Carlos Manuel Rodrigues Machado Autonomic Ubiquitous Computing

information that reflects the users´ actions or internal state changes. This characteristic allows the
systems to be included in a newer installation, because the essential environment monitoring is
preserved.
The design definition that devices and systems deployed in the environment should perform
reflexive actions, in order to carry out the basic functionalities, was presented in this thesis. The
reflexive actions were achieved using simple configuration definitions (namely configurable binding
tables) in combination with the events that are available in the data bus. These reflexive actions
results in a faster response by the systems, increasing at the same time its robustness, because
basic or essential functions do not require the upper-layer-devices intervention. The upper layer
components can use the device simple configuration definition capability to embed behaviour,
making it a part of the environment. This can be done using the behaviour patterns determined by
analyses of the captured event data that are available on the data bus.
In this thesis, it has also been presented the essential capabilities, together with the obvious
ability to communicate, that must exist in hardware devices and system components. These
capabilities allow the implementation of data broadcasting, binding of events into actions and the
execution of reflexive actions, making them a part of an autonomic ubiquitous system.
Concerning the artificial intelligence of the system and usage of the context-awareness, a
method has been devised for the determination of the state of the lights in a house that uses the
ANN as a classifier algorithm in combination with basic statistics. This method uses the actions
executed by users, in an implicit way, and without the need to perform data labelling.
Based in a real installation, the captured data allow the calculation of the gains that an
autonomic action could have in saving energy. The analyses show that the ability to shut-down
lights automatically, those that are activated outside their normal usage, can obtain a reduction of
energy consumption around 50%.
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