Wilma Russo

Agent-oriented smart objects development

The Internet of Things (IoT) term is recently emerging to envision a global infrastructure of networked physical objects. As different definitions of IoT do currently exist, we specifically refer to IoT as a loosely coupled, decentralized system of smart objects (SOs), which are autonomous physical/digital objects augmented with sensing/actuating, processing, and networking capabilities. SOs are able to sense, log, and interpret information generated within themselves and around the neighboring external world where they are situated, act on their own, cooperate with each other, and exchange information with humans. The development of a IoT based on SOs raises many issues involving hw/sw system architecture and application development methodology. A few approaches (e.g. FedNet, UbiComp, Smart Products) have been to date proposed to support the vision of an SO-based IoT infrastructure. In this paper we first discuss the suitability of the agent paradigm and technology to effectively support the development of such an IoT infrastructure and then propose a multi-layered agent-based architecture for the development of proactive, cooperating and context-aware smart objects. Our architecture takes into account a wide variety of smart objects, from reactive to proactive, from small to very large, from stand-alone to social. The implementation phase can be based on multiple agent languages and platforms (JADE, JADEX, LEAP, MAPS) atop heterogeneous computing systems (computers, smartphones, and sensor nodes).

Integration of agent-based and Cloud Computing for the smart objects-oriented IoT

In the future Internet of Things (IoT), smart objects will be the fundamental building blocks for the creation of cyber-physical smart pervasive systems in a great variety of application domains ranging from health-care to transportation, from logistics to smart grid and cities. The implementation of a smart objects-oriented IoT is a complex challenge as distributed, autonomous, and heterogeneous IoT components at different levels of abstractions and granularity need to cooperate among themselves, with conventional networked IT infrastructures, and also with human users. In this paper, we propose the integration of two complementary mainstream paradigms for large-scale distributed computing: Agents and Cloud. Agent-based computing can support the development of decentralized, dynamic, cooperating and open IoT systems in terms of multi-agent systems. Cloud computing can enhance the IoT objects with high performance computing capabilities and huge storage resources. In particular, we introduce a cloud-assisted and agent-oriented IoT architecture that will be realized through ACOSO, an agent-oriented middleware for cooperating smart objects, and BodyCloud, a sensor-cloud infrastructure for large-scale sensor-based systems.

Enabling IoT interoperability through opportunistic smartphone-based mobile gateways

In the near future, all our everyday things and objects will be both connected to the Internet and equipped with enough sensing, acting and processing capabilities to exploit the full potential benefits of the so called Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Even the simplest objects will become smart because they will be interconnected to other objects to share and collect data from the environments in which they are placed thus paving the way to novel application services, computing and communication scenarios.In this context, interoperability among different standards and communication technologies is still a significant challenge that we have started to address by proposing a smartphone-based mobile gateway acting as a flexible and transparent interface between different IoT devices and the Internet. The presented unified, high-level and extendible software architecture supports opportunistic IoT devices discovery, control and management coupled with data processing, collection and diffusion functionalities.A specific testbed on common smartphones with different hardware and software capabilities was deployed to evaluate the real feasibility of the designed solution measuring the system performance in terms of energy consumption, memory and CPU usage in high and low load scenarios. According to the obtained results, the implemented software architecture for multi-standard and multi-technology interoperation presents a reduced use of hardware resources in front of a relatively high energy consumption value, mostly due to the simultaneously active radio interfaces combined with a small battery capacity, that limits the smartphone lifetime. Nevertheless, the presented general approach is still remarkable because this latter aspect will most likely be exceeded, in a short time, thanks to daily technological advancements in both batteries and radio interfaces.

Middlewares for Smart Objects and Smart Environments: Overview and Comparison

In the last few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) is gaining more and more attention both in the academic and in the industrial worlds. IoT is a concept describing a vision in which everyday objects will be connected to the Internet, will be identified, and will, possibly, communicate with other devices. These objects are typically referred as “smart objects”, which can be defined as real artifacts augmented with computing, communication, sensing/actuation and storing functionalities. Their importance resides in the capabilities they have to make physical environments “smart” so as to provide novel cyberphysical services to people. In the last years, several middlewares for SOs were proposed. Middlewares, widely used in conventional distributed systems, are fundamental tools for the design and implementation of smart objects as well as of smart environment applications. They provide general and specific abstractions (e.g. object computation model, inter-object communication, sensory/actuation interfaces, discovery service, knowledge management) through which smart objects and their related applications can be easily built up. In this chapter, we present an overview of middlewares for smart objects and smart environments and compare them according to the most important general and specific requirements that have been identified in the literature so far. Moreover, such middlewares are also compared according to a feature-oriented framework to better highlight their distinctive properties. The comparison therefore provides a clear picture about the suitability of such middlewares to support the development of SO-based IoT systems. Finally, the chapter will briefly discuss on-going challenges in this research area.

An Agent-Based Middleware for Cooperating Smart Objects

This paper proposes an agent-oriented and event-based framework for the development of cooperating smart objects. Smart objects are objects of the real life augmented with computing, communication, sensing/actuation and storing functionalities. They are the building blocks of the future Internet of Things (IoT) towards the construction of complex smart environments. In the proposed framework, smart objects are modelled as agents that can cooperate as a multi-agent system to fulfill specific goals. The framework implementation relies on the JADE middleware that provides an effective agent management and communication infrastructure. In particular, cooperating smart objects can be implemented as JADE or Jadex agents and can cooperate through direct coordination based on ACL message passing and spatio-temporal decoupled coordination based on a topic-based publish/subscribe. A simple yet effective case study referring to a smart office environment constituted by two cooperating smart objects, is presented to elucidate the proposed approach.

A Statecharts-based Software Development Process for Mobile Agents

Abstract Although mobile agents and their supporting infrastructures have been extensively developed, it is still an emerging technology. A wider acceptance of mobile agents would be facilitated with the exploitation of suitable methodologies and tools which fully support their development lifecycle. This paper proposes a Statecharts-based development process for mobile agents, which allows for a seamless transition from the specification of mobile agent behaviour to its implementation and adaptation to target mobile agent systems. In particular, modelling of the mobile agent behaviour is visual and its coding is seamlessly supported by the Mobile Active Object Framework. The coded agent behaviour can be adapted to platform-specific mobile agents by means of the Mobile Agent Adaptation Framework thus enabling re-use of existing mobile agent systems.

easyABMS: A domain-expert oriented methodology for agent-based modeling and simulation

Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation (ABMS) has arisen as new approach to effectively support domain experts to cope with the growing complexity of the problems which they have to face and solve. To date, few methodologies are available which can be exploited by domain experts with limited programming expertise to model and subsequently analyze complex systems typical of their application domains. In this paper the easyABMS methodology is proposed to overcome the lack of integrated methodologies able to seamlessly guide domain experts from the analysis of the system under consideration to its modeling and analysis of simulation results. The effectiveness of easyABMS is also experimented through a case study in the logistics domain which concerns the analysis of different policies for managing vehicles used for stacking and moving containers in a transhipment terminal.

Using event-driven lightweight DSC-based agents for MAS modelling

To date several agent models and related programming frameworks have been introduced for developing distributed applications in terms of multi-agent systems in open and dynamic environments. Among them, those based on lightweight architectures, asynchronous messages/events and state-based programming such as JADE, Bond and Actors have demonstrated great effectiveness for modelling open and distributed software systems. In this paper, we propose the event-driven lightweight distilled statecharts-based agent (ELDA) model which is based on the same fundamentals of the aforementioned agent models and frameworks, and provides a more effective design enabled by: a Statecharts-based specification of the agent behaviour, multiple coordination spaces for local/remote inter-agent and agent/non-agent-component interactions, and a coarse-grained strong agent mobility. A MAS based on the ELDA model can be easily designed through the ELDA meta-model and programmed through a Java-based implementation of the meta-model (ELDAFramework). Visual programming and automatic code generation of the MAS under-development is supported by an Eclipse-based visual tool (ELDATool). The produced MAS code can be executed by a discrete-event simulator framework (ELDASim) which allows for the validation of the MAS under-development. A simple yet effective case study is provided to exemplify the proposed model and its related tools.

ELDAMeth: An agent-oriented methodology for simulation-based prototyping of distributed agent systems

In application domains, such as distributed information retrieval, content management and distribution, e-Commerce, the agent-based computing paradigm has been demonstrated to be effective for the analysis, design and implementation of distributed software systems. In particular, several agent-oriented methodologies, incorporating suitable agent models, frameworks and tools, have been to date defined to support the development lifecycle of distributed agent systems (DAS). However, few of them provide effective validation methods to analyze design objects at different degrees of refinement before their actual implementation and deployment. In this paper, ELDAMeth, a simulation-based methodology for DAS, which enables rapid prototyping based on visual programming, validation, and automatic code generation for JADE-based DAS, is presented. ELDAMeth can be used both stand-alone for the modeling and evaluation of DAS and coupled with other agent-oriented methodologies for enhancing them with simulation-based validation. In particular, the proposed methodology, which is based on the ELDA (Event-driven Lightweight Distilled StateCharts-based Agents) agent model, provides key programming abstractions (event-driven computation, multi-coordination, and coarse-grained strong mobility) very suitable for highly dynamic distributed computing and is supported by a CASE tool-driven iterative process seamlessly covering the detailed design, simulation, and implementation phases of DAS. A simple yet effective case study in the distributed information retrieval domain is used to illustrate the proposed methodology.

PASSIM: a simulation-based process for the development of multi-agent systems

This paper presents the Process for Agent Specification, Simulation and Implementation (PASSIM), a simulation-based development process for Multi-agent Systems (MASs), which was obtained by integrating the well-known and established Process for Agent Societies Specification and Implementation (PASSI) methodology and a Statecharts-based simulation methodology supporting functional and nonfunctional validation of the MAS being developed. PASSIM can be effectively used as an experimental tool in the context of Agent Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) for evaluating the benefits of using simulation for MAS development. To exemplify this process and demonstrate its effectiveness, a case study concerning the analysis, design and simulation of a complex MAS implementing an agent-based e-marketplace is defined and detailed.