Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the name “Human Agent Interface” directly from the purpose of our develop-
ment. In order to remain independent from a specific UI technology or a par-
ticular agent framework, we arranged HAI to act as some kind of middle layer
between the UI and the MAS. The advantage of this architecture lies with the
clear separation between agent-specific parts and those from the user interface,
such as JSPs, Silverlight pages or XUL, Flex components, to name but a few.
Both, details and specific properties of the agent layer are hidden from the user
interface. For the UI developer, the application appears as a monolithic system,
whose functions are accessible via an API.
Fig. 1.
The HAI as middle layer mediating between UI and MAS
Figure 1 emphasises the role as a middle layer and illustrates the HAI with
some of its components. It also shows one of the main tasks: Converting UI re-
quest into agent messages and vice versa. In compliance with JIAC's principle of
modularity, each capability is implemented as an AgentBean. Consequently, we
implemented our HAI concept as JIAC V agent: The
HAI-Agent
. The loose cou-
pling between capabilities and agent allows for custom and streamlined context
adaptations, since unused features can be removed easily.
2.3
Integrating Agents into MVC
Using application frameworks to implement user interfaces offers many advan-
tages for the development process. Nevertheless, as an objective of our work,
we wanted to ensure, agent and UI developers do not influence each other. For
this purpose, we made use of the MVC paradigm, since it logically separates an
application on programming level.
In an MVC application the logic is implemented within the controller. When
it comes to agent applications, the agents are usually dedicated to some appli-
cation goal. The Human Agent Interface combines both principles and allows
for the integration of agents into applications that comply with MVC. Since the
application logic is hosted within the agents, a UI developer is not affected, when
