Abstract One of the most important challenges of this decade is the Internet of
Things (IoT) that pursues the integration of real-world objects in Internet. One of
the key areas of the IoT is the Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems, which
should be able to react to variable and continuous changes while ensuring their
acceptance and adoption by users. This means that AAL systems need to work as
self-adaptive systems. The autonomy property inherent to software agents, makes
them a suitable choice for developing self-adaptive systems. However, agents lack
the mechanisms to deal with the variability present in the IoT domain with regard
to devices and network technologies. To overcome this limitation we have already
proposed a Software Product Line (SPL) process for the development of self-adaptive
agents in the IoT. Here we analyze the challenges that poses the development of
self-adaptive AAL systems based on agents. To do so, we focus on the domain
and application engineering of the self-adaptation concern of our SPL process. In
addition, we provide a validation of our development process for AAL systems.
