Agent-Based Development of Multisensory Monitoring Systems - Foundations on Natural and Artificial Computation - page 452

are transformed into concepts used in a specific agent-oriented programming
language named JACK [1]; this supposes, in principle, a loss of generality. On
the contrary, INGENIAS does facilitate a general process to transform models
specified during the design phase into executable code. However, INGENIAS
does not offer guidelines to identify the entities of the model; the developer's ex-
perience is necessary for their identification. Therefore, VigilAgent methodology
is not developed from scratch but integrates facilities of both Prometheus and
INGENIAS to take advantage of both of them.
Regarding implementation, the ICARO-T framework has been selected be-
cause it provides high level software components that facilitate the development
of agent applications. Moreover, it is independent of the agent architecture; that
is, the developer can develop new architectures and incorporate them in the
framework. This is a clear difference regarding other agent frameworks such as
JACK or JADE [1], which provide a middleware, instead of an extensible archi-
tecture, to establish the communications among agents. An additional advantage
are the functionalities already implemented in the framework to automatically
carry out component management, application initialization and shutdown, re-
ducing the developers' amount of work and guarantying that the components
are under control. These last functionalities are usually not provided by other
frameworks.
3 A Case Study: Access Control
Access control is the usual and basic term used for monitoring and controlling
entrances to and exits from a specific area. This section illustrates how to use
VigilAgent in order to develop an intelligent system that automatically controls
entrances/exits of humans to/from an enclosure throughout the installed mod-
ules. Specifically, each module facilitates the entrances and exits according to its
configuration and is composed of the following components: a reader device, an
automatic door, a contact sensor and an infrared sensor.
In order to go in/out of the enclosure throughout a module, first, the user
inserts a ticket into the reader device that the system verifies against the users'
database. Then, a LED illuminates in green if the user is authorized, otherwise
it illuminates in red. Moreover, if the user is authorized then the door is opened,
and closed once the user has crossed or some time has elapsed.
In addition, the system collects and shows the guard statistics about the num-
ber of humans crossing each door and the number of humans located inside the
enclosure by using the infrared sensor located in each module. It should also
control if any anomalous situation happens, such as tailgating or if a door is
blocked by a human when the system opens it. A tailgating situation is detected
when some cunning human crosses a door that has been opened by a user cor-
rectly authenticated. The system also shows the state of the devices and offers
the guard the possibility of disabling a module if its door remains closed despite
having correctly authenticated a user.