An Architecture For A System of Mobile Agents

Abstract

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The system of mobile agents described here is like a beehive: agents (like bees) swarm off to do their duties, wandering to different places, and finally returning to their origin. The main insight of this work is how to specifically separate the different functionalities in such a system of mobile agents, and in particular a description of the cooperative processes is given. In fact, modeling the cooperation of agents is at the heart of this proposal. This paper proposes the specification of a mobile system in an object oriented specification language, thus permitting to model a system without binding it to a particular language, an implementation platform or a programming model. The specification is an architectural description of the system, focusing on its components, their functionalities and connectors. It helps making assumptions and hence properties of the system explicit, it will be used as a blueprint for the implementation of a framework which supports mobile agents.