Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The development of the cyberspace concept resulted in the necessity of inventing
a new attitude towards entities that can exist and operate in this space, as well as
methods for their formation. The former term of the process became insufficient in
relation to the new possibilities provided by cyberspace. Through the development
of processes (applications), a new client-server model came into being.
One of the attempts to introduce a new entity of mobile properties in cyberspace
was the autonomous agent. The agent constituted the concept of the mobile entity that
couldmove in cyberspace and operate in its different areas. Thus it could realize com-
plex tasks often in cooperation with other agents. The activity of the agent required
that the possibilities of information acquisition from its surrounding cyberspace be
created and appropriate changes implemented. Therefore, the agent had to posses cer-
tain capability for activity, as well as the skill of observing its surrounding cyberspace
in order to acquire information.
The origins of the concept of the agent could be found in the attempts to formulate
the terms of class and object from the 60s of the last century. It was a new direction
in decomposition of an algorithm into component algorithms, which differed from
the previous methods of program decomposition into subprograms.
The practical realization of the language implementing the terms of “class” and
“object” is the concept of SIMULA language with its final version SIMULA-67, and
then its extension [51, 63, 64]. In the next few years, new languages were introduced
for object-oriented programming, and methods of realization of such systems were
developed.
In the second half of the 20th century, with the appearance of new challenges in
programming, the existing tools proved insufficient, particularly those based on the
concept of object. The source of such tasks were structures comprising a number of
connected processors (multiprocessor structures) which at that time came into being
and enabled parallel solution of complex computing problems. It brought a lot of
problems in programming.
One of the problems was the scattering of tasks in the multiprocessor structures. A
complex task, divided into many fragmentary tasks, could be realized on a number of
processors constituting the multiprocessor structure. Apart from the task of division
of a complex algorithm into component algorithms, it was still necessary to solve
the problem of programmed algorithms distribution in the form of fragmentary tasks
between the processors of the structure.
Apart from the above-mentioned sources of prospecting for new solutions, the
inspiration was found in the field of robotics.
Robots created in realspace have certain qualities contributing to their indepen-
dence of action, so-called autonomy. The term
autonomy
, despite the initial lack of
precise definition was quite comprehensible and became one of the basic proper-
ties of robots, specifically mobile robots. The significant quality of robots is also the
capability for information acquisition from their surrounding realspace in which they
exist and particularly from a certain part of that space called the robot action envi-
ronment. The operation of information acquisition is robot's capability to observe
its surrounding environment.
