears. The problem occurs when
services interfere with one another causing unexpected or undesirable outcomes.
The main goal of this work is to detect undesired interactions between devices
and services while allowing positive interactions between services and devices.
If the interaction is negative, the approach should be able to handle it in an
appropriate way.
Being able to carry out interaction detection in the home poses certain challenges.
Firstly, the devices and services are provided by a number of vendors and will
be using a variety of protocols. Secondly, the configuration will not be fixed,
the network will change as devices join and leave. Services may also change and
adapt to user needs and to devices available at runtime. The developed approach
is able to work with such challenges.
Since the goal of the automated home is to make life simpler for the occupant,
the approach should require minimal user intervention.
With the above goals, an approach was developed which tackles the problem.
Whereas previous approaches solving service interaction have focused on the
service, the technique presented here concentrates on the devices and their surrounds,
as some interactions occur through conflicting effects on the environment.
The approach introduces the concept of environmental variables. A variable may
be room temperature, movement or perhaps light. Drawing inspiration from
the Operating Systems domain, locks are used to control access to the devices
and environmental variables. Using this technique, undesirable interactions are
avoided. The inclusion of the environment is a key element of this approach as
many interactions can happen indirectly, through the environment.
Since the configuration of a home’s devices and services is continually changing,
developing an off-line solution is not practical. Therefore, an on-line approach in
the form of an interaction manager has been developed. It is the manager’s role
to detect interactions.
The approach was shown to work successfuly. The manager was able to successfully
detect interactions and prevent negative interactions from occurring.
Interactions were detected at both device and service level. The approach is flexible:
it is protocol independent, services are unaware of the manager, and the
manager can cope with new devices and services joining the network. Further,
there is little user intervention required for the approach to operate