Agent

The Formant Agent

The agent is a software service running on your device that acts as a conduit for all data and commands between your device and Formant. Without an agent, data will not be uploaded and your device will not appear online.

This agent is responsible for authentication, buffering, pre-processing, and uploading your device's data to the Formant cloud.

By default, the agent will send a heartbeat and basic system status metrics, like CPU percentage, memory usage, disk space, network activity, etc. If your device is ROS-based, the agent can automatically process and upload data from any ROS topic. The agent also serves as a middleware for use with Formant's Agent SDK, allowing you to upload any user-defined data and to respond to commands.

To install the agent, a new device must be provisioned. Provisioning gives the agent a unique token for authentication and identification of your device in the Formant cloud. To learn more, visit Installing the Formant agent.