Appliance control apparatus and method

An appliance control apparatus which controls a plurality of appliances in a living space of a user, the apparatus comprising:

• an acquisition unit configured to acquire, at intervals of predetermined time, a state data including values of operation states of the respective appliances;
• a state data memory to store the state data as one record, to store a plurality of time-series records;
• a classifying unit configured to classify the records stored in the state data memory into a plurality of living situation groups by clustering the records based on the values of operation states in each record, and to calculate, for each living situation group, a barycenter of each operation state from records belonging to the living situation group;
• a living situation determination unit configured to determine, for each target state data which is acquired by the acquisition unit, one of the living situation groups to which the target state data belongs, the values of the operation states in each record belonging to the one of the living situation groups are closest to the values of the operation states in the target state data;
• an operation determination unit configured to compare a value of each operation state in the target state data with the barycenter of each operation state in the one of the living situation groups to which the target state data belongs, to determine one of the operation states whose value in the target state data is larger than corresponding barycenter in the one of the living situation groups, and to determine the barycenter of the one of the operation states in the one of the living situation groups as a first recommended value of the one of the operation states;
• an interface unit configured to present the first recommended value of the one of the operation states, and to obtain an acceptance instruction or a rejection instruction concerning the first recommended value of the one of the operation states which is presented;
• and
• an appliance control unit configured to control the one of the operation states to the first recommended value when obtaining the acceptance instruction.