COGITO: a platform for developing cognitive environments

A Cognitive Environment (CE) is a smart environment having self-learningand self-adaptation capabilities. It is obtained by augmenting a physical environmentby using IT equipment and artificial intelligence technologies. The goal is to fur-nish the environment's dwellers and the environment itself with advanced servicesdevoted to (i) improving the quality of life of the people, (ii) optimizing the use ofshared resources and spaces, (iii) increasing security and safety, (iv) assisting peoplein daily-life activities, (v) extending the lifetime of devices and infrastructures, (vi)enforcing and actuating policies promoting sustainability, green-aware behaviors andenergy-saving management of the whole system. Realizing a CE is a complex andmultidisciplinary task. It requires transversal skills among which those related todistributed systems, IoT and artificial intelligence technologies, and networking. Inaddition, suitable methodological approaches and platforms could be leveraged inorder to deal with the complex process of designing and implementing a CE. In thischapter, as enabling technology, the COGITO platform is introduced. COGITO isan agent-based IoT platform tailored to the development of CEs in a heterogeneouscontinuum computing environment comprising cloud, fog, and edge resources. Thepractical use of the platform is demonstrated through some uses cases developed atthe ICAR-CNR headquarter at Rende (Italy).