Building real time agents using parallel blackboards and its use for mobile robotics

Vehicle intelligent control is a robotics real time application where elaborated reasoning process and reactive process work together and have to cooperate or more to be interdependent. Multi-agent systems are well suited to such complex systems specification, because of their software engineering, their reasoning capabilities (from a cognitive point of view) or their performances (from a reactive point of view). This paper proposes a model of agent integrating both reactive and deliberative capabilities adapted to real time context. The paper introduces and discusses the use of a parallel blackboard architecture to support the agent model in order to meet real time constraints. An illustration of the functioning of the agent architecture is given through a roadway traffic scenario emphasizing the main aspects of real time distributed decision making