A TMO based approach to structuring real-time agents

Mobile agent structuring is an increasingly practiced branch of distributed computing software engineering. In this paper we discuss the major issues encountered in producing real-time (RT) agents which are designed to perform output actions in a manner meeting specified timing requirements. An approach to structuring RT agents, which is an extension of a high-level real-time distributed object programming approach called the time-triggered message-triggered object (TMO) programming scheme, is also presented. The TMO based approach is promising because it provides a sound framework in which timeliness issues can be resolved in a cost-effective manner.