Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Language constructs for coordination in an agent space

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Book cover Distributed Software Agents and Applications (MAAMAW 1994)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1069))

Abstract

This paper describes an open language framework based on concurrent object-oriented programming. In this computational model, autonomous active objects are used to specify interacting agents. Many researchers have indicated the suitability of concurrent object-oriented programming as a base for multi-agent languages [Pog94][Sho93], but we claim that powerful coordination constructs are needed to achieve better expressive power in the language. Our language framework supports two kinds of semantics for coordination in the agent space:

  • Sender-initiated coordination by means of pattern-based group communication.

  • Receiver-initiated coordination by means of multi-object synchronisation constraints.

Both facilities are integrated in the type-system of the language. A type serves as a partial specification of an agent's behaviour. Type-based coordination combined with a meta-level enables an efficient simulation of the agent space on a distributed memory machine.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. G. Agha. ACTORS: A Model of Concurrent Computation in Distributed Systems. The MIT Press series in artificial intelligence, 1986.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Pierre America. Pool-T: A Parallel Object-Oriented Language. In M. Tokoro and A. Yonezawa, editors, Object-Oriented Concurrent Programming, pages 199–220. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Inc. American National Standards Institute. The Programming Language Ada Reference Manual. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 155, 1983.

    Google Scholar 

  4. S. Bijnens. The Correlate Language Definition and Architecture. Technical Report 94-4SB, Dept. of Computer Science, KULeuven, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Bob Bywater, Wouter Joosen; Stijn Bijnens, Pierre Verbaeten, Thomas Larsen, and John Perram. Parallel Simulation Software for Drug Design. In HPCN Europe 94, pages 189–196. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 796, Springer Verlag, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Stijn Bijnens, Wouter Joosen, Jan Pollet, Yolande Berbers, and Pierre Verbaeten. Active Objects, Message Passing and Concurrency Control in XENOOPS. In Proceedings of the TOOLS EUROPE'93 Workshop on Distributed Objects and Concurrency, March 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Stijn Bijnens, Wouter Joosen, and Pierre Verbaeten. A Reflective Invocation Scheme to Realise Advanced Object Management. In R. Guerraoui, O Nierstrasz, and M. Riveill, editors, Object-Based Distributed Programming, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 791, pages 139–151. Springer-Verlag, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Jacques Ferber. Computational Reflection in class-based object-oriented languages. In Proceedings of OOPSLA '89, pages 317–326. ACM Sigplan Notices, October 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Oscar Nierstrasz. Regular Types for Active Objects. In Proceedings of OOP-SLA '93, pages 1–15. ACM Sigplan Notices, October 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  10. A. Poggi. Agents and Resources Management with CUBL. In Proceedings of the 27th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pages 112–121. IEEE Computer Society Press, January 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Rajendra K. Ray, Ewan Tempero, and Henry M. Levy. Emerald: A General-Purpose Programming Language. Software: Practice and Experience, 21(1):91–92, January 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Y. Shoham. Agent-Oriented Programming. Artificial Intelligence, (60):51–92, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  13. T. Sueyoshi and M. Tokoro. Dynamic Modeling of Agents for Coordination. In Proceedings of the European Workshop on Modeling Autonomous Agents in a Multi-Agent World (MAAMAW'90), August 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  14. A. Yonezawa. ABCL: An Object Oriented Concurrent System. The MIT Press series in artificial intelligence, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, KULeuven, Belgium

    Stijn Bijnens, Wouter Joosen & Pierre Verbaeten

Authors
  1. Stijn Bijnens
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Wouter Joosen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Pierre Verbaeten
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

John W. Perram Jean-Pierre Müller

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Bijnens, S., Joosen, W., Verbaeten, P. (1996). Language constructs for coordination in an agent space. In: Perram, J.W., Müller, JP. (eds) Distributed Software Agents and Applications. MAAMAW 1994. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1069. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61157-6_24

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61157-6_24

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-61157-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68335-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation