Transcript Sheffield Hallam University Overview

Mobile Agents
Martin Beer,
School of Computing & Management Sciences,
Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield,
United Kingdom
[email protected]
Overview
• Introduction to Mobile Agents
– What are they?
– How can they be used?
• A Currentb Example
– The LEAP Project
• The Future
Mobile Agents
• software processes which can:
 roam wide area networks
 interact with foreign hosts
 perform tasks on behalf of their owners
 return ‘home’
Mobile Agents:
Key Hypothesis
• in certain applications, they provide practical,
though non-functional, advantages which
escape their static counterparts
“imagine having to download many images just to
pick out one. Is it not more natural to get your
agent to ‘go’ to that location, do a local search and
only transfer the chosen compressed image back
across the network?”
Part View of Telescript
Architecture
WAN
WAN
PROCESS
PROCESS
Local
Local
Agent
Agent
Mobile
Mobile
Agent
Agent
190.0.1.25
190.0.1.25
190.0.1.26
190.0.1.26
Going
Goingtoto
190.0.1.25
190.0.1.25
Telescript
Telescript
Engine
Engine
Telescript
TelescriptAPI
API
Server/Operating
Server/Operatingsystem
system
Telescript Concepts
Concept
Concept
process
process the
thetop
topclass
classin
inTelescript’s
Telescript’sobject
objecthierarchy
hierarchy
Telescript
Telescript aapre-emptive
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whichcan
canrun
runmultiple
multiple
processes
engine
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place
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containan
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meet
two or
ormore
moreagents
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can meet
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and use
use each
each other’s
other’s
meet
services
services
The Telescript ‘go’ operation
• Host engine:
 requires destination
place
 packages up the
agent along with all
its data, stack and
instruction pointer
 ships it off to
destination place
• Destination engine:
 unpacks agent
 checks its
authentication
 agent now free to
resume execution at
this new place
 on completion of
tasks, agent returns
to original host
Mobile Agents:
Development Languages
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Telescript
Java
Agent-Tcl
Safe-Tcl
Xlips
C/C++
indeed any programming language
Mobile Agents:
Applications
System
System
Sony’s
Sony’sMagic
MagicLink
Link
PDA
PDA
Application
ApplicationDomain
Domain
assists
assistsin
inmanaging
managingaauser’s
user’se-mail,
e-mail,fax,
fax,phone
phoneand
andpager
pager
links
linksthe
theuser
usertotoTelescript-enabled
Telescript-enabledmessaging
messagingand
and
communication
communicationservices
services
France
mobile
FranceTelecom
Telecom
mobileTelescript
Telescriptagents
agentsintegrate
integraterailway
railwayticketing
ticketingand
and
prototype
car
prototype
carrenting
rentingservices
services
IBM
IBMCommunication
Communication mobile
mobileagents
agentsprovide
provideaacommunications
communicationssuper-service
super-service
System
capable
System
capableof
ofrouting
routingand
andtranslating
translatingcommunications
communicationsfrom
from
one
oneservice
serviceand
andmedium
mediumto
toanother
another
BT
mobile
BTLaboratories
Laboratories
mobileC/C++
C/C++agents
agentscontrol
controlaatelecommunications
telecommunications
prototype
network
prototype
network
Mobile Agents:
Key Challenges
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
transportation
authentication
secrecy and privacy
destination system security
cash
performance issues
interoperability/communication/brokering
services
The LEAP Project
•Acronym:
Lightweight Extensible Agent Platform
•Reference:
IST-1999-10211
•Effort: 433.6 Man/Months
•Budget:
5.4 Millions Euros
•Run:
Jan 2000 - June 2002
•Consortium:
•
Motorola (prime contractor)
•
ADAC
•
British Telecommunications
•
Broadcom
•
Telecom Italia Labs
•
University of Parma
•
Siemens
LEAP
EU
RTD IST
The mobile workforce
Commercial, maintenance, assistance activities are inherently mobile.
 A trend which has been revolutionized by the new methods of communication
(cellular phones and Internet), and which extends to new kinds of mobile
workers.
Remaining issues:
 Centralized management is not suited to this type of architecture;
 No/limited access to information;
 Expertise/Knowledge of the mobile team is under exploited;
 Lack of social integration.
The LEAP objectives
Develop an architecture and applications, which support a
mobile enterprise workforce.
•Decentralised teamwork co-ordination
• Collective decision making
• Flexibility in work scheduling (e.g. job swapping)
• Creation of virtual teams
•Travel management
• Anticipating workers’ travel needs
• Providing guidance and time estimation
• Synchronising the movements of virtual teams
•Knowledge Management
• Anticipating workers’ knowledge requirements
• Accessing and customising knowledge
• Networking individuals with each other, based on their expertise
LEAP applications
•Agent: an autonomous piece of software that acts on behalf of its user
and communicates, co-operates and negotiates with its peers in order to
achieve its goals.
•Agents and the mobile workforce:
 Some similarities (distributed, autonomous, goal driven);
 Dynamic and open architecture (flexible, peer to peer);
 Customize services according to users’ specific needs;
 Enable emergence of intelligent behaviours.
•Generic services: swap-shift, plan-route, make-collective-decision, findexpert…
•JADE-LEAP a standard agent platform that runs on devices from phones
to PDA to desktops.
Technical scenario
Jobs
DB
Selection of
Field Engineer
based on
personal
preferences
Geogr.
DB
Specific
work
request
Work
Scheduler
Travel to Job
Guidance (Route planning)
Customer
Field
Engineer
Repair fault
Information (Expert, Technical)
Update (Experience)
Find-relevant-information
Information (Traffic)
Traffic
Plan-route
Find-relevant-information
Estimate-route-cost
BT
Find-expert
Expertise
DB
Update-knowledge
Social scenario
Social
Events
DB
Geogr.
DB
Jobs
DB
Field Engineer
B
A
C
Field Engineer
Trade work (Shifts, Holidays, Overtime)
Organize meetings (Event, Location, Time)
D
Plan-route
Swap-shift
Make-collective-decision
Coordinate-social-activity
Field Engineer
Field Engineer
Field trials
ADAC - Yellow Angel Trial
ADAC employs 1,700 “Yellow Angels” for road-side assistance in Germany performing 9600
incidents / repair cases per day while driving 150,000 km.
Time: March-April 2002, duration 10 days
Localition: area of 100 km around Munich, Germany
Participants: 5 yellow angels (in shifts, more than 2 per shift)
How: Emulate several car breakdowns per day
BT - Field Engineer Trial
BT has 25,000 engineers performing 150,000 installation and repair tasks each day in the UK.
Time: March-April 2002, duration 14 days
Localition: area of Birmingham, UK
Participants: 10 Customer Service Team members (more than 2 per field unit to have some
social interaction)
How: Parallel working with current and LEAP systems within real work situations
What was Achieved?
Achievements:
 A FIPA compliant agent platform that runs on all Java editions (J2SE, J2ME,
pJava, J1.1.x). Released in open-source on September 26th, 2001;
 Validation of concept on a laboratory trial application: the cinema-organizer;
 Won the System Innovation Award at CIA’01 workshop, demonstrating the cinemaorganizer on Accompli008 through GSM and iPAQ through WaveLAN.
Next challenges:
 Complete applications (Integration of generic services, legacy systems and
databases)
 Heavy testing of the applications
 Prepare training and evaluation materials (user documentation, interviews)
 Run the field trials
 Evaluate the field trials
The future…
Agentcities.RTD and Agentcities.NET, two new European projects deploying a
worldwide network of agent platforms.
A lot of spin-off projects.
San Francisco
Active research concerns:
 Security, trust and privacy;
 Ontology sharing;
 Service clustering;
 Integration with m-Commerce;
 From specialization to personalization;
 Social and cultural impacts.
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