ACCESS: An Agent Architecture for Ubiquitous Service Delivery [chapter]

Conor Muldoon, Gregory O'Hare, Donnacha Phelan, Robin Strahan, Rem Collier
2003 Lecture Notes in Computer Science  
This paper introduces the Agents Channeling ContExt Sensitive Services (ACCESS) architecture, an agent-based architecture that supports the development and deployment of context sensitive services. Specifically, ACCESS is comprised of two sub-systems: a run-time system that delivers the minimum functionality necessary to execute ACCESS Agents, and a development environment that delivers structured tool-based support for the creation, development, and visualization of u-commerce services.
more » ... Work Considerable research has been invested of late in the deployment of agents in the ubiquitous and mobile computing arena. Many such systems deliver context sensitive services. Agents2Go [12] is representative in this respect and constitutes an agent based distributed system that provides mobile users with location dependent services and information. It consists of a PalmApp, residing on the PDA, together with several server side components namely the Agents2Go Server, the Locator and the Agents2Go Information Repository. An initial prototype delivers restaurant based information. Thus two further components are used to provide this specific service, the Restaurant Broker and the Restaurant Agent. The Agent2Go Server handles all communication to and from the PalmApp. The user's location is determined by simple base cell identification. Static information about the restaurants (such as their address, phone number, etc) is stored on the Information Repository. Dynamic content (such as the menu and prices) is handled by the Restaurant Broker. Each restaurant has a Restaurant Agent that allows them to update the information in the Broker. Restaurants are assigned to a Broker that handles a specified region. This facilitates system scalability. A user's request for information to the Agent2Go Server is passed to the Locator, which determines the Broker best suited to respond to the request. The Broker then formulates a response from its store of dynamic information. This response is sent to the Agent2Go Server, which combines it with static content from the Information Repository to form the complete response which is dispatched to the PalmApp. Numerous m-commerce applications have been developed including Agora [5], Impulse [15] and Easishop [6]. Agora is based on the Zeus Agent Framework [8] and permits shoppers equipped with a PDA to interact with services offered by stores at a mall, whether they are at the mall or in close proximity to it. Stores and shoppers are represented by agents. The shopper agent acts as a personal shopping assistant and bidder. When the user enters the mall they indicate to the mall server what product(s) they wish to purchase. The user chooses the product and quantity together with the maximum price they are willing to pay. This information is passed to an English Auction agent. The auction agent holds auctions on behalf of store agents for the requested products. It allows any number of bidding agents to participate in an English auction of fixed length. If the user wins the auction, payment for the product is made and the transaction is completed. Easi-shop utilises the Agent Factory system [3, 4, 10] and similarly provides a market place where shopper agents may migrate in order to participate in an auction process on behalf of the user. The Impulse project developed at MIT Media Lab [15] in contrast uses the Hive [14] system of agents, also developed by MIT Media Lab merely assists the user in the location of products and does not support auctioning or purchase. Mihailescu and Binder [7] have proposed an m-commerce framework based on mobile agents. It provides three agent types Device, Service and Courier agents. The Device agent resides fixed on the mobile device, handling the presentation of information to the user and communication between the device and Service Agents. Service Agents handle user requests to service providers. Service agents typically store information from prior user interactions in order to personalise future content. Courier Agents are single hop lightweight agents that are transmitted to the mobile devices by the Service Agents. They carry information that can be displayed to the user and can be destroyed once reaching their target. but the Device Agent can also cache them to aid storing the current status of a transaction in case of failure. Of the five systems all but one involve determining the user's location in order to provide context sensitive information. However no two systems use the same method of doing so. Agents2Go uses cell-based location; Agora uses infrared sensors embed-
doi:10.1007/978-3-540-45217-1_1 fatcat:nyuhnh7qq5cxtlo74v5unai75a