Here - Agents Lab - University of Nottingham

Although some success [13] [14] have been made in the literature for solvingthe joint action and configuration planning problems at a global level for heterogeneousrobotic ecologies or to enable their purely reactive configuration [15], wepropose to distribute certain aspects of these tasks over a number of agents withvarying responsibilities and functionalities in order to lead to better scalability,robustness and fault tolerance.Agent and Multi Agent Systems (MASs) are regarded as a general-purposeparadigm to facilitate the co-ordination of complex systems built in terms ofloosely-coupled, situated, autonomous and social components (the agents). Inparticular, the Belief Desire Intention (BDI) agent model, used in the Self -OSGiframework discussed in the following section, provides a simple but extensiblemodel of agency that explicitly addresses the production of rational and autonomousbehaviour by agents with limited computational resources.3 Self -OSGiSelf -OSGi [3] [4] is a BDI agent framework built on OSGi Java technology andpurposefully designed to support the type of collaboration envisaged within theubiquitous and embedded systems targeted by RUBICON.The component & service orientation used in the design of Self -OSGi is anhighly popular, mainstream approach used to build modular software systems.Component & service frameworks operate by posing clear boundaries (in termsof provided and required service interfaces) between software components andby guiding the developers in re-using and assembling these components intoapplications. Self -OSGi addresses the lack of common adaptation mechanismsin these frameworks by leveraging their previously unexploited similarities withthe BDI agent model.3.1 OSGiOSGi specification [5] is currently the most widely adopted technology for buildingmodular control systems for networked home applications, with many implementationstargeting computationally constrained platforms. Within the AALdomain, OSGi-based middleware have long been used to provide the technicalbasis for integrating network devices and services, e.g. in EU projects such asAmigo, OASIS, SOPRANO, and their recent consolidation in the UniversAALplatform.OSGi defines a standardised component model and a lightweight containerframework, built above the JVM, which is used as a shared platform for networkprovisionedservices and components specified through Java interfaces and Javaclasses. Each OSGi platform facilitates the dynamic installation and managementof units of deployment, called bundles, by acting as a host environmentwhereby various applications can be executed and managed in a secured andmodularised environment. An OSGi bundle is packaged in a Jar file and organisesthe frameworks internal state and manages its core functionalities. These73