Patent ID: 8276069

Claim:
A method of automatically generating an adaptive user interface for a plurality of appliances within a physical environment, said method comprising: generating appliance description specifications of said plurality of appliances in said physical environment from appliance functionality information comprising a set of state variables and corresponding operations wherein a state variable is represented as an interface and semantic information comprising a set of relations among said state variables of related appliances and/or related environment information; and rendering on a controller device said adaptive user interface based on said appliance description specifications, wherein rendering said adaptive user interface based on said appliance description specifications comprises: analyzing said appliance description specifications to construct a semantic functionality relationship among said appliances in said physical environment wherein analyzing each of said appliance description specifications comprises: determining a hierarchical relationship between appliances and said state variables; forming a functionality tree maintaining said appliance state variables, corresponding operations and relations among said state variables; analyzing said semantic information included in each of said appliance descriptions; assembling appliances in close relationship in a group; creating a virtual node to represent said group; setting said virtual node as a parent of appliances and child of environment; and adding widgets among said appliances to represent said semantic relationship; transforming said semantic functionality relationship into an interface elements relationship based on properties of said controller device; and rendering said adaptive user interface based on said interface elements relationship.