In ambient intelligence, systems should interact intelligently with users and assist them in integrated and almost transparent way. Hence, planning and context awareness is crucial for building such systems. To cope with the high dynamics and the openness of ambient intelligence environments, representation formalism allowing a run-time analysis and monitoring of plans is required. In this paper, we focus on context awareness and planning ability on ambient environments. First, we outline a formal modeling approach for context-aware planning based upon a hierarchical colored Petri nets formalism. The approach enables the specification of plans through many levels of abstractions. Second, we address the problem of assigning tasks to groups of agents; we describe the use of resulted model in conjunction with contract net protocol to form the collaborative agent networks. Again we show how the formal foundation of this framework allows plan verification and execution monitoring. Finally, we highlight the main aspects of the approach through an assisted healthcare system case study.
AbowdG.D.DeyA.K.BrownP.J.DaviesN.SmithM. and StegglesP., Towards a Better Understanding of Context and Context-Awareness, in: Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium on Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing. London, UK, UK: Springer-Verlag, (1999), 304–307. (HUC 99). Available from: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=647985.743843.
2.
AmigoniF.GattiN.PinciroliC.RoveriM., What planner for ambient intelligence applications?IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics – Part A: Systems and Humans35(1) (Jan 2005), 7–21.
3.
BauerJ.KutscheR.D. and EhrmanntrautR., Identification and modeling of contexts for different information scenarios in air traffic, Technische Universita, Berlin, Diplomarbeit (2003), 1–104.
4.
BettiniC.BrdiczkaO.HenricksenK.IndulskaJ.NicklasD.RanganathanA. et al., A survey of context modelling and reasoning techniques, Pervasive and Mobile Computing6(2) (Apr 2010), 161–80.
5.
BidotJ. and BiundoS., Artificial Intelligence Planning for Ambient Environments, in: Next Generation Intelligent Environments. Springer, New York, NY, (2011), 195–225.
6.
BrahimiS.MaamriR. and SahnounZ., Hierarchical Multi-Agent Plans Using Model-Based Petri Net, International Journal of Agent Technologies and Systems (IJATS)5(2) (2013), 1–30.
7.
KwonO.B., Modeling and generating context-aware agent-based applications with amended colored Petri nets, Expert Systems With Applications27(4) (2004), 609–21.
8.
de WeerdtM. and ClementB., Introduction to planning in multiagent systems, Multiagent and Grid Systems5 (2009), 345–355.
9.
DeyA.K., Understanding and Using Context, Personal Ubiquitous Comput5(1) (Jan 2001), 4–7.
10.
DeyA.K.AbowdG.D. and SalberD., A conceptual framework and a toolkit for supporting the rapid prototyping of context-aware applications, Human-Computer Interaction16(2–4) (Dec 2001), 97–166.
11.
ErolK.HendlerJ. and NauD.S., HTN planning: Complexity and expressivity, in: Proceedings of the Twelfth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Menlo Park, CA, USA: American Association for Artificial Intelligence, (AAAI’94), 1994, pp. 1123–1128.
12.
FerberJ., Multi-agent systems: An introduction to distributed artificial intelligence, Harlow: Addison-Wesley, 1999, 509.
13.
HaiouniH. and MaamriR., Context-aware planning for intelligent environments, in: International Conference on Advanced Aspects of Software Engineering (ICAASE). Presented at the 2016, International Conference on Advanced Aspects of Software Engineering (ICAASE), 2016, pp. 1–5.
14.
HaiouniH. and MaamriR., Context-aware automatic service selection mechanism for ambient intelligent environments, in: Ambient Intelligence – Software and ApplicationsNovaisR.C.P.NihanC.E.Corchado RodríguezJ.M., eds, Cham: Springer International Publishing, (2014), 1–11.
15.
HanS. and YounH.Y., Petri net-based context modeling for context-aware systems, Artif Intell Re37(1) (1 Jan 2012), 43–67.
16.
HeinrichB. and SchönD., Automated planning of context-aware process models, Twenty-Third European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Münster, Germany, (26–29 May 2015), 422–431.
17.
HsiehF-S., Developing cooperation mechanism for multi-agent systems with Petri nets, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence22(4–5) (Jun 2009), 616–627.
18.
JenningsN.R. and WooldridgeM.J., eds, Agent technology, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 1998.
19.
JensenK. and KristensenL.M., Coloured petri nets, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009.
20.
LiX.EckertM.MartinezJ-F. and RubioG., Context aware middleware architectures: Survey and challenges, Sensors15(8) (20 Aug 2015), 20570–607.
21.
LopesB.BenevidesM. and HaeuslerE.H., Reasoning about multi-agent systems using stochastic petri nets, in: Trends in Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems and SustainabilityBajoJ.HernándezJ.Z.MathieuP.CampbellA.CaballeroF.-A.MorenoM.N., et al., eds, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015, pp. 75–86.
22.
McCarthyJ., Notes on formalizing contexts, in: Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, San Mateo, CaliforniaBajcsyR., ed., Morgan Kaufmann, 1993, pp. 555–560.
23.
MurataT., Petri nets: Properties, analysis and applications, Proceedings of the IEEE77(4) (Apr 1989), 541–80.
24.
NauD.GhallabM. and TraversoP., Automated planning: Theory & practice. San Francisco, CA, USA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., 2004.
25.
Pajares FerrandoS. and OnaindiaE., Context-aware multi-agent planning in intelligent environments, Information Sciences227 (Apr 2013), 22–42.
26.
RiahiI. and MoussaF., A formal approach for modeling context-aware Human – Computer System, Computers & Electrical Engineering44 (May 2015), 241–261.
27.
SchilitB.AdamsN. and WantR., Context-aware computing applications, in: IEEE, 1994, pp. 85–90. Available from: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4624429/.
28.
SchmidtA.BeiglM. and GellersenH., There is more to context than location, Computers and Graphics23 (1998), 893–901.
29.
Smith, The contract net protocol: High-level communication and control in a distributed problem solver, IEEE Transactions on Computers, (Dec 1980) C–29(12) 1104–13.
30.
StrangT. and Linnhoff-PopienC., A context modeling survey, in: Workshop on Advanced Context Modelling, Reasoning and Management, UbiComp 2004 – The Sixth International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, DLR Electronic Library, 2004, pp. 31–41.
31.
UscholdM. and GruningerM., Ontologies: Principles, methods and applications, The Knowledge Engineering Review11(2) (Jun 1996), 93.
32.
WangH. and ZengQ., Modeling analysis for workflow constrained by resources and nondetermined time: An approach based on petri nets, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics – Part A: Systems and Humans38(4) (Jul 2008), 802–817.
