Today, two interesting and important research fields are converging: nomadic computing and software agent technology. Nomadic computing enables access to the fixed network services from virtually anywhere and anytime. Nomadic users are not tied to any particular location or time, but they can use these services whenever needed.  Software agent technology has raised a great deal of enthusiasm in both research communities and commercial markets. As a higher abstraction level of the software development methodology, software agent technology is assumed to be an efficient design and implementation method for complex distributed systems. Combining these two technologies makes it possible to create a solid basis for future nomadic applications. 

In the nomadic computing, the environment undergoes  significant and rapid changes. This creates demands for adaptability. The ability to adjust automatically to changes in the environment in a transparent and integrated fashion is essential for nomadicity, as nomadic end-users usually demand the best obtainable service on every occasion. 

The research project Monads examines adaptation agents for nomadic users. In the project we have designed and implemented a software architecture based on software agents. We are not developing a new agent system but extending existing systems with mobility-oriented features. The Monads architecture is based on the Mowgli communications architecture that takes care of data transmission issues in wireless environments.  In addition, we have made use of existing solutions, such as FIPA specifications as far as possible. The principal idea in the Monads project has been that nomadic applications are offered information about the future quality of the connection, and they are supposed to adjust their behavior to meet the forthcoming situation. 

Software systems that are to be used in wireless environments should be able to adapt to sudden changes in the quality of data transmission over wireless connections. As a minimum, a system should detect when current data transmission tasks may not be completed any longer in a reasonable amount of time due to temporary changes in the QoS. More sophisticated systems could try to adapt to the current QoS by using special data filtering and compression methods, and to refuse to accept requests that cannot be fulfilled within a certain time limit. In the Monads, adaptation is mainly achieved by learning; so far, our main focus has been on learning to predict QoS. 
 

 Monads Publications:

Heikki Helin, Heimo Laamanen and Kimmo Raatikainen: Mobile Agent Communication in Wireless Networks. In Proceedings of the European Wireless'99/ITG'99. pp. 211-216, October 1999

Stefano Campadello and Kimmo Raatikainen: Agents in Personal Mobility. In Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Mobile Agents for Telecommunication Application (MATA'99). Ottawa Canada October 6-8 1999. World Scientific , pp. 359-374. 

Kimmo Raatikainen, Lassi Hippeläinen, Heimo Laamanen and Matti Turunen: Monads - Adaptation Agents for Nomadic Users. In World Telecom '99.

Pauli Misikangas, Mikko Mäkelä, and Kimmo Raatikainen: Predicting QoS for Nomadic Applications Using Intelligent Agents. In Impact '99 Workshop. 

Stefano Campadello, Heikki Helin, Oskari Koskimies, Pauli Misikangas, Mikko Mäkelä and Kimmo Raatikainen: Using Mobile and Intelligent Agents to Support Nomadic Users. In 6th International Conference on Intelligence in Networks (ICIN2000), 17-20 January 2000, Bordeaux, France. 

Pauli Misikangas: Intelligent Agents for Nomadic Users. In FDWP'99. 1999. 

Stefano Campadello, Heikki Helin, Oskari Koskimies and Kimmo Raatikainen: Performance Enhancing Proxies for Java2 RMI over Slow Wireless Links. In the Second International Conference and Exhibition on The Practical Application of Java (PA JAVA2000), 12-14 April 2000, Manchester, UK. 

Pauli Misikangas and Kimmo Raatikainen: Agent Migration Between Incompatible Platforms. In the 20th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS 2000), 10-13 April 2000, Taipei, Taiwan,  Republic of China. 

Mikko Mäkelä, Oskari Koskimies, Pauli Misikangas and Kimmo Raatikainen: Adaptability for Seamless Roaming Using Software Agents. In the XIII International Symposium on Services and Local Access (ISSLS2000), 18-23 June 2000, Sweden. 

Stefano Campadello, Heikki Helin, Oskari Koskimies, Kimmo Raatikainen: Wireless Java RMI. In the 4th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing (EDOC2000). September 2000, To appear.

Oskari Koskimies, Kimmo Raatikainen: Partitioning Applications with Agents. In the Second International Workshop on Mobile Agents for Telecommunication Applications (MATA2000), pages 79-93. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Verlag, September 2000.
 

Links
Bibliography on Software Agents
 

Members
Kimmo Raatikainen (deceased)

Chiara Braghin, Stefano Campadello, Heikki Helin , Oskari Koskimies, Pauli Misikangas, Mikko Mäkelä, Sampo Pyysalo, Sasu Tarkoma

 

 
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