Middleware for Smart Environments Management

This paper introduces a self-configuring middleware that manages the processes of context information acquisition and representation from smart closed environments, targeting the development of context aware applications. The environment context information is modeled using three sets: context resources, context actors and context policies. The context model artifacts are generated and administrated at run time by a management infrastructure based on intelligent software agents. The self-configuring property is enforced by monitoring the closed environment in order to detect variations or conditions for which the context model artifacts must be updated. The middleware was tested and validated within the premises of our Distributed Systems Research Laboratory smart environment.