A multi-agent approach to controlling a smart environment

The goal of the MavHome (Managing An Intelligent Versatile Home) project is to create a home that acts as a rational agent. The agent seeks to maximize inhabitant comfort and minimize operation cost. In order to achieve these goals, the agent must be able to predict the mobility patterns and device usages of the inhabitants. Because 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.