Ambient Intelligence Through Agile Agents - Ambient Intelligence for Scientific Discovery - page 292

- Finally, the Agent Model (AgtM) completes the design by switching the focus
from roles, interactions, and activities to a more agent-centric view of the
target system. Specifically, this model focuses upon two concepts: roles, and
agent classes . The roles specify meaningful aggregations of protocols (e.g.
in a mobile computing application, roles may include the Map Creator, the
Interface Manager, and the PDA Cache Manager). These roles are then im-
plemented through certain agent classes. As such, the agent classes combine
one or more roles, with any additional protocols, and finally, a set of activ-
ities that are required to realize the protocols. These activities are derived
from the ActM.
Further details of the visual notation employed within the AgtM and the
implementation and deployment phases of the methodology can be found in [3].
2.4 The Development Environment
Agent development is realized through a federation of toolsets. The Agent Fac-
tory Integrated Development Environment (IDE), illustrated in Fig. 4, provides
a standard programming environment in the vein of NetBeans and JBuilder.
Specifically, the editor includes features such as syntax highlighting, code com-
pilation, and application execution.
In addition, VIPER [33] is a graphical tool suite that allows the user to com-
pose the Agent UML Sequence Diagrams that sit at the heart of the Protocol
Model. VIPER is comprised of two tools: a Protocol Editor that provides a vi-
sual tool for generating Agent UML Sequence Diagrams, and a Rule Editor that
further supports the user by guiding them through the step of implementing the
protocols in AF-APL. Further tools that have been provided to support the de-
velopment of AF-APL agents, the Agent Factory Development Environment also
includes a suite of tools that facilitate the testing and debugging of agent-oriented
applications. These tools are associated with the Agent Platform component of
the Run-Time Environment. Debugging environment tools include:
- the Agent Viewer Tool , which allows the developer to monitor and modify
the agents internal state;
- the Message Sender , which allows the developer to interact with other agents
as if they were themselves an agent; and
- the Community Monitor , which allows the developer to monitor interactions
between a specified set of agents.
Further details of these tools can be found in [3]. Having reviewed the design
and fabrication environment by which we develop our agile agents we will now
illustrate how such agents can be utilized in the realization of ambient intelligence
systems.
3 Gulliver's Genie
At its simplest, Gulliver's Genie may be regarded as a mobile context-aware
tourist guide. In many respects, it is a classic example of an mobile applica-