The Butlers Framework for Socio-Technical Smart Spaces

Smart Spaces outline an intriguing application scenario where people are immersed in time and space in an augmented virtual environment, which suitably exploits ubiquitous computing technologies, space and time awareness, and pervasive intelligence. A number of technical, social, pragmatic challenges, arising from several perspectives and domains, need to be dealt with. Moving from a Socio-Technical Systems approach, this paper first introduces the Butlers for Smart Spaces (BSS) architecture, which specialises the Butlers architecture originally defined for Smart Homes to the Smart Spaces scenario; then, it shows how BSS can be mapped onto the Home Manager platform, and discussed how a Smart Space can be designed and developed on its top - in general, and with regard to a specific example.