Mansion: An Objectbased Distributed MultiAgent System

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Mansion An Object-based Distributed Multi-Agent
System
Guido van t Noordende, Frances Brazier, Maarten
van Steen, Andrew Tanenbaum Division of
Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of
sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands contact guido_at_cs.vu.nl
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Problem Statement

• We want to support the implementation of
  well-designed,large-scale Multi-Agent Systems
• The system should support heterogeneous (mobile)
  agents in a distributed environment consisting of
  heterogeneous hosts.
• The system should be flexible, scalable and
  secure.
• It should be possible to model applications using
  our system in relatively easy terms

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The Mansion Paradigm

• Paradigm based on Rooms containing Objects,
  Agents and Hyperlinks.
• Agents can interact with objects in the room
• and communicate with each other anywhere using
  message passing.
• Agents migrate logically by following hyperlinks,
  and decide on physical mobility independent of
  their logical location
• Physical location is orthogonal to logical
  location hosts are invisible at the logical
  level.

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Attic contains globally accessible services
Room 2
Room 1
Object
Agent
Hyperlink
Room 3
Basement Global location service for logical
entities such as agents
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World Elements

• Rooms are used to group objects and provide
  structure to an application
• A world topology can be used to provide
  structure. Think of a shopping mall with
  different stores, each modelled as disjunct sets
  of hyperlinked rooms
• Global services (e.g., yellow page services) can
  be placed in the attic

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Distributed deployment

• Rooms are a logical grouping
• Rooms are physically represented by a special
  object, the Room Monitor Object, that contains
  all necessary information about the state of a
  room and the entities in the room.
• The RMO can be implemented as a distributed
  object and can be accessed remotely.

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Agent Interaction

• Agents can interact with objects and take objects
  with them
• Usually, agents will meet and interact in the
  same room, but they may communicate with other
  agents, wherever they are
• Agents can be contacted using a
  location-independent identifier, that is resolved
  by the basement

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Agent Middleware

• A Middleware system is being designed that is
  based on the Mansion paradigm
• The system provides application-specific
  mechanisms for interacting with a world
• The middleware uses a location-transparent
  binding mechanism for accessing rooms, objects,
  and agents
• The system can make use of any distributed object
  architecture, and the design makes no assumptions
  about the underlying systems