Collaborative design approach to intelligent environments

Abstract

Intelligent environments are buildings and other settings that can recognize the changing needs of their users and/or the changing nature of their context, and respond to them by adjusting some key environmental parameters (temperature, light, sound, furnishings, etc.). Unlike the currently common approach, which is based on systems theory (i.e., adjusting the parameters of the environment to match some pre-defined use profile), the approach proposed in this paper is based on dynamic, collaborative design: it views the (built) environment as comprised of multiple independent object-agents, each of which is responsible for one small aspect of the environment. Each can sense the immediate changes pertaining to its domain of responsibility, and propose corrective measures, which are negotiated with other agents to form a collective response. The paper hypothesizes that such an approach can be made more context-sensitive and dynamic, is easily scaleable, and can respond to the needs of multiple different users of the environment at the same time. The paper presents the rationale for developing the multi-agent approach, its hypothetical implementation, and its application to hypothetical case studies.