Special Issue on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence

There is a wide range of military and civil applications where Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and MultiAgent Systems (MASs) can be used for providing contextawareness for troops and special corps. On the one hand, WSNs comprise an ideal technology to develop Real-Time Locating Systems (RTLSs) aimed at indoor environments, where existing global navigation satellite systems do not work properly. On the other hand, agent-based architectures allow building autonomous and robust systems that are capable of working on highly dynamic scenarios. This paper presents two piracy scenarios where the n-Core platform can be applied. n-Core is a hardware and software platform intended for developing and deploying easily and quickly a wide variety of WSNs applications based on the ZigBee standard. In the first scenario a RTLS is deployed to support boarding and rescue operations. In the second scenario a multi-agent system is proposed to detect the unloading of illegal traffic of merchandise at ports. Keywords— Wireless Sensor Networks, Real-Time Locating Systems, Multi-Agent Systems, Maritime Piracy. Manuscript received June 15, 2012. This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Subprograma Torres Quevedo). Óscar García is with the R&D Department of Nebusens, S.L.. Scientific Park of the University of Salamanca, Building M2, calle Adaja s/n, 37185, Villamayor de la Armuña, Salamanca, Spain (corresponding author to provide phone: +34923134594; e-mail: [email protected]). Ricardo S. Alonso is with the R&D Department of Nebusens, S.L.. Scientific Park of the University of Salamanca, Building M2, calle Adaja s/n, 37185, Villamayor de la Armuña, Salamanca, Spain (e-mail: [email protected]). Dante I. Tapia is with the R&D Department of Nebusens, S.L.. Scientific Park of the University of Salamanca, Building M2, calle Adaja s/n, 37185, Villamayor de la Armuña, Salamanca, Spain (e-mail: [email protected]). Fabio Guevara is with the R&D Department of Nebusens, S.L.. Scientific Park of the University of Salamanca, Building M2, calle Adaja s/n, 37185, Villamayor de la Armuña, Salamanca, Spain (e-mail: [email protected]). Fernando de la Prieta is with the Department of Computer Science and Automation, University of Salamanca. Plaza de la Merced, s/n, 37008, Salamanca, Spain (e-mail: [email protected]). Raúl A. Bravo is with the Department of Computer Science and Automation, University of Salamanca. Plaza de la Merced, s/n, 37008, Salamanca, Spain (e-mail: [email protected]).