Patterns of Intelligent and Mobile Agents

Agent systems must have a strong foundation; one approach that has been successfully applied to other kinds of software is patterns. This paper presents a collection of patterns for agents. 2. MOTIVATION Almost all agent development to date has been "home grown" [4] and done from scratch, independently, by each development team. This has led to the following problems: . Lack of an agreed definition: Agents built by different teams have different capabilities. . Duplication of effort: There has been little reuse of agent architectures, designs, or components. . Inability to satisfy industrial strength requirements: Agents must integrate with existing software and computer infrastructure. They must also address security and scaling concerns. Agents are complex and ambitious software systems that will be entrusted with critical applications. As such, agent based systems must be engineered with valid software engineering principles and not constructed in an ad hoc fashion. Agent system..