JaCa-Android: An Agent-Based Platform for Building Smart Mobile Applications

Mobile applications are getting a strong momentum given the larger and larger diffusion of powerful mobile systems and related application platforms. A main example of such an application platform is given by Android, an open-source Java-based framework developed by Google for building and running applications on mobile devices. On the other hand we do really believe that Agent-Oriented Programming (AOP) provides an effective level of abstraction for tackling the programming of mainstream software applications, in particular those that involve complexities related to concurrency, asynchronous events management and context-sensitive behaviour. Accordingly in this paper we support this claim in practice by discussing the use of a platform integrating two main agent programming technologies for the development of advanced mobile applications. In detail this two technologies are: (i) Jason an agent programming language rooted on a strong notion of agency and (ii) CArtAgO environment programming framework. Here then we discuss the features of JaCa-Android, which makes it possible to exploit Jason and CArtAgO for straightforwardly programming smart applications on top of the Android platform using agent-based technologies.