A multi-agent system for controlling intelligent buildings

Gives a high-level description of a project aimed at investigating the usefulness of the agent metaphor and the notion of multi-agent systems for the design of control systems for intelligent buildings. The use of the agent approach was initially motivated by the close mapping that it offered between the entities of the application domain and the entities of the software. The concurrent non-deterministic nature of the activities inside the building was another factor that led to the development of concurrent autonomous entities. We argue that the suggested multi-agent system architecture can be easily adapted to almost any building. Also, the implementation of the system allows for dynamic re-configuration of the agents, without disrupting the operation of the system. Finally, simulation results indicate that the approach is viable and that considerable energy savings are possible, while at the same time providing added value for the customer. Also, the approach enables a much more fine-grained control of the tradeoff between energy saving and customer satisfaction than current approaches do