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Multi-Agent Systems in Virtual Enterprises: Luís M. Camarinha-Matos
Multi-Agent Systems in Virtual Enterprises: Luís M. Camarinha-Matos
MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS
IN VIRTUAL ENTERPRISES
Luís M. Camarinha-Matos
VE
Network Member A
Remote places
WEB were implemented during the last years. Remote plan representation stationary agents
challenges in what concerns the reliability of the Mobile Agent MA current Residence Place of MA
implemented system and its dependence on the
characteristics of the network; ii) when practical Figure 8: Mobile agent structure
application domains are considered, high levels of
heterogeneity can be expected in terms of sensors and When dealing with remote operation, the agents must
equipment at the remote places, which can degrade the run with a high degree of autonomy in uncertain
flexibility and scalability of the system; and iii) the environments. To achieve this goal, an approach based on
composition of the execution environments are potentially general monitoring and recovery methods and on plans
unstructured and unknown, which means that it is not with annotations, intended to help the execution
adequate to resort to deterministically programmed monitoring and error recovery, was adopted in the
systems. Complementarily, the increased use of wireless mentioned work. A hierarchical plan structure was
networking (mobile / ubiquitous computing) requires considered, since, besides other advantages of hierarchical
short connection periods. planning, it allows the specification of monitors at various
levels of detail, which is quite appropriate for complex platform include:
domains. Furthermore, the hierarchical approach is a • External Enabler Level: Supports the communication
powerful mean to structure interesting monitoring and interfacing to the external devices.
strategies that range over a set of low level actions.
In addition to the mentioned generic advantages of a. Safe communications infrastructure that provides
the mobile agents approach [9], the remote supervision safe communications.
application can also benefit from the autonomy of the b. Device abstraction adaptor, interfaces to the
agents in order to not require a synchronous availability of sensors and monitoring devices and other hardware
the participants in different nodes as these participants can (home appliances, environment controllers, etc.).
delegate to their agent representatives the actual These interfaces represent the bridge to any
realization of some task, which will be done when the “intelligent home” or “local domotics1 network”
necessary conditions are satisfied. hiding aspects such as low-level protocols, wire-
based or wireless communications, etc.
4.2 Remote supervision in elderly care
Services Level
Care providers and relatives Elderly end users
The concept of virtual organization (VO) initially more
Components
Vertical Vertical
Specialized
focused on the industrial inter-enterprise cooperation, is Vertical Vertical Service Service
Service 3 4
now spreading to other less traditional domains such as Service
1 2
the elderly care sector. An integrated elderly care system Specialized Interfaces for elderly
comprises a number of organizations such as social
security institutions, care centers / day centers, health care Core MAS Platform Level
institutions, etc. and involves the cooperation of a number Agent reception
of different human actors e.g. social care assistants, health and registration Agent Factory Platform Manager
Basic Platform
supported by computer networks and adequate supporting Resources Manager Federated information Manager