 It is the task of TCUDEV to build a comprehensive software package which will interface with all smart home components in the Crescent Laboratory for Intelligent Systems, such that the system may be utilized and managed through a central interface. The Computer Science Department maintains and conducts research in the Crescent Lab on the campus of Texas Christian University. The research focal point of the lab is smart home technology. Over the past few years the lab has invested a considerable sum of money and time in various technologies and smart home sub-systems such as a virtual human interface and smart kitchen software. These components currently work as independent systems that must be individually managed, hence, the necessity for our project.
Lying at the very foundation of this project is our Crescent Agent Communication Language or CACL. CACL’s very name suggests that it will open the lines of communication between systems by playing messenger between each smart home agent. Due to the ever evolving nature of smart home technologies, CACL is an extensible language that closely resembles extensible markup language (XML) or extensible hypertext markup language (XHTML), in that it utilizes a combination of predefined standard and user defined tags to specify the parts of a message it may be carrying between systems. The extensibility of CACL will enable current and future developers to customize the language based on the needs of each agent of the smart home with which it is to interface. The power of CACL is that all messages may be sent in a standard format while the CACL Messaging Server (CMS) is able to route the message to the appropriate receiving agent for interpretation.
As previously stated, the Crescent Lab has implemented a Smart Kitchen software package. The Smart Kitchen software is the result of a previous senior design project during the 2003-2004 academic year. The system is designed to automate and assist with common kitchen tasks including inventory management, recipe storage, and dietary needs management. Being a major smart home agent, it is imperative that this software not only have interfacing capabilities with CACL, but also function as a standalone system. It has been found that the current version of the Smart Kitchen software contains numerous errors and bugs that prevent it from performing as originally intended. Thus, TCUDEV will further undertake the task to correct all errors and bugs in hopes of producing a fully-functional, CACL enabled, system that will integrate into the smart home environment.
Apart from CACL and the Smart Kitchen software, a major component of this project shall be the development of a Natural Language Processor. The science of natural language processing (NLP) studies the problems of automated generation and understanding of natural human languages. TCUDEV shall specifically concentrate on the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) aspect of NLP. NLU deals with converting human language to machine recognizable formats. This element of the Smart Home Integration project is critical as it will provide one of, if not, the most important interfaces a user will utilize to control the various agents of the smart home; the ability to communicate with the smart home, like a human and not a computer, and have requests understood and carried out.
During the development process, the Smart Home Integration software project aims to meet the requirements demanded by the smart home environment in which it will be utilized. TCUDEV is committed to a high quality finished product which will result from continued testing, error correction, and incremental deliveries of working code. All of this will help the development team reach the ultimate goal of deploying a central user interface from which all Crescent Lab smart home agents will be controlled. |
