EVA Architecture Overview

Nano-Agent Architecture

In order to meet these requirements, we have designed a bio-inspired multi-agent

architecture that does not try to simulate a specific organism but rather integrates several

artificial life features in order to implement machine life and intelligence. A typical

application consists one or more “nano-agents”, and possibly up to a large number if

necessary as in natural swarms. We call them “nano” because of their small size and

resource requirement compared to most existing software environments. An application can

be composed of several “execution environments” running on a computer or on a network

of computers. Each of these environments includes a set of nano-agents and a nano-server

which diffuses messages locally. In other words, when a nano-agent diffuses a message, all

nano-agents in the local execution environment receive the message. In addition, any nanoagent

can send a message to another distant execution environment.

A Bio-inspired Nano-Agent Architecture for Intelligent Agents 3

Fig. 1. The nano-agent architecture principle.

In the current implementation, the core technology is implemented in Java and its weight is

less than 25 Kilo-bytes. Most applications require a small set of knowledge-base and

behavioral scripts text files, thus resulting in lightweight applications that are also wellsuited

for web-based, mobile phone, robots and embedded environments.