Case-based reasoning for matching SMARTHOUSE technology to people’s needs

SMARTHOUSE technology offers devices that help the elderly and people with disabilities to live independently in their homes. This paper presents our experiences from a pilot project applying case-based reasoning techniques to match the needs of the elderly and those with disabilities to SMARTHOUSE technology. The SMARTHOUSE problem is decomposed into sub-tasks, and generalised concepts added for each sub-task. This decomposition and generalisation enables multiple case reuse employing a standard decision tree index based iterative retrieval strategy. Documented real situations are used to create a small case base. An initial prototype is evaluated empirically using leaveone-out testing, and separately with the domain expert on newly created test cases. Results show that system generated solutions to be comparable to those of a domain expert. Importantly, the iterative retrieval strategy employing multiple indices generated solutions that were significantly better compared to a one-shot retrieval without indices. q 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.