Publications

Abstract : Our interest is in developing smart environments that keep track of their occupants and are capable of answering questions about the whereabouts of the occupants. We abstract the smart environment by a state transition system: Each state records a set of individuals who are present in various zones of the environment. Since biometric recognition is inexact, state information is probabilistic in nature. An event abstracts a biometric recognition step, and the transition function abstracts the reasoning necessary to effect state transitions. In this manner, we are able to accommodate different types of biometric sensors and also different criteria for state transitions. We define the notions of ‘precision’ and ‘recall’ of a smart environment in terms of how well it is capable of identifying occupants.