In this paper the framework DESIRE, originally designed for formal specification of complex reasoning systems is used to specify a real-world multi-agent application on a conceptual level. Some extensions to DESIRE are introduced to obtain a useful formal specification framework for multi-agent systems.

A declarative compositional modelling framework, DESIRE, designed to model knowledge-intensive multi-agent systems, is shown to provide a means to model distributed industrial and business processes. An agent's knowledge, reasoning processes and interaction with other agents, and the world are explicitly specified within this framework. Electricity transportation management is used to illustrate the characteristic elements of the approach, in particular with respect to dynamic aspects of distributed industrial and business processes; aspects which are of importance to knowledge management and knowledge engineering.

this paper a generic model for competitive agents is introduced: a model which can be used to support the design of agents in diverse knowledge-intensive domains. An example of the type of multi-agent situation in which this model can be applied is one in which a number of agents wish to access a given (information) resource and explicit knowledge is available (to either the accessing agents, or the resource to be accessed, or all agents involved) on appropriate orderings or priorities between the transactions from the different agents. This model includes explicit knowledge of possible communication and cooperation strategies for individual agents, but also identifies the type of communication needed between agents and the interaction needed between agents and the material world, specified in the compositional multi-agent system modelling framework DESIRE [1,2]. DESIRE is briefly introduced in Section 2. In Section 3, the role of competitive cooperation in a competitive situation is discussed. A generic model of an arbitrary competitive agent is presented in Section 4. Section 5 describes a generic model for limited resource acquisition. In Section 6, a comparison is made with an algorithmic approach to limited resource access in the domain of operating systems (see for example [4]). Discussion and further research are presented in Section 7.

This paper proposes an approach for the development of multi-agent architectures based on a conceptual model set which is implementation independent. We propose an extension of the CommonKADS methodology to multi-agent systems; run-time aspects are taken into consideration, in particular, the structuring of problem-solving knowledge at a conceptual level guarantees flexibility and modularity and an execution level. The construction of agent models is a compositional process based on the CommonKADS-close conceptual models resulting from five analysis steps. Inference structures have appeared to be a useful means to guide the implementation of our competence-encapsulating agent model. In fact, we use them to identify procedures from a program library during implementation.

The paper deals with the research in the area of knowledge acquisition from multiple experts when knowledge includes temporal component. The expert’s ranking refinement technique is presented which is based on of the most supported opinion among all the experts. Paper answers to the following questions: how to derive the most supported knowledge from the multiple experts about the unknown temporal relation between the two events; how to make quality evaluation of the most supported opinion; how to make syntactical analysis of the most supported opinion to make necessary corrections; how to make, evaluate, use and refine ranking of all the experts to improve the results. 1.

Modelling and formally specifying agent knowledge required to deal with limited access to resources in a multi-agent situation, is the focus of this paper. Not only the static elements involved but also the dynamic element, namely the behaviour of the system, is explicitly modelled and specified. It will be shown how this results in a flexible, compositional specification that is applicable to real-world domains. DESIRE, a formal framework for the design and specification of compositional architectures, is employed for this purpose. A task model of an arbitrary participating competitive agent is presented, together with a model of interaction between agents, the formal specifications and a comparison of this knowledge-based approach and other approaches. 1 Introduction Modelling interaction between autonomous agents requires insight in the types of knowledge and cooperation strategies agents employ. To formally specify interaction between agents, a framework is required in whi...

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This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents an overview of the course taken by knowledge engineering while passing from the single-agent to the multi-agent perspective. Section 3 focuses on the main collaboration modalities that can be found in agent-based organizations. Section 4 deals with the individual agent and MAS models we have adopted. In Section 5 the way is analyzed in which explicit ontologies can be collected into libraries and configured in order to be used as mediating mechanisms for collaboration. Section 6 addresses the encapsulation of ontological and also terminological services into dedicated agents, namely ontology and terminology servers.

Abstract. Within knowledge ngineering a new research paradigm is emerging based on the Multi-Agent System (MAS) architectural framework, allowing human and software agents to interoperate and thus cooperate within common application areas. Such a vision entails bridging the different "’views of the world " of knowledgeable agents through the commitment to common definitions of the conceptual entities and of the technical terms employed in knowledge/data bases. We claim that within a multi-agent framework ontological libraries and also standardized terminological repositories should be "’agentified " into ontology and terminology servers providing other agents with the common semantic foundation required for effective interoperation, and allowing the configuration of suitable application ontologies for distributed applications.