Self-organization models for adaptive environments: Envisioning and evaluation of alternative approaches

Ambient intelligence refers to environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people thanks to the integration of computer systems. A particular aim of this kind of system is to enhance the everyday experience of people moving inside the related physical environment according to the narrative description of a designer’s desiderata. In this kind of situation computer simulation represents a useful way to envision the behaviour of the responsive environments that are being designed, without actually bringing them into existence in the real world, in order to evaluate their adherence to the designer’s specification. This paper describes two different approaches, respectively based on cellular automata and autonomous agents, to the realization of a self-organization model for an adaptive illumination facility, a physical environment endowed with a set of sensors that perceive the presence of humans (or other entities such as dogs, bicycles, cars) and interact with a set of actuators (lights) that coordinate their state to adapt the ambient illumination to the presence and behaviours of its users. Computer simulation is employed to evaluate the adequacy and feasibility of the approaches in the above scenario.