Goalaviour-Based Control of Heterogeneous and Distributed Smart Environments

In this paper, we show how to transfer the general idea of the subsumption architecture to the control of a smart environment. As in Brooks original idea, the control is implemented within small independent behaviours. But instead of controlling the actuators of the environment directly, our behaviours produce goals. These goals describe the desired state of the world. All behaviours create their goals solely based on the current state of the world, and independent of other behaviours. The created goals are then merged and a sequence of device actions is computed that lead to the desired state of the world. We show how to implement and configure such a controller, and how to use it for the control of an instrumented environment.