Intelligent Association in Agent-based Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Our living spaces are becoming increasingly populated with infinite numbers of intelligent embedded agents we are interacting with. In ubiquitous computing environments the aim is to support the occupants during their everyday lives and enhance their living conditions. In this paper we introduce such an environment, the iDorm, which has arisen from our work in careAgents, a project supported by the UK-Korean S&T collaboration fund and the EU's Disappearing Computer Initiative eGadgets project. We discuss the research challenges involved, particularly those relating to intelligently associating and configuring large numbers of embedded agents. The paper presents an intelligent association system (IAS) that can overcome problems of existing user-dictated association technologies on multi -embedded agent systems operating in dynamic ubiquitous computing environments. We also introduce the IAS Editor, a tool to create and visualize associations and discuss the high-level multi embedded-agent model, explaining how it facilitates inter-agent communication between heterogeneous sets of agents.