Multi-agent intelligent controller design for smart and sustainable buildings

In this paper, a multi-agent intelligent control system is applied to design a control system for smart and sustainable buildings. Smart and sustainable buildings require solving conflicts between energy consumption and indoor comfort level. Also, user preferences should be taken consideration in the control system design. Hierarchical control architecture is introduced and utilized to design such a control system, which includes a central agent-controller and multiple local agent-controllers. The central agent-controller coordinates the local agent-controllers for achieving the maximum user comfort in two different operation modes. The local agent-based control employs multiple fuzzy logic controllers to satisfy different comfort demands. Simulation results are also presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed multi-agent control system for building energy and comfort management.