Argumentation-Based Conflict Resolution in Pervasive Services

Pervasive services applications often employ networked sensors, devices and appliances to build intelligent and adaptable environments, such as Smart Homes. One of the most significant emergent problems in the deployment of such applications is conflicting sensors information. The system is required to decipher the true context of ambiguous or conflicting data in order to efficiently assimilate context-awareness and subsequently ensure accurate adaptability to suit the application space. To-date, there has been speculation as to the optimal method to disambiguate conflicting data; citing the use of ”argumentation” based reasoning to resolve conflict situations as a theoretical solution. This chapter presents the first known implementation of argumentation based conflict resolution for pervasive services computing. It proves that the concept is feasible, accurate and efficient, through simulated deployment on a range of conflict scenarios. The prototype is based on SOA4D built upon the OSGi platform and implements DPWS; and is capable of resolving conflicting data gathered from up to 10 sensors in approximately 2.5 seconds. In effect, this work realises the potential of argumentation theory to solve real-world problems in services computing.

Keywords: Argumentation Theory, Conflict Resolution, Context Information, Service-oriented Architecture, Quality of Context, Pervasive Computing, Argumentation-based Decision Making, Computational Argumentation, Intelligent Agents, Multi-agent Systems.