Towards Automated Building Management through Cooperative Sensor-actuator Networks

Sensor-actuator networks require sharing of actuators across multiple applications. Here, simple device arbitration is not enough because actuators have lasting (or irreversible) effects on their environment. For example, actuating a heater not only affects the internal program state of the controlling application, but the nearby temperature as well. This change in external environment often has impact on application-level decision making. We present CAhoot, a preliminary software infrastructure to enable cooperative sensor actuator applications through communication of actuator ranges, and show how it can be applied to automate building-level energy control.