Using a Contract Net to Dynamically Configure Sensor Webs

We describe how we developed a multi-agent system to represent a collection of sensors that are dynamically combined into a Sensor Web. The sensors use a combination of a Matchmaker architecture together with the Contract Net protocol to enable the reasoned, task-based creation of a dynamic Sensor Web that adapts to the data sensed and to the requirements generated by the agent sensors. We tested our system using EO-1 instruments, and showed how Sensor Web instrument coalitions can be generated based on sensing and processing needs.