Book Description

Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, where the personal computing era appears when technologyrecedesinto the backgroundof our lives. The widespread use of new mobile technology implementing wireless communicationssuch as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smart phones enables a new type of advanced applications. In the pastyears,themainfocusofresearchinmobileserviceshasaimedattheanytime-anywhere principle (ubiquitous computing). However, there is more to it. The increasing demand for distributed problem solving led to the development of multi-agent systems. The latter are formed from a collection of independent software entities whose collective skills can be applied in complex and real-time domains. The target of such systems is to demonstrate howgoaldirected,robustandoptimalbehaviorcanarise frominteractionsbetweenindiv- ual autonomous intelligent software agents. These software entities exhibit characteristics like autonomy, responsiveness, pro-activeness and social ability. Their functionality and effectiveness has proven to be highly depended on the design and development and the - plication domain. In fact, in several cases, the design and developmentof effective services shouldtakeintoaccountthecharacteristicsofthecontextfromwhichaserviceisrequested. Contextis the set of suitable environmentalstates and settings concerninga user, which are relevant for a situation sensitive application in the process of adapting the services and - formation offered to the user. Agent technology seems to be the right technology to offer the possibility of exploringthe dynamic context of the user in order to provideadded-value services or to execute more and complex tasks.