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approach is known as the Semantic Web. The
semantic web may be viewed as a web of
information which is structured and linked up in
such a way enabling other applications view and
understand that data i.e. providing a foundation for
agents to communicate and understand one another.
3 ENVIRONMENTS WHICH
DEMAND
CONTEXT-AWARENESS
Probably the most well known of such an
environment is a “Smart Home”. By Smart Home
here, we understand a house equipped to bring
advanced services to its users. There is a plethora of
sensing/acting technology, ranging from those that
stand alone (e.g., smoke or movement detectors), to
those fitted within other objects (e.g., a microwave
or a bed), to those that can be worn (e.g., shirts that
monitor heart beat). For example, in the case of
people at early stages of senile dementia (the most
frequent case being elderly people suffering from
Alzheimer’s disease) the system can be tailored to
minimize risks and ensure appropriate care at critical
times by monitoring activities, diagnosing
interesting situations and advising the carer. There
are already many ongoing academic research
projects with well established Smart Homes research
labs in this area, for example Domus (Pigot et al.,
2002), iDorm (Callaghan et al., 2001) MavHome
(Cook, 2006), and Gator Tech Smart Home (Helal ,
2005).
4 THE 6WS CONCEPT
This section focuses on the initial work to design
and develop a 6W agent based architecture to help
recognise and integrate all 6 aspects (Who, Where,
What, When, Why and hoW) which are relevant for
the implementation of AmI. At a logical level, a
representation of the 6Ws architecture is compared
against the BDI model c.f. figure 2.
Whilst “context” has been defined in many ways
several years of research in Ambient Intelligence
have highlighted the importance of certain elements
in the success of building systems within this area.
A consensus in this area is that systems with
Ambient Intelligence should be built as human-
centric, systems should serve humans and not vice-
versa. Systems should be able to learn about the
needs and preferences (compare “the user need to
increase insulin intake to keep glucose at the right
level” with “I prefer to minimize the number of
insulin intakes”) of the users they are supposed to
serve and, if necessary and feasible, hold updated
profiles of them to ensure they can accomplish their
service in the best possible way.
Figure 2: The 6Ws attention to key ambient intelligent
elements i.e. profile, situation and temporal. c.f. figure 3 in
relation to the AgentSpeak(L) semantic model.
The rationale for the inclusion of the Who
component is that an important part of the
meaningful context the agent should know is the
needs and preferences of the potential users. Fig. 3
provides a depiction on our modified AgentSpeak(L)
architecture. [1] highlights the Who component
(which emphasise the user-centred characted of the
system) as an important component of the Belief
Base, [2] and [3] embeds the Where (spatial
conditions) and When (temporal conditions)
elements within the meaningful events which can
describe triggering situations, [4] includes the Why
dimension which highlights the desires of the agent
(this includes paying attention to the needs and
preferences related to users as specified in the Who
dimension), [5] highlighting the What component
through the specification of intentions, and [6] refers
to the hoW component as the plans represent the
ways the agent can achieve the goals.
5 CONCLUSIONS
Presented is the concept of developing an agent
based context-aware architecture with 6 elements
which are key to the development of Ambient
Intelligence system with a rational for the Who,
Where, When, What, Why and hoW elements. As an
initial step the 6Ws approach was compared against
the well established BDI model. We have
highlighted that the BDI model still contains a
number of weaknesses as a framework for AmI e.g.
user-centeredness, spatial and temporal reasoning
which are within Ambient Intelligence systems.
Our proposed framework although following a
route closer to AgentSpeak for the implementation
1 Who Profile (including
eeds/Preferences)
Beliefs
2 Where Spatial conditions
3 When Temporal conditions
4 Why General aims Desires
5 What Specific goals
Intentions
6 hoW Selection of plans
CONTEXT-AWARE AGENTS - The 6Ws Architecture
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