Underlying all Almende research is the Common Hybrid Agent Platform – CHAP.

Almende believes that hybrid networks – computers and people combined – making use of self-learning, multi-agent technology, can facilitate and ameliorate many aspects in our daily life. With CHAP, Almende hopes to develop a generic solution that could aid communication and organization in domains ranging from logistics, health care, to neurorobotics and wireless sensor networks.

Thus, all Almende research essentially aims at contributing to the CHAP software development kit. One could say that the research projects provide the tools to build CHAP: concepts, software development tools, concrete solutions and models for multi-agents systems and self-organization.

Central to all CHAP research are:

•    Hybridity – Man and software working together, each performing the functions they are best suited for
•    Multi-agent systems – People, objects and functions are represented by software agents (or rather a collection of agents) which perform simple tasks.
•    Rapid communication between agents
•    Self-learning and self-organization – No complicated algorithms to tell agents what to do, but allowing them to find the best solution for themselves by learning from feedback.
•    Evolution - the system must be generic and capable of adapting to new application
•    Emergence

^{*coming soon*} A website dedicated entirely to CHAP. There, you will be able to read more about the philosophy behind the project and the latest developments, and download demos.