A study on the mechanism for mobile embedded agent development based on product line

Abstract

In most mobile embedded agent systems (MEAS), agents are required to achieve their own goals. An agent's goals, however, can conflict with others either when agents compete with each other to achieve a common goal or when they have to use a set of limited resources to accomplish agents' divergent goals. In either case, agents need to be designed to reach a mutual acceptable state where they can avoid any goal conflicts through negotiation with others to achieve their goals. In this paper, we consider that a ABCD architecture, as a shorthand for Architecture platform, Business, Common, and Domain is a core component of agents' mental attitudes and represent resource-bounded ABCD agents in logic programming framework. We propose an algorithm in which ABCD agents with different goals solve their problems through negotiation resolving goal conflicts. Finally, we develop a negotiation meta-language to show the effectiveness of the negotiation system proposed in this paper. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.