Event based distributed real-time communication architecture for multi-agent systems

In this paper an event-based distributed real-time communication architecture for multi-agent systems is presented. The architecture was designed regarding the needs of hardware-based multi-agent systems, especially robotic systems. This includes in particular fast and reliable transportation of messages in unstable wireless networks. Furthermore the architecture is usable for different agent-based software systems and allows communication between different systems even if they have a complete different representation of internal data. The architecture was evaluated in the RoboCup scenario with a multi-agent system of 5 robots interacting in a highly dynamic environment. Using this system, the RoboCup team of the University of Stuttgart won the RoboCup German Open Championship and World Championship in 2009.