Developing Intelligent Environments: A Development Tool Chain for Creation, Testing and Simulation of Smart and Intelligent Environments

Abstract

Advances in the fields of distributed computing, wireless sensor networks, ubiquitous computing and many more have facilitated the development of a plenitude of Intelligent Environments (IE). The development processes, underlying tools and methods have however not yet been in the focus of researchers. A significant amount of time has to be spent for building a novel ecology of distributed systems to form an Intelligent Environment to conduct novel research in. A sophisticated middleware can shift the focus from building to research. Yet, a middleware is only one of the many requirements for leveraging the development process of Intelligent Environments. In this paper, we present a complete tool chain to simplify research on Intelligent Environments and to ease their creation. This tool chain consists out of middleware, simulation, visualization and prototyping tools. We start by modeling the physical environment using a CAD software and visualization tool including physical properties. The tool chain is complemented by a middleware and a sophisticated simulation environment allowing e.g. to simulate mobile phone interactions triggering, and the deployment to the real-world events. For developers and researchers of Intelligent Environments, creation and maintenance of Intelligent Environments is significantly improved. Development is speeded up as algorithms, interaction can be already evaluated and tested in simulation before the deployment to the real world.