Distributed Intelligence for Smart Home Appliances

A main goal for the researchers designing smart health care technology is to develop strategies allowing both, early detection of and avoid problems that could lead to a decreased independence. Medical analysis, smart sensors, intelligent software agents, distributed control, wireless communication and internet resources are research areas implied in home automation delivering intelligent health care. Ubiquitous computing is the most promising technological approach that can meet this challenge if their non-intrusive and adaptable objectives are reached, meanwhile it is able to maintain privacy. Our work is concerned with the development of a smart home architecture allowing to integrate information from a wide variety of sensors and actuators: information recruited for these elements is processed into microprocessors implementing computational intelligence techniques; cooperative communication between units is implemented through a wireless net into the home; and internet resources allow to link the home with external services. Within this general infrastructure, the proposed architecture expands from the conversion of passive sensors into smart devices (we call them “intelligent hardware units”) by adding processing capabilities and using them like plug-and-play mechanisms. Performed experiments on a robotic pet platform show the viability of the present approach and they appoint interesting results to be applied on the entire home.