Intelligent association selection of embedded agents in intelligent inhabited environments

Recent advances in technology and manufacturing have resulted in more powerful and smaller processors to be embedded in the various artefacts within smart environments. Most of these artefacts are network enabled and thanks to pervasive networking such artefacts can communicate and collaborate together to support our daily lives. Furthermore, these artefacts can also be equipped with embedded agents to provide intelligent reasoning, planning and learning capabilities. However, the multitude of interconnected devices and artefacts can result in major network and processing delays as well as creating inherent complexities in programming and configuring smart environments to personalise themselves to suit the individual needs. Hence, a major challenge to the design and use of smart environments involves finding the best set of device associations and interconnections that are most suitable to the environment and user needs. In this paper, we will present a novel intelligent method for reducing the number of associations and interconnections between the various devices and artefacts within smart environments to minimise the network and processing overheads while reducing the cognitive load associated with configuring and programming smart environments.