AmI Systems as Agent-Based Mirror Worlds: Bridging Humans and Agents through Stigmergy

In this chapter we introduce a vision of agent-oriented AmI systems that is extended to integrate ideas inspired by MirrorWorlds as introduced by Gelernter at the beginning of the eighties. In this view, AmI systems are actually a digital world mirroring but also augmenting the physical world with capabilities, services and functionalities.We then discuss the value of stigmergy as background reference conceptual framework to define and understand interactions occurring between the physical environments and its digital agent-based extension. The digital world augments the physical world so that traces left by humans acting in the physical world are represented in the digital one in order to be perceived by software agents living there and, viceversa, actions taken by software agents in the mirror can have an effect on the connected physical counterpart.