A location-aware architecture for heterogeneous building automation systems

Smart Objects and Smart Environments are expected to become two of the leaders of the future Internet of Things. In this context, the Smart Homes are getting more and more attention, since people are very attracted by the idea of a home environment able to automatically meet their needs. However, the heterogeneity of the smart devices, the difficulty in automating the user-home interaction, and the poor involvement of the users in the development process of new services and applications still represent very debated issues. So, in this paper, we propose an architecture able to overcome the heterogeneity of smart devices and that can be easily extended to new future technologies. To maximize the User Experience, the proposed architecture automatically manages the environment basing on users-defined rules and on people movements, by exploiting an indoor location service based on Bluetooth Low Energy. Finally, the system also provides a simplified development tool that allows even common users to develop new services for Smart Homes and mobile applications to directly interact with the home environment. As a proof-of-concept, the first development steps are described in this paper.