Managing Responsive Environments with Software Agents

Responsive environments are physical surroundings whose components change their behaviour to accommodate the presence of people as well as other components. We describe a means to manage such responsive environments whereby each component is dynamically assigned a software agent. Software agents are autonomous and reactive/proactive programs that communicate via message-passing. Arbitrary functionalities can be encoded in such agents, reflecting the capabilities of the components they represent, as well as extending them. Ours is a flexible and scalable approach allowing the gradual population of an environment with physical devices and their corresponding agents.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: AAI
• Authors: Flávio S. Corrêa da Silva, Wamberto Weber Vasconcelos
• Keywords: AAI 2007, Physical Surroundings, Responsive Environments, Software Agents