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As an important notion in the vision of Ubiquitous Computing, Smart Space or Intelligent Environment is defined as an enhanced physical space where people can get the services of computer systems without approaching to computers or using the cumbersome keyboard or mouse to interact with them. Typically a Smart Space is a distributed system that involves many sensors, perception devices, software modules and computers. To develop and support such a complicated system, some type of software platform is a must.
Smart Platform is just designed and developed as a solution for this software platform of Smart Space. This Developer's Guide describes the features and the architecture of Smart Platform, and provides a description of how to develop an agent on this platform.
We just assume a general familiarity with software engineering practices and programming language concepts. Some familiarity with the basics of the XML language is also helpful, as XML serves as the basis communication language throughout the whole platform.
The Smart Platform is modeled as a Multi-Agent System, in which the basic unit is agent. Each agent is an autonomous process that either contributes some services to the whole system or uses the service of other agents to achieve a specific goal. As a software platform, Smart Platform implements a runtime environment for the agents and an agent develop kit, which include a programming interface and some debug tools, for the developers.
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