Anonymous Agents Coordination in Smart Spaces

Rapid developments of communication, data processing and storage technologies, and continuing proliferation of consumer devices that surround user have created an opportunity for creation of a new generation of services based on smart spaces concept. The current approach for expanding mobile devices functionality is integration of new physical components. But this approach is bounded by the physical device size limits, dissipation of heat and the limited scalability of user experience due to small displays and incapability to produce high-end experience (e.g., audio) to the user. The smart spaces maximize the user benefits by utilizing capabilities of all available devices. This leads to a shift in the concept when instead of putting new functionality into the devices, all consumer electronics become a building blocks of the common information and service spaces. The smart spaces also provide another level of handling the user data. However, development of the smart spaces where a number of devices can use a shared view of resources and services is related to a number of problems. One of such problems is how to resolve possible conflicts arising from attempts of simultaneous access to the shared information. This paper describes an approach for coordination of anonymous agents, which solve this problem for the Smart-M3 smart space.