Designing Mobile Agents
By Clayton Crooks
Software agents aren't a new concept: The prospects of self-learning software have been tossed about in academia for some time, but until recently, it's been mostly research-based or simply a good topic of conversation. Tryllian, a relatively new software company, recently released its Agent Developer Kit (ADK)—one of the first toolkits for commercializing this technology.
What are Software Agents?
The term "software agent" is quite ambiguous, and has a rather broad definition. Not only do we use the word "agent" in everyday language (for example: travel agent or sports agent), but there are several synonyms to describe "agent" in a technical way, such as knowbots, softbots, and taskbots. With this in mind, most researchers define a software agent as a software component that conforms to a strict set of rules to accomplish tasks on behalf of its user.
The Tryllian concept of mobile agents takes this definition one step further. Instead of limiting the software's ability to a single platform or network, mobile agents are available on any device capable of using the Agent Runtime Environment (ARE). Thus, various mobile technology devices, like cell phones and PDAs, can access them.
Agent Development Kit
Tryllian
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