Table of Contents
Mica objects (mobs) are the messages that agents post to the blackboard. Mobs use a frame paradigm [1] to formalize their information. In this paradigm each mob has a set of slots that hold values. As yet Mica does not restrict the slots that can be added to a mob or the values that can be placed in a slot.
Mobs when created are given a type. A mob's type is used to determine which agents to notify when it is written to the blacboard. Mica allows the multiple inheritance of types but doesn't accept cyclic inheritances. The type 'mob' is the top most mob type and all mobs will inherit from it either directly or indirectly. When a mob is created it is set to its given type.
Figure 3.1 shows what a simple mob type hierarchy may look like.
The mob types are managed by the blackboard. For information on how to define mob types see the section called “Declaring Mob Types”.