Intelligent environments are an interesting development and research application
problem for multi-agent systems. The functional and spatial distribution
of tasks naturally lends itself to a multi-agent model and the existence
of shared resources creates interactions over which the agents must
coordinate. In the UMASS Intelligent Home project we have designed and
implemented a set of distributed autonomous home control agents and deployed
them in a simulated home environment. Our focus is primarily on
resource coordination, though this project has multiple goals and areas of
exploration ranging from the intellectual evaluation of the application as a
general MAS testbed to the practical evaluation of our agent building and
simulation tools.