Distributed context assessment for robots in intelligent environments

This paper describes a context model based on functionalist considerations to be used in context-aware distributed artificial systems, such as robots in smart environments. The proposed framework, which is aimed at integrating ontology and logic approaches to context modeling, assumes the availability of both an ontology and a simple mechanism for performing inferences. The context model is formally defined adopting a functional approach, which describes contexts as recursive structures grounded with respect to the ontology. Experimental results are presented and discussed, which describe how the proposed context-model can aid distributed robotic systems to deal with highly dynamic environments.