This book is a translation ofthe accomplishment ofthe French engineer Ammar Attoui, who has set out to bring together the works of computer scientists and automotive engineers. Computer scientists have worked on the same type of systems as automotive engineers, but have used different designs, methods and tools. The former call the resultant systems "real-time systems", and the latter call them "discontinuous event systems". Today, telecommunications systems of increasing performance, and increasingly powerful multi-task operating and real time systems offer the possibilities of the development of distributed structure applications organized in a group ofasynchronous entities which communicate by the exchange of messages and events. Hence, combining the cultures ofcomputer science and automotive engineering is essential to gain the benefits of unifying their techniques and methods in order to realize this potential. The absence of the global state in distributed systems, which is a result of the absence of a shared memory and unique repository, makes communication via messaging the sole means which can be used under any circumstances. Agents are conceptual communicating entities. The book presents the methods and tech niques which are necessary for the concrete implementation ofthe idea ofan agent as an autonomous and reactive computing entity. Multi-agent systems are com posed ofa set ofspecialized entities communicating on behalfofa global applica tion.
