Keith Decker. Task Environment Centered Simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996  Home/Search   Document Details and Download   Summary   Related Articles   Check

.... continuous, nondeterministic, partially inaccessible, dynamic and noisy [20,21] These kinds of scenarios include search and rescue like scenarios as it is the case of RoboCup Rescue domain [11] public transport coordination, mine clearance, land exploration and hospital factory maintenance [4]. The complexity of these scenarios is even greater when they become multi objective, simultaneously collaborative as well as adversarial environments as it is found in the simulated RoboSoccer [3,15,16] and robotics domain [27] as well as war scenario domains like battlefield combat [26] In ....

Keith Decker. Task Environment Centered Simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996

....resources, perform badly, or even fail [23] On the other hand, agents with information about these relationships can choose their actions exploiting beneficial relationships and avoiding conflicts. Unfortunately, accurate knowledge of coordination relationships (CR) is difficult to maintain [12], specially when agents act in an uncertain environment where interactions occur very often. In addition developers may not fully know every detail of the environment or interactions among agents, making the problem harder to solve. Some attempts on the usage of an explicit representation of CRs ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996.

....the re use of solutions approaches to try to solve our problem. For the Knowledge Representation and Ontology construction for the medical domain we follow the work developed in GRAIL [29] A comprehensive set of Internet resources for medical terminology is compiled in [18] The work of Decker [7] on the design of coordination mechanisms for groups of agents applied to Hospital scheduling is clear antecedent for our work. For planning in the medical domain we follow the work of Miksch [19] The ideas about the implementation of medical protocols follow the work of Pattison Gordon et al. ....

....proposal cannot be carried out, the Planner can ask for help to the Hospital Transplant Coordinator in person and or notify the problem to the surgeon. The special characteristics of planning in the Medical Domain are discussed by Miksch [19] We are following Decker s approach for task planning [7]. The Arrival Agent is responsible for updating the Planner Agent about events that can change the delivery plan (see messages H23 and H24 in THE TITLE 5 Table 1. Messages Surgeon Agent Analyzer Agent Message] Predicate Parameters H1 piece request id request, id piece, piece params, info ....

K. S. Decker. Task Environment Centered Simulation, chapter 6, pages 105--128. In Prietula et al. [27], 1 st edition, 1998. 12 THE AUTHORS???

....to the sources, and other related items. The database is constructed by an offline Web spider and modified during the search process to reflect newly discovered sites and data. This object has information aging concerns similar to those of the object database. TMS Modeling Framework The TMS (Decker 1996) task modeling language is used to hierarchically model the information gathering process and enumerate alternative ways to accomplish the high level gathering goals. The task structures probabilistically describe the quality, cost, and duration characteristics of each primitive action and specify ....

Decker, K. S. 1996. Task environment centered simulation. In Prietula, M.; Carley, K.; and Gasser, L., eds., Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press.

....Interrelationship Method Interrelationship Quality Accumulation Function Expected Method Results Fig. 3. T ms task structure for the IHome Dishwasher agent 4 Multi Agent System Simulator MASS is a more advanced incarnation of the T ms simulator created by Decker and Lesser in 1993 [7]. It provides a more realistic environment by adding support for resources and resource interactions, a more sophisticated communication model, and mixed real and simulated activity. It also adds a scripting language, a richer event model, and a graph like notion of locations and connectors in ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996. Forthcoming.

....and generates a set of plans that delineates alternative ways to go about gathering the information and characterizes the different possibilities statistically in three dimensions quality, cost, and duration, via discrete probability distributions. The task assessor encodes the plans in the TAEMS [7] generic, domain independent task modeling framework. The TAEMS models then serve as input to the agent scheduler and other agent control components that will be added in the future (e.g. a multi agent coordination module) Object Database Used initially by the task assessor when determining ....

....to the sources, and other related items. The database is constructed by an offline Web spider and modified during the search process to reflect newly discovered sites and data. This object has information aging concerns similar to those of the object database. Modeling Framework The TAEMS [7] task modeling language is used to hierarchically model the information gathering process and enumerate alternative ways to accomplish the high level gathering goals. The task structures probabilistically describe the quality, cost, and duration characteristics of each primitive action and specify ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996. Forthcoming.

....fills templates and associates certainty factors from the extracted items. In contrast, the simple and inexpensive pattern matcher attempts to locate items within the text via simple grep like behavior. BIG s planner handles the process of laying out the problem solving options by emitting a TMS [11, 29] task structure that describes alternative ways to perform tasks and quantifies them statistically via discrete probability distributions in terms of quality, cost, and duration (omitted from the figure for clarity) Figure 2 shows the TMS task structure produced in response to the client s query. ....

....or cluster related records in order to obtain an approximate representation of certain classes of sources. The server database is expanded during search (new entries are added as new sources are explored) and supplemented by an off line indexing web spider. TMS Modeling Framework The TMS [11] task modeling language is used to hierarchically model the information gathering process and enumerate alternative ways to accomplish the high level gathering goals. The task structures probabilistically describe the quality, cost, and duration characteristics of each primitive action and specify ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996. Forthcoming.

....Fires: None Listens: Communicate:MessageEvent, State:PropertyChangeEvent The Mass Execute component builds on the simplest template described above by adding the functionality needed to simulate execution. It uses a PropertyChange event stream from State to watch for changes in the global TAEMS [2] task structure, which may or may not contain an execution schedule. If a schedule is found, it selects the first method from the list and sends it to the simulation controller to be executed. The Execute component then makes use of a Message event stream from Communicate to watch for the ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996. Forthcoming.

....elect to wait until hot water becomes available. Agents coordinate over shared resources like noise, electricity, temperature, and hot water. Resources, resource interactions, task interactions, and the performance characteristics of primitive actions are all represented and quantified in the TMS [4] task modeling framework. This enables agents to reason about the trade offs of different possible courses of action and to adapt behaviorally to the changing environment. The research has several goals, among them are: 1. Examine the intelligent home domain as a general application testbed for ....

....about the trade offs of different possible courses of action and to adapt behaviorally to the changing environment. The research has several goals, among them are: 1. Examine the intelligent home domain as a general application testbed for research in multi agent systems. 2. Apply the TMS [4] domain independent task modeling framework to a new domain and evaluate its use in the rapid development of a new multi agent application. 3. Test and refine our multi agent simulation environment [17] that controls method execution and communication characteristics for a set of distributed ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996. Forthcoming.

....state, reasons and plans on how to solve problems, and establishes the performance criteria for the agent. The domain problem solver may communicate with other agents in the generation of potential activities. 2. 2 TAEMS task modeling language and TAEMS interface The TAEMS task modeling language [4] is a domain independent framework used to model the agent s candidate activities. It is a hierarchical task representation language that features the ability to express alternative ways of performing tasks, statistical characterization of methods via discrete probability distributions in three ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996.

....again during the actual search process by the RESUN planner when the information gathering activities actually take place. The server database is supplemented by an off line indexing web spider and is also updated with information gained during an on line search. T MS Modeling Framework The T MS [9] task modeling language is used to hierarchically model the information gathering process and enumerate alternative ways to accomplish the high level gathering goals. The task structures probabilistically describe the quality, cost, and duration characteristics of each primitive action and specify ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996. Forthcoming.

....research, robotic soccer [10] In both simulated and robotic systems, teams can plan strategies before the game, at halftime, or at other breakpoints, but during the course of the game, communication is limited. There are several other examples of PTS domains, such as hospital factory maintenance [6], multi spacecraft missions [21] search and rescue, and battlefield combat [27] 2 Team Member Architecture Our new teamwork structure is situated within a team member architecture suitable for PTS domains in which individual agents can capture locker room agreements and respond to the ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996.

....are known a priori, and then go to the sites and browse query his her way to the relevant data. Our system automates this process. Figure 1 shows a simplified task structure for comparing two different automobiles according to a given client s criteria. The task structure is encoded in the T MS [8] domain independent task modeling language (the details of which are beyond the scope of this paper) The task structure describes a hierarchical plan for gathering information to support the auto purchase decision. The lowest level leaves are executable actions and different combinations of ....

....is another benefit of our research agenda. By combining components in a single agent, that have hereto been used individually, we gain new insight and discover new research directions for the components. The most important components, or component groups are: Modeling Framework The T MS [8] task modeling language is used to hierarchically model the information gathering process and enumerate alternative ways to accomplish the high level gathering goals. The task structures probabilistically describe the quality, cost, and duration characteristics of each primitive action and specify ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1997.

....state, reasons and plans on how to solve problems, and establishes the performance criteria for the agent. The domain problem solver may communicate with other agents in the generation of potential activities. 2. 2 T MS task modeling language and T MS interface The T MS task modeling language [4] is a domain independent framework used to model the agent s candidate activities. It is a hierarchical task representation language that features the ability to express alternative ways of performing tasks, statistical characterization of methods via discrete probability distributions in three ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996.

....companies to create their own agents that accurately represent their goals and interests. They must then be combined into a multiagent system with the aid of some of the techniques described in this article. Another example of a domain that requires MAS is hospital scheduling as presented in [11]. This domain from an actual case study requires different agents to represent the interests of different people within the hospital. Hospital employees have different interests, from nurses who want to minimize the patient s time in the hospital, to x ray operators who want to maximize the ....

K. S. Decker, "Task environment centered simulation," in Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups (M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, eds.), AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996.

....posed this section. 2 Agent Control Components We approach the agent control problem from a domain independent perspective. Domain problem solvers, be they process program environments, sophisticated problem solvers, or planners, are coupled with a domain independent task modeling language, TAEMS [10], and modules for agent coordination (GPGP GPGP2) agent scheduling (Design to Criteria) and possibly components for learning [31, 19] and diagnosis [16, 21] The problem solvers translate their internal representations into TAEMS and these structures are passed to the control components. The ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996.

....to wait until hot water becomes available. Agents coordinate over shared resources like noise, electricity, temperature, and hot water. Resources, resource interactions, task interactions, and the performance characteristics of primitive actions are all represented and quantified in the TAEMS [9] task modeling framework. This enables agents to reason about the trade offs of different possible courses of action and to adapt behaviorally to the changing environment. The research has several goals, among them are: 1. Examine the intelligent home domain as a general application testbed for ....

....Toward that end, the coordination protocols and agent control tools used in many of the home agents are the products of a bottom up design process rather than a top down process that would have occurred if the requirement had been to apply the generic technologies directly. 3. Apply the TAEMS [9] domain independent task modeling framework to a new domain and evaluate its use in the rapid development of a new multi agent application. 4. Test and refine our multi agent simulation environment [24] that controls method execution and communication characteristics for a set of distributed ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996.

....inter agent communication during the low communication periods of PTS domains with single channel, low bandwidth, unreliable communication during the on line periods. In addition to simulated robotic soccer, there are several other examples of PTS domains, such as hospital factory maintenance [9], multi spacecraft missions [30] search and rescue, and battlefield combat [38] There are also several other domains with similar communication requirements to the ones considered here. For example, aural communication in crowded settings is one. Both people and robots using aural sensors ( ....

....also agree, as part of their locker room agreement to switch formations either after a certain time or as a result of some limited communication, perhaps from a unit captain. Other PTS domains that could be applications for the team member agent architecture are hospital factory maintenance [9] and battlefield combat [38] Network packet routing [4] could also be formulated as a PTS domain if the network nodes are permitted to freely use network bandwidth during periods of otherwise low usage. They could then exchange policies and feedback with regards to network performance. The ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996.

....research, robotic soccer [7] In both simulated and robotic systems, teams can plan strategies before the game, at halftime, or at other breakpoints, but during the course of the game, communication is limited. There are several other examples of PTS domains, such as hospital factory maintenance [4], multi spacecraft missions [15] search and rescue, and battlefield combat [19] 2 Team Member Architecture Our new teamwork structure is situated within a team member architecture suitable for PTS domains in which individual agents can capture locker room agreements and respond to the ....

K. S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, eds, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996.

....companies to create their own agents that accurately represent their goals and interests. They must then be combined into a multiagent system with the aid of some of the techniques described in this article. Another example of a domain that requires MAS is hospital scheduling as presented in [20]. This domain from an actual case study requires different agents to represent the interests of different people within the hospital. Hospital employees have different interests, from nurses who want to minimize the patient s time in the hospital, to x ray operators who want to maximize the ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996.

....show up over and over again in different locations in each new domain. Thus the GPGP approach allows us to apply the five Durfee mechanisms to domains other than distributed vehicle monitoring (such as randomly generated problems, distributed data processing[24] choosing organizational forms[6], local area network diagnosis [29] or hospital patient scheduling and information gathering as discussed in this paper) The only limitation is the reliance on a taems specification of the underlying task. However, just because a mechanism can be applied to any domain does not mean that it ....

K. S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups, pages 105--131. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1997.

.... 5] Over the last three years, we have significantly extended the framework based on our experience applying it to a number of applications involving distributed situation assessment, information gathering and management, coordination of concurrent engineering activities, and hospital scheduling [2, 3, 9, 10]. The focus of this paper is to discuss these extensions and how they permit us to implement coordination strategies for a wide range of multi agent systems. We start out by first reviewing the basic concepts behind GPGP and how this framework relates to other approaches. Review of Basic ....

Keith S. Decker. "Task environment centered simulation." In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1997.

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K. S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups, pages 105#131. AAAI Press#MIT Press, 1997.

....reliability (by using multiple underlying sources) simple information integration (from partially overlapping information) and load balancing. This is not an exhaustive list. Our general architecture has supported other explorations into understanding the effects of organizational structures [11, 12, 10]. 17 5.1. Example: Matchmaking and Brokering As an example of organizational adaptation, let us compare the failure recovery characteristics of matchmade and bureaucratic manager ( brokered ) information organizations. Both organizations are possible solutions to the connection problem ....

Keith S. Decker. Task environment centered simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1997. Forthcoming.

....balancing. Managing can be viewed as brokering with special constraints on worker behavior brought about by the manager worker authority relationship. This is not an exhaustive list. Our architecture has supported other explorations into understanding the effects of organizational structures (Decker 1996). Planning Adaptation The planner portion of our agent architecture consists of a new hierarchical task network based planner using a plan formalism that admits sophisticated control structures such as looping and periodic tasks (Williamson, Decker, Sycara 1996) It has features derived from ....

Decker, K. S. 1996. Task environment centered simulation.

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Keith Decker. Task Environment Centered Simulation. In M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser, editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press/MIT Press, 1996

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Decker, K. S. (1998). Task environment centered simulation. In Prietula, M., Carley, K., and Gasser, L., editors, Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. AAAI Press / MIT Press, Menlo Park, CA.

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K.S. Decker, Task Environment Centered Simulation, 1st edition, in Prietula et al. [21], 1998, chapt. 6, pp. 105--128.

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K.S. Decker, Task environment centered simulation, in: M. Prietula, K. Carley, L. Gasser (Eds.), Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups, AAAI Press/MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996.

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