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ABSTRACT

Tuple spaces are a common platform for the coordination of agents. In the past years there have been several approaches of improving the concept of coordination via the shared space. However, some of those concepts, like the Programmable Matching Engine, were primarily concentrating on retrieving tuples from the space with improved query techniques.

In this paper, we propose the concept of structured spaces, so called Space Containers, which allow to store tuples in a customizable structured way. The concept of a Space Container allows a) to distinguish between the data needed for coordination purposes only and the payload, b) enables an explicitly structured way of storage and retrieval of the stored data, and c) the realization of more complex coordination patterns. The benefits of the proposed approach are a) less complex agent implementations, and b) the possibility of an efficient implementation of coordination issues.

We describe the architecture of the proposed approach, explain the benefits of it by means of a scenario from the production automation domain and show evaluation results.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

General Terms:
Design, Measurement, Performance

Keywords:
Linda, coordination, coordination pattern, multi-agent systems, production automation, tuple spaces