A Data-Oriented Coordination Language for Distributed Transportation Applications

Data-oriented coordination languages rely on a shared space in which agents add, read and retrieve data. They are intuitively well suited for distributed transportation applications, where different actors evolve in a highly dynamic and very constrained environment. However, existing coordination languages can hardly be used for transportation applications, because they cannot express agents complex interaction needs. Indeed, in transportation applications, the interaction needs of the agents are driven by their current context and by ambient conditions, expressed in the form of constraints on the values taken by variables. In this paper, we propose Lacios, a new data-oriented coordination language for designing and implementing distributed transportation applications, and we illustrate our proposal with two examples: a traveler information system and a demand-responsive transport system. Lacios allows agents to express complex interaction needs, including agents states, system objects values, operators and functions, and is grounded on a model where the multi-agent system design is centered on the environment.