The EMS model

Abstract

The interface which connects the agent to its environment is usually based on the particular architecture of the agent. This makes it difficult for agents of different architectures to interact with each other within the same virtual environment. In this paper, we present a model to describe the agent/world interface in a generic, architecture independent way. The usefulness of the model is demonstrated in a generic testbed library which facilitates rapid prototyping for experimental multi-agent systems. Also, a network protocol derived from the basic model which allows for the development of distributed testbeds is presented.