Q:
What's difference between Mobile-C from other mobile agent platforms?
Mobile-C is designed for real-time applications.
Most other mobile agent platforms are written in Java to support mobile code written in Java. Unlike Java-based platforms,
with underministic garbage collection.
Mobile-C is time deterministic for real-time applications
without garbage collection.
Mobile-C is designed for easy interface with hardware.
Mobile-C is written in C and it supports mobile code in C/C++.
Because both agent platform and mobile code
are written in C, it is especially appealing for applications such as
robotics and sensor network that need to interface with hardware.
To the best of our knowledge, Mobile-C is the only actively maintained
agent platform that supports mobile agents written in C/C++.
It can be easily integrated with applications written in C/C++.
Mobile-C is designed for power-sensitive applications.
For some applications such as sensor network,
communication typically consumes more battery power than computation.
To minimize the agent code, Mobile-C does not use bytecode
which usually takes more space than the original source code.
To reduce the communication, Mobile-C also supports
incremental computing for mobile agents.
Mobile-C is designed for resource constrained applications.
Although Mobile-C is a general agent platform,
it is specially developed for mechatronic and embedded systems
to support code mobility. In comparison with other mobile agent platforms,
Mobile-C has a smaller footprint. For example, for an agent printing
the message "Hello, World", the memory usage in Mobile-C is 100 times
less than that in Jade, a Java-based mobile agent platform.
Q: Where can Mobile-C be applied?
Mobile-C can be used to support the code mobility of networked systems, especially intelligent mechatronic and embedded systems. It can be found in many applications including
<![CDATA[
Intelligent monitoring
Autonomous mobile robotic systems
Sensor network
Intelligent sensor fusion
Adaptive control
Predictive maintenance
Intelligent transportation systems
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Q: Is there a limit in the number of agents for an agency?
No.
Q: Can an agent communicate with other agents in a different agency?
Yes.
Q: Does Mobile-C use peer-to-peer communication?
Yes.
An agency in Mobile-C can communicate with different agencies. An agent can communicate with
different agents and agencies.
Q:
Is Mobile-C open source?
Yes.
Mobile-C is open source. You are welcome to contribute to the development of Mobile-C.
