Deployment of Industrial Agents in a Smart Parking System

In recent years, the intense urbanization, and consequently the traffic congestion, has been a major concern of large cities. In this context, the development of smart parkings is a suitable solution to deal with this problem. However, the complexity and requirements imposed by such large-scale systems are an obstacle to its easy implementation. In this sense, it is fundamental to adopt emergent ICT and Artificial Intelligence technologies that are capable to address the imposed requirements. Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) is a suitable approach to face this challenge by providing modularity, flexibility, reconfigurability and fast response to condition change based on its decentralized nature. The use of such agent-based solutions to control physical assets, create novel systems entitled Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) where the interconnection between the cyber and the physical parts is a crucial issue. This paper focuses the interface between the software agents of a smart parking system with the physical control devices of the parking spots. For this purpose, different interface practices were implemented and tested, considering different interaction schemes and technologies. These alternative interface practices were analyzed taking into consideration the response time, scalability and re-usability parameters.