Mobile agents as smart virtual counterparts

Smart spaces should not be bound by physical constraints but should transcend them in order to provide enhanced services. One way of overcoming this is by having smart virtual counterparts represent the real world entities in smart spaces. In this paper we propose that mobile agent technology is aptly suited for providing smart virtual counterparts of real-world entities in the virtual world and can be used to enhance the performance of smart spaces. We also present a prototype implementation using the Grasshopper mobile agent toolkit as proof of concept.