Infrastructure for an intelligent kitchen

Abstract

In a world of growing numbers of "things that think", a software infrastructure for managing complex systems of these things is a necessity. This paper presents such a software system, Hive. Hive is a decentralized distributed mobile agents platform, addressing the requirements of a infrastructure for "things that think". Hive addresses the need for ways to manage highly heterogeneous sets of devices, methods for describing and discovering resources, and an approach toward constructing applications. To effectively evaluate this architecture, the particular testbed of a networked kitchen is examined. The kitchen provides a dynamic and compelling application domain to explore the Hive system. The kitchen described in this paper is capable of assisting a user in the preparation of recipes, through use of a variety of sensing and actuation technologies. In addition to the kitchen, a number of other Hive-based systems are discussed, including a networked jukebox and a localization infrastructure for wearables. Hive is evaluated in the context of the networked kitchen and these other applications. Hive is compared to other distributed software systems, in particular Jini. Finally, areas for future work are suggested, in both the Hive infrastructure and the networked kitchen application.