Context-Sensitive Ecosystem of Intelligent Environments

Abstract

In this article we propose an agent-based architecture to create an ecosystem of Intelligent Environments (IE's). The distinctive characteristics of this proposal are: it takes into account the changing needs of the environment's dwellers, that is, the IE is sensitive to the context, and it allows the user to move among the ecosystem's elements freely. With these features, the ecosystem manages all required information to satisfy the users' needs, even when they are in transit between two IE's. The key element in our proposal is an ontology that is used in three main processes in our ecosystem. First of all, it works together with sensor information to provide the sensitivity of the context, second, it is used to decide whether local resources are enough to fulfill user needs or if it is necessary to use the ecosystem's resources, and third, the ontology is also useful in the interaction among different IE's to satisfy some users' requirements.