Conflict Resolution Method for Multi-context Situation

Abstract

In ubiquitous environment, each agent tires to aware the context. Usually, the context which agent tries to recognize, consists of different information. Even if several agents are in the same environment, each agent’s contexts are different. As every agent has different intention in the process of interaction with the environment, the view of each agent to the environment is different from others’ view. This difference in awareness of each agent can cause the conflict. As every agent behaves based on its own context, an agent’s action can interrupt other agent’s action. In this paper, we propose a novel solution for conflict management where several agents exist with different views for one situation. In this solution, two middleware agents are employed. One is the conflict manager which overlooks the whole situation and decides whether the requests of agents lead to the collision with existing requests. The other is the scheduler which selects which request should be performed according to the priority. With these middleware agents, the conflict can be effectively resolved by maximizing the usage of resources and minimizing the cancellation of requests.

This research is supported by the ubiquitous Autonomic Computing and Network Project, the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) 21st Century Frontier R&D Program in Korea.