The document describes a prototype of a smart bathroom system that uses a ubiquitous multi-agent system (uMAS) to manage natural resources. Sensors and actuators allow agents to interact with the bathroom environment. One centralized agent communicates with 8 other agents to manage security, resource usage, and respond to emergencies. Experiments showed the centralized approach can cause delays as the number of functions grows. Future work involves developing the uMAS for a real laboratory and using a middleware to allow different MAS to communicate.

1. Managing Natural Resources in a
Smart Bathroom Using a
Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
11th Workshop-School on Agents,
Environments, and Applications
WESAAC 2017
• 1. Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica (CEFET/RJ), Brasil
• 2. Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), Brasil
Fabian Cesar P. B. Manoel 1
Palloma da Silva Machado Nunes 1
Vinicius Souza de Jesus 1
Carlos Eduardo Pantoja 1,2
José Viterbo 2
4th May 2017

2. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

3. OUTLINE
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

4. 4Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
1. INTRODUCTION
Important Concepts
Ubiquitous Systems [Chaouche et al. 2014]

5. 5Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
1. INTRODUCTION
Important Concepts
Ambient Intelligence [Aarts and De Ruyter 2009]
Ubiquitous Systems [Chaouche et al. 2014]

6. 6Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
1. INTRODUCTION
Important Concepts
Ambient Intelligence [Aarts and De Ruyter 2009]
Multi-Agent System [Wooldridge 2009]
Ubiquitous Systems [Chaouche et al. 2014]

7. 7Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
1. INTRODUCTION
Important Concepts
Ambient Intelligence [Aarts and De Ruyter 2009]
Multi-Agent System [Wooldridge 2009]
Ubiquitous Systems [Chaouche et al. 2014]
Jason Framework [Bordini et al. 2007]

8. 8Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
1. INTRODUCTION
Important Concepts
Ambient Intelligence [Aarts and De Ruyter 2009]
Multi-Agent System [Wooldridge 2009]
Ubiquitous Systems [Chaouche et al. 2014]
Argo agents [Pantoja et al. 2016]
Jason Framework [Bordini et al. 2007]

9. 9Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
1. INTRODUCTION
ARGO is a customized architecture of Jason agents that provides communication
with low-cost controllers, actuators and sensors allowing an interaction with the real
world. ARGO is an attempt to provide an uncoupled architecture where the high-level language
is programmed without being coupled to the hardware to facilitate the development and
prototyping of ubiquitous MAS and AmI using Jason.
ARGO Agents
Figure 1. MAS using ARGO

10. 10Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
1.1. Problems
Second (and worst case)
Some works [Martins and Meneguzzi
2014][Andrade et al. 2016] uses MAS mostly
applied in simulated environments,
thereby when applying these MAS in the real
world, there is no guarantees of their
effectiveness, since the real world is a
dynamic environment which generates
constant perceptual information that can
compromise the MAS performance and its
response time.
First
One controller to manager a lot
functionalities at the same time,
without using any filtering technique, and the
ubiquitous system may act without
losing its pervasively.

11. 11Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
1.2. The Objective
The main objective of this work is to employ the MAS approach applied in a physical
intelligent bathroom that is able to manage hydric and electrical resources for economy
and sustainability.

12. 12Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
1.2. The Objective
The main objective of this work is to employ the MAS approach applied in a physical
intelligent bathroom that is able to manage hydric and electrical resources for economy
and sustainability.
It is represented as a prototype
composed of sensors and actuators that
one or more agents can use to
interact with the real world.

13. 13Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
1.2. The Objective
The main objective of this work is to employ the MAS approach applied in a physical
intelligent bathroom that is able to manage hydric and electrical resources for economy
and sustainability.
It is represented as a prototype
composed of sensors and actuators that
one or more agents can use to
interact with the real world.
The prototype constructed is physically connected to only one micro-controller in order
to explore the situation where multiple functions need to be handled by a MAS,
without using any filtering technique, but the hardware is limited (this situation can lead to
undesirable delays).

14. 14Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
1.2. The Objective
The main objective of this work is to employ the MAS approach applied in a physical
intelligent bathroom that is able to manage hydric and electrical resources for economy
and sustainability.
It is represented as a prototype
composed of sensors and actuators that
one or more agents can use to
interact with the real world.
The MAS was programmed using Jason
and ARGO where intelligent agents
could control the resources based on their
beliefs and decide the actions to be taken
in a near real-time situation.
The prototype constructed is physically connected to only one micro-controller in order
to explore the situation where multiple functions need to be handled by a MAS,
without using any filtering technique, but the hardware is limited (this situation can lead to
undesirable delays).

15. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

16. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

17. 17Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
2. THE MAS APPROACH IN HOME SYSTEMS
The aim is to save and reuse hydric and electrical resources in an autonomous
way showing how people can manage resources applying MAS using the bathroom.
SEWER
Figure 2. The water flux to save and reuse hydric resources.
SANITARY
DISCHARGE
SINK
SHOWER

18. 18Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
2. THE MAS APPROACH IN HOME SYSTEMS
The aim is to save and reuse hydric and electrical resources in an autonomous
way showing how people can manage resources applying MAS using the bathroom.
Figure 3. The save and the reuse of electric resources.

19. 19Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
2. THE MAS APPROACH IN HOME SYSTEMS
Figure 4. The logical status of the bathroom for an emergency situation.
Moreover, the proposed intelligent bathroom is able to manage also the security of
the user inside the bathroom. In the bathroom, the person only can get in if it is empty or
if someone is not feeling well inside the bathroom. A sound is emitted to report that
something is wrong with the person which occupy the bathroom.

20. 20Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
2. THE MAS APPROACH IN HOME SYSTEMS
Figure 5. Two cases tested.

21. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

22. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

23. 23Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
3. THE PROTOTYPE
The prototype has a controller which is dedicated to one ARGO agent named
Manager, which is responsible for capturing the perceptions from sensors and to action
upon the real environment based on messages received from 9 standard agents.

24. 24Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
3. THE PROTOTYPE
The prototype has a controller which is dedicated to one ARGO agent named
Manager, which is responsible for capturing the perceptions from sensors and to action
upon the real environment based on messages received from 9 standard agents.
The intelligent agents are responsible for the security and decision-
making related to the economy of the bathroom resources.

25. 25Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
3. THE PROTOTYPE
The prototype has a controller which is dedicated to one ARGO agent named
Manager, which is responsible for capturing the perceptions from sensors and to action
upon the real environment based on messages received from 9 standard agents.
The intelligent agents are responsible for the security and decision-
making related to the economy of the bathroom resources.
For the security and supervision
actions: was used the logical status
mode as explained before.

26. 26Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
3. THE PROTOTYPE
The prototype has a controller which is dedicated to one ARGO agent named
Manager, which is responsible for capturing the perceptions from sensors and to action
upon the real environment based on messages received from 8 standard agents.
The intelligent agents are responsible for the security and decision-
making related to the economy of the bathroom resources.
For the security and supervision
actions: was used the logical status
mode as explained before.
For the decision-making: standard agents
working together with the ARGO agent where
the first ones are responsible for making
decisions based on their beliefs and
message exchanged between agents.

27. 27Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
3. THE PROTOTYPE
Figure 6. The prototype Figure 7. The prototype

28. 28Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
3.1. Results
About the tests About the results
Considering the response time of agents
in each interaction with the prototype
In general the results showed that as
the number of agents was increased, the
response time was increased as well.

29. 29Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
3.1. Results
About the tests About the results
Considering the response time of agents
in each interaction with the prototype
Throughput tests - considering the
number of requests for perceptions per
second that were done by agents
In general the results showed that as
the number of agents was increased, the
response time was increased as well.
In average, the agent in these tests
shows a throughput 5 requests per
second, where 100% of them arrived
without being discarded by Javino.

30. 30Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
3.1. Results
About the tests About the results
Considering the response time of agents
in each interaction with the prototype
Throughput tests - considering the
number of requests for perceptions per
second that were done by agents
In general the results showed that as
the number of agents was increased, the
response time was increased as well.
In average, the agent in these tests
shows a throughput 5 requests per
second, where 100% of them arrived
without being discarded by Javino.
All the agents with achievement plans
ARGO agent with achievement plans and
all the standard agents with belief plans
Comparing the both:
All the agents with achievement plans has an
answer time smaller than the ARGO agent with
achievement plans and all the standard
agents with belief plans.

31. 31Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
3.1. Results
Figure 8. The results for some of the agents of the smart bathroom (seconds per number of agents employed in tests).

32. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

33. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

34. 34Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
4. RELATED WORK
Papers showing methods of using MAS for AmI in Smart Homes, or using concepts of
ubiquitous computing environments, Ambient Intelligence, and embedded agents:
[Lim et al. 2009]
The MavHome [Cook et al. 2003];
The Ambient Intelligence Environment Using Embedded Agents [Hagras et al. 2004];

35. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

36. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

37. 37Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
5. DEMOSTRATION

38. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

39. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
7. References

40. 40Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
6. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
A prototype was constructed in order to simulate a real bathroom and the uMAS was
developed using Jason and the ARGO architecture.

41. 41Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
6. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
A prototype was constructed in order to simulate a real bathroom and the uMAS was
developed using Jason and the ARGO architecture.
The ARGO characteristics help in the development of uMAS with an
acceptable response time depending on the programming strategy adopted.

42. 42Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
6. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
A prototype was constructed in order to simulate a real bathroom and the uMAS was
developed using Jason and the ARGO architecture.
The ARGO characteristics help in the development of uMAS with an
acceptable response time depending on the programming strategy adopted.
Then, in this work, it was explored a strategy using a centralized ARGO agent
responsible for managing actions and perceptions interacting with one controller and
8 agents responsible for specific functions of the proposed smart bathroom negotiating
actions with the centralizer.

43. 43Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
6. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
A prototype was constructed in order to simulate a real bathroom and the uMAS was
developed using Jason and the ARGO architecture.
The ARGO characteristics help in the development of uMAS with an
acceptable response time depending on the programming strategy adopted.
Then, in this work, it was explored a strategy using a centralized ARGO agent
responsible for managing actions and perceptions interacting with one controller and
8 agents responsible for specific functions of the proposed smart bathroom negotiating
actions with the centralizer.
The experiments conducted showed that using a centralized agent when the
number of functions are high and specialized per agents generates a bottleneck of
requisitions (messages) that could delay in seconds the execution of certain
functions.

44. 44Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
6. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
For future works, an uMAS will be developed in a real room for
managing the resources of a laboratory.

45. 45Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
6. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS
For future works, an uMAS will be developed in a real room for
managing the resources of a laboratory.
Besides, a communication mechanism using a middleware for the
internet of things will be tested using Jason and ARGO
agents. This middleware aims to provide a way of two different MAS
communicate.

46. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works
7. References

47. OUTLINE 1. Introduction
2. The MAS Approach in Home
Systems
3. The Prototype
4. Related Work
5. Demonstration
6. Conclusion and Future Works

48. 48Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
7. Reference
•Aarts, E. and De Ruyter, B. (2009). New research perspectives on ambient intelligence. Journal of
Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments, 1(1):5–14.
•Andrade, J. P. B., Oliveira, M., Gonçalves, E. J. T., and Maia, M. E. F. (2016). Uma Abordagem com
Sistemas Multi-agentes para Controle Autônomo de Casas Inteligentes. In XIII Encontro Nacional
de Inteligência Artificial e Computacional (ENIAC).
•Bordini, R. H., Hübner, J. F., and Wooldridge, M. (2007). Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using
Jason. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
•Bratman, M. E. (1987). Intention, Plans and Practical Reasoning. Cambridge Press.
•Chaouche, A.-C., Seghrouchni, A. E. F., Ilié, J.-M., and Saïdouni, D. E. (2014). A higher-order agent model with
contextual planning management for ambient systems. In Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence
XVI, pages 146–169. Springer.
•Cook, D. J., Youngblood, G. M., Heierman III, E. O., Gopalratnam, K., Rao, S., Litvin, A., and Khawaja, F. (2003).
Mavhome: An agent-based smart home. In PerCom, volume 3, pages 521–524.
•Hagras, H., Callaghan, V., Colley, M., Clarke, G., Pounds-Cornish, A., and Duman, H. (2004). Creating an
ambient-intelligence environment using embedded agents. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 19(6):12–20.

49. 49Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
7. Reference
•Kazanavicius, E., Kazanavicius, V., and Ostaseviciute, L. (2009). Agent-based framework for
embedded systems development in smart environments. In Proceedings of International
Conference on Information Technologies (IT 2009), Kaunas.
•Lazarin, N. M. and Pantoja, C. E. (2015). A robotic-agent platform for embedding software agents
using raspberry pi and arduino boards. In 9th Software Agents, Environments and Applications
School.
•Lim, C., Anthony, P., and Fan, L. (2009). Applying multi-agent system in a context aware. Borneo
Sci, 24:53–64.
•Martins, R. and Meneguzzi, F. (2014). A smart home model using jacamo framework. In 2014 12th
IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN). IEEE.
•Pantoja, C. E., Stabile, M. F., Lazarin, N. M., and Sichman, J. S. (2016). Argo: An extended jason
architecture that facilitates embedded robotic agents programming. In Baldoni, M., Müller, J. P.,
Nunes, I., and Zalila-Wenkstern, R., editors, Engineering Multi-Agent Systems: 4th International
Workshop, EMAS 2016, pages 136–155. Springer.
•Stabile Jr., M. F. and Sichman, J. S. (2015). Evaluating perception filters in BDI Jason agents. In
4th Brazilian Conference on Intelligent Systems (BRACIS).

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7. Reference
•Rao, A. S. (1996). AgentSpeak(L): BDI agents speak out in a logical computable language. In de
Velde, W. V. and Perram, J. W., editors, Proceedings of the 7th European workshop on Modeling
autonomous agents in a multi-agent world (MAAMAW’96), volume 1038 of Lecture Notes in
Artificial Intelligence, pages 42–55, USA. Springer-Verlag.
•Villarrubia, G., De Paz, J. F., Bajo, J., and Corchado, J. M. (2014). Ambient agents: embedded
agents for remote control and monitoring using the pangea platform. Sensors, 14(8):13955–
13979.
•Wooldridge, M. (2009). An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems. Wiley.

51. 51Managing Natural Resources in a Smart Bathroom Using a Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
THANKS
THANK YOU!
fabiancpbm@gmail.com
pallomapit@hotmail.com
souza.vdj@gmail.com
pantoja@cefet-rj.br
viterbo@ic.uff.br

52. Managing Natural Resources in a
Smart Bathroom Using a
Ubiquitous Multi-Agent System
11th Workshop-School on Agents,
Environments, and Applications
WESAAC 2017
• 1. Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica (CEFET/RJ), Brasil
• 2. Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), Brasil
Fabian Cesar P. B. Manoel 1
Palloma da Silva Machado Nunes 1
Vinicius Souza de Jesus 1
Carlos Eduardo Pantoja 1,2
José Viterbo 2
4th May 2017