www.computer.org/intelligent The “Helpful Environment”: Geographically Dispersed Intelligent Agents That Collaborate

This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. © 2006 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. For more information please see www ieee org/portal/pages/about/documentation/copyright/polilink html T h e F u t u r e o f A I A future network of sophisticated sensors, protection, and repair systems could be integral to clothing, communications devices, transportation systems, buildings, and the environment. These would form the basis for a distributed, adaptable, and resilient “helpful environment.