Distributed Sensor Networks: A Multiagent Perspective

This book documents results from the DARPA Autonomous Negotiating Teams program, which used a sensor network testbed to illustrate the utility of their advances. That, in essence, is what I dislike about this book. I find it a misnomer to market this book as a sensor networks book. It is an agents technology book. There are some aspects of artificial intelligence that I have always been wary of. Some of this goes back to a French AI company I worked for that went bankrupt. One of my professors referring to an AI specialty as the ‘‘best way to guarantee being unemployed’’ probably did nothing to counter that tendency. Agents technology is one area that I have always been hesitant about. There are some agents research groups that I greatly admire, the people at the Santa Fe Institute and Soundar Kumara at Penn State, for example. But for the unwashed masses of agents papers, I have always felt like I was watching a snake oil peddler. This attitude colors my feeling of seeing an agents technology book marketed as a sensor network text. In terms of agents technologies, the articles probably represent advances in the art. In terms of sensor networks technologies, I found the problems addressed to be contrived and unrealistic. I found the solutions proposed to be not very useful. I really did not like this book.