The content is as follows. In Introduction we describe background work, focusing on issues of migration and communication transparency in process mobility, distributed objects, and mobile agent systems. In Model , we describe the syntax and operational semantics of our agent calculus, which extends an asynchronous pi-calculus. Then, we briefly discuss design choices in related calculi and two other non-calculi models. In Language , we describe Nomadic Pict: the language principles, syntax, and programming idioms. We compare with two other related languages. In Infrastructure , we describe many algorithms for location-independent communication, expressing two simple infrastructure algorithms (central server and forwarding pointers) as translations in Nomadic Pict. In Applications , we discuss various applications of mobile agents, matching examples with suitable infrastructures. Then, we develop in steps a non-trivial distributed infrastructure for an example application of a Personal Assistant. The focus is on demonstrating the benefits of a multi-level architecture based on clearly defined levels of abstraction. We begin with a simple centralised algorithm, which evolves to match application demands of scalability (execution on wide-area networks) and support for disconnected operation (on laptop computers). Finally, we describe the current implementation of Nomadic Pict.
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