An Agent-Based Smart Home System and Its Service-Scheduling Mechanism: Design and Implementation

摘要

This investigation presents an agent-based smart (ABS) home system that automates home-service operations. The ABS home system comprises three subsystems, namely user interface, home gateway, and home functionality. ABS home users can request services with handheld devices through an ABS user interface, and receive them through an agent cooperation mechanism. This investigation has designed three agents and implemented them in the agent platform: the manager agent schedules the service processes; the service agent manages service requests, and the task agent executes service operations. With home-functionality subsystems including location servers, message centers, and multimedia centers in ABS homes, services are conveniently provided, efficient, and comfortably manipulated. The Universal Plug and Play feature adopts IP network technology to control, manage, and transfer data among functionality devices in ABS homes. The proposed service-scheduling mechanism provides services that are conveniently provided, efficient, and comfortably manipulated. This study presents an implementation of the ABS home system to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed architecture. The study also presents a performance evaluation to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism.