Agent-Based Development of Multisensory Monitoring Systems - Foundations on Natural and Artificial Computation - page 456

Fig. 3. (a) Tailgating interaction protocol; (b) Fragment of system overview diagram

to the contact and infrared sensors ( InfrarredSensorAg and ContactSensorAg )
to carry out their tasks.

3.3 Detailed Design Phase

Now, we are in front of one of the major aspects and contributions of this pro-
posal. The system overview diagram previously obtained (see Fig. 2b) describes
the overall system architecture, that is, the agents identified, the perceptions
received, the actions to be executed, the interaction protocols among agents,
and the data read and/or written by agents. These entities are described using
Prometheus concepts. However, the VigilAgent models of the detailed design
phase are developed using INGENIAS concepts, which are different from the
previous ones. Therefore, a transformation from Prometheus models to INGE-
NIAS models must be carried out in order to perform the next modeling phase.
We have developed four conceptual mappings [2] to transform the structures
that involve percepts, actions, messages and data related to agents. These map-
pings have been inferred considering both the definition of these concepts, and
how each Prometheus structure can be modeled using an INGENIAS equivalent
structure. For example, a percept is a piece of information from the environment
received by means of a sensor. Percepts are sent by actors (Actor Percept)

by means of interaction protocols , these percepts are received by agents (Percept
→

→

Agent). The relations among actors, percepts and agents (Actor Percept

→

Agent) are described in the system overview diagram . In INGENIAS, all the
software and hardware that interacts with the system and cannot be designed
as an agent is considered an application ; and every agent that perceives changes
in the environment must be in the environment model associated to an applica-
tion. Therefore, as Fig. 4 shows (arrow 1), the percepts of a Prometheus agent
can be triggered in INGENIAS by specifying a collection of operations in an
application . A Prometheus percept has a field, Information carried , to spec-
ify the information it carries. As Fig. 4 depicts (arrow 2), in INGENIAS this
information is described in a type of event named ApplicationEventSlots that
is associated to the EPerceives relation established between the agent and the

→