Patent ID: 9720391
Date: 2017-08-01
CPC Classifications: G05B,H04L

Claim:
1. A cooperative process execution method for causing household electric devices that are registered to a server to execute cooperative processes, wherein the server stores (i) group information including one or more group items each associating one or more household electric devices with one or more operation identifiers, the operation identifiers each indicating an operation that a corresponding household electric device is capable of executing, the group information at least including one or more group items associated with a first operation that a first household electric device is capable of executing, and (ii) correspondence information associating one or more operation identifiers with one or more control signals, the control signals each being a signal causing a household electric device to execute an operation indicated by a corresponding operation identifier, the cooperative process execution method comprising: detecting execution of an operation by a household electric device; when execution of the first operation by the first household electric device is detected in the detecting, selecting one of the one or more group items associated with the first operation; and transmitting, to each of the one or more household electric devices in the selected group item, a control signal that is associated in the correspondence information with the operation identifier associated with the household electric device in the selected group item in order to cause the household electric device to execute the operation indicated by the operation identifier, wherein the server further stores a degree of priority of each of the one or more group items associated with the first operation, and in the selecting, when two or more group items are associated with the first operation, one of the two or more group items provided with a highest degree of priority is selected.