Creating Pervasive Intelligent Environments

Increasingly, we live in a world rich in embedded processors. The modern home, office, factory, and other environments, or domains, have different types of hardware and software that need to interoperate almost invisibly. This book presents one such prototype system, called AutoHAN, that aims to enable automation with respect to applications and resources and has used the home domain as a reference framework without loss of generality. Applications are allowed to enter a domain only after their behaviour has been formally verified not to conflict with that of other applications or to violate the pre-defined rules shaping domain behaviour. This work focuses on modelling domains and the accompanying rules in an ontology substrate. The ontology is itself expressed in first-order logic and hence enjoys classification and reasoning support. Overall, this design allows reliable control of the domain free from unintended interactions. This book is a must-read for researchers, developers, and vendors in the fields of intelligent environments and rule-based control. The research has applications in numerous areas of automation, e.g., homes, workplaces, factories, schools, vehicles, etc.