DAISY: an object-oriented system for Distributed Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

This paper presents an object-oriented distributed system, called DAISY, for the development and experimentation of Distributed Artificial Intelligence systems and algorithms. This system is based on two programming levels: object level and agent level. Both the levels allow to define, implement and experiment systems. While the object level offers a large set of “low level” programming means (a large set of program constructs, a set of “low level” communication procedures, and so on), the agent level, which is implemented on the object level, offers a limited set of “high level” programming means (few program constructs, a fixed set of “high level” communication procedures derived by speech act theory and a fixed set of “high level” procedures to manage agent’s knowledge). In particular, the paper shows the use of DAISY for modeling an airline reservation scenario and a manufacturing plant scenario.