Multi-agent Systems for Pervasive Electronics: A Case Study in School Classrooms

Complex electronic systems comprise heterogeneous components operating concurrently to achieve complex goals. Electronic systems (like everything else) can fail. Hence, having resiliency in mind, components must adapt to changing circumstances to meet their goals. In this context, multi-agent systems (MAS) offer a flexible approach to managing complex problems by leveraging agents’ collective behaviour and sensory abilities. This article presents a multi-layered event-driven hierarchical MAS model, which enhances the resilience of pervasive electronic systems by adapting to events within the application domain. We report a case study with classrooms augmented for contextual sensing.