An agent-based architecture for wireless bus travel assistants

Multi-agent systems are open and extensible systems that allow for the deployment of autonomous and proactive software components. This paper describes how a multi-agent architecture has been developed to extend a previously implemented bus travel assistant prototype called Bus Catcher [2]. Such a system was developed to provide accurate information about bus locations and arrival times to Dublin Bus users. The new version of the system is more flexible and easily extensible as it relies on generic agents responsible for channeling context sensitive services. New features have also been added to the system, including user profiling and monitoring of available hardware/service characteristics