A Mobile Agents Approach to Virtual Laboratories and Remote Supervision

This paper presents the use of adaptive mobile agents for remote operation, enabling real-time response in spite of the limitations of the communication channels in terms of time-delays, availability, and reliability. Autonomy of the mobile agents is achieved through high levels of intelligence including execution monitoring and error recovery. Potential applications range from traditional telerobotics to virtual laboratories where mobile agents act as representatives of users in scientific experiments. Practical results are presented in a scenario where a SCARA-type robot is remotely commanded through the Internet.