SodaPop: a software infrastructure supporting self-organization in intelligent environments

The vision of ambient intelligence is based on the ubiquity of information technology, the presence of computation, communication, and sensorial capabilities in an unlimited abundance of everyday appliances and environments. While today's experimental smart environments are carefully designed by hand, future ambient intelligent infrastructures must be able to configure themselves from the available components in order to be effective in the real world. But enabling an ensemble of devices to spontaneously act and cooperate coherently requires software technologies that support self-organization. The salient properties of such a software infrastructure are analyzed and a potential solution to these challenges is proposed, the "SodaPop" middleware. In contrast to other approaches, SodaPop uses a two-stage model for structuring multi-agent systems and provides unique facilities for coordinating the activities of competing agents through domain specific conflict resolution strategies. The use of SodaPop is illustrated by realizing a smart conference room whose capabilities may be extended ad hoc through dynamically added devices.