Planning Agent for Geriatric Residences

Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) have become increasingly relevant for developing distributed and dynamic intelligent environments. The ability of software agents to act somewhat autonomously links them with living animals and humans, so they seem appropriate for discussion under nature-inspired computing (Marrow, 2000). This paper presents AGALZ (Autonomous aGent for monitoring ALZheimer patients), and explains how this deliberative planning agent has been designed and implemented. A case study is then presented, with AGALZ working with complementary agents into a prototype environment-aware multi-agent system (ALZ-MAS: ALZheimer Multi-Agent System) (Bajo, Tapia, De Luis, Rodriguez & Corchado, 2007). The elderly health care problem is studied, and the possibilities of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) (Sokymat, 2006) as a technology for constructing an intelligent environment and ascertaining patient location to generate plans and maximize safety are examined. This paper focuses in the development of natureinspired deliberative agents using a Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) (Aamodt & Plaza, 1994) architecture, as a way to implement sensitive and adaptive systems to improve assistance and health care support for elderly and people with disabilities, in particular with Alzheimer. Agents in this context must be able to respond to events, take the initiative according to their goals, communicate with other agents, interact with users, and make use of past experiences to find the best plans to achieve goals, so we propose the development of an autonomous deliberative agent that incorporates a Case-Based Planning (CBP) mechanism, derivative from Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) (Bajo, Corchado & Castillo, 2006), specially designed for planning construction. CBP-BDI facilitates learning and adaptation, and therefore a greater degree of autonomy than that found in pure BDI (Believe, Desire, Intention) architecture (Bratman, 1987). BDI agents can be implemented by using different tools, such as Jadex (Pokahr, Braubach & Lamersdorf, 2003), dealing with the concepts of beliefs, goals and plans, as java objects that can be created and handled within the agent at execution time.