Bridging the Gap between Real and Simulated Environments: A Hybrid Agent-Based Smart Home Simulator Architecture for Complex Systems

Deployment, maintenance of Smart Homes, Smart Grids in real environments is an expensive, lengthy process. In this paradigm, simulations play an important role by providing means of emulating the behaviour of the aforementioned systems. However, these simulations may suffer from lack of accuracy due to the inability to properly reproduce the operation of complex technologies such as solar panels, Heating, Ventilating, Air Conditioning systems (HVAC), sewerage networks or water provisioning. Within this context, this paper presents a Smart-Home Simulation architecture that is able to carry out more representational simulations by merging agent-based simulation of human behaviour with real-world modelling capabilities such as those provided by the Simulink software. Based on the simulation of human behaviour, water, electricity consumption profiles are generated, sent to Simulink models using the TCP/IP communication protocol. The obtained results show that a synchronized connection of both platforms in feasible, enabling a more accurate representation of the systems involved.