Search

Algorithms to determine the itinerary of agents are fundamental in the context of distributed applications based on mobile agents with timing requirements. To establish an agent's itinerary it is necessary to consider the trade-offs between achieving high-quality results while meeting firm deadlines. In this paper we describe and evaluate two adaptive heuristics that make a decision about the behavior for an agent at the beginning of its mission. The decision-making about the behavior is based on a log of benefits collected by the mobile agent in past executions. An agent adapts itself at the departure. Once chosen the behavior for a particular mission, the agent keeps this behavior until the end of the mission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some applications, as part of a mobile agent mission, there may be the necessity of meeting a firm end-to-end deadline, although with some itinerary flexibility due to optional resources. This paper proposes an execution model based on the concept of imprecise mobile agents with timing constraints. In this paper it is considered an execution model where agents do not previously know their itineraries. The imprecise mobile agent may choose among alternative and/or optional resources. The objective is to propose and to evaluate heuristics to be used individually or in pairs by imprecise mobile agents that must accomplish a mission within a firm deadline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]