JOURNAL OF LATEX CLASS FILES, VOL. 6, NO.

1, JANUARY 2007

FUZZ-IEEE 2009, Korea, August 20-24, 2009

A Dynamical Cognitive Multi-Agent System

for Enhancing Ambient Intelligence Scenarios
Giovanni Acampora, Member, IEEE, and Vincenzo Loia, Senior Member, IEEE

backgrounds are need to deal with the problem of human being

modeling in a good way. Within human-directed scientific
areas, such as cognitive science, psychology, neuroscience
and biomedical sciences, models have been and are being
developed for a variety of aspects of human functioning. If
such models of human processes were represented in a formal
and computational format, and incorporated in the human
environment in devices that monitor the physical and mental
state of the human, then such devices are able to perform a
more in-depth analysis of the humans functioning. This can
result in an AmI environment that may more effectively affect
the state of humans by undertaking in a knowledgeable manner
actions that improve their well-being and performance. Moreover, AmI environments are strongly depending upon dynamic
aspects, i.e, a same system could take various decisions in
different time and, consequently, are necessary computational
methodologies capable of dealing with time concept in a direct
way.
Starting from this considerations, our studies try to define
a novel AmI architecture based on the integration of methods
of cognitive modeling as the Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs)
[6] together with computational paradigms oriented to the distributed artificial intelligence as can be considered the multiagent systems in order to propose an AmI system modeled as
a collection of dynamical intelligent agents whose behaviours
are defined by a cognitive network capable of opportunely
modifying the AmI status by analyzing the cognitive state
of the user. FCMs have gradually emerged as a powerful
modeling and simulation technique applicable to numerous
research and application fields do not necessarily belonging to
political and sociology areas. In fact, in the last years FCMs
have been exploited to model the behaviour of complex applications as control plant systems, electrical circuit analysis,
cooperative man-machines, distributed group-decision support
and adaptation and learning, etc. [7] [8] [9].
Nevertheless, a complex AmI environment could have a
dynamic behaviour that the FCMs (or one of its extensions
[10][11][12] [13] [14]) have not able to model. Indeed, these
methods are not able to formally deal with external or temporal
events changing the so-called cognitive configuration of the
system which is characterized by: 1) the number and the value
of cognitive concepts, 2) the number and the value of causal
relationships, 3) the B-Time value.
This paper presents a novel AmI architecture organized as
multi-agent system exploiting FCMs and Timed Automata
to model intelligent entities capable of controlling the environment in a dynamic and cognitive way for enhancing the
users life quality by maximizing their personal comfort and

AbstractAmbient Intelligence (AmI) is born as a computer

paradigm that deals with a new world where computing devices
are spread everywhere in order to make wider the interaction
between human beings and information technology and put together a dynamic computational-ecosystem capable of satisfying
the users requirements. However, the AmI systems are more
than a simple integration among computer technologies, indeed,
their design can strongly depend upon psychology and social
sciences aspects able to describe and analyze the human being
status during the systems decision making. Consequently, from
a computational point of view, an AmI system can be considered
as a distributed cognitive framework composed by a collection
of intelligent entities capable of modifying their behaviours by
taking into account the users cognitive status in a given time.
This paper introduces a novel methodology of AmI systems
design that exploits multi-agent paradigm and a novel extension
of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps theory benefiting on the theory of Timed
Automata in order to create a collection of dynamical intelligent
agents that use cognitive computing to define actions patterns
able to maximize environmental parameters as, for instance,
users comfort or energy saving.
Index TermsFuzzy Cognitive Maps, Ambient Intelligence,
Multi-Agent Systems, Systems Dynamic.

I. I NTRODUCTION
MBIENT Intelligence (AmI) systems are computer
framework capable of integrating computation into a
living environment [1] in order to enable the people to move
around and interact with their surroundings more naturally
than they currently do [2], [3]. Literature shows that different
computer approaches have been exploited in order to try to
integrate intelligence in living spaces in a transparent way. In
particular, Computational Intelligence approaches can be used
to realize context awareness and model a collection of relationships between environmental events. These relationships
could be derived by the application of neural or evolutionary
techniques which collect data into the user surrounding [4][5]
to define fuzzy rules modeling the behaviour of the AmI
framework. Typically, these approaches are embedded into
a distributed computing frameworks allowing the intelligent
environment to be managed in a transparent and remote way.
From this point of view an AmI system can be considered as a
distributed service oriented architecture, where each service is
designed by using computational intelligence methodologies.
However, last researches proves that an AmI system is more
than a simple integration of computational methodologies and
computer networking technologies and additional scientific

G. Acampora and V.Loia are with the Department of Mathematics and

Computer Science, University of Salerno, Fisciano, Salerno, 84084 Italy. Email: {gacampora, loia}@unisa.it.
Manuscript received April 19, 2005; revised January 11, 2007.
978-1-4244-3597-5/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE
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FUZZ-IEEE 2009, Korea, August 20-24, 2009

Agent h

Agent 1

Clock 1
Clock 2

...
Clock k

AmI
Concepts

User
Concepts

Cognitive Inference

AmI
Concepts

AmI
Concepts

...

User
Concepts

Actuator1

Actuato2

Cognitive Inference

AmI
Concepts

Agent Behavior

User
Concepts

...

User
Concepts

Agent Behavior

...

User
Status

...

Actuators Enviroment

Fig. 1.

Dynamical FCMs in AmI.

taking into account some environmental parameters as can be

considered the energy saving.
II. A M I S YSTEM S A RCHITECTURE
Figure 1 shows our proposal of AmI systems architecture.
It is simple to note that the framework is composed by
a collection of intelligent agents able to exhibit a set of
well-defined behaviours depending on the cognitive state of
environment, user and time. In order to achieve this result,
the architecture merges together fuzzy cognitive maps, timed
automata and multi-agent systems. Indeed, FCMs enable the
different component of the system to be controlled by simple
cognitive relationships; timed automata are used to embed the
time concept in the system in a formal and direct way; the
multi-agent paradigm is exploited to distributed the knowledge
in a complex and distributed environment. Reasoning in this
way, each agent can be considered as a dynamic finite state
machine where each state is represented by means of a cognitive map able to manage appropriate AmI and user concepts.
In the following subsection will be introduced our proposal
of agents inference engine starting from the definition of the
single components which realize it. The case study section
will be devoted to presents an AmI scenarios exploiting our
proposal lived from multiple users.

value of the originating concept at the immediately preceding

state. In general, a FCM functions like associative neural
networks. A FCM describes a system in a one-layer network
which is used in unsupervised mode, whose neurons are
assigned concept meanings and the interconnection weights
represent relationships between these concepts. It is important
to mention that all the values in the graph are fuzzy, i.e,
concepts take values in the range between [0, 1] and the arcs
weights are in the interval [1, 1]. Between concepts, there
are three possible types of causal relationships, that express
the type of influence from one concept to the others. The
weights of the arcs between concept Ci and concept Cj could
be positive Wij > 0 which means that an increase in the
value of concept Ci leads to the increase of the value of
concept Cj , and a decrease in the value of concept Ci leads to
the decrease of the value of concept Cj . Or there is negative
causality Wij < 0 which means that an increase in the value
of concept Ci leads to the decrease of the value of concept
Cj and vice versa. Beyond the graphical representation of the
FCM there is its mathematical model. It consists of an 1 n
state vector A which includes the values of the n concepts and
an n n weight matrix W which gathers the weights Wij of
the interconnections between the n concepts of the FCM. The
matrix W has n rows and n columns where n equals the
total number of distinct concepts of the FCM and the matrix
diagonal is zero since it is assumed that no concept causes
itself. The value of each one concept is influenced by the
values of the connected concepts with the appropriate weights
and by its previous value. So, the value Ai for each concept
Ci is computed by the following rule:
n

Ai = f (
Aj Wij ) + Aold
i

A FCM is a fuzzy signed oriented graph with feedback

that model systems by means of a collection of concepts and
causal relations among concepts. In details, variable concepts
are represented by nodes in a directed graph and the graphs
edges represent the casual influences between the concepts.
The value of a node reflects the degree to which the concept
is active in the system at a particular time. This value is a
function of the sum of all incoming edges multiplied and the

(1)

j=1
j=i

where Ai is the activation level of concept at time t + 1,

Aj is the activation level of the concept Cj at time t, Aold
i
is the activation level of concept Ci at time t (it is clear that
the variable t just represents the iteration number between
two successive FCM matrix computation), and Wji is the
weight of the interconnection between Cj and Ci , and f is
a threshold function, i.e, a function used to reduce unbounded
inputs to a strict range. This threshold mapping is a variation
of fuzzification process in fuzzy logic. The threshold functions
used in the calculation of FCM are, mainly, of two different
kinds:

x if 0 x 1
0 if x < 0
f (x) =

1 if x > 1
and

A. Fuzzy Cognitive Maps and Temporal Drawbacks

1
1 + ex
Differently from standard FCMs, the RBFCMs use a fuzzy
rule base to evaluate the weight of incoming concepts Aj
in a simultaneous and accumulative way. The time interval
between the instants t and t + 1 has referred as Base Time
(B-Time) which represents the resolution of the simulation,
i.e., the highest level of temporal detail that a simulation can
provide in the modeled system.

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f (x) =

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In our vision, an AmI system is considered as a biological

entity that lives its existence by crossing a sequence of time
periods named cognitive eras. As it will be better depicted in
the following sections, a cognitive era is the longest interval
time in which the environment does not change its cognitive
configuration, i.e., its concepts, causal relationships and the
B-Time value.
In order to embed the cognitive era idea into the FCMs
context it is necessary to introduce a temporal abstraction
capable to deal with the cognitive eras in a direct and formal
way. This novel concept is named T-Time and, the timed
automata are the formal methodology implementing it. T-Time
can be view as a mechanism capable of changing the cognitive
configuration of a FCM by moving the system from a cognitive
era to the successive one.

B. Timed Automata
As previously said, each agent of the proposed system is
modeled through a finite state machine capable of throwing
state transitions by considering time values. Timed automata
are the formal method that realizes this idea. In detail, a timed
automaton is a standard finite-state automaton extended with a
finite collection of real-valued clocks providing a straightforward way to represent time related events, whereas automatabased approaches cannot offer this feature. The transitions of
a timed automaton are labeled with a guard (a condition on
clocks), an action or symbol on alphabet , and a clock reset
(a subset of clocks to be reset). Intuitively, a timed automaton
starts execution with all clocks set to zero. Clocks increase
uniformly with time while the automaton is within a node.
A transition can be taken if the clocks fulfill the guard. By
taking the transition, all clocks in the clock reset will be set
to zero, while the remaining keep their values. Thus transitions
occur instantaneously. Semantically, a state of an automaton is
a pair of a control node and a clock assignment, i.e. the current
setting of the clocks. Transitions in the semantic interpretation
are either labeled with an action (if it is an instantaneous
switch from the current node to another) or a positive real
number i.e. a time delay (if the automaton stays within a node
letting time pass).
The set of behaviours expressed by an agent modeled by
means of a timed automaton is defined by a timed language,
i.e., a collection of timed words. Both timed concepts are
defined in the follows.

Definition 2. Let X a finite collection of real-valued variables

named clocks then the set (X) of clock constraints is
defined inductively by:
:= x c|c x||1 2
where x is a clock in X and c is a constant in Q, the set of
nonnegative rationals.
A clock interpretation for the set X of clocks assigns a
real value to each clock; that is, it is a mapping from X to
R. A clock interpretation for X satisfies a clock constraint
over X if and only if evaluates to true using the values
given by .
Now, a precise definition of timed transition table, which
define the timed automaton behaviour, is given:
Definition 3. A timed transition table A is a tuple
, S, S0 , C, E, where:
is a finite alphabet,
S is a finite set of states,
S0 S is a set of start states,
C is finite set of clocks, and
C
E SS2 (C) is the collection of transitions.

An edge s, s , a, ,  represents a transition from state
s to state s on input symbol a. The set C represents
the collection of clocks to be reset with this transition,
and is a clock constraint over C.
If (, ) is a timed word viewed as an input to an automaton,
it presents the symbol i at time i . If each symbol i is interpreted to denote an event occurrence then the corresponding
component i is interpreted as the time of occurrence of i .
Given a timed word (, ), the timed transition table A starts
in one of its start states at time 0 with all clocks initialized to
0. As time advances, the values of all clocks change, reflecting
the elapsed time. At time i , A state from s to s using some
transition of the form s, s , i , ,  reading the input i , if
the current values of clocks satisfy . With this transition the
clocks in are reset to 0, and thus start continuing time with
respect to the time of occurrence of this transition. Formally,
this timed behaviour is captured by introducing runs of timed
transition tables.
Definition 4. A run r, denoted by (
s, v), of a timed transition
table , S, S0 , C, E over a timed word (, ) is an infinite
sequence of the form

1
2
3
r : s0 , 0 
s1 , 1 
s2 , 2 

Definition 1. A time sequence = 1 2 is an infinite

sequence of times values i R with i > 0, satisfying the
following constraints:
1) Monotonicity: increases strictly monotonically; that is,
i < i+1 for all i i + 1.
2) Progress: For every t R, there is some i 1 such
that i t.

with si S and i [C R], for all i 0, satisfying the

following requirements:
Initiation: s0 S0 and 0 (x) = 0 for all x C.
Consecution: for all i 1, there is an edge in E of
the form si1 , si , i , i , i  such that (i1 + i i1 )
satisfies i and i equals [i
0](i1 + i i1 ).

Then, a timed word on alphabet is a pair (, ) where

= 1 2 . . . is an infinite word over and is a time
sequence. A timed language over is a set of timed words
on .

The timed transition table together with the run concept are
the main notions used in our approach to embed dynamism in
the standard FCM definition.

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III. M ERGING T IMED AUTOMATA AND F UZZY C OGNITIVE

M APS TO C REATE DYNAMICAL I NTELLIGENT AGENTS
This section is devoted to introduce a novel intelligent
agents inference engine that try to improve agent capabilities
by merging, in the same methodology, concepts coming from
computational intelligence area together with system dynamics. This result is achieved by solving the temporal drawbacks
of FCM discussed in section II-A and introducing the Timed
Automata based Fuzzy Cognitive Maps( TAFCMs). TAFCMs
add temporal concepts to standard FCM by exploiting a timed
automaton whose possible behaviors define all the potential
sequences of cognitive eras (and the related cognitive configurations) that the system could cross during its life-cycle. In
particular, TAFCMs improve FCMs by associating each state
in a timed automaton with a cognitive configuration which
describes the behaviour of a system in a time interval. Therefore, TAFCMs are able to model dynamic changes in cognitive
representation of system and, consequently, perform a more
realistic and coherent cognitive computation. A TAFCM, as
will be formally defined at the end of this section, is a
couple of two components: a timed automaton that describes
the dynamic evolution of a system and a FCM modeling
the cognitive behaviour of system during first phase of its
existence. Once that the automaton computation starts over a
given timed word, the state transitions will opportunely modify
the initial FCM in order to model the system in a better and
time-dependent way.
introducing a novel definition of FCM based on the
graphs theory;
modifying the Timed Automata definition introducing the
concepts of cognitive edges, timed cognitive transition
table, cognitive evolution and cognitive run;
showing as these definitions are capable of moving a system among several cognitive eras modifying its behaviour
during the time.

The formal graph view of a FCM only represents a static

vision of our cognitive system. The successive step is to
introduce a collection of operators able to transform the
cognitive structure defined in (2). These operators represent the
fundamental operations on which constructing the proposed
cognitive/dynamic model. They will change the cognitive
configuration of a given agents FCM, F = (V, E) , by
following the rules:
To add concepts;
To add causal relationships;
To remove concepts;
To remove causal relationships;
To magnify/reduce the strength of a causal relationships;
To magnify/reduce the level of system concept.
Definition 5 (Adding a novel cognitive concept - ). This
operator modifies in a direct way the set V containing the
fuzzy cognitive concepts. Let ct be the concept to add to V set
and let {ck , cl , cm , . . .} V be the concepts set influencing by
ct and let {ch , ci , cj , . . .} V be the concepts set influenced
by ck . Then, the behaviour of is defined as follows:
VC = VC {ct }
E  = E ({ct } {ck , cl , cm , . . .})
E  = E  ({ch , ci , cj , . . .} {ct })

(3)

where F  = (VC , E  ) is the FCM resulting from application.

Definition 6 (Removing a cognitive concept - ). The operator  removes a cognitive concept, named ct , from the
concepts set V . Let {ck , cl , cm , . . .} V be the concepts set
influenced by ct and let {ch , ci , cj , . . .} V the collection of
concepts acting on ct . Then:
VC = VC {ct }
E  = E ({ct } {ck , cl , cm , . . .})
E  = E  ({ch , ci , cj , . . .} {ct })

(4)

where F  = (VC , E  ) is the FCM resulting from  application.

A. Timed Automata based Fuzzy Cognitive Maps

The first step towards the definition of TAFCMs is the
redefining of the standard FCMs by means of the graph theory.
From this point of view, an FCM F can be defined as follows:
F = (V, E)
V = VC VR
VC = {ci |ci [0, 1]}
VR = {fuzzy rules on VC }
E = {(ci , cj )|ci , cj V }
w : E [1, 1]
btime R

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(2)

Definition 7 (Additive modification of cognitive concept ). This operator modifies the value of a concept ct value
in additive way. Let r R be a real number, then, if r 0:

V {ct } {(ct + r)} if (ct + r) 1
VC =
(5)
V {ct } {1}
if (ct + r) > 1
or, if r < 0:
VC

where V is the set of nodes composing the FCM; VC is the

collection of cognitive concepts (normalized in [0, 1]), VR is
the set of fuzzy rules used by RBFCM to compute multiple
fuzzy causes in the system; E is the set of causal relationships
between concepts; w is a function associating an edge in E
with a real weight in [1, 1]; btime is a real variable exploited
by the rules in VR to model the length of a cognitive iteration.
If VR = then the graph F represent a simple FCM.

773


=

V {ct } {(ct + r)}

V {ct } {0}

if (ct + r) 0
if (ct + r) 0

(6)

and F  = (VC , E) is the FCM resulting from application.

Definition 8 (Multiplicative modification of cognitive concept
- ). This operator changes the value of a concept ct value
through a multiplicative constant. Let r R+ be a real
number, then,

V {ct } {(ct r)} if 0 (ct r) 1

(7)
VC =
if (ct r) > 1
V {ct } {0}

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and F  = (VC , E) is the FCM resulting from application.

B-Time parameter. Because each cognitive era is determined

by a given state of timed automaton modeling del T-Time
concept of our system (as will be shown in the following
subsection), it is possible to define an operator, , capable
of associating a real number (expressing the B-Time value) to
each automaton state:

Definition 9 (Adding a novel cognitive causal relationship ).

This operator is used to add a novel causal relationship to a
FCM F . Let (ci , cj ) be causal relationship with ci , cj V and
(ci , cj )  E and let wij [1, 1] be the weight of relationship
(ci , cj ), then:
E  = E {(ci , cj )}
w : E  [1, 1] with w /E = w and w ((ci , cj )) = wij
(8)
F  = (VC , E  ) and are, respectively, the FCM and weight
function resulting from the application of  operator.
Definition 10 (Removing a cognitive causal relationship ).
This operator remove a given causal relationship from the
collection of causal relationships E. Let (ci , cj ) be the relationship to remove , with ci , cj V , (ci , cj ) E and
w((ci , cj )) = wij [1, 1], then:
E  = E {(ci , cj )}
V  = V {ci , cj }
w : E  [1, 1]

(9)

where the behaviour of function named w is the same of w

because E  E. Then, F  = (V, E  ) is the FCM resulting
from  application and w is the weight function of F  .

fBT ime : S R
btime = fBT ime (s) and s S

w ((cl ,cm ))=

w((cl ,cm ))+

if (cl ,cm )=(ci ,cj ) and 1w((ci ,cj ))+1

if (cl ,cm )=(ci ,cj ) and w((cl ,cm ))+<1

if (cl ,cm )=(ci ,cj ) and w((cl ,cm ))+>1

As can be noted by previous operators definition, the

proposed TAFCM idea is not currently usable to modify the
VR set, i.e., the collection of rules, however, experimental
results will shown that this limitation does not deteriorate the
performance of TAFCM from the dynamic modeling point of
view.
Once defined the operators changing FCM configuration it
is possible to define the cognitive operator set:
Cop = {, , , , , , , , , }
The Cop allow us to redefine the Timed Automata concept
in order to introduce a novel kind of transition edges capable
of changing the cognitive configuration of the modeled system.
In particular, the following edges set is adding to the standard
transitions set of timed automata:
EC S S 2C (C) Cop

Definition 15. A timed cognitive transition table At is a tuple

, S, S0 , C, E, EC , where:
is a finite alphabet,
S is a finite set of states,
S0 S is a set of start states,
C is finite set of clocks
C
EC S S 2 (C) Cop is the collection
of cognitive transitions. An edge s, s , a, , , , with
Cop produces the same effect of a standard transition
s, s , a, , , but it individuates the task defined by the
operator Cop . The set C represents the collection
of clocks to be reset with this transition, and is a clock
constraint over C.

Then F  = (V, E) is the obtained cognitive map and w is its

weight function.
Definition 12 (Multiplicative modification of cognitive concept ). This operator changes the value of a given causal
relationship by multiplying it for a real value . Analogously
to the previous operator, this task is performed by redefining
the weight assignment function w. Let (ci , cj ) be the causal
relationship to modify in multiplicative way, then w : E
[1, 1] is the modified function defined as follows:

w((cl ,cm ))
if (cl ,cm )=(ci ,cj )

w((cl ,cm ))

if (cl ,cm )=(ci ,cj ) and 1w((ci ,cj ))1

if (cl ,cm )=(ci ,cj ) and w((cl ,cm ))<1

if (cl ,cm )=(ci ,cj ) and w((cl ,cm ))>1

(11)

Then F  = (V, E) is the obtained cognitive map and w is its

weight function.
Definition 13 (B-Time updating ). As previously stated,
each cognitive era can be characterized by a different value of

(13)

and, the novel definition of timed automata based on cognitive

edges idea is:

(10)

w  ((cl ,cm ))=

(12)

Definition 14 (Cognitive identity ). The operator  represents a simple function identity that transforms a FCM F in
itself. This operator does not have practical usefulness but its
definition it is necessary to introduce the definition of TAFCM
in a more simple way.

Definition 11 (Additive modification of causal relationship

). The operator named  modifies the value of a given
causal relationship by adding it to a real value . This
task is accomplished by opportunely redefining the weight
assignment function w. Let (ci , cj ) be the causal relationship
to modify in additive way, then w : E [1, 1] is the
modified function defined as follows:

w((cl ,cm ))
if (cl ,cm )=(ci ,cj )

At this point, it is possible to give a formal definition

of a TAFCM and the properties characterizing its dynamic
behaviour.
Definition 16. A TAFCM T A is an ordered pair composed
by an initial cognitive configuration named F 0 together with
a timed cognitive transition table TM which represents the
mathematical entity acting as melting point between cognitivism and dynamism in system modeling. Formally:

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TA = (F 0 , TM )

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(0) : s0 S0

(14)

(1) : s1 S
(2) : s2 S

The TAFCM properties which define the dynamic behaviour

of an agent are: cognitive evolution and cognitive run.
The cognitive evolution is a mapping among the states
S contained in TM and the collection of possible cognitive
configurations obtained starting from F 0 . More in detail, the
cognitive evolution is a mathematical succession, generated
in an inductive way, which maps each state in S with a
one or more cognitive configurations obtained by sequentially
applying over F 0 the cognitive operators in S S 2C
(C) Cop . Then:

..
.
(j) : sj S
..
.

(0) = (s , F )
The inductive step. Let (i 1), with i > 1, be the cognitive
pair defined as:
(i 1) = (si1 , F i1 )
where si1 S and F i1 F , then:
(i) = (si , F i )
with si S, F i =
si1 , si , a, , , i  EC .

i (F i1 ), i

and

The image of function , I , can be finite or infinite.

This depends upon the topology of graph modeling the
component TM of the TAFCM. Indeed, if the topology of
TM contains cycles then the edge si1 , si , a, , , i 
EC can be crossed more times and, consequently, various FCM can associated with a same state sh S. i.e.,
sh st st+c1 st+c2 . . . st+ck . . . and
{(st+c1 , F t+c1 ), (st+c2 , F t+c2 ), . . . , (st+ck , F t+ck ), . . .}
I .
More intuitively, the expression (15) shows the sequence
of pairs composing a cognitive evolution over s0 S0
together with the fuzzy cognitive transformations obtained by
exploiting the i operators.

j1
Fj
j
..
.

Definition 18. Let be a cognitive evolution, then a cogs, v), of a timed transition table
nitive run rc , denoted by (
, S, S0 , C, E, EC  over a timed word (, ) and a collection
of cognitive operators Cop , is an infinite sequence of the
form

: N S F

(15)

Obviously, the cognitive evolution only represents a mapping between the states of timed automaton TA and the
collection of cognitive configurations computable starting from
F 0 by applying different sequence of operators in ; no
dynamic aspects are considered in the cognitive evolution
definition and, therefore, we introduce the idea of cognitive
run extending the initial idea of the run of standard timed
transition table.

Definition 17 (Cognitive Evolution). Let TA = (F 0 , TM )

be a TAFCM defined over a timed cognitive transition table , S, S0 , C, E, EC  with S = {s0 , s1 , . . . , s|S|1 } the
finite set of automaton states; let F be the collection of
all FCMs defined by means of expression (2) over a set
{cl R : l = 1 . . . k} of initial cognitive concepts; let
= {1 , 2 , . . . , || } be a subset of operators in Cop used to
define the edges in EC . Then, the cognitive evolution over
a state s0 S0 is:

defined inductively, as follows:

The base case (i = 0). Let s0 S0 be an initial state of
, S, S0 , C, E, EC , then:

F0
0
F1
1
F2
2
..
.

1 ,1

2 ,2

3 ,3

rc : s0 , 0  s1 , 1  s2 , 2 

with s S, i [C R] and i Cop , for all i 0,
satisfying the following requirements:
Initiation: s0 S0 and 0 (x) = 0 for all x C.
Consecution: for all i 1, there is an edge in E of
the form si1 , si , i , i , i  such that (i1 + i i1 )
satisfies i and i equals [i
0](i1 + i i1 ).
Atomicity: The operators i Cop are atomic operations
and their computation time is equals to 0, i.e., they do
not modify the duration of permanence in the automaton
state si , (i i1 ).
i
i
Evolution: each state s of a pair s , i  in rc is mapped
i
on a FCM F as described by the cognitive evolution .
i

If TA = (F 0 , TM ) is a TAFCM that models a given

system then the set of cognitive run rc defined over the
timed language L, generated by TM , completely describes
the collection dynamic behaviours of the system, whereas, the
cognitive run rc defined over a single word wi L defines a
precise dynamic behaviour of the system, i.e., wi defines the
T-Time.
Definition 19 (T-Time). If TA = (F 0 , TM ) is a TAFCM and
TM is a timed automaton recognizing the timed language L =
{w1 , w2 , w3 , . . . , wi , . . .} and wi is a timed word and rc is
a cognitive run defined over wi then wi is a T-Time of the
system.
Starting from the T-Time definition a formal description of
cognitive era and cognitive configuration is given.

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FUZZ-IEEE 2009, Korea, August 20-24, 2009

Sensors Side
S1

S2

S3

Seasons
Side

S4

0.8

0.1

a, , ,

-0.2

0.25

0.25

3
Adding User Side

Day
Side

Actuators Side

Human Side

Fig. 4. The timed automaton that describe a portion of the agents dynamic
behaviour of the AmI environment.
Fig. 2. The cognitive map that models interactions among sensors S1 , S2 ,
S3 , S4 , actuator A and the human status H.

AmI environment. Indeed, the collection:

AmI M AS = {(F 0 , TM )1 , (F 0 , TM )2 , . . . , (F 0 , TM )p }

Human Side

can be view as the set of p AmI intelligent agents capable

of changing their behaviour in a time-dependent way and
whose behaviours are depending upon a collection of cognitive
relationships that consider human and technology aspects. In
detail, during its life-cycle, each agent in Ami M AS is
capable of changing its cognitive behaviour by means of the
application of the cognitive operator Cop when some temporal
constraints are satified. As a simple sample of application we
can consider the cognitive agent shown in figure 2. This agent
is designed as a cyclic cognitive network capable of setting
the environmental parameters through cognitive maps engine:
the sensors S1 , S2 , S3 , S4 are, for instance, the temperature
and lighting sensors that the agent exploits the infer the novel
status of actuators and the human being. Figure 2 corresponds
to the following initial FCM:

H2

0.6
S1

S2

S3

S4

0.8

-0.1
0.25

H1

Human Side

0.25

-0.2

A
Actuators Side

F 0 = (V, E)
V = {S1 , S2 , S3 , S4 , H1 , A}
E = {(H1 , S1 ), (H1 , S2 ), (H1 , S3 ), (H1 , S4 ),
(S1 , A), (S2 , A), (S3 , A), (S4 , A), (A, H1 )}
w(H1 , S1 ) = 0.2
w(H1 , S2 ) = 0.3
w(H1 , S3 ) = 0.4
w(H1 , S4 ) = 0.1
w(S1 , A) = 0.25
w(S2 , A) = 0.1
w(S3 , A) = 0.2
w(S4 , A) = 0.8
w(A, H1 ) = 0.25

Fig. 3. The cognitive map resulting from timed automaton transition. A

novel user lives into the environment.

Definition 20 (Cognitive era and cognitive configuration). If

rc is a cognitive run defined over the T-Time wi = (, ) L:
1 ,1

2 ,2

3 ,3

rc : s0 , 0  s1 , 1  s2 , 2 

then time interval between the instant i and i+1 is the ith
cognitive era of system and the FCM F i that depicts the
system during the same interval is defined as the ith cognitive
configuration .
IV. A C ASE S TUDY: AN A MBIENT I NTELLIGENCE
S CENARIO
Last section shows as the intelligence of an agent can be
simply defined by means of an ordered pair composed by a
cognitive and dynamic component. In other word, our proposal
introduces a method to define, in a single entity, the most
important components that every intelligent system should to
have: the reasoning and the time. Starting from the definition
of a single agents intelligence, it is direct to introduce a multiagent scenario as a collection of TAFCM agents managing an

Figure shows the dynamic behaviour of the agent expressed

by a timed automata. The transition 0 1 represents the
situation where a novel user lives the enviroment, then, the
agent modify its behaviour by applying the operator able
to add a novel concept together with the collection of causal
relationships influencing old concept; the transitions 0 1
represent the change of behaviour of the agent related to time
constraints. In particular, transition 0 4, 0 5, 0 6, 0
7 is used to individuate a change of behaviour depending upon
the passing od the seasons and the related cognitive operators

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FUZZ-IEEE 2009, Korea, August 20-24, 2009

TABLE I
T HE F 0 S B EHAVIOUR
FCM
Iteration
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

TABLE II
T HE (F 0 ) S B EHAVIOUR

Concepts
H
A
0.01
0.0
0.08 0.04
0.07 0.06
0.07 0.08
0.07 0.09
0.08
0.1
0.09 0.11
0.1
0.12
0.11 0.13
0.12 0.14
0.13 0.14

Iteration
0
1
2
3

FCM Concepts
H
A
0.13
0.14
0.13
0.14
0.13
0.14
0.13
0.14

H2
0.05
0.13
0.14
0.14

V. C ONCLUSIONS AND F UTURE W ORKS

are used to modify the weight of causal relationships (details

about these transitions have been omitted); the transitions
0 8, 0 9 are used to change the causal relationships
of the cognitive agent during the same day: for instance, the
relationship among the lighting sensors and human status is
more strong during the night, when, the light can be very
annoyinf for the user (details about these transitions have been
omitted). Figure shows the cognitive agent resulting from the
application of transitions 0 1: a novel user enters into the
environment and the agent has to consider the relationship
between him and the AmI systems sensors network:

AmI environments are systems obtained as fusion of three

different methodologies: ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous
networking and intelligent user-friendly interface. The main
aim of Computational Intelligence is to design set of methodologies capable of realizing rationale ubiquitous computing
embedded into efficient ubiquitous networking. In this paper,
this aim is satisfied by introducing a multi-agent system
implemented by means of an innovatove novel inference
methodology that solves, in a one shot, cognitive and dynamic
problem. Moreover, our proposal opens new challenges in the
Computational Intelligence community by inviting researcher
to define ourselves cognitive operators, evolutions and runs to
better design their multi-agent environment.

F 0 = (V, E)
V = {S1 , S2 , S3 , S4 , H1 , A}
E = {(H1 , S1 ), (H1 , S2 ), (H1 , S3 ), (H1 , S4 ),
(S1 , A), (S2 , A), (S3 , A), (S4 , A), (A, H1 )}
w(H1 , S1 ) = 0.2
w(H1 , S2 ) = 0.3
w(H1 , S3 ) = 0.4
w(H1 , S4 ) = 0.1
w(S1 , A) = 0.25
w(S2 , A) = 0.1
w(S3 , A) = 0.2
w(S4 , A) = 0.8
w(A, H1 ) = 0.25
w(H2 , S1 ) = 0.1
w(H2 , S2 ) = 0.2
w(H2 , S3 ) = 0.1
w(H2 , S4 ) = 0.1
w(A, H2 ) = 0.6
The table I and II shows the behaviour of our dynamical
cognitive agent. In detail, I describes the human(H) and actuator(A) concept with the following sensors value: S1 = 20,
S2 = 30, S3 = 15, S4 = 12. When the user H2 live
the system, the cognitive map F 0 modifies itself and the
table II presents the behaviour of the novel cognitive model.
It is important to note that the FCM (F 0 ) achieves the
convergence in only three step. This is due the fact that
the actuator A have always achieved its better value and,
consequently, the user H 2 is faster than H to accomplish its
optimal status.

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