Chapter 1. Introduction: Outline and Synopsis
4
Furthermore, the deployment of agents can overcome interface barriers
and closes the gap arising between platforms and environments differing con-
siderably in computational and communication capabilities, enabling the
integration of sensor networks in large-scale World-Wide-Web (WWW) appli-
cations and providing Internet connectivity, shown in Figure 1.2. This is
addressed by using a unified agent-based programming and interaction
model, independent of the underlying processing platform. For the following
proposed advanced agent processing platform architecture there are suitable
hardware, software, and simulation model implementations, which can be
interconnected in networks, including a JavaScript implementation with an
advanced broker and DOS service suitable for the WEB browser and node.js
processing. All platform implementations are compatible on the operational
and execution level, thus, agents can migrate between these different plat-
form implementations.
The agent mobility crossing different execution platforms, synchronized
agent interaction by using tuple-space databases, and global signal propaga-
tion aid solving data distribution and synchronisation issues in the design of
distributed sensor networks.
In this work Multi-agent systems with state-based mobile agents are used
for computing in unreliable networks consisting of generic and embedded
computational nodes (e.g., sensor nodes), sometimes consisting only of a sin-
gle microchip. A novel and unified design approach for reliable distributed
and parallel data processing is introduced that can be deployed in embedded
systems having static resource constraints and the Internet domain. There is
currently still a large gap between agent behaviour models and technological
implementations of such resource-constrained processing platforms, which is
addressed in this work significantly. Self-organizing Agent Systems (SoS) are
one major agent organization structure class, which is considered in this work
for solving robustness and distribution problems in general and for solving
inherent distributed problems, especially concerning computation with
incomplete world models, e.g., mechanical models.
Designing complex distributed systems and processing platforms is a chal-
lenge. Therefore, besides unified agent models a unified design framework is
required, covering the design of agent processing platforms and agent imple-
mentations with different architecture models and different implementation
target classes (hardware, software, simulation).
For this purpose, an advanced database driven high-level synthesis
approach is used to map the agent behaviour on hardware (Agent-on-Chip
processing architecture, AoC), software, and simulation platforms.
The agent behaviour, their interaction, and the mobility behaviour can be
fully integrated on the microchip level with a single System-on-Chip (SoC) or
System-on-Programmable-Chip (SoPC/FPGA) design.
S. Bosse, Unified Distributed Sensor and Environmental Information Processing with Multi-Agent Systems
epubli, ISBN 9783746752228 (2018)