A Context-Aware Multi-Agent System as a Middleware for Ambient Intelligence
Résumé
There is currently a lot of work in Ambient Intelligence—or AmI—reporting on specific scenarios, or on implementations of particular cases. In the same time, there is a common agreement of the fact that AmI applications should be pervasive, covering a large number of devices, assisting a large number of people, and serving a large number of purposes. In an attempt to achieve scalable scenarios and implementations, we have focused our research on the development of a generic middleware layer for the context-aware transfer and exchange of information between devices. This paper presents a model for a such middleware, based on software agents, in which context-awareness is implemented both in the agent’s representation of context information, and in the logical topology of the agent system. The model is oriented towards decentralization of the system and relies mostly on local behavior. The paper also reports on several proof-of-concept applications that have been developed and tested using the proposed model, proving thus the validity of the approach.