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6 Improvement of the agent systemThe agent system is rather simple so it can be extended in many ways.First, a real text-based communication language and a content language can be used for acleaner communication.Then some performance issues could be considered. A multiagent system involves a lot ofmultithreading. Sometimes it is better to create new threads, sometimes not. Furthermore,distribution raises the problem of load balancing. The directory facilitator could be improvedin order to select providers based on criteria like the current load on the agents’ host. It caneven be thought about allowing for mobile agents for dynamic load rebalancing. The agentsystem should not be too hard to extend in that direction. Real tests should make loadproblems clearer.Lastly, our current agents are “lightweight” in the sense that their autonomy and“intelligence” are limited. Nevertheless they will certainly evolve in the future and get moreand more “intelligence” as the application and its algorithms get more sophisticated. It couldthen be useful to provide higher-level layers in the agent design. For example, explicit supportfor agent states and transitions could be added for a direct implementation of state diagrams,or a Prolog-like inference engine for defining a rule-based behaviour.For the time being, these issues, particularly those from subsections 1 to 3, are being activelyresearched in the LEOPARD project.MSc EMOOSE Thesis – http://www.emn.fr/EMOOSE 53