D.T. Ndumu and H.S. Nwana, Research and development challenges for agent-based systems. IEE Proc. on Software Engineering 14 (1997) 2-10.  Home/Search   Document Details and Download   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....possibly complex) tasks, as specified by agent owners, in an autonomous fashion. Usually the specifier of an agent doesn t necessarily need to interact with the agent as it performs its tasks. Such agents are useful for WWW searching, electronic commerce, office automation and software engineering [1, 2]. We have utilized this concept of software agents to good effect in the process modeling and enactment (also called workflow management ) systems that we have been developing [3, 4] Agents can be configured to carry out simple or complex automation of tasks, coordinate work by multiple people ....

D.T. Ndumu and H.S. Nwana, Research and development challenges for agent-based systems. IEE Proc. on Software Engineering 14 (1997) 2-10.

....and often a learning capability. It should be understood, though, that the concept of intelligent agent is not an absolute characterization that divides the world to agents and non agents. From the architectural point of view, most agents fall into one of the following categories [27] [45], 62] 63] Logic based agents. Such agents make decisions about their actions through logical deduction, as in theorem proving. The internal state of a logic based agent is assumed to be a database of formulae of classical first order predicate logic. The database is the information that ....

....2 . Layer n API layer Definition layer Organization layer Coordination layer Communication layer Other agents a) Action output b) Sensory input Figure 4. Layered architecture of intelligent agents a) horizontally layered architectures (after [62] b) vertically layered architectures (after [45]) The communication layer in Figure 4a brings about the issue of agent communication. Collectively, agents may be physically distributed, but individually, they are logically distinct and unlikely to operate in isolation [39] Agents typically communicate by exchanging messages represented in a ....

D.T. Ndumu an H.S. Nwana, Research and Development Challenges for Agent-Based Systems, IEE Proceedings on Software Engineering 144, February (1997), 2-10.

....universities, was formed to address such problems. The objective of the consortium [2] is to develop intelligent autonomous systems (called holons) that cooperate for high variety low volume production. The consortium adopts as two of its key technologies the approach of multi agent systems [14] [15], 17] and database authorisations. This paper focuses on the latter of these technologies to illustrate how holons can be introduced into manufacturing to resolve various business scenarios more cost effectively, and with higher degrees of security and integrity. Authorisation is an important ....

D. Ndumu and H. Nwana. Research and Development Challenges for Agent-Based Systems. IEE Proceedings in Software Engineering, 1997.

....at various organisational and functional layers by human managers, who not only make many of the decisions but also carry out a great deal of cognitive processing. Agent controlled system management networks have yet to show themselves capable of equalling such integrity, which has led researchers [8] to model automating telecommunications networks. We visualise that for fully automated networks of the future, some roles will be undertaken by intelligent agents [5] that must interact due to vast knowledge processing requirements and geographic diversity. Moreover, these agents will be ....

D. Ndumu and H. Nwana. Research and Development Challenges for Agent-Based Systems. IEE Proceedings Software Engineering, 144(1):2--10, February 1997.

....for rapid prototyping and testing of distributed software applications modelled as MultiAgent Systems. As it is well known, Logic Programming [9] is a powerful, declarative and executable specification language, very suitable as the basis for a prototyping framework. The agentoriented paradigm [22, 15] permits a high level modellization of applications in which many autonomous, intelligent and interacting entities (a multi agent system) cooperate to achieve a common goal or compete to satisfy personal interests. We deem that the marriage between agent technology and Logic Programming can play a ....

D. T. Ndumu and H. S. Nwana. Research and development challenges for agent--based systems. IEE Proceedings of Software Engineering, 144(1):2--10, February 1997.

....where a set of entities have to cooperate and coordinate for exchanging information coming from diverse existing sources. Hence, integration and reusing of different kinds of information and software tools is an urgent necessity that new software products have to face. The agent oriented paradigm [28, 24] is an emerging technology which allows a high level model of applications in which many autonomous, intelligent and interacting entities (a Multi Agent System or MAS) cooperate to achieve a common goal or compete to satisfy personal needs. We assume a loose declarative definition that an agent ....

D. T. Ndumu and H. S. Nwana. Research and development challenges for agent-based systems. IEE Proc. of Software Engineering, 144(1), 1997.

....systems, prototyping. 1 Introduction Nowadays applications are strongly characterized by their complexity. They are usually composed by heterogeneous and distributed entities which must cooperate and coordinate in an intelligent way to exchange and share knowledge. The agent oriented paradigm [22, 16] is an emerging technology that faces the problem of modeling such kinds of applications. It is suitable for modeling entities (agents) which communicate (social ability) monitor the environment and react to events which occur in it (reactivity) are able to take the initiative whenever the ....

D. T. Ndumu and H. S. Nwana. Research and development challenges for agent-based systems. IEE Proc. of Software Engineering, 144(1), 1997.

....These features make the declarative paradigm a solution that is suitable for developing and verifying prototypes of complex applications, where a set of autonomous, intelligent and distributed entities cooperate and coordinate the exchange and integration of knowledge. Agent oriented technology [21, 16] faces the problem of modelling such kinds of applications. It is suitable for modelling entities which communicate (social ability) monitor the environment and react to events which occur in it (reactiv ity) are able to take the initiative whenever the situation requires so (proactivity) ....

D. T. Ndumu and H. S. Nwana. Research and development challenges for agentbased systems. IEE Proc. of Software Engineering, 144(1), 1997.

....complexity of constructing collaborative agent systems. To facilitate large scale realisation of the collaborative agent approach to distributed software engineering, there is an urgent need for frameworks, methodologies and toolkits that support the rapid development of multi agent systems [28]. Hence, the recent explosion in the number of multi agent system development environments, frameworks and toolkits [2,4,5,7,8,22,25,34,35] This paper describes ZEUS, a toolkit for constructing collaborative multi agent applications. ZEUS is a culmination of a careful synthesis of established ....

....library of agent level components, and configure new agents using a combination of user defined and system supplied components. Fourthly, we also required that the toolkit utilise standardised technology wherever feasible, or be designed with standardisation in mind. We argue in Ndumu Nwana [28] that standardisation is sine qua non for the industrial uptake of this technology. This way, we envisaged components which could later be replaced with little difficulty by more standardised components. Standardisation in agent applications address agent agent, agent legacy software and ....

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Ndumu, D.T. & Nwana, H.S. "Research and Development Challenges for Agent-based Systems". IEE Proceedings on Software Engineering, 144(1), 2-10, 1997. (Also http://www.labs.bt.com/ projects/agents/). 39

....agent, all the agents need to be able to backtrack to any point of their design history. With human designers, such any time behavior is relatively straightforward, although it becomes less so if the human designer are replaced or augmented with legacy design support systems. In Ndumu Nwana [3] we discuss general research and development challenges for agent based systems. We conclude this section by arguing that the agent based approach provides both a metaphor and framework for reasoning about design systems. As a metaphor, the approach emphasizes the view of (agent based) design ....

Ndumu, D.T., Nwana, H.S.: Research and Development Challenges for Agent-Based Systems. IEE Proceedings -- Software Engineering, 144(1) (1997) 2--10

....predefined agents such as name server agents (white pages) facilitator agents (yellow pages) and a visualiser. A key goal of the visualiser was for analysis and debugging of distributed agent systems, as it is well known that this is a notoriously complex issue. Our visualiser is reported in Ndumu et al. 1997). In summary, the specific goals for the ZEUS project included: defining and developing a generic ZEUS agent, 3 . developing a clear methodology for building distributed multi agent systems and the ZEUS tool kit to support instantiate it, developing a suite of visualisation and debugging ....

....agents, and also provided a flavour of how a ZEUS agent is actually defined. The broad steps carried out in defining a ZEUS agent forms the core of our agent design methodology. Naturally, there are much other details which we omit here (for a more complete specification of the methodology see Ndumu et al. 1997)) 4 The ZEUS Tool Kit The ZEUS tool kit essentially supports and instantiates the methodology outlined in the previous section. ZEUS consists of a host of (visual) editors which an agent developer uses to specify the information required to define a ZEUS agent. The current suite of editors ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

Ndumu, D.T. & Nwana, H.S (1997), Research and Development challenges for agent-based systems, IEE Proceedings on Software Engineering 144 (1), 2-10.

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D.T. Ndumu, H.S. Nwana. "Research and Development Challenges for agent-based systems". IEE Proceedings On Software Engineering, Volume 144(1), p2-10, 1997.

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