The LAICA project: supporting ambient intelligence via agents and ad-hoc middleware

Users\´ environments are going to be disseminated of intelligent devices and sensors that coordinate each other to help users in their activities. This leads to what is called "ambient intelligence", i.e., environments that exhibits a certain degree of intelligence. Software agents are the natural candidates for this kind of task, thanks to their autonomy and the capability to act on behalf of their owners, resulting thus appropriate in the ambient intelligence area. In this position paper, we discuss the use of agents in ambient intelligence, and sketch the relevant aspects of the LAICA project. In particular, we focus on the design of a middleware for ambient intelligence that connects several kinds of agents and other distributed components.