Coordination Of Mobile Agents Research Articles

Evolving a communication hierarchy on coordinated tasks using adaptive mobile agents

Mobile Agent coordination is important in applications, which are both time and space bound, such as disaster recovery or demining. In such environments, each agent is required to be mobile to cover a region around it. In order to cover the entire area, all agents should collectively ensure full coverage of the area of interest, for which infrastructure for coordination across mobile agents may not be readily available. Knowing when to communicate and what to communicate becomes therefore becomes a key learning exercise. In such a scenario, it is interesting to study the evolution of a communication hierarchy in order to accomplish a multi-agent coordination task such as area coverage. In this paper, we propose a coordination hierarchy for a survivor rescue task and overlay a learning framework to teach a team of agents what to communicate and when to communicate while recovering the survivors efficiently. We then study the evolution of a communication hierarchy derived from the agent learning.

An Immediate Messaging-based Multi-agent System using Linda Coordination Model

The quick development of mobile agents, the coordination of mobile agent becomes an up-and-coming technology in multiagent structure for internet and distributed applications. This time an immediate messaging is getting popular and many people apply it to coordinate with each other in domestic as well as commercially. In this review paper I used a new approach for immediate messaging based Multi-agents using Linda like Coordination model. By this we have avoid the limitation of time and space. The Linda like coordination model having qualities of easy to implement and ubiquitous access. An ubiquitous meeting room and an immediate messaging mail service are provided in our structure for multi-agents to synchronize with each other in any place and at any moment. Some other qualities of Linda like coordination model i.e. it creates heterogeneous environment, platform independent and making useful application in object oriented programming because of all it, this creates welldesigned interface for coordination of mobile agents.

Coordination of Mobile Agents in Flocks with Time-varying Interactions

AbstractIn this paper, we develop a novel self-propelled particle model to describe the emergent behavior of a group of mobile agents. All agents coordinate with their neighbors through local social forces accounting for velocity alignment and collision avoidance. We allow the interaction ranges to adapt to the group density. This range adaption results in topology changes as well as discontinuities in those social forces. We apply differential inclusion technique to analyze the convergence properties of the proposed control method. The analytical and numerical results show that all the agents eventually align their velocities and avoid collisions with each other no matter how fast the topology changes.

Coordinated Checkpointing Algorithms for Mobile Agent Environments

Mobile agent execution environments have many features that are different from traditional distributed execution environments such as: mobility, autonomy and limited data size. If a failure occurs in an application where mobile agents cooperate and there is no appropriate method to protect it, more cost will be wasted for restarting the program. This investigation proposes checkpointing algorithms based on four mobile agent coordination models: direct coordination, blackboard-based coordination, meeting-oriented coordination and Linda-like coordination models. These algorithms consider the influence of spatial and temporal coupling on mobile agent coordination, and are easy to implement. Therefore, the checkpointing overhead can be reduced when mobile agents cooperate to complete a task in a multi-agent system. Finally, the experiments and our findings suggest the appropriate coordination algorithms for different applications.

An embeddable mobile agent platform supporting runtime code mobility, interaction and coordination of mobile agents and host systems

Agent technology is emerging as an important concept for the development of distributed complex systems. A number of mobile agent systems have been developed in the last decade. However, most of them were developed to support only Java mobile agents. In order to provide distributed applications with code mobility, this article presents a library, the Mobile-C library, that allows a mobile agent platform, Mobile-C, to be embeddable in an application to support mobile C/C++ codes carried by mobile agents. Mobile-C uses a C/C++ interpreter as its Agent Execution Engine (AEE). Through the Mobile-C library, Mobile-C can be embedded into an application to support mobile C/C++ codes carried by mobile agents. Using mobile C/C++ codes, it is easy to interface a variety of low-level hardware devices and legacy systems. Through the Mobile-C library, Mobile-C can run on heterogeneous platforms with various operating systems. The Mobile-C library has a small footprint to meet the stringent memory capacity for applications in mechatronic and embedded systems. The Mobile-C library contains different categories of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in both binary and agent spaces to facilitate the design of mobile agent based applications. In addition, a rich set of existing APIs for the C/C++ interpreter employed as the AEE allows an application to have complete information and control over the mobile C/C++ codes residing in Mobile-C. With the synchronization mechanism provided by the Mobile-C library for both binary and agent spaces, simultaneous processes across both spaces can be coordinated to get correct runtime order and avoid unexpected race condition. The study of performance comparisons indicates that Mobile-C is about two times faster than JADE in agent migration. The application of the Mobile-C library is illustrated by dynamic runtime control of a mobile robot’s behavior using mobile agents.

A low cost vision based localization system using fiducial markers

This paper investigates a mobile robot self-localization system based on fiducial markers which are placed on the ceiling. Recently there have been many articles related to path planning and coordination of mobile agents within an unknown environment. These algorithms demand dedicated (and often expensive) hardware that is capable of handling complex tasks in real time. In this paper, we have explored the possibility to realize an inexpensive and simple navigation system, based on passive fiducial markers, which are able to guide an autonomous mobile robot along a predefined path. Fiducial markers provide not only improved performance in runtime, but also much better identification and localization. Marker design based on circle shape is presented. Using a low-cost webcam and appropriate marker detection algorithm three features are determined: robot position, new movement direction and marker ID. Experimental results are presented at the end of the paper.

The mobile groups approach for the coordination of mobile agents

We present the concept of mobile groups as a basic mechanism for the reliable coordination of mobile agents. Analogously to traditional group systems, mobile groups also provide message delivery guarantees and virtual synchrony. Furthermore, they make agent mobility not only visible for the group, but also consistently ordered with other group actions (such as crashes, joins, leaves, and other migrations). The mobile groups approach represents a novel mobility support mechanism, which can be used to handle reliability of mobile agents required at both, the application and system level (e.g., for coordinating distributed agents and for reliable agent migration, respectively). In this paper, we discuss the motivations for the mobile groups approach, formally define their properties, and present a membership protocol for such groups. We also discuss some implementation issues and related performance data, and present the advantages of mobile groups against mechanisms commonly employed for the coordination of mobile agents.

A Hybrid Agent Platform Composed of Cooperating Intelligent Agents And Mobile Agents

This article presents IMAP, a hybrid intelligent and mobile agent platform. IMAP is implemented in Java and Prolog. Java is used to implement the framework of the system, and in particular for supporting communication between agents and mobility of the agent, whereas Prolog is used to implement both adduction and derivation mechanisms. IMAP is intended to independently employ the underlying derivation/adduction and mobility mechanism. In IMAP, an intelligent agent and a mobile agent can not only fully exploit their individual merits, but also cooperate to perform a task under a uniform platform. Each intelligent agent can accept queries from mobile agents by means of the interface module; each query is passed to the reasoning module of the intelligent agent, which performs a derivation and adduction in order to get an answer for the mobile agent. IMAP also provides mobile agents with a flexible and efficient coordination mechanism. A mobile agent's coordination mechanism exploits the advantages of the XML language and Linda-like coordination. The design and implementation key technologies of IMAP are described in this work. An application example shows the suitability and the effectiveness of the IMAP, followed by conclusions and some remarks.

Design and Implementation of a Hybrid Agent Platform

This paper presents IMAP, a hybrid agent platform composed of several cooperating intelligent agents and mobile agents. IMAP is implemented in Java and Prolog. Java is used to implement the framework of the system, and in particular for supporting the communication between agents and mobility of agent, while Prolog is used to implement both adduction and derivation mechanisms. IMAP intends to independently employ the underlying derivation/adduction and mobility mechanism. In IMAP, intelligent agent and mobile agent can not only fully exploit individual virtue, but also cooperate to perform a task under a uniform platform. Intelligent agents in IMAP are equipped with hypothetical reasoning capabilities, performed by means of adduction: if the knowledge available to an agent is insufficient to solve a query, the agent could adduce new hypotheses. Each intelligent agent can accept queries from mobile agents by means of the interface module, each query is passed to the reasoning module of intelligent agent which performs a derivation and adduction in order to get an answer for mobile agent. IMAP also provides mobile agents a flexible and efficient coordination mechanism and a reliable migration mechanism, and supports persistence of agent state and agent security. Mobile agent's coordination mechanism exploits the advantages of the XML language and Linda-like coordination. This programmable Linda-like coordination mechanism suits the mobility and openness of the Internet application, XML standard for Internet data representation may guarantee a high-degree of interoperability between heterogeneous environments. The design and implementation key technologies of IMAP are described in this paper. An Internet based auction application example shows the suitability and the effectiveness of the IMAP, and its performance evaluation is also made. Finally, some conclusions and remarks are given.

Mobile Agent Coordination for Distributed Network Management

Mobile agents are a promising technology to face the problems raised by the increasing complexity and size of today's networks. In particular, in the area of network management, mobile agents can lead to a fully distributed paradigm to overcome the limits of traditional centralized approaches. A basic requirement for the management of a complex network is the definition of high-level and flexible models to coordinate the accesses to the resources—data and services—provided by the network nodes. On this basis, this paper describes the MARS coordination architecture for mobile agents. MARS is based on the definition of programmable tuple spaces associated with the network nodes: mobile agents can access the local resources and services via the tuple space, thus adopting a standard and high-level interface. The network administrator—via mobile agents—can dynamically program the behavior of the tuple space in reaction to the agents' access to the tuple space, thus leading to a flexible network model. Several examples show the effectiveness of the MARS approach in supporting network management activities.