An Agent Model for the Control of Smart Appliances

This paper proposed an agent model for the control of smart appliances. A smart appliance here refers to a home appliance with limited computation and network capabilities that can communicate with other network devices. The simple control protocol (SCP) technology was used to connect smart appliances over power lines to provide agents with an integrated network environment. The proposed agent model consists of four software units: behavior learner, control operator, event handler, and message carrier. A hybrid soft computing approach was used to analyze the appliance usage patterns for learning users' behaviors. Through the collaboration of software agents, the control of home appliances can be achieved to meet users' expectation.