A novel agent-based concept of household appliances |
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Authors: | Konrad Steblovnik Damjan Zazula |
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Affiliation: | (1) Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Universiteit Leiden, P.O. Box 9518, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands;(2) Procter & Gamble Eurocor, Temselaan 100, 1853 Strombeek-Bever, Belgium;(3) Procter & Gamble Company, Winton Hill Business Center, 6280 Center Hill Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45224, USA |
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Abstract: | Mass production, such as white goods manufacturing, is traditionally bound to hierarchical factory-floor procedures and accepts
only gradual changes in technology and product architecture. This paper introduces an idea on how to upgrade from classical
to network-connected reconfigurable devices. A generic multi-agent architecture was created, derived from belief-desire-and-intention
(BDI) agents. It covers all types of white goods in the form of rational home assistant, and enables reconfiguration of agent-based
household appliances during the design, production and implementation phases. The introduced concept involves a multi-agent
architecture which utilizes distributed processing power at different levels: higher-level agents run on more powerful devices
than embedded appliance’s controllers, personal assistant (PDAs), or Windows or Linux based personal computers (PCs). PDAs
can run a single agent, for example a GUI agent, whereas the embedded controllers execute lower-level device (embedded) agents.
In this way, all the appliance’s basic functionality, such as its hardware units (e.g., electrical motors, valves, heaters,
etc.), are initially simulated by auxiliary agents running together with higher-level agents on a PC or PDA. Using this simulator
in the design phase, all vital functions and capabilities of the agent-based appliance under development are thoroughly tested
first. Afterwards, the agents that simulate the device’s hardware units and environment are simply replaced by the communication
to the corresponding device units. In such way, any new functionality or device’s behaviour can be upgraded any time just
by adapting the core of the multi-agent architecture on the PC and individual agents on the PDA or the embedded agents in
appliances. A thorough design and implementation cycle of the proposed solution using two freeware development tools is also
described, i.e., the Prometheus agent design methodology and the agent simulation/execution environment called Jadex. The
approach is exemplified by building a simulator of an agent-based household appliance, namely a Multi-agent Washing Assistant
as a special instance of rational home assistant. |
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