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Agentification of Objects in Heterogeneous
Dynamic Environments
Sebastian Bader
MMIS,UniversityofRostock,Germany
sebastian.bader@uni-rostock.de
http://mmis.informatik.uni-rostock.de
Abstract.
In this article, we discuss an approach to build dynamic and
heterogeneous ensembles of objects. The presented approach is based on
a middleware for distributed systems and extends the deployment system
such that ordinary objects are turned into agents without modifying the
original object. By avoiding a direct connection between the different
components, we obtain a highly dynamic and flexible system.
1
Introduction and Motivation
The design and implementation of smart environments is a challenging task.
It includes, among other aspects, the connection of different components into a
distributed system, and the definition of assistance functionalities. To complicate
things further, such environments are usually heterogeneous and dynamic, that
is, they consist of many different components from different vendors, which enter
and leave the ensemble dynamically.
One approach to the design and implementation of such ensembles are multi-
agent systems. They allow autonomous software components, called agents, to
communicate and cooperate. Most multi-agent systems require a rather coor-
dinated implementation of the single components. Usually, the type of agents
and their interplay is known in advance. Adding new components might require
some re-design. This is due to the fact, that most implementations do not allow
on-line generation of plans, but require the plans to be constructed in advance.
The objective of this paper is three-fold. We propose an approach which (i)
combines middleware systems as known from smart environment design and
agent based modelling, (ii) allows for online construction of plans and (iii) de-
couples the ensemble by specifying environmental goals instead of object specific
goals. Our work is based on the assumption that we can not make any assump-
tion with respect to the configuration of the environment. Instead, all compo-
nents may enter and leave dynamically. We furthermore believe that legacy code
should be usable in such a system, in particular encapsulations of artefacts, like
software adapters to physical objects, should be deployable into the ensemble
and integrate seamlessly with it. For this, we combine the legacy code, formal
specification and a deployment system to agentify objects. This results in a loose
coupling between objects without modification of code.
