An agent-based bidirectional intelligent remote controller

This paper proposes a remote controller (RC for short) with high usability. Nowadays, RCs play an important role in improving the usability of home appliances. The conventional RCs have mainly two drawbacks-the increase in the number of the buttons on the control panel and inflexible macro functions. Furthermore, the RC is associated with each appliance, RCs are scattered in a room. To overcome some problems, a bidirectional RC has been proposed. However, this RC only simulates multiple RCs using downloaded menus. It supplies no intelligent operations. The RC proposed in this paper manipulates multiple appliances with an XML-based touchpanel LCD and agent-based bidirectional communication. It carries out user-friendly integration of RCs using XML technology. Advanced/flexible interoperations among home appliances can also be established via agent scripts. The RC software is implemented on an 32 bit embedded MCU and experimental results ensure its high usability and flexibility.