Proc. of FGCS '94, ICOT, Tokyo, December 1994

Heterogeneous Distributed Cooperative Problem Solving System HELIOS

Akira Aiba, Kazumasa Yokota, and Hiroshi Tsuda

Institute for New Generation Computer Technology
4-28, Mita 1-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108, Japan
{aiba, kyokota, tsuda}@icot.or.jp

Abstract:

This paper describes a heterogeneous distributed cooperative problem solving system HELIOS that is being developed at ICOT.

HELIOS is a framework for constructing a heterogeneous distributed cooperative problem solving system having those three kinds of flexibilities. Each problem solver is encapsulated by a module called a capsule to absorb heterogeneity on types of data or knowledge that are used to communicate with other problem solver. Encapsulated problem solvers, we call them agents, are placed in a common space called an environment. Through an environment, agents can communicate by sending messages to each other. An environment provides global information such as a common data type system, common message protocol, and global constraints, for agents in it. Furthermore, even if agents are placed on more than one machines, the environment takes care of communication between them.

To verify our idea, we implemented several versions of HELIOS on distributed environment. The HELIOS system will be released as ICOT Free Software by the end of March 1995.

All of this proceedings (Compressed PostScript file) :

Heterogeneous Distributed Cooperative Problem Solving System HELIOS (97KB)

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