SmartSEAL: A ROS based home automation framework for heterogeneous devices interconnection in smart buildings

With this paper we present the SmartSEAL inter-connection system developed for the nationally founded SEAL project. SEAL is a research project aimed at developing Home Automation (HA) solutions for building energy management, user customization and improved safety of its inhabitants. One of the main problems of HA systems is the wide range of communication standards that commercial devices use. Usually this forces the designer to choose devices from a few brands, limiting the scope of the system and its capabilities. In this context, SmartSEAL is a framework that aims to integrate heterogeneous devices, such as sensors and actuators from different vendors, providing networking features, protocols and interfaces that are easy to implement and dynamically configurable. The core of our system is a Robotics middleware called Robot Operating System (ROS). We adapted the ROS features to the HA problem, designing the network and protocol architectures for this particular needs. These software infrastructure allows for complex HA functions that could be realized only levering the services provided by different devices. The system has been tested in our laboratory and installed in two real environments, Palazzo Fogazzaro in Schio and “Le Case” childhood school in Malo. Since one of the aim of the SEAL project is the personalization of the building environment according to the user needs, and the learning of their patterns of behaviour, in the final part of this work we also describe the ongoing design and experiments to provide a Machine Learning based re-identification module implemented with Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). The description of the adaptation module complements the description of the SmartSEAL system and helps in understanding how to develop complex HA services through it.