Smart homes have been viewed with increasing interest by both home owners and the research community in the past few years.\r\nOne reason for this development is that the use of modern automation technology in the home or building promises considerable\r\nsavings of energy, therefore, simultaneously reducing the operational costs of the building over its whole lifecycle. However, the\r\nfull potential of smart homes still lies fallow, due to the complexity and diversity of the systems, badly engineered and configured\r\ninstallations, as well as the frequent problem of suboptimal control strategies. Summarized, these problems converge to two\r\nundesirable conditions in the ââ?¬Å?not-so-smartââ?¬Â home: energy consumption is still higher than actually necessary and users are\r\nunable to yield full comfort in their automated homes. This work puts its focus on alleviating the current problems by proposing\r\na comprehensive system concept, that shall ensure that smart homes can keep their promise in the future. The system operates\r\non an extensive knowledge base that stores all information needed to fulfill the goals of energy efficiency and user comfort. Its\r\nintelligence is implemented as and within a multiagent system that also caters for the systemââ?¬â?¢s openness to the outside world. As a\r\nfirst evaluation, a profile-based control strategy for thermal comfort is developed and verified by means of simulation.
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