An Agent-Based Middleware for Cooperating Smart Objects

This paper proposes an agent-oriented and event-based framework for the development of cooperating smart objects. Smart objects are objects of the real life augmented with computing, communication, sensing/actuation and storing functionalities. They are the building blocks of the future Internet of Things (IoT) towards the construction of complex smart environments. In the proposed framework, smart objects are modelled as agents that can cooperate as a multi-agent system to fulfill specific goals. The framework implementation relies on the JADE middleware that provides an effective agent management and communication infrastructure. In particular, cooperating smart objects can be implemented as JADE or Jadex agents and can cooperate through direct coordination based on ACL message passing and spatio-temporal decoupled coordination based on a topic-based publish/subscribe. A simple yet effective case study referring to a smart office environment constituted by two cooperating smart objects, is presented to elucidate the proposed approach.