c-INPRES: Coupling Analysis towards Locking Optimization in Ambient Intelligence

Abstract

Ambient Intelligence, and in general, any autonomous rule based system has been found to suffer from cyclic instability. This behaviour is characterized by unwanted oscillations, due to interacting rules within networks of pervasive computing devices. The binary behaviour of each agent is defined via a set of boolean rules, and the behaviour of the system as a whole is given by the ensemble of rules defined over the set of agents. From complex theory it has been found that the problem of cyclic instability cannot be solved analytically; however, it is possible to prevent it. In this paper we present a novel solution based on locking, to prevent cyclic instability. This strategy makes use of the topological properties of the digraph associated called Interaction Network (IN), and the local rules of the interacting agents. The concept of strong and weak coupling is introduced. Using the strong and weak concepts, a strategy c-INPRES that minimizes the number of agents locked is presented. Preliminary and encouraging results are shown.