Hardware Agents

This book presents the general software agent models but with hardware structures. The basic concepts of multi-agent technology are discussed and how these concepts can be developed and incorporated in hardware systems with reconfigurable logics. How hardware agents can be created using conventional hardware description languages. Several examples that implement finite state and data flow machines using hardware agents are presented. The potential use of these new type of agents in image-processing and information gathering or monitoring systems is examined. Then how this hardware multi-agent technology can be applied to real-time data and sensor fusion applications is presented. The concepts, applications and examples presented in this book should be especially useful to students, researchers and engineers both in software and hardware fields who are working in the area of parallel processing systems or want to use such systems and are looking for a way to increase the speed, flexibility and performance of their operations considerably.