The European Union Establishes that for the next few years, a cleaner and more efficient energy system should be used. In order to achieve this, this work proposes an energy optimization method that facilitates the achievement of these objectives. Existing technologies allow us to create a system that optimizes the use of energy in homes and offers some type of benefit to its residents. Specifically, this study has developed a recommendation system based on a multiagent system that allows to obtain consumption data from electronic devices in a home, obtain information on electricity prices from the Internet, and provide recommendations based on consumption patterns of users and electricity prices. In this way, the system recommends new hours in which to use the appliances, offering the economic benefit that it would propose recommendations for the user. In this way, it is possible to distribute and optimize the use of energy in homes and reduce the peaks in electricity consumption. The system provides encouraging results in order to resolve the problem proposed by the European Union by optimizing the use of energy among different hours of the day and saving money for the customer.
People who suffer from any kind of motor difficulty face serious complications to autonomously move in their daily lives. However, a growing number research projects which propose different powered wheelchairs control systems are arising. Despite of the interest of the research community in the area, there is no platform that allows an easy integration of various control methods that make use of heterogeneous sensors and computationally demanding algorithms. In this work, an architecture based on virtual organizations of agents is proposed that makes use of a flexible and scalable communication protocol that allows the deployment of embedded agents in computationally limited devices. In order to validate the proper functioning of the proposed system, it has been integrated into a conventional wheelchair and a set of alternative control interfaces have been developed and deployed, including a portable electroencephalography system, a voice interface or as specifically designed smartphone application. A set of tests were conducted to test both the platform adequacy and the accuracy and ease of use of the proposed control systems yielding positive results that can be useful in further wheelchair interfaces design and implementation.