Mobile agents and remote operation

The Internet has been opening new opportunities for remote operation. In fact its universal infrastructure of communications allows an easy and economic way of interaction between different sites despite the distance separating them. However, the traditional client-server architecture is becoming a drawback for those applications which require the processing of large amounts of data coming from one server but which, comparatively, produce a small amount of data as a result of their work. In this paper the mobile agents philosophy, as a mean to reduce the communication load in such applications, is discussed and several important factors related to this approach are considered. Another advantage of the mobile agents philosophy is related to the ability to simplify the evolution of the applications without the need to change the servers. For remote operation, a way for the agents to self adapt to the local environments they encounter in each remote site is mandatory. These issues are discussed here within the context of an application intended to help elderly staying alone at home. We also emphasize the advantage the platform independent languages have in the context of the applications discussed in this paper.