Android

Jadex Android is a framework for developing software agents running on the Android platform. Agent-oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) is a software development paradigm especially suited for distributed Systems as the main buildings blocks are constituted by software agents, whose outstanding characteristics are - among others - autonomy, message-based and asynchronous communication, re- and proactivity, social abilities and cooperation, etc.

On the one hand, AOSE allows to model active objects, meaning that e.g. the user and her needs can naturally be represented by an agents, taking the responsibilty to autonomously achieve the user's goals. On the other hand AOSE abstracts from lower-level details such as multithreading and communication issues, as in this respect the Jadex framework takes care of all these.

State of Implementation

First tests on an Android Dev Phone, patched to be running on Android 2.2, were promising. Up to 3.000 agents could be created. 

1st Jadex-Android "Screenshot"

So far, we ported the current Jadex distribution (version 2.1) to the Android platform.
The current state of efforts is described in the Jadex Android User Guide.

Download

The latest release version is jadex-android-0.0.5, which can be downloaded from here.

The latest jadex-android nightly build package can be downloaded from here.

Please note that nightly builds are generally untested.

They will compile, but since most of the jadex-android code is auto-generated from the Jadex SVN repository, there could be API changes that need manual adjustments.

Release Notes

Please note that every jadex-android release is based on jadex snapshot code (currently 2.1-SNAPSHOT).

2.1 (not yet released)

• adjusted version numbering to Jadex' Version
• Jadex-Android uses android xml pull parser now instead of woodstox, reduces memory footprint
• Jadex-Android stores settings in Android Shared Preferences now. It will, however, prefer properties stored in a default.settings.xml (/data/data/<application package name>/files/default.settings.xml)
• (TODO) use micro plattform?
• (TODO) provide simple control center application

0.0.5

• fixed bug, preventing service calls from Desktop-Jadex to Android-Jadex. Please note, that due to the Android emulator's virtual network environment, it is still not possible to call services offered by Desktop-Jadex. You have to manually create a ProxyAgent on the Android device to communicate. On real devices, if you are not in a private Wifi network you need to use Jadex' relay server as broadcast are generally not supported over the Internet.

0.0.4

• updated maven projects to maven-andoid-plugin-3.0.0-alpha-14 -> supports ADT R15
• communication between platforms fixed, so remote mobile platform components are visible in JCC
  (This requires the HTTP Relay Transport to be enabled if running in an emulator)
• added AndroidSettingsService for File Access on Android Devices
• introduced AndroidContextService to provide access to android files (TODO: properties)
• Security Service is active by default. The generated Plattform Password will be written to LogCat and saved in
  /data/data/<packagename>/files/<platformname>.settings.xml.
  To disable the Security Service, just uncomment the Service in your platform.component.xml

0.0.3

• uses Woodstox XML Parser instead of broken StaX reference implementation