Technology
Our Goals:
Simplify design, development, deployment and management of complex real-time systems
Empower continuous improvements (kaizen) - changes are inevitable
Lower skill requirements and empower domain experts to develop systems
Integration - unlock information from hardware / software islands
Our Approach:
Reactive agents - relatively simple components that interact in basic ways
Composite applications - assemble from agents, intelligence emerges through collaboration. Complex patterns of behavior
emerge from these interactions when the ensemble of agents is viewed globally
Packaged functionality - reusable agent libraries. Ability to create vertical domain-specific language
Targeted tools for developers and domain experts
Don't reinvent the wheel - use standard languages, component architectures and tools
What We Build:
Real-time framework
Development tools
Distributed runtime environment
Simplify design, development, deployment and management of complex real-time systems Empower continuous improvements (kaizen) - changes are inevitable Lower skill requirements and empower domain experts to develop systems Integration - unlock information from hardware / software islandsOur Approach:
Reactive agents - relatively simple components that interact in basic ways Composite applications - assemble from agents, intelligence emerges through collaboration. Complex patterns of behavioremerge from these interactions when the ensemble of agents is viewed globally
Packaged functionality - reusable agent libraries. Ability to create vertical domain-specific language Targeted tools for developers and domain experts Don't reinvent the wheel - use standard languages, component architectures and toolsWhat We Build:
Real-time framework Development tools Distributed runtime environment
OUR APPROACH ALLOWS US TO MODEL ANY COMPLEX SYSTEM AS A COLLECTION OF INTERACTING AGENTS:
...in order to build a system that is intelligent, it is necessary to have representations grounded in the physical world (Brooks, 1991a). This hypothesis is quite radical and it turns, literally, the physical symbol system hypothesis 'on its head'. Brooks argues that this hypothesis obviates the need for symbolic representations or models because the world becomes its own best model. Furthermore, this model is always kept up-to-date since the system is connected to the world via sensors and/or actuators. Hence, the reactive agents hypothesis may be stated as follows: smart agent systems can be developed from simple agents which do not have internal symbolic models, and whose 'smartness' derives from the emergent behavior of the interactions of the various modules.
The key benefits which motivates reactive agents work is that they are more robust and fault tolerant than other
agent-based systems, e.g. an agent may be lost but without any catastrophic effects. Other benefits include
flexibility and adaptability in contrast to the inflexibility, slow response times and brittleness of classical AI systems.
The key benefits which motivates reactive agents work is that they are more robust and fault tolerant than other
agent-based systems, e.g. an agent may be lost but without any catastrophic effects. Other benefits include
flexibility and adaptability in contrast to the inflexibility, slow response times and brittleness of classical AI systems.
British Telecom’s research, technology and IT operations group
Software Agents: An Overview
Software Agents: An Overview
These agents model various system aspects such as hardware components (sensors, actuators, barcode and RFID readers, etc.), software components (various packaged applications, databases and middleware) and logical components (rules, state machines, sequences, flows, etc.) The As One Agent Development Toolkit allows software developers to package functionality into binary, reusable components. The As One Ggraphical Solution Editor is used to create system models from above components. The As One Solution Editor generates XML files that are used by Runtime to load, host and provide communication between Agents. Solutions are individually manageable and may be added or removed from Runtime at any time. Agents may interact across Solutions and Runtimes, providing endless extensibility to the System.
