Experience from Building Industry Strength Agent-Based Appliances

This paper describes the Intelligent Lifestyle project conducted at the University of Melbourne in cooperation with our industrial partner Adacel Technologies in 2004. The Intelligent Lifecycle project aimed to design and build an industrial-strength system of intelligent agent-based appliances. It further aimed to demonstrate that agent development methods were suitable for wide acceptance by software developers with object-oriented but no agent-oriented experience. We first describe initial requirements engineering activities undertaken using the ROADMAP methodology and fast prototyping performed by using the RAP/AOR methodology. We next address the design and implementation of the intelligent agent system, focusing on a subsystem which handles communication in the case of an intruder break-in, and report on field testing. We finally analyse the results and draw conclusions. Overall, this paper defines and demonstrates a systematic approach for achieving systems of intelligent agents of industrial strength.