Agents and Ubiquitous Computing

An Intelligent Agent Model for Smart Home Environment

Title
An Intelligent Agent Model for Smart Home Environments

Introduction
This research paper proposes an intelligent smart home agent environment
architecture. What is Ubiquitous Computing, Intelligent Agent and Smart Home?
(Leem, 2005) Based on the research paper A Business Model (BM) Development
Methodology in Ubiquitous Computing Environments by researchers of Yonsei
University, ubiquitous computing is a technology, in which invisible computers are
embedded and connected with all things so that anyone can communicate, exchange
and share information anywhere anytime. However, there are many concepts
comparison of ubiquitous computing by scholars and research institutes.
(KANG, 2007) Ubiquitous enabling us to utilize information in several ways and
reduce the complexities in our daily lives.
(Kortuem, n.d.) A house that is responsive to its in habitants and their actions by being
aware of their context is a smart home. A smart home must be consisting a computing
system consisting of distributed sensors. An intelligent agent for smart home acts as a
centralized agent, which communicates with all other devices present in home. (Cho,
2004) The agent has to learn users preferences in order to assist them. These
preferences are represented by user profiles.
This paper is organized in four sections. Next section describes the smart home agent
architecture. Section 3 explains the functioning of the agent. Finally, section 4
concludes the paper.

Smart Home Architecture

There are many users in home. Every user has their own life style. They have different
way to interact with devices available in the home. Smart home should have an agent
to manage the profiles and preferences of individual user. Besides, smart home has
many devices like T.V, music system, air conditioner, coffee maker and so on. The

Agents and Ubiquitous Computing

An Intelligent Agent Model for Smart Home Environment
agent should maintain the status of the devices. The Figure 1 shows the interaction
between agent and devices.

Figure 1: Interaction of Agent and devices (Cho, 2004)

The smart home agent architecture is a hierarchy of rational agents which cooperate to
meet the goals of the overall home.

Figure 2: Agent Architecture (ailab, n.d.)

(Das, 2003) The agent architecture is separated into four cooperating layers which are
Decision layer, Information layer, Communication layer and Physical layer. Decision
layer is the layer to decide and selects actions for agent to execute based on
information supplied from other layers. Information layer is the layer to collect
information, generate inferences for decision making. Communication layer will route
the information and requests between agents. The physical layer contains hardware
such as appliances and network.
There are two (2) process available for this agent architecture which are bottom-up
process and top-down process.
Perception or recognition is a bottom-up process. The sensors will monitor the home
environment. The information will transmit to another agent through communication

Agents and Ubiquitous Computing

An Intelligent Agent Model for Smart Home Environment
layer if necessary. The database will record the information and update its predictions
to decision layer.
For example, there is a daylight sensor to control the lights in home should be turn on
or turn off. When the sensors detect that is daytime, the communication layer will
transmit the information to information layer and the decision layer will decide to turn
off the lights.
For action execution, it is flows top down. The decisions layer will select action. The
decisions will reflect to information layer and update the database. The
communication layer routes the action to the devices which need to execute and the
devices will receive the command and execute it.
For example, the user turns on the TV at 8pm every day. The decision will reflect to
information layer and record the information into database. The communication layer
will transmit the instruction to the physical layer TV and turn on the TV. The
information layer will also generate the inference and know the preference of the user.
The TV will be turn on automatically at 8pm every day because the inference
generated show that the user will do this consistently.
Besides, there are two (2) key concepts, CBR Case Based Reasoning and Bayesian
Inference in this agent building process.
Bayesian
(Heckerman, 1996) A Bayesian network is a graphical model that encodes
probabilistic relationships among variables of interest. The determination of various
probabilities of interest from the model will be constructed to a Bayesian network.
Most probably problems concerning in fraud detection. People want to know the
probability of fraud given observations of the others variable. The probability or
information need to be computed because it is not stored directly in the model and the
computation of the probability of interest known as probabilistic inference.

There are many probabilistic inference algorithms for Bayesian networks that exploit
conditional independence roughly.

Agents and Ubiquitous Computing

An Intelligent Agent Model for Smart Home Environment

(Ronald A. Howard, 1981) The researchers developed an algorithm that

reverses arcs in the network structure until the answer to the given
probabilistic query can be read directly from the graph.

Pearl (1986) developed A message-passing scheme that updates the probability

distributions for each node in a Bayesian network was created by Pearl on
1986. The scheme allows to observe one or more variables.

The first algorithm that transforms the Bayesian network into a tree where
each node in the tree corresponds to a subset of variables in X was created on
1988. This tree used to perform probabilistic inference after the algorithm
exploits several mathematical properties.

D'Ambrosio developed an inference algorithm that simplifies additions and

products symbolically on 1991.

The most commonly used algorithm for discrete variables is created by

Lauritzen and Spiegelhalter (1988), Jensen et al (1990), and Dawid (1992).

Jaakkola and Jordan developed approximate methods for inference in

Bayesian networks, such as the generalized linear-regression model on 1996.

Figure 3: Bayesian Inference (Cho, 2004)

The Figure 3 shows that the activities and the queries that User 1 will made after he
returns from working. The variables that do not depends on other variables are
watching TV, having dinner and listening music system. The probability collected to
these activities are 70% user 1 will watching TV, 10% will having dinner and 20%
user 1 will listening to music system.
TV
0.7

Dinner
0.1
Table 1: Probability Values

Music System
0.2

Agents and Ubiquitous Computing

An Intelligent Agent Model for Smart Home Environment
The smart home agent will use the conditional probability to calculate the probability
that user 1 like coffee or juice to drink when watching TV.

TV
Music System

Coffee + Juice
0
0

Coffee Only
0.65
0.5

Juice Only
0.35
0.5

None
0
0

Table 2: Conditional Probabilities

Case Based Reasoning

(Agnar Aamodt, 1994) CBR, Case-Based Reasoning is a problem solving paradigm
that in many respects is fundamentally different from other major AI (Artificial
Intelligence) approaches. CBR is able to utilize the general knowledge of problem
domain or making associations along generalized relationships between problem
descriptors and conclusions to concrete problem situations. (Agnar Aamodt, 1994) A
new problem will be solved by remembering a previous similar situation and by
reusing information and knowledge of that situation. Once the new problem solved, it
will be recorded and available for future problems immediately.
Main types of CBR methods
The CBR paradigm covers a range of different methods for organizing, retrieving,
utilizing and indexing the knowledge retained in past cases.
Cases may be kept as concrete experiences, stored as separate knowledge units or
indexed by a prefixed and open vocabulary. The problems can be solved by using the
solution from previous case directly or modified according to differences between the
two cases. A deep model of general domain knowledge will use to guide and support
the matching of cases and adaptation of solutions.

Agents and Ubiquitous Computing

An Intelligent Agent Model for Smart Home Environment
(Michael Carl, 2003) There are several types of more specific approaches for CBR.

Exemplar-based reasoning.
Reasoning based on particular examples rather than on prototypes or rules

Instance-based reasoning.
Same as Exemplar

Memory-based reasoning.
Reasoning from memories as opposed to using more abstract reasoning rules

Case-based reasoning.
An AI field that reasons from cases in memory

Analogy-based reasoning.
Often used to characterize methods that solve new problems based on past
cases

The CBR cycle

A general CBR cycle may be described by the following four (4) processes.
1. Retrieve: the most similar case or cases
2. Reuse: the information and knowledge in that case to solve the problem
3. Revise: the proposed solution
4. Retain: the parts of this experience likely to be useful for future problem solving
(Agnar Aamodt, 1994) A new problem is solved by retrieving one or more previously
experienced cases, reusing the case in one way or another, revising the solution based
on reusing a previous case, and retaining the new experience by incorporating it into
the existing knowledge-base. The four processes cycle is illustrated in Figure 4.

Agents and Ubiquitous Computing

An Intelligent Agent Model for Smart Home Environment

Figure 4: The CBR Cycle (Michael Carl, 2003)

There is a new case created and used to retrieve a case from the collection of past
cases. Reuse will make the retrieved case combined with the new case to produce
solved case. In the revise process, the case will be tested and repaired if failed. In
retain process, the useful information or experience will be retained for future use.
The case base is updated by modification of some existing cases or by a new case.
As the figure shown, the general knowledge usually plays a part in this cycle to
supporting the CBR processes. The type of CBR methods will affect the support range
which are from very weak to very strong or none.
These techniques help people to solve problems effectively and make people more
convenience.

Conclusion
This paper presents an architecture for smart home agent which will integrate all other
devices and perform the tasks as per user preference in the smart home. Case-Based
reasoning and Bayesian inference is the key concept in this smart home agent building
process. Experiments have to be made in order to check for the usefulness of this
design technique and its ability to adapt changes of user preference over time.

Agents and Ubiquitous Computing

An Intelligent Agent Model for Smart Home Environment

Reference

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Issues,Methodological Variations, and System Approaches. [Online]
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Heckerman, D., 1996. A Tutorial on Learning With Bayesian Networks.
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Agents and Ubiquitous Computing

An Intelligent Agent Model for Smart Home Environment
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