Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
This layer provides a set of primitives to the upper layer, and so hide the
difference of real machines. Through this layer the upper layers can run
successfully without concerning the network, operating system, or hardware
configuration. Resource layer is a set of resources, such as knowledge base,
database, model base, image base and so on, which will be used by a special
agent.
Data
Base
Resource
Layer
Knowledge
Base
Model
Base
Image
Base
Function Modules
Logic
Layer
Agent Kernel
Virtual Machine
Layer
Sensors
Comm.
Actors
Figure 14.7. The agent model of AOSDE
Virtual machine layer is intended to be a general interface to environment
which provides the agent's communicative, sensoric and actoric links to outside
world. The communicative part provides the functionality of sending message to
and receiving message from other agents using Software Agent Communication
Language (SACL) or other language. Agent can sense its environment through
sensoric part. Actors will carry out the physical actions the agent may perform.
This layer provides a set of primitives to the upper layer, and so hide the
difference of real machines. Through this layer the upper layers can run
successfully without concerning the network, operating system, or hardware
configuration. Resource layer is a set of resources, such as knowledge base,
database, model base, image base and so on, which will be used by a special
agent.
Logic layer is core of agent model. We defined agent as an entity that can
execute some specific actions and communicate with its environment. Although
agents may differ in many aspects to each other, they do have many features in
common. For examples, their communication method, execution engine, and
