ATLANTIS A MBIENT AND P ERVASIVE I NTELLIGENCE

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 Atlantis Ambient and Pervasive Intelligence

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A MSTERDAM – PARIS


c ATLANTIS PRESS / WORLD SCIENTIFIC
 Agent-Based Ubiquitous
Computing

Eleni Mangina, Javier Carbo, José M. Molina

School of Computer Science and Informatics
University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland
University Carlos III of Madrid,
Computer Science Department,
Applied Artificial Intelligence Group (GIAA),
Avda. Universidad Carlos III 22, 28270 Colmenarejo, Spain

A MSTERDAM – PARIS
Atlantis Press
29, avenue Laumière
75019 Paris, France

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This book, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced for commercial purposes in any form or by
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ISBN: 978-90-78677-10-9 e-ISBN: 978-94-91216-31-2

ISSN: 1875-7669

c 2009 ATLANTIS PRESS / WORLD SCIENTIFIC


 To our children,
Patrick, Sofia, Jose, Javier and Maria.
Preface

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, where the personal computing
era appears when technology recedes into the background of our lives. The widespread use
of new mobile technology implementing wireless communications such as personal digital
assistants (PDAs) and smart phones enables a new type of advanced applications. In the
past years, the main focus of research in mobile services has aimed at the anytime-anywhere
principle (ubiquitous computing). However, there is more to it. The increasing demand for
distributed problem solving led to the development of multi-agent systems. The latter are
formed from a collection of independent software entities whose collective skills can be
applied in complex and real-time domains. The target of such systems is to demonstrate
how goal directed, robust and optimal behavior can arise from interactions between individ-
ual autonomous intelligent software agents. These software entities exhibit characteristics
like autonomy, responsiveness, pro-activeness and social ability. Their functionality and
effectiveness has proven to be highly depended on the design and development and the ap-
plication domain. In fact, in several cases, the design and development of effective services
should take into account the characteristics of the context from which a service is requested.
Context is the set of suitable environmental states and settings concerning a user, which are
relevant for a situation sensitive application in the process of adapting the services and in-
formation offered to the user. Agent technology seems to be the right technology to offer
the possibility of exploring the dynamic context of the user in order to provide added-value
services or to execute more and complex tasks. In this respect, agent-based ubiquitous
computing can benefit from marrying the agent-based technology for the extensive usage
of distributed functionality, to be deployed for lightweight devices and enable to combine
ubiquity and intelligence in different application areas and challenge with questions the
research communities in computer science, artificial intelligence and engineering.

We noticed during the AAMAS workshop we organized about this issue in 2007 that, al-
though a number of other books on ubiquitous computing have been published in the last
years, none of these has focused on the agent-based perspective. So we opened a call
for chapters to gather input and feedback concerning the above challenges, through the
collection of the high-quality contributions that reflect and advance the state-of-the art in
agent-based ubiquitous application systems. It brought together researchers, agent-based

vii
viii Agent-Based Ubiquitous Computing

software developers, users and practitioners involved in the area of agent-based ubiquitous
systems, coming from many disciplines, with the target to discuss the different funda-
mental principles for construction and design of agents for specific applications, how they
co-operate and communicate, what tasks can be set and how different properties like coor-
dination and communication have been implemented, and which are the different problems
they had to cope with. Existing perspectives of ubiquitous agents within different appli-
cation domains have been welcome, as well as the different mechanisms for design and
cooperation that can be used within different agent building environments. Specifically, the
book focused on the different disciplines contributing to the design, cooperation, coordi-
nation and implementation problems of ubiquitous computing applications and how these
can be solved through the utilization of agents.
Thanks are due to all contributors and referees for their kind cooperation and enthusiasm,
and to Zeger Karssen (Editorial Atlantis Press) for his kind advice and help to publish this
volume.

E. Mangina, J. Carbo and J.M. Molina

Contents

Preface vii
1. Solving Conflicts in Agent-Based Ubiquitous Computing Systems: A Pro-
posal Based on Argumentation 1
Andrés Muñoz Ortega, Juan A. Botı́a Blaya, Félix J. Garcı́a Clemente,
Gregorio Martı́nez Pérez and Antonio F. Gómez Skarmeta
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Classification of authorization policies conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 The basics of argumentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 Using argumentation to resolve policy conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.5 Related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.6 Conclusions and future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.7 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2. Mixed Reality Agent (MiRA) Chameleons 13

Mauro Dragone, Thomas Holz, G.M.P. O’Hare and Michael J. O’Grady
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Social interface agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3 Ubiquitous robots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3.1 Augmented HRI and immersive interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4 Ubiquitous agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.4.1 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.5 Dynamic embodiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.5.1 Agent chameleons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.5.2 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.6 MiRA chameleons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.6.1 Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.6.2 The socially situated agent architecture (SoSAA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.6.3 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.6.4 Testbed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.6.5 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

3. A Generic Architecture for Human-Aware Ambient Computing 35

Tibor Bosse, Mark Hoogendoorn, Michel C.A. Klein, and Jan Treur
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2 Modelling approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

ix
x Agent-Based Ubiquitous Computing

3.3 Global structure of the agent-based generic model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

3.4 Generic ambient agent and world model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.5 Case study 1: An ambient driver support system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.6 Case study 2: Ambient aggression handling system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.7 Case study 3: Ambient system for management of medicine usage . . . . . . . . . 48
3.8 Specification and verification of dynamic properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.9 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.10 Appendix 1: Driver case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.10.1 Driver assessment agent: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . . 54
3.10.2 Cruise control agent: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.10.3 Steering monitoring agent: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . 54
3.10.4 Steering sensoring agent: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . . 55
3.10.5 Gaze-focus sensoring agent: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . 55
3.10.6 Alcohol-level monitoring agent: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . 55
3.10.7 Alcohol sensoring agent: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . . 56
3.10.8 Driver: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.10.9 Car and environment: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.11 Appendix 2: Aggression handling case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.11.1 Sound analysis agent: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.11.2 Microphone agent: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.11.3 Persons in crowd: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.11.4 Police officer at station: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.11.5 Police officer at street: Domain-specific temporal rules . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.12 Appendix 3: Medicine usage case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.12.1 Medicine box agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.12.2 Usage support agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

4. e-Assistance Support by Intelligent Agents over MANETs 63

Eduardo Rodrı́guez, Juan C. Burguillo and Daniel A. Rodrı́guez
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
4.1.1 Multi agent systems (MAS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4.1.2 Ubiquitous computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.1.3 Case based reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
4.1.4 Peer-to-peer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.1.5 Mobile ad-hoc networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.2 System architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.2.1 Reasoning process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.2.2 Communication process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
4.3 A case of study: An intelligent gym . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

5. The Active Metadata Framework 85

Christopher McCubbin, R. Scott Cost, John Cole, Nicholas Kratzmeier, Markus
Dale, Daniel Bankman
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
5.1.1 Background: Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
5.1.2 Background: The active metadata concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
5.2 SimAMF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Contents xi

5.2.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.2.2 Related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.2.3 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5.2.4 Simulation visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.2.5 Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
5.3 SWARM-AMF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
5.3.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5.3.2 System design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.3.3 An experiment using some swarming metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.3.4 Experimental design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
5.3.5 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.3.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
5.4 List of acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

6. Coalition of Surveillance Agents. Cooperative Fusion Improvement in

Surveillance Systems 103
Federico Castanedo, Miguel A. Patricio, Jesús Garcı́a and José M. Molina
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
6.2 Related works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
6.3 Cooperative surveillance agents architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
6.3.1 Sensor and coalition layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
6.3.2 Coalition protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
6.4 Information fusion for tracking during coalition maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
6.4.1 Time-space alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
6.4.2 Map correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
6.5 Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
6.6 Conclusions and future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

7. Designing a Distributed Context-Aware Multi-Agent System 117

Virginia Fuentes, Nayat Sánchez-Pi, Javier Carbó and José M. Molina
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
7.2 Context-aware multi-agent framework for heterogeneous domains . . . . . . . . . 118
7.2.1 Multi-agent architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
7.3 BDI model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
7.3.1 Beliefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
7.3.2 Desires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
7.3.3 Intentions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
7.4 Gaia methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
7.4.1 Analysis phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
7.5 Analysis and design using Gaia methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
7.5.1 The environmental model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
7.5.2 The organization structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
7.5.3 Role model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
7.5.4 Interaction model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
7.5.5 Organizational rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
7.5.6 Agent model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
7.5.7 Service model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
7.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
xii Agent-Based Ubiquitous Computing

8. Agent-Based Context-Aware Service

in a Smart Space 131
Wan-rong Jih, Jane Yung-jen Hsu
8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
8.2 Background technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
8.2.1 Context models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
8.2.2 Context reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
8.3 Smart space infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
8.4 Context-aware service platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
8.4.1 Context-awarereasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
8.4.2 Service planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
8.4.3 Context knowledge base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
8.5 Demonstration scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
8.5.1 Context-aware reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
8.5.2 Service planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
8.6 Related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
8.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

9. Prototype for Optimizing Power Plant Operation 147

Christina Athanasopoulou and Vasilis Chatziathanasiou
9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
9.2 Problem domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
9.2.1 Electricity generation units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
9.2.2 Knowledge engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
9.3 Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
9.3.1 Agent programming paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
9.3.2 Intelligent Power Plant engineer Assistant MAS (IPPAMAS) . . . . . . . 151
9.4 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
9.4.1 Data mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
9.4.2 Multi-agent system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
9.4.3 Wireless transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
9.4.4 Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
9.5 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
9.5.1 MAS performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
9.5.2 User evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
9.6 Concluding remarks and future enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

10. IUMELA: Intelligent Ubiquitous Modular Education Learning Assistant

in Third Level Education 163
Elaine McGovern, Bernard Roche, Rem Collier, Eleni Mangina
10.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
10.2 Related work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
10.2.1 Multi-agent systems based learning technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
10.2.2 The mobile device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
10.2.3 Modular education at UCD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
10.2.4 Learning styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
10.2.5 Teaching strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
10.2.6 Evaluation techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Contents xiii

10.2.7 Presenting modules for selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

10.3 IUMELA: the agent architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
10.3.1 The assistant agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
10.3.2 The moderator agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
10.3.3 Expert agent technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
10.4 IUMELA student user interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
10.4.1 Initial registration and login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
10.4.2 Personalised welcome screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
10.4.3 Learning journal facility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
10.4.4 Student messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
10.4.5 The module and assistant facilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
10.5 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
10.5.1 ABITS FIPA messenger in IUMELA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
10.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Bibliography 183