Increasing an individual’s quality of life via their intelligent home
The hypothesis of this project is: can an individual’s quality of life be increased by integrating “intelligent technology” into their home environment. This hypothesis is very broad, and hence the researchers will investigate it with regard to various, potentially over-lapping, sub-sections of the population. In particular, the project will focus on sub-sections with health-care needs, because it is believed that these sub-sections will receive the greatest benefit from this enhanced approach to housing. Two research questions flow from this hypothesis: what are the health-care issues that could be improved via “intelligent housing”, and what are the technological issues needing to be solved to allow “intelligent housing” to be constructed? While a small number of initiatives exist, outside Canada, which claim to investigate this area, none has the global vision of this area. Work tends to be in small areas with only a limited idea of how the individual pieces contribute towards a greater goal. This project has a very strong sense of what it is trying to attempt, and believes that without this global direction the other initiatives will fail to address the large important issues described within various parts of this proposal, and that with the correct global direction the sum of the parts will produce much greater rewards than the individual components. This new field has many parallels with the field of business process engineering, where many products fail due to only considering a sub-set of the issues, typically the technology subset. Successful projects and implementations only started flow when people started to realize that a holistic approach was essential. This holistic requirement also applies to the field of “smart housing”; if we genuinely want it to have benefit to the community rather than just technological interest. Having
said this, much of the work outlined below is extremely important and contains a great deal of novelty within their individual topics.
Health-Care and Supportive housing：
To date, there has been little coordinated research on how “smart house” technologies can assist frail seniors in remaining at home, and/or reduce the costs experienced by their informal caregivers. Thus, the purpose of the proposed research is to determine the usefulness of a variety of residential technologies in helping seniors maintain their independence and in helping caregivers sustain their caring activities.
The overall design of the research is to focus on two groups of seniors. The first is seniors who are being discharged from an acute care setting with the potential for reduced ability to remain independent. An example is seniors who have had hip replacement surgery. This group may benefit from technologies that would help them become adapted to their reduced mobility. The second is seniors who have a chronic health problem such as dementia and who are receiving assistance from an informal caregiver living at a distance. Informal caregivers living at a distance from the cared-for senior are at high risk of caregiver burnout. Monitoring the cared-for senior for health and safety is one of the important tasks done by such caregivers. Devices such as floor sensors (to determine whether the senior has fallen) and access controls to ensure safety from intruders or to indicate elopement by a senior with dementia could reduce caregiver time spent commuting to monitor the senior.
For both samples, trials would consist of extended periods of residence within the ‘smart house’. Samples of seniors being discharged from acute care would be recruited from acute care hospitals. Samples of seniors being cared for by informal caregivers at a distance could be recruited through dementia diagnosis clinics or through request from caregivers for respite.
Limited amounts of clinical and health service research has been conducted upon seniors (with complex health problems) in controlled environments such as that represented by the “smart house”. For example, it is known that night vision of the aged is poor but there is very little information regarding the optimum level of lighting after wakening or for night activities. Falling is a major issue for older persons; and it results in injuries, disabilities and additional health care costs. For those with dementing illnesses, safety is the key issue during performance of the activities of daily living (ADL). It is vital for us to be able to monitor where patients would fall during ADL. Patients and caregivers activities would be monitored and data will be collected in the following conditions.
Projects would concentrate on sub-populations, with a view to collecting scientific data about their conditions and the impact of technology upon their life styles. For example:
Persons with stable chronic disability following a stroke and their caregivers: to research optimum models, types and location of various sensors for such patients (these patients may have neglect, hemiplegia, aphasia and judgment problems); to research pattern of movements during the ambulation, use of wheel chairs or
canes on various type of floor material; to research caregivers support through e-health technology; to monitor frequencies and location of the falls; to evaluate the value of smart appliances for stroke patients and caregivers; to evaluate information and communication technology set up for Tele-homecare; to evaluate technology interface for Tele-homecare staff and clients; to evaluate the most effective way of lighting the various part of the house; to modify or develop new technology to enhance comfort and convenience of stroke patients and caregivers; to evaluate the value of surveillance systems in assisting caregivers.
Persons with Alzheimer’s disease and their caregivers: to evaluate the effect of smart house (unfamiliar environment) on their ability to conduct self-care with and without prompting; to evaluate their ability to use unfamiliar equipment in the smart house; to evaluate and monitor persons with Alzheimer’s disease movement pattern; to evaluate and monitor falls or wandering; to evaluate the type and model of sensors to monitor patients; to evaluate the effect of wall color for patients and care givers; to evaluate the value of proper lighting.
Technology - Ubiquitous Computing：
The ubiquitous computing infrastructure is viewed as the backbone of the “intelligence” within the house. In common with all ubiquitous computing systems, the primary components with this system will be: the array of sensors, the communication infrastructure and the software control (based upon software agents) infrastructure. Again, it is considered essential that this topic is investigated holistically.
Sensor design: The focus of research here will be development of (micro)-sensors and sensor arrays using smart materials, e.g. piezoelectric materials, magneto strictive materials and shape memory alloys (SMAs). In particular, SMAs are a class of smart materials that are attractive candidates for sensing and actuating applications primarily because of their extraordinarily high work output/volume ratio compared to other smart materials. SMAs undergo a solid-solid phase transformation when subjected to an appropriate regime of mechanical and thermal load, resulting in a macroscopic change in dimensions and shape; this change is recoverable by reversing the thermo mechanical loading and is known as a one-way shape memory effect. Due to this material feature, SMAs can be used as both a sensor and an actuator. A very recent development is an effort to incorporate SMAs in micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) so that these materials can be used as integral parts of micro-sensors and actuators.
MEMS are an area of activity where some of the technology is mature enough for possible commercial applications to emerge. Some examples are micro-chemical analyzers, humidity and pressure sensors, MEMS for flow control, synthetic jet actuators and optical MEMS (for the next generation internet). Incorporating SMAs in MEMS is a relatively new effort in the research community; to the best of our knowledge, only one group (Prof. Greg Carman, Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles) has successfully demonstrated the dynamic properties of SMA-based MEMS. Here, the focus will be to harness the sensing and actuation capabilities of smart materials to design and fabricate useful and economically viable micro-sensors and actuators.
Communications: Construction and use of an “intelligent house” offers extensive opportunities to analyze and verify the operation of wireless and wired home-based communication services. While some of these are already widely explored, many of the issues have received little or no attention. It is proposed to investigate the following issues:
Measurement of channel statistics in a residential environment: knowledge of the indoor wireless channel statistics is critical for enabling the design of efficient transmitters and receivers, as well as determining appropriate levels of signal power, data transfer rates, modulation techniques, and error control codes for the wireless links. Interference, channel distortion, and spectral limitations that arises as a result of equipment for the disabled (wheelchairs, IV stands, monitoring equipment, etc.) is of particular interest.
Design, analysis, and verification of enhanced antennas for indoor wireless communications. Indoor wireless communications present the need for compact and rugged antennas. New antenna designs, optimized for desired data rates, frequency of operation, and spatial requirements, could be considered.
Verification and analysis of operation of indoor wireless networks: wireless networking standards for home automation have recently been commercialized. Integration of one or more of these systems into the smart house would provide the opportunity to verify the operation of these systems, examine their limitations, and determine whether the standards are over-designed to meet typical requirements.
Determination of effective communications wiring plans for “smart homes.”: there exist performance/cost tradeoffs regarding wired and wireless infrastructure. Measurement and analysis of various wireless network configurations will allow for determination of appropriate network designs.
Consideration of coordinating indoor communication systems with larger-scale communication systems: indoor wireless networks are local to the vicinity of the residence. There exist broader-scale networks, such as the cellular telephone network, fixed wireless networks, and satellite-based communication networks. The viability and usefulness of compatibility between these services for the purposes of health-care monitoring, the tracking of dementia patients, etc needs to be considered.
Software Agents and their Engineering: An embedded-agent can be considered the equivalent of supplying a friendly expert with a product. Embedded-agents for Intelligent Buildings pose a number of challenges both at the level of the design methodology as well as the resulting detailed implementation. Projects in this area will include：
Architectures for large-scale agent systems for human inhabited environment: successful deployment of agent technology in residential/extended care environments requires the design of new architectures for these systems. A suitable architecture should be simple and flexible to provide efficient agent operation in real time. At the same time, it should be hierarchical and rigid to allow enforcement of rules and restrictions ensuring safety of the inhabitants of the
building system. These contradictory requirements have to be resolved by designing a new architecture that will be shared by all agents in the system.
Robust Decision and Control Structures for Learning Agents: to achieve life-long learning abilities, the agents need to be equipped with powerful mechanisms for learning and adaptation. Isolated use of some traditional learning systems is not possible due to high-expected lifespan of these agents. We intend to develop hybrid learning systems combining several learning and representation techniques in an emergent fashion. Such systems will apply different approaches based on their own maturity and on the amount of change necessary to adapt to a new situation or learn new behaviors. To cope with high levels of non-determinism (from such sources as interaction with unpredictable human users), robust behaviors will be designed and implemented capable of dealing with different types of uncertainty (e.g. probabilistic and fuzzy uncertainty) using advanced techniques for sensory and data fusion, and inference mechanisms based on techniques of computational intelligence.
Automatic modeling of real-world objects, including individual householders: The problems here are: “the locating and extracting” of information essential for representation of personality and habits of an individual; development of systems that “follow and adopt to” individual’s mood and behavior. The solutions, based on data mining and evolutionary techniques, will utilize: (1) clustering methods, classification tress and association discovery techniques for the classification and partition of important relationships among different attributes for various features belonging to an individual, this is an essential element in
finding behavioral patterns of an individual; and (2) neuro-fuzzy and rule-based systems with learning and adaptation capabilities used to develop models of an individual’s characteristics, this is essential for estimation and prediction of potential activities and forward planning.
Investigation of framework characteristics for ubiquitous computing: Consider distributed and internet-based systems, which perhaps have the most in common with ubiquitous computing, here again, the largest impact is not from specific software engineering processes, but is from available software frameworks or ‘toolkits’, which allow the rapid construction and deployment of many of the systems in these areas. Hence, it is proposed that the construction of the ubiquitous computing infrastructure for the “smart house” should also be utilized as a software engineering study. Researchers would start by visiting the few genuine ubiquitous computing systems in existence today, to try to build up an initial picture of the functionality of the framework. (This approach has obviously parallels with the approach of Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides deployed for their groundbreaking work on “design patterns”. Unfortunately, in comparison to their work, the sample size here will be extremely small, and hence, additional work will be required to produce reliable answers.) This initial framework will subsequently be used as the basis of the smart house’s software system. Undoubtedly, this initial framework will substantially evolve during the construction of the system, as the requirements of ubiquitous computing environment unfold. It is believed that such close involvement in the construction of a system is a necessary component in producing a truly useful and reliable artifact. By the end of the construction phase, it is expected to produce a stable
framework, which can demonstrate that a large number of essential characteristics (or patterns) have been found for ubiquitous computing.
Validation and Verification (V&V) issues for ubiquitous computing: it is hoped that the house will provide a test-bed for investigating validation and verification (V&V) issues for ubiquitous computing. The house will be used as an assessment vehicle to determine which, if any, V&V techniques, tools or approaches are useful within this environment. Further, it is planned to make this trial facility available to researchers worldwide to increase the use of this vehicle. In the long-term, it is expected that the facilities offered by this infrastructure will evolve into an internationally recognized “benchmarking” site for V&V activities in ubiquitous computing.
Other technological areas：
The project also plans to investigate a number of additional areas, such as lighting systems, security systems, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, etc. For example, with regard to energy efficiency, the project currently anticipates undertaking two studies:
The Determination of the effectiveness of insulating shutters: Exterior insulating shutters over time are not effective because of sealing problems. Interior shutters are superior and could be used to help reduce heat losses. However, their movement and positioning needs appropriate control to prevent window breakage due to thermal shock. The initiation of an opening or closing
cycle would be based on measured exterior light levels; current internal heating levels; current and expected use of the house by the current inhabitants, etc.
A comparison of energy generation alternatives: The energy use patterns can easily be monitored by instrumenting each appliance. Natural gas and electricity are natural choices for the main energy supply. The conversion of the chemical energy in the fuel to heat space and warm water can be done by conventional means or by use of a total energy system such as a Volvo Penta system. With this system, the fuel is used to power a small internal combustion engine, which in turn drives a generator for electrical energy production. Waste heat from the coolant and the exhaust are used to heat water for domestic use and space heating. Excess electricity is fed back into the power grid or stored in batteries. At a future date, it is planned to substitute a fuel cell for the total energy system allowing for a direct comparison of the performance of two advanced systems.
Intelligent architecture: user interface design to elicit knowledge models
Much of the difficulty in architectural design is in integrating and making explicit the knowledge of the many converging disciplines (engineering, sociology, ergonomic sand psychology, to name a few), the building requirements from many view points, and to model the complex system interactions. The many roles of the architect simply compound this. This paper describes a system currently under development—a 3Ddesign medium and intelligent analysis tool, to help elicit and make explicit these requirements. The building model is used to encapsulate information throughout the building lifecycle, from inception and master planning
to construction and ‘lived-in’ use. From the tight relationship between material behaviour of the model, function analysis and visual feedback, the aim is to help in the resolution of functional needs, so that the building meets not only the aims of the architect, but the needs of the inhabitants, users and environment.
The Problem of Designing the Built Environment：
It is often said that architecture is the mother of the arts since it embodies all the techniques of painting: line, colour, texture and tone, as well as those of sculpture: shape, volume, light and shadow, and the changing relative position of the viewer, and adds to these the way that people inhabit and move through its space to produce—at its best—a spectacle reminiscent of choreography or theatre. As with all the arts, architecture is subject to personal critical taste and yet architecture is also a public art, in that people are constrained to use it. In this it goes beyond the other arts and is called on to function, to modify the climate, provide shelter, and to subdivide and structure space into a pattern that somehow fits the needs of social groups or organizations and cultures. Whilst architecture may be commissioned in part as a cultural or aesthetic expression, it is almost always required to fulfill a comprehensive programme of social and environmental needs.
This requirement to function gives rise to three related problems that characterize the design and use of the built environment. The first depends on the difference between explicit knowledge—that of which we are at least conscious and may even have a scientific or principled understanding—and implicit
knowledge, which, like knowing your mother tongue, can be applied without thinking. The functional programmes buildings are required to fulfill are largely social, and are based on implicit rather than explicit bodies of knowledge. The knowledge we exploit when we use the built environment is almost entirely applied unconsciously. We don’t have to think about buildings or cities to use them; in fact, when we become aware of it the built environment is often held to have failed. Think of the need for yellow lines to help people find their way around the Barbican complex in the City of London, or the calls from tenants to ‘string up the architects’ when housing estates turn out to be social disasters.
The second is a problem of complexity. The problem is that buildings need to function in so many different ways. They are spatial and social, they function in terms of thermal environment, light and acoustics, they use energy and affect people’s health, they need to be constructed and are made of physical components that can degrade and need to be maintained. On top of all this they have an aesthetic and cultural role, as well as being financial investments and playing an important role in the economy. Almost all of these factors are interactive—decisions taken for structural reasons have impacts on environment or cost—but are often relatively independent in terms of the domains of knowledge that need to be applied. This gives rise to a complex design problem in which everything knocks on to everything else, and in which no single person has a grasp of all the domains of knowledge required for its resolution. Even when the knowledge that needs to be applied is relatively explicit—as for instance in structural calculations,
or those
concerning thermal performance—the complex interactive nature of buildings creates a situation in which it is only through a team approach that design can be carried out, with all that this entails for problems of information transfer and breakdowns in understanding.
The third is the problem of ‘briefing’. It is a characteristic of building projects that buildings tend not to be something that people buy ‘off-the-shelf’. Often the functional programme is not even explicit at the outset. One might characterise the process that actually takes place by saying that the design and the brief ‘co-evolve’. As a project moves from inception to full specification both the requirements and the design become more and more concrete through an iterative process in which design of the physical form and the requirements that it is expected to fulfill both develop at once. Feasible designs are evaluated according to what they provide, and designers try to develop a design that matches the client’s requirements. Eventually, it is to be hoped, the two meet with the textual description of what is required and the physical description of the building that will provide it more or less tying together as the brief becomes a part of the contractual documentation that the
client signs up to.
These three problems compound themselves in a number of ways. Since many
of the core objectives of a client organization rest on implicit knowledge—the need for a building to foster communication and innovation amongst its workers for instance—it is all too easy for them to be lost to sight against the more explicitly stated requirements such as those concerned with cost, environmental performance or statutory regulations. The result is that some of the more important aspects of the functional programme can lose out to less important but better understood issues. This can be compounded by the approach that designers take in order to control them complexity of projects. All too often the temptation is to wait until the general layout
of a building is ‘fixed’ before calling in the domain experts. The result is that functional design has to resort to retrofitting to resolve problems caused by the strategic plan.
The Intelligent Architecture project is investigating the use of a single unified digital model of the building to help resolve these problems by bringing greater intelligence to bear at the earliest ‘form generating’ phase of the design process when the client’s requirements are still being specified and when both physical design and client expectations are most easily modified. The aim is to help narrow the gap between what clients hope to obtain and what they eventually receive from a building project.
The strategy is simple. By capturing representations of the building as a physical and spatial system, and using these to bring domain knowledge to bear on a design at its earliest stages, it is hoped that some of the main conflicts that
lead to sub- optimal designs can be avoided. By linking between textual schedules of requirements and the physical/spatial model it is intended to ease the reconciliation of the brief and the design, and help the two to co-evolve. By making available some of the latest ‘intelligent’ techniques for modelling spatial systems in the built environment, it is hoped to help put more of the implicit knowledge on an equal footing with explicit knowledge, and by using graphical feedback about functional outcomes where explicit knowledge exists, to bring these within the realm of intuitive application by designers.
The Workbench：
In order to do this, Intelligent Architecture has developed Pangea. Pangea has been designed as a general-purpose environment for intelligent 3D modelling—it does not pre-suppose a particular way of working, a particular design solution, or even a particular application domain. Several features make this possible.
Worlds can be constructed from 3D and 2D primitives (including blocks, spheres, irregular prisms and deformable surfaces), which can represent real-world physical objects, or encapsulate some kind of abstract behaviour. The 3D editor provides a direct and simple interface for manipulating objects—to position, reshape, rotate and rework. All objects, both physical and abstract, have an internal state (defined by attributes), and behaviour, rules and constraints (in terms of a high-level-language ‘script’). Attributes can be added dynamically, making it possible for objects to change in nature, in response to new
knowledge about them, or to a changing environment. Scripts are triggered by events, so that objects can respond and interact, as in the built environment, molecular systems, or fabric falling into folds on an irregular surface.
Dynamic linking allows Pangea’s functionality to be extended to include standard ‘off-the-peg’ software tools — spreadsheets, statistical analysis applications, graphing packages and domain-specific analysis software, such as finite element analysis for air- flow modelling. The ‘intelligent toolkit’ includes neural networks [Koho89] [Wass89], genetic algorithms [Gold89] [Holl75] and other stochastic search techniques [KiDe95], together with a rule- based and fuzzy logic system [Zade84]. The intelligent tools are objects, just like the normal 3D primitives: they have 3D presence and can interact with other 3D objects. A natural consequence of this design is easy ‘hybridisability’ of techniques, widely considered as vital to the success of intelligent techniques in solving realistically complex problems [GoKh95]. This infrastructure of primitive forms, intelligent techniques and high-level language makes it possible to build applications to deal with a broad range of problems, from the generation of architectural form, spatial optimisation, object recognition and clustering, and inducing rules and patterns from raw data.
Embedding Intelligence：
Many consider that there is an inevitable trade-off between computers as a pure design medium, and computers with intelligence, ‘as a thinking machine’
[Rich94]. We propose here that it is possible to provide both these types of support, and allow the user to choose how best to use each, or not, according to the situation.
It is essential that the creative role of the architect is preserved as he or she uses the work bench, that the architect as artist may draw manipulate the world as seen through the workbench as freely as they would when using a sheet of paper. Much of the knowledge entered into the workbench in this way is unexpressed: an architect may draw a block, but intend that the block to be a stair or a door or a room. By using a clustering algorithm we have tried to capture some of the knowledge that the architect as artist does not express. In this manner, the architect as engineer may then pick up the sketch and continue to work with a technical drawing. Once we have identified the components, we can also apply rule-based systems to make recommendations for the design. Thus, by using a clustering algorithm, we are crossing the bridge from implicit knowledge of the architect as artist to the explicit knowledge of architect as engineer.
The object-oriented nature of the workbench allows a common interface to the clusterer, while implementing the clustering engine itself by a choice of simple linkage clustering algorithm or neural network (either a back-propagation multi-layer network or Kohonen). The architect specifies the attributes of an object in the world that are considered important to the definition of a set of objects, and we make a normalised vector representation of those attributes. Attributes chosen might be volume or the greenness or an
arbitrary combination of attributes such as these. The clustering algorithm is applied to these vectors, and places each cluster of objects into a collection. After clustering, the architect can name the set of objects retrieved (for example, ‘doors’ or ‘stairs’); the workbench can make sensible guesses as to which new objects belong to those clusters, and the workbench or architect can use the information to reason about the clusters.
Since each object can contain inside itself the rules relating to it, these can be triggered into operation when a particular event occurs. For example, when a building core (the area containing lifts, stairwells, ventilation shafts, and so on) is moved, an event is sent to it, and it can automatically go through its set of rules to determine if it still meets regulations for access and fire safety. This is particularly valuable when many rules need to be processed simultaneously, making it possible to investigate various designs, with rapid feedback. This can be taken further, by encapsulating rules in ‘expert’ or ‘critic’ objects [FNOS93], whose job it is to oversee some kind of design evaluation.
For example, the Pangea thermal modelling object would contain the rules and other information relating to the thermal environment. When invoked (by clicking with the mouse on it) it would iterate through the 3D objects in the building to determine the expected thermal performance. When dragged and dropped into another area of the building it would carry out the same function there. The metaphor of cameras and filters providing new ‘views’ on the world has been found to be very effective. In the case of thermal modelling, the same knowledge would be built into a thermal camera that could
be pointed at a scene, overlaying it with contours to indicate the hotspots, as if being viewed through an infra-red filter.These cameras can then be copied from one application to another, as re-usable components encapsulating different functionality.
This mechanism of component re-use is exploited in the Intelligent Architecture component libraries, being built for specific domains, including intelligent housing type and commercial building components. These parameterised components, where a component can even be a whole building, contain rules about sizing, placement and their relationship with other objects. The intelligent office building component, for example, can be resized, and automatically determines the correct number of floors for the given scaling, the approximate size of core necessary, and so on. The aim is to embed useful expert knowledge at the early stages of design, when such influences can have a major effect on the final outcome.
During the design process a building tends to be evaluated using many orthogonal or conflicting criteria, such as cost of construction, cost of running, environmental impact, social factors and comfort levels. Since these tend to be measured in different ways, it is often not possible to resolve them into a single value to indicate the quality of the design. Where these criteria can be expressed explicitly and quantified, Pangea can use colour, graphs and gauges to indicate the quality of the design from these multiple viewpoints. As these values move up and down, this can help to give a feel of how each of these evaluations are affected as the design changes, and how the various
factors interact. Often, however, these quantities cannot be expressed in such an explicit manner. From a group of candidate designs that perform well over the range of criteria, the designer will have to make the final decision based on factors less easy to make explicit, or factors that only become consciously apparent from manipulating the designs and internalising the behaviour in terms of the multiple evaluations. Genetic algorithms and other intelligent optimization techniques can be exploited to generate this set of candidate designs, leaving the designer to make the final decisions. In this way intelligent techniques act in the more subtle roles of decision support, rather than attempting to replace the expert.
Some particularly effective and novel optimization techniques incorporated into Pangea are dynamic representation hill-climbers and genetic algorithms. If the search space for an optimization problem is viewed as a landscape, with the aim of locating the single highest point (the global optimum), standard hill-climbers, and even genetic algorithms often get stuck in the foothills at local optima. By dynamically remapping the search space throughout the search, the space becomes ‘rearranged’ so that a difficult and bumpy terrain can become smoothed out for the search to traverse more easily. This technique has proven to be very effective at tackling a range of difficult optimization problems [KiDe95]. Within Intelligent Architecture they are being used on many space management problems, from site planning to open-plan office layouts.
Conclusions：
Most of the knowledge that is exploited in design is implicit knowledge. This create a problem for the knowledge engineer, who requires an explicit statement of the criteria and rules to be used in making a decision.
In the Intelligent Architecture project we are working on the basis that if a tool is actually going to be used by creative designers, it must appeal to their implicit understanding of problem domains. In order to do this we are trying to make a new creative medium in which one of the material properties is an ability to give graphical feedback about functional performance. We hope in this way that designers will be able to internalise the dynamics of functional performance as they model the form of the design. In this sense we are aiming to help people to become more ‘intelligent’. One side-effect of this approach has been the discovery that in designing the user interface to give feedback on particular problem domains—for instance, the requirements of housing development layouts, where over-looking, over-shadowing, density and car parking criteria must all be squared with each other—the boundary conditions are clarified. It is here that the process of integrating essentially manual systems helps the knowledge engineer to define the relationships between the many interacting criteria which characterise the design of the built environment. The effect is to make implicit knowledge explicit enough to allow advanced optimization techniques to be brought into use, to map out the fitness landscape and give guidance to designers on strategies that are likely to be fruitful.
智能家居能提高个人的生活品质
假设这个项目是：个人的生活质量能否因为在家庭环境中运用了智能技术而得到提高呢？这种假设是很广泛的，因此， 研究人员将通过调查各种各样的、有潜在研磨意识的、分节的人群来证明这个假设。特别的是，该项目将着重于调查卫生保健方面的需求， 因为我们相信这部分的实施可使房屋获得最大利益。从这个假说可以得出两个研究问题：什么样的医疗保健问题可以改进\"智能屋\"，如果让\"智能屋\"得以兴建，什么技术问题尚需解决？在加拿大的境外存在着少数的倡议，他们的目的是调查这方面的知识，但是并没有对这方面的工作有一个全球视野。通常，小地方的研究工作会涉及到怎样通过个别件实现更大目标这样一些主意。这个项目着重研究“试图做什么”，并认为如果没有这个全球方向，其他措施不能解决这项建议，并表示，有了正确的走向世界的方向，零件将产生比个人组成部分更大的回报。这新的领域跟外地的业务流程工程有许多相似之处， 那里有很多产品失败，其原因是只考虑了一个小组设置的问题，通常是技术方面。当人们开始认识到有一个全面的方法是至关重要的时候，成功的项目和措施才开始流通。如果我们真的希望它可以造福于社会，而并非只是创造技术利息，这种全面的规定也将适用于外地的\"小巧房屋\" 。话虽如此，下面叙述的许多工作都是非常重要的，其个别题目还包含大量的新生事物。
医疗保健和辅助房屋：
截至目前为止，有很少的协调研究是关于“智能屋” 是否可以降低体弱的老人留在家里的成本，而并非由经验丰富的非正式照顾者照顾。因此，其提出的研究得目的，是确定各种住宅技术对帮助老年人保持其独立生活和帮助看护延续自己的爱心活动是否有用。整体设计的研究是通过两个组别的老人来进行的。第一组是老年人他们脱离了急性护理的环境后保持独立性的能力降低。其中一个例子是老人髋关节置换手术。这组可能受益于技术，并将有助于他们更好适应流动性的降低。 第二组是老人有慢性健康问题，如老年痴呆症，
并正接受一个生活在一定距离之外的非正式的照顾者的援助。生活在离需要照顾的老人有一定距离的非正规照顾者正处于高风险时期的照顾倦怠。照顾者监测需要照顾的老人的健康和安全是其中一项重要的任务。设备，如地板传感器（以确定是否老人跌倒）和访问控制器（在入侵时确保安全或显示老人是否外出）。利用这些设备可以减少照顾着照顾老人所花的时间。
用“智能家”将得出两个样本。由急性护理医院照顾的上面例子中的老人出院。例子中的通过一定距离之外的非正式照顾者照顾的老人将通过诊所的诊断出院或者要求休息的照顾者回来照顾。
数量有限的、针对老人的复杂的健康问题的临床及健康服务研究工作在受控制的环境（如聪明屋中的环境）中完成。举例来说，据了解，针对高年龄人的夜视差，但有极少人认为觉醒或夜间活动课可以达到最低水平。对老年人来说它造成伤害，残疾的和额外的卫生保健成本是重大的问题。对于那些有疾病的人，在日常生活活动中安全是至关重要的。对我们来说，能够掌握病人在哪个阶段下降时至关重要的。患者和看护者的活动会受到监察，并在具备下列条件的情况下收集数据。
项目将集中于亚群，并期望在他们的条件和生活作风的技术的影响后搜集科学数据。例如： 有着稳定的慢性残疾的人宜遵循以下照料：研究专门针对为这类病人（这些病人可能有忽视，偏瘫，失语和判断方面的问题）的最好的类型和位置的各种传感器;研究在不同类型的地板材料上使用轮椅或拐杖的变动; 通过电子保健技术研究照顾者的支持;监测下降的频率和位置，以评估针对中风患者和看护者的智能家电的价值;评价建立用于远程居家服务信息和通信技术；最有效的评价面向远程家居服务的工作人员和客户评价的技术接口的办法是使房子的各部分照明均匀;修改、开发新技术以提高中风患者和看护者的舒适性和方便性;评估协助照料的监视系统的价值。
有着阿尔茨海默病的人的照料：评价智能家居（陌生的环境）在有或无提示的情况下的自我护理能力; 评估它们在智能家居环境中用陌生的设备的能力;评价和监测有着阿尔茨海默病的人的运动模式;评价和监测下降或波动; 评价监测患者的各种类型和型号的传感器;观察病人和照顾者墙的颜色;评估适当照明的价值。
技术-普适计算：
无所不在的基础设施的计算被看作智能屋的骨干。所有普通的运算系统的主要部件包括：一系列的传感器，通信基础设施和软件控制（基于软件代理）的基础设施。重要的是，这话题是从整体上的研究得出的。
传感器设计：这里研究的焦点是（微型） -传感器的发展和传感器阵列所使用的智能材料，例如：压电材料，磁致伸缩材料和形状记忆合金（形状） 。特别是，形状是一类智能材料，它能吸引候选人传感及致动，主要是因为它有比其他智能材料异常偏高的工作输出/体积比。形状进行固固改造时，受到适当的机械和热负荷作用，导致在尺寸和形状上宏观的变化;这种变化是由可回收扭转热机械载荷和被称为单向形状记忆效应的东西产生的。这种材料功能、形状可用于传感器和执行器。在近期的发展中，我们正努力把形状应用在微机电系统（ MEMS ） ，使这些材料可以作为微型传感器和执行器的重要组成部分。
微机电系统是一个领域的活动，在这个领域某些技术已经成熟，能够让一些商业应用出现。例如微化学分析仪， 湿度和压力传感器，流量控制的微机电系统，合成射流器和光学微机电系统（下一代互联网） 。在研究社会把形状应用在微机电系统是一个相对较新的努力，它足以穷尽我们所知。只有一组（洛杉矶加州大学机械工程的格雷戈教授）已成功地演示了动态性能的形状记忆合金作为基础的微机电系统这个试验。在这里，工作的重点是利用智能材料的动能力设计和制造经济上可行的微型传感器和驱动器。
构造：建造和使用的\"智能屋\"为分析和核实以无线和有线家庭为基础的通讯服务提供了广泛的机会。而有些公司中已经开始广泛地探讨，但许多问题没有注意到。现拟调查了以下几个问题：
在一个住宅环境里频道统计的测量：室内无线信道的统计知识是至关重要的，利用它可设计高效率的发射机和接收机， 以及确定适当程度的信号电源，数据传输速率，调制技巧，以及无线链路的差错控制编码。它所产生的干扰，信道失真，导致的并谱的局限性，以及残疾人士的设备（轮椅，监测设备等） ，都是特别令人感兴趣的。
设计，分析与验证以加强天线用于室内无线通信。目前室内无线通信有必要改为紧凑和坚固的天线。新的天线设计，可使数据传输速率优化，频率的操作方便，在空间需要方面也可加以考虑。
核查和分析室内无线网络的操作：家庭自动化的无线联网标准最近已商品化。一体化的一个或一个以上这样的系统被纳入智能家居，将为核实这些系统操作提供机会，并审视其局限性，并确定这些标准是否是超过设计要求，是否满足典型的业务需求。
确定有效的通信线路来规划\"智能家居\" ：对于有线和无线基础设施的性能/成本比较，测量和分析各种无线网络配置将有利于网络设计的确定。
审议协调室内较大规模的通信系统：室内无线网络广泛应用到附近的居住地。这些居住地存在着广阔- 大规模的网络，例如蜂窝电话网，固定无线网络和基于卫星的通信网络。这些服务的宗旨是保健监测、跟踪老年痴呆症患者。
软件代理商及其工程：一种嵌入式剂。在这一级别的设计方法中智能建筑嵌入式代理
商面临不少挑战，以及由此产生的详细执行。这方面的项目将包括：
适用于人类居住的有大型代理系统的建筑：为这些系统设计新的体系结构的住宅/延续护理环境近代的技术需要成功部署。一个合适的架构，在实时性上应该是简单、灵活的，这样能提供有效的代理操作。在同一时间内，应允许规则和限制的分层次和刚性，以确保居民建筑制度的安全。这些相互矛盾的要求，需要设计一个新的、适用所有的建筑的体系结构来加以解决。
学习代理的决策和控制结构：在实现终身学习能力方面，代理商必须具备强大的机制来学习和适应能力的需要。 孤立原来使用的传统的学习制度，是不可能让这些代理商达到高预期寿命的。我们打算发展混合学习系统，结合新兴的多种具有代表性的学习技术。这种系统将基于适应新形势，或学习新的行为模式来达到自身的成熟及对数额变化能做出各种不同的做法。为了应付高水平的非确定性（不可预测的人类用户） ，我们能够利用先进的技术处理不同类型的不确定性（如概率和模糊不确定性），这种稳健的行为将制定和组织实施，在推理机制的基础上计算智能。
自动模拟真实世界的物体，包括个别户主：问题是：为具有代表性的个性、习惯的个人 \"定位，并提取\"信息是至关重要的;系统能够跟随个人的心情与行为而作出反应。在解决这个方案的基础上，数据挖掘和进化技术将利用： （ 1 ） 聚类方法，对寻找行为模式的个人来说这是一个至关重要的因素; （ 2 ）以规则为基础的系统的学习和适应能力，可用来开发模型单独的特性，这对估计和预测潜在的活动和前瞻性的规划是至关重要的
调查普适计算的框架特点：考虑以分布式因特网为基础的系统，这也许是最常见的普适计算，在这里，最大的冲击不是来自特定的软件工程过程，而是让这些领域快速部署现有的软件框架或'工具箱' 。因此，建议以普适计算为基础设施的\"智能家居\"的建造，也应
该加以软件工程来研究。研究人员将开始访问的几个真正存在的普适计算系统，试图建立一个初步了解该功能的架构 （这种做法显然与伽马射线，掌舵，约翰逊和针对\"设计模式\"的开创性工作相平行。不幸的是，和他们的工作相比， 样本在这里将非常小，因此，为得到可靠的答案额外的工作要做） 。这个初步框架，也将随之被利用为智能式房子的软件系统。毫无疑问，由于要求普适计算环境的展开，这初步的框架将大大演变建造该系统的过程。据认为，这种密切参与体系建设的行动，是制作一个真正有用的和可靠的伪影的组成部分。截至去年底的施工阶段，它预计产生一个稳定的框架，这个框架能够证明，适用于普适计算的一大批至关重要的特点（或图案）将被发现。
为普及计算验证和核查问题：希望众议院能为普及计算调查核实和验证问题提供一个试验台。众议院将可以用来评估并确定（如果有的话）VV 技术，工具或方法在这个环境中是否有用。此外，它计划把这项试验设施提供给世界各地的研究人员，以增加这种评估的利用。就长期而言，我们期望该设施所提供的基础设施，将演变成对于普及计算的V及V活动而言一个国际公认的\"基准\"的网站。
其他技术领域：
该项目还计划调查一些其他领域，如照明系统，安全系统，供暖，通风和空调设备等，举例来说，对于能源效率，该项目目前承诺了两项研究报告：
测定保温帘的成效：因为密封问题，外墙保温窗帘随着时间的推移是否无效。内部风窗是优越的，它还可用来帮助减少热损失。不过，他们的运动和定位需要适当控制，以防止由于热创击而导致的窗破损。将根据实测外部光照水平启动开幕或闭幕周期，现行内部的加热水平等。
发电替代品的比较：能源利用方式，可以通过检测每个家电进行监察。天然气和电力是一种主要能源供应。通过传统方式或使用一个总的能源系统（沃尔沃研发体系）我们可以在燃料加热空间和温暖水中转换化学能。有了这一套系统，燃油用来给小内燃机供电，反过来又能驱动一台发电机的电气能源生产。冷却剂与排气的余热的热水供给家庭使用和空间加热。过剩的电力反馈到电网或储存在电池中。在以后的一个日期，计划用能源总系统取代燃料电池，可以直接比较出两先进的系统的差别。
智能建筑：用户界面设计来获取知识模型
不少建筑设计中的困难，是整合并保证许多学科（工学，社会学，人机工程学与心理学，仅举几例）知识的汇合 ，建筑要求从许多观点，去模仿复杂系统的相互作用。许多建筑师只是简单的把它们整合在一起。本文介绍了一种目前正在开发的一个关于三维设计、智能分析工具的系统，以协助使这些要求明确。建筑模型是用来概括从开始总体规划，到建设和实际使用这一建设周期的信息的。利用材料的行为模式，功能分析与可视化反馈之间紧张的关系，能帮助解决功能性的需要方面的问题， 使建筑既满足建筑师的目标，也能满足居民，使用者和环境的需要。
关于设计建筑环境的问题：
我们常说，建筑是艺术的母亲，因为它体现了所有工艺画的线，颜色，纹理和色彩，和雕塑的形状，体积，光与阴影，并能改变观众的相对位置，让人们通过在建筑物空间的居住和移动想起舞蹈或戏剧。正如所有的艺术，建筑是受个人的批判的，但建筑也是公共艺术，人们被约束着来使用它。因此，它已超越其他艺术，并呼吁改变住房的功能和气候，并细分结构空间使其能满足社会团体或组织的需要。建筑，尽管被委托作为部分文化或审美的表达，它几乎总是需要履行综合方案来满足社会和环境的需要。这一功能的要求，产
生了三个关于使设计和建筑环境特色化的问题，。第一，就看显性知识差异，即我们对它有多少了解，或者有一个科学的或原则性的理解，像了解你的母语，可运用自如的脱口而出。功能节目建筑物均须履行社会的要求，而且是基于隐而不显的肢体知识上。内置的环境中的知识，我们几乎完全是在不知不觉中应用的。我们不一定要在想想实际建筑物或城市时是什么样时使用;事实上，当我们意识到的时候它建成的环境往往是失败的。想到需要黄线帮助人们在伦敦金融城找到自己的方式，或者住户呼吁'串起来的建筑师'的时候，屋的建筑往往是被社会灾害的。
二是一个问题的复杂性。问题是，建筑物需要这么多不同的方法、功能。在空间和社会中，他们的功能以热环境，光，声的形式呈现，他们使用能源、影响人民群众的身体健康，他们需要建造，并由可降解和需要得到维护的物理部分组成。再加上这一切，他们有审美和文化的作用，还可作为金融投资，并发挥着重要的经济角色。几乎所有的这些因素都是互动式的-采取结构性的决定对环境和费用或许有影响，但它常常在相对独立而言的知识领域里加以应用。这就引起了一个复杂的设计问题，一件事情影响着另一件事情。并在其中没有一个单一的人已掌握了所有的领域中能解决这个问题所需的知识。甚至需要应用的知识是比较明确的-作为举例，在结构计算中，具有散热性能-复杂的互动性质的建筑创造了一个局面，因为只能通过这种方式，设计才可以进行，所有这些就意味着信息传递和理解被破坏的问题。
第三个问题是'简报' 。这是一个建筑物往往不被一些人购买作为建设项目的一个很明显的特点。功能性的方案往往在开始是不明确的。其中使过程特色化的发生可能是通过方案的设计与简单的合作、演变表现出来的。一个项目从开始到全部规格都要求变得越来越具体，其间通过一个迭代过程，在这个过程中物理形式的设计和要求期望马上达到两方的发展。根据他们所提供的可行的设计评估，设计师试图发展与客户的要求相匹配的设计。 最后，我们希望，这两个被要求用文字说明的而且客户端想成为一个部分的合同文件的会议
能顺利开展。
这三个问题在几个方面复方自己。由于很多核心目标客户在隐性知识上需要有一个建设，以促进交流和创新，其中包括它的员工举例-太容易让他们忽视更明确地规定，例如那些关注成本，环境绩效或法定规例的注意。结果是，一些较重要的功能性方案可以输出不重要、但更好的理解性的问题。这个更为复杂的方法能让设计者充分控制复杂的工程。而且很多时候，一栋建筑的大体构造在要求在域的专家设计前之前确定的。结果是： 功能设计已诉诸改造，以解决战略计划所造成的问题。
智能建筑的工程正在调查使用一个单一，统一的数字化模型的建设，以帮助解决由更大情报所带来的问题。在这个设计过程中顾客的要求和专家的设计还是很容易被改变的。其目的是帮助缩小客户希望得到和他们实际从建设项目中得到之间的差距。
这个策略很简单。通过作为一个物理和空间系统的建筑的捕获交涉，并利用这些使领域知识，来承担设计的最初阶段，这是希望一些会导致最佳外观设计的主要冲突可以防患于未然。通过挂钩时间表中所需的经费和实物/空间模型，它可以缓解概要和设计，并帮助两国共同发展。通过使一些包含最新模特儿空间的智能系统在建筑环境中应用，希望能够帮助更多的内隐知识和外显知识建立平等的关系，并采用显性知识存在的图形化反馈功能，带来设计师对这些内部境界的直觉。
该工作台：
为了做到这一点，智能建筑已制定了盘古大陆。盘古大陆已设计为一个针对智能3D建模的普通用途的环境， -它不预先假设某一特定的工作方式、特别设计的解决方案、甚至是一个特别是应用领域。其中几个特点使之成为可能。
世界可通过三维和二维原语（包括大厦，领域， 不规则棱镜，可变形表面）进行构造 ，它可以代表真实世界的物理物体，或概括某种抽象的行为。三维编辑提供了一个直接和简单的用户界面，这个界面可对操纵对象来进行定位，改造，旋转和返工。所有的对象，无论是物理和抽象的，都有一个内部的被属性定义的状态（界定属性） 和行为、规则和限制（在高层次的语言'脚本' ） 。属性可以被添加到动态里，从而使属性为响应新的认识，或者一个不断变化环境发生质变变为可能，。剧本由事件而引发，使物体能顺应和互动，正如在建筑环境中，分子系统，或织物落入不规则表面的褶层。
动态连接允许盘古大陆的功能扩大至包括标准软件工具- 电子表格，统计分析应用， 图形软件包和特定域分析软件如空调流建模的有限元分析。'智能工具包' 包括神经网络和遗传算法和其他随机搜索技巧再加上一条基于规则的和模糊的逻辑制度。该智能工具物体，就如同正常的三维原语：三维的存在可以与其他的3D对象相互作用。一个这样设计自然的后果，可使技术很容易被广泛认为是切实解决复杂问题的智能技术取得成功的关键。这一基础设施的原始形式，智能化技术和高层次的语言，使人们有可能建立处理范围广泛的问题申请，无论从建筑形式，空间优化，目标识别和集群， 包括原始数据的规则和形式上都可以。
嵌入式智能：
许多人认为，在作为纯粹设计的计算机和作为思维机器的计算机之间有一种必然差别。 我们建议，在这里我们可以提供这两种类型的支持，并允许用户根据实际的情况选择如何最好地利用每一个。
具有创造性的角色的建筑师是否能保留下来中至关重要的是他或她用不用该工作台，即建筑师作为艺术家，通过工作台操纵世界，是否象他们使用一张纸一样运用自如。通过
这种方式进入工作台的知识是表现不出来的： 建筑师可能以此为座，但须打算好该座是楼梯或门或室。通过用聚类算法，我们曾尝试捕捉一些建筑师作为艺术家并不能表达的知识。以这种方式，建筑师作为工程师可能拿起素描继续技术绘图等。一旦我们确定了组件，我们也可以申请以规则作为基础的系统来提出建议的设计方案。因此，用聚类算法，我们有了从建筑师作为艺术家的隐性知识向建筑师作为工程师的显性知识的过渡。
工作台的面向对象的性质允许一个面向大众的共同的界面，而所选择的简单连锁聚类算法或神经网络（无论是反向传播多层网络或神经）能用来实施聚类引擎本身。建筑师明确属性的一个对象，这个对象在世界被认为是一组物体重要的定义，而且我们作出正常的矢量来表示这些属性。属性选择由可能是体积化的或绿色的或任意组合的属性，如上述。 聚类算法适用于这些载体和为每组物体提供一个收藏地方。归类后，建筑师可以定义这些物体（例如， '门'或'楼梯' ） ;工作台，可以作出明智的猜测，关于哪个新的对象属于那些集群，以及工作台或建筑师可以利用这些信息。
由于每个对象都可以包含内部本身的规则，当特别的事件发生的时候这些可触发生效。举例来说，当一建设核心（含电梯，楼梯，通风竖井的区域等）被移动，一个事件发送给它，它可以自动通过它的一套规则，以确定是否仍能满足法规通道及消防安全。当许多规则需要同步处理的时候这一点尤为宝贵，，使得调查各种设计，提供快速反馈成为可能。这可以采取灌封规则，其职责是监督一些设计评价。
举例来说，盘古大陆热模拟对象包含有关热环境的规则和其他有关资料。当它被引用时（点击随着鼠标） ，三维物体在队伍建设中进行遍历，以决定预期热性能。当投入到另一建筑物的其他区域，它将在那里发挥同样作用。该隐喻的数码相机和过滤器会提供新的'意见' ，对已经发现的东西能非常有效。在热建模技术中，同样的知识，建成热相机在一个场景可被指出，叠加，显示热点，好象被解读成一个红外线过滤器一样。 这些摄影机，
可从一个应用到另一个复制，利用重用元件的封装来表现不同的功能。
这一机制的组成部分重新使用，是利用在智能建筑图书馆，这个图书馆为了特定区域组建，其中包括智能化住宅类型和商业建筑构件。这些组件， 或者包含建设的一个部分，甚至可以是整个建设。包含了一些规则，这些规则限制了尺寸、位置和与其他物体的关系。智能化办公楼组件可以调整大小，并能按给定尺度自动决定楼层的正确数目，等等。其目的是在早期阶段的设计嵌入有用的专业知识，这种影响能影响到最后的收入。
在设计过程中的建筑物，往往是采用了许多正交或相互冲突的标准对它进行评价，如建造费用，运行费用，环境的影响，社会因素和舒适的水平。因为这些往往是以不同的方式来进行衡量的，但它往往不可能解决它们合并为单一来评估价值的想法。如果这些标准可以明确表示，并量化，盘古大陆可以用颜色，图表和压力表，从这些多重观点来显示高质量的设计。由于这些价值观的浮动，可以让人感觉到由于设计的变化这些评价是怎么被影响的以及各种因素是如何相互作用的。很多时候，在这样一个明确的方式下这些数量不能表示。从一组做的超过标准的候选设计，设计者将不得不作出最后的决定，以多重评价的方式操控设计。遗传算法和其它智能优化技术，可以被利用来离开设计师产生这组候选人的设计，并作最后的决定。这样，智能技术在行动中扮演着更为微妙的决策支持的角色，而不是试图取代专家。
一些特别有效的和新颖的优化技术纳入盘古大陆是动态的代表了遗传算法。如果为优化问题搜索空间，是被看作为一个景观，但它的目的是定位单一最高点（全局最优） ，标准山，甚至遗传算法往往停留在当地最优解的小山丘。由动态重映搜索空间，在整个搜索中，空间成为了'重排' ，使一个困难和崎岖的地形，变得缓解足以使寻找导线更容易。这一技术已证明对解决一系列棘手的问题是非常有效地。在智能建筑中，他们正被用来解决空间管理上的问题， 从选址规划，到开放式办公室布局。
结论：
大部分的知识，被认为是剥削，设计就是隐性知识。这就造成了一个问题，作为知识工程师，他们需要一个明确的声明的标准和规则，以用于作出决定。
在智能建筑项目，我们在此基础上正在努力，如果一个工具其实质就是被创意设计师利用，它必须呼吁他们对问题域的隐了解。为了做到这一点，我们正试图一个新的创作，在这个创作中其中一宗材料，有能力给出具有功能体现的图解反馈。我们希望这样的设计师能够在他们模型的形式设计中运用动态功能表现。从这个意义上讲，我们的目标是帮助人们变得更加'聪明' 。在设计用户提供反馈意见的接口中这一做法的副作用已被发现，特别是在问题域中更明显-例如， 密度和停车场业务的准则，都必须是清楚的。正是在这里，一体化进程系统有利于知识的工程师来界定很多人际交往的关系，包括建筑环境的特色设计。该效果是使隐性知识不够明确来使先进的优化技术绘制出健身景观，并在战略中指导设计者达到一定的成果。
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