Virtual Agents in Next Generation Interactive Homes

Today's houses are slowly turning into a complex electronic net of devices. The increasing complexity of systems and the need for these systems to remain simple, accessible and transparent for the user, makes it necessary to research technologies that enable intelligent and autonomous computing and new ways of interacting with future home. Autonomic computing systems are those which can manage themselves given high level objectives. If we integrate autonomic computing and new interactive user mechanisms like virtual agents, we obtain the future smart homes.