Service Conflict Management Framework for Multi-user Inhabited Smart Home

In this paper, we propose a service conflict management framework for detecting and resolving conflicts of multi-users who share context-aware applications within a smart home. For supporting a general solution to deal with the multi-user conflicts, the framework utilizes an ontology that describes applications and their services, an approach determination tree that assigns an appropriate resolution strategy to the conflict, and a set of resolution strategies. Based on this ontology, it dynamically detects conflicts associated among multiple users who are using various applications affecting each other, or the same application with different preferences. An appropriate resolution method is assigned to the conflict according to the properties involved, their relationship, and users’ preferences. The detected conflict is resolved either by an automatic decision, based on either priority or preferences, or by a user decision. Through implementing and evaluating the framework to a smart home test-bed, we found that the proposed framework dynamically detected and flexibly resolved multi-user conflicts which occurred among the services of multiple applications, as well as within a single application.