Chapter
4
Mobile Agent
Communication
In previous chapters we have focused mainly on examples in which a single
agent roams the Internet in order to fulfill a user’s given task. Although in
many application scenarios a single agent is sufficient as a representative of
a human user, other domains may have many agents, possibly of various
types, that must work together to solve a single problem. In these situations,
agents need some technique to coordinate and to collaborate, for example, to
synchronize their activities or to exchange provisional results. In fact, agent
communication problems might be seen as differing from agent coordination
problems, because the latter can occur without communication [Franklin
and Graesser, 1996]. In the rest of this chapter ...