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Agent-based architectural framework enhancing configurability, autonomy and scalability of context-aware pervasive services

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Abstract

Multi-agent software architectures have gained in popularity due to their beneficial behavior in designing and implementing sophisticated applications. However, current approaches in implementing such architectures have led to application-specific, non-scalable implementations which limit the reusablity and improvement of the whole architecture. Moreover, these attempts lack features to enhance the user experience, thus slowing the adoption of the resulting services. In this paper we describe a fully-fledged multi-agent architecture covering a large variety of preferred features including capabilities of ‘plugging’ ubiquitous services, servicing mobile users, interconnecting remote similar architectures and interfacing with advanced software components such as knowledge bases. This framework exploits a wide-range of context-aware components making it essentially context-aware, allowing for the development of ubiquitous context-aware human-centric services, which are the focus of our research. To illustrate the flexibility of this architectural framework, we present four services which were built using this architectural paradigm by different development teams and elaborate on their overall behavior.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Intelligent Systems and Networks Group, Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Imperial College, London, SW7 2BT, UK

    Nikolaos Dimakis

  2. Athens Information Technology, 0.8Km Markopoulou Avenue, 19002, Peania, Greece

    John Soldatos & Lazaros Polymenakos

  3. Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing, Fraunhoferstraße 1, 76131, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Axel Bürkle, Uwe Pfirrmann & Gerhard Sutschet

Authors
  1. Nikolaos Dimakis
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  2. John Soldatos
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  3. Lazaros Polymenakos
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  4. Axel Bürkle
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  6. Gerhard Sutschet
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Correspondence to Nikolaos Dimakis.

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Dimakis, N., Soldatos, J., Polymenakos, L. et al. Agent-based architectural framework enhancing configurability, autonomy and scalability of context-aware pervasive services. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 21, 36–68 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-009-9101-1

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