A Multi-agent Approach to Controlling a Smart Environment

Abstract. The goal of the MavHome (Managing An Intelligent Versa-tile Home) project is to create a home that acts as a rational agent. The agent seeks to maximize inhabitant comfort and minimize opera-tion cost. In order to achieve these goals, the agent must be able to predict the mobility patterns and device usages of the inhabitants. Be-cause of the size of the problem, controlling a smart environment can be effectively approached as a multi-agent task. Individual agents can address a portion of the problem but must coordinate their actions to accomplish the overall goals of the system. In this chapter, we discuss the application of multi-agent systems to the challenge of controlling a smart environment and describe its implementation in the MavHome project.