Simplifying Context-Aware Agent Coordination Using Context-Sensitive Data Structures; Technical rept

摘要

Context-aware computing, an emerging paradigm in which applications sense and adapt their behavior to changes in their operational environment, is key to developing dependable agent-based software systems for use in the often unpredictable settings of ad hoc networks. However, designing an application agent which interacts with other agents to gather, maintain, and adapt to context can be a difficult undertaking in an open and continuously changing environment, even for a seasoned programmer. Our goal is to simplify the programming task by hiding the details of agent coordination from the programmer, allowing one to quickly and reliably produce a context-aware application agent for use in large-scale ad hoc networks. With this goal in mind, we introduce a novel abstraction called context-sensitive data structures (CSDS). The programmer interacts with the CSDS through a familiar programming interface, without direct knowledge of the context gathering and maintenance tasks that occur behind the scenes. In this paper, we define a model of context- sensitive data structures, and we identify key requirements and issues associated with building an infrastructure to support the development of context-sensitive data structures.