The CYBEROIKOS system is based on research and development work ("Intelligent Spaces and Buildings: Paradigms and Agents") that defined the conceptual model of intelligent interiors for buildings and urban spaces.

ABSTRACT

“Intelligent Spaces and Buildings: Paradigms and Agents” intends to be a global and multidisciplinary approach to the problem of autonomous and intelligent management of Urbanized Spaces and Buildings (US&B).

The thesis has the intention to build a scientific and technological frame, sufficiently formalized, for the development of one or more industrial products for the related industry.

The work presents results like the definition of a specification paradigm, several physical design models and a logical implementation paradigm, an architecture named CyberOïkos System. It also presents some views of the development of some of the agents that execute the most important features of the CyberOïkos System implementation.

The specification paradigm takes account of the Intelligent Space and Building (IS&B) definition, as an artificial entity (made by men to humanize the world), a machine (IS&BM) that assists a society of humans in the management of US&B (satisfying their values and substituting their actions). The IS&BM is an application of information technologies on US&B, by means of material media (specially electronics). The main difference from this model to other common management models is the role that most humans play in it: they conflict each other, they would not be obliged to have a mental model of the IS&BM and they are inconstant. The IS&BM model is anthropomorphic, possessing four main activities: knowing, appreciation, deciding and acting. The thesis describes the procedures of those activities, the interfaces with the world and with the humans and the several types of information the model requires.

The resources, available for the implementation of this paradigm, are analyzed. It is concluded that it does nor exist such a product that accomplishes completely the task, but that there are countless functional components that allow to implement important aspects of the model. The missing items are the components that achieve the most intensive logical and intelligent activities of IS&BM model, such as symbolic and abstract knowledge models, learning, appreciation and decision models.

Next step is the presentation of the material implementation models that use the available resources to execute the knowledge of and action upon the world, the communications between IS&BM and humans and the assistance to the human intercommunication. From these models take relief a first group of work to do, that implies a development of the global technological level, which is beyond the capacities of the corporate project the author integers; and a second group of works that deals with the integration of those components in an architecture (architecture definition and component adequacy) and the creation of specific components for the internal logic processes and the communication and interoperability between components.

Such an architecture is the logical implementation model of IS&B concept, named CyberOïkos System. That logical architecture allows the non existence of a specific physical architecture (as usual in several solutions available in the market), but the easy adjustment to all of them.

CyberOïkos System is defined in its elements: services of the System to humans (in specification, installation and development) and to the System components; procedures; domains; Machines; Devices.

CyberOïkos System applies several technologies: object-oriented technologies (but reviewed: total encapsulation of objects in execution time, by means of integral separation of implementation and interface, generalization of the private variables concept to private structured databases, generalization of the method concept to algebras, generalization of the interface concept to languages, introduction of new elements in the interface, such as those that express commitment of an object toward the others, with the publication of pre and post conditions, introduction of the concepts of object as encapsulation of synchronous operations and of applications as sets of actors, interactive through asynchronous messages), client / server technologies originated mainly in ORB technology, in order to assure the interoperability of several heterogeneous components (automatic yellow pages service, perfect semantic understanding between components), other technologies of interoperability between components in diverse platforms of hardware, operating systems, languages and nets.

The Agents are the implementation components of CyberOïkos System architecture, and they are the working elements that finally embody the main required innovative features. Several agents are presented, but three of them have a fundamental role: the first, that authorizes not very skilled specificators to define in a loose way (not very detailed and without profound and global knowledge of the system) the knowledge, aptitudes, values and behaviours of the IS&B – an agent for the specification or knowledge representation, based on predicate logics; a second agent, that allows the creation of optimized implementations based on the required functionalities (defined by the former agent) and the installed resources – an algebraic or inference agent that transform the former specifications in optimized conditional plans, totally instantiated, that uses discrete mathematics and decision theory (dynamic programming); and a third agent that accepts dynamically the implementations sent by the second and executes them – an execution agent, based in prepositional logics, similar to finite state automata. Some features of the formalization of those agents are presented, such as syntax, static semantics, dynamic denotational and operational semantics.

Another interesting exhibited agent is one of anthropomorphic type and is an interface in near natural language between IS&B and the users.