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A Roadmap of Agent Research and Development
- INT JOURNAL OF AUTONOMOUS AGENTS AND MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS
, 1998
"... This paper provides an overview of research and development activities in the field of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. It aims to identify key concepts and applications, and to indicate how they relate to one-another. Some historical context to the field of agent-based computing is give ..."
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Cited by 508 (8 self)
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This paper provides an overview of research and development activities in the field of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. It aims to identify key concepts and applications, and to indicate how they relate to one-another. Some historical context to the field of agent-based computing is given, and contemporary research directions are presented. Finally, a range of open issues and future challenges are highlighted.
Methods for Task Allocation Via Agent Coalition Formation
, 1998
"... Task execution in multi-agent environments may require cooperation among agents. Given a set of agents and a set of tasks which they have to satisfy, we consider situations where each task should be attached to a group of agents that will perform the task. Task allocation to groups of agents is nece ..."
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Cited by 360 (21 self)
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Task execution in multi-agent environments may require cooperation among agents. Given a set of agents and a set of tasks which they have to satisfy, we consider situations where each task should be attached to a group of agents that will perform the task. Task allocation to groups of agents is necessary when tasks cannot be performed by a single agent. However it may also be beneficial when groups perform more efficiently with respect to the single agents' performance. In this paper we present several solutions to the problem of task allocation among autonomous agents, and suggest that the agents form coalitions in order to perform tasks or improve the efficiency of their performance. We present efficient distributed algorithms with low ratio bounds and with low computational complexities. These properties are proven theoretically and supported by simulations and an implementation in an agent system. Our methods are based on both the algorithmic aspects of combinatorics and approximat...
Middle-Agents for the Internet
, 1997
"... Like middle-men in physical commerce, middleagents support the flow of information in electronic commerce, assisting in locating and connecting the ultimate information provider with the ultimate information requester. Many different types of middleagents will be useful in realistic, large, dis ..."
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Cited by 250 (44 self)
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Like middle-men in physical commerce, middleagents support the flow of information in electronic commerce, assisting in locating and connecting the ultimate information provider with the ultimate information requester. Many different types of middleagents will be useful in realistic, large, distributed, open multi-agent problem solving systems. These include matchmakers or yellow page agents that process advertisements, blackboard agents that collect requests, and brokers that process both. The behaviors of each type of middle-agent have certain performance characteristics---privacy, robustness, and adaptiveness qualities---that are related to characteristics of the external environment and of the agents themselves. For example, while brokered systems are more vulnerable to certain failures, they are also able to cope more quickly with a rapidly fluctuating agent workforce and meet certain privacy considerations. This paper identifies a spectrum of middle-agents, cha...
Cooperative Multiagent Systems: A Personal View of the State of the Art
- IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
, 1999
"... Scientific research and practice in multiagent systems focuses on constructing computational frameworks, principles, and models for how both small and large societies of intelligent, semiautonomous agents can interact effectively to achieve their goals. This article provides a personal view of the ..."
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Cited by 84 (0 self)
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Scientific research and practice in multiagent systems focuses on constructing computational frameworks, principles, and models for how both small and large societies of intelligent, semiautonomous agents can interact effectively to achieve their goals. This article provides a personal view of the key application areas for cooperative multiagent systems, the major intellectual problems in building such systems, the underlying principles governing their design, and the major directions and challenges for future developments in this field. Index Terms---Multiagent systems, coordination, cooperation, distributed problem solving, distributed artificial intelligence, computational organizations. ------------------------------ ###p### ------------------------------ 1INTRODUCTION ULTIAGENT systems are computational systems in which two or more agents interact or work together to perform some set of tasks or to satisfy some set of goals. These systems may be comprised of homogeneous o...
Reflections on the Nature of Multi-Agent Coordination and Its Implications for an Agent Architecture
- Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
, 1998
"... The development of enabling infrastructure for the next generation of multi-agent systems consisting of large numbers of agents and operating in open environments is one of the key challenges for the multi-agent community. Current infrastructure support does not materially assist in the development ..."
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Cited by 74 (12 self)
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The development of enabling infrastructure for the next generation of multi-agent systems consisting of large numbers of agents and operating in open environments is one of the key challenges for the multi-agent community. Current infrastructure support does not materially assist in the development of sophisticated agent coordination strategies. It is the need for and the development of such a high-level support structure that will be the focus of this paper. A domain-independent (generic) agent architecture is proposed that wraps around an agent’s problem-solving component in order to make problem-solving responsive to real-time constraints, available network resources and the need to coordinate — both in the large and small, with problem-solving activities of other agents. This architecture contains five components, local agent scheduling, multi-agent coordination, organizational design, detection and diagnosis and on-line learning, that are designed to interact so that a range of different situation-specific coordination strategies can be implemented and adapted as the situation evolves. The presentation of this architecture is followed by a more detailed discussion on the interaction among these components and the
A lightweight coordination calculus for agent systems
- In Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies
, 2004
"... Abstract. The concept of a social norm is used in multi-agent systems to specify behaviours required of agents interacting in a given social context. We describe a method for specifying social norms that is more compact than existing methods without loss of generality and permits simple but powerful ..."
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Cited by 57 (8 self)
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Abstract. The concept of a social norm is used in multi-agent systems to specify behaviours required of agents interacting in a given social context. We describe a method for specifying social norms that is more compact than existing methods without loss of generality and permits simple but powerful mechanisms for analysis and deployment. We explain the method and how to compute with it. 1 Introduction: A Broad View of Social Norms The Internet raises the prospect of engineering large scale systems that are not engineered in the traditional way, by tightly integrating modest numbers of components familiar to a single design team, but are assembled opportunistically from components built by disparate design teams. Ideally such systems would make it easy for new components
Multi-agent Coordination as Distributed Logic Programming
- In International Conference on Logic Programming
, 2004
"... Abstract. A novel style of multi-agent system specification and deployment is described, in which familiar methods from computational logic are re-interpreted to a new context. One view of multi-agent system design is that coordination is achieved via an interaction model in which participating agen ..."
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Cited by 45 (10 self)
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Abstract. A novel style of multi-agent system specification and deployment is described, in which familiar methods from computational logic are re-interpreted to a new context. One view of multi-agent system design is that coordination is achieved via an interaction model in which participating agents assume roles constrained by the social norms of their shared task; the state of the interaction reflecting the ways these constraints are mutually satisfied within some system for synchronisation that is open and distributed. We show how to harness a process calculus; constraint solving; unfolding and meta-variables for this purpose and discuss the advantages of these methods over traditional approaches. 1
Multi-agent Coordination through Coalition Formation
, 1998
"... Incorporating coalition formation algorithms into agent systems shall be advantageous due to the consequent increase in the overall quality of task performance. Coalition formation was addressed in game theory, however the game theoretic approach is centralized and computationally intractable. Recen ..."
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Cited by 38 (6 self)
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Incorporating coalition formation algorithms into agent systems shall be advantageous due to the consequent increase in the overall quality of task performance. Coalition formation was addressed in game theory, however the game theoretic approach is centralized and computationally intractable. Recent work in DAI has resulted in distributed algorithms with computational tractability. This paper addresses the implementation of distributed coalition formation algorithms within a real-world multi-agent system. We present the problems that arise when attempting to utilize the theoretical coalition formation algorithms for a real-world system, demonstrate how some of their restrictive assumptions can be relaxed, and discuss the resulting benefits. In addition, we analyze the modifications, the complexity and the quality of the cooperation mechanisms. The task domain of our multi-agent system is information gathering, filtering and decision support within the WWW. 1 Introduction Theories of ...
Agent cloning: An approach to agent mobility and resource allocation
- IEEE Communications
, 1998
"... Multi-agent systems (MAS) are subject to performance bottlenecks in cases where agents cannot perform tasks by themselves due to insu cient resources. Solutions to such problems include passing tasks to others or agent migration to remote hosts. We propose agent cloning as a more comprehensive appro ..."
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Cited by 36 (1 self)
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Multi-agent systems (MAS) are subject to performance bottlenecks in cases where agents cannot perform tasks by themselves due to insu cient resources. Solutions to such problems include passing tasks to others or agent migration to remote hosts. We propose agent cloning as a more comprehensive approach to the problem of local agent overloads. Agent cloning subsumes task transfer and agent mobility. According to our paradigm, agents may clone, pass tasks to others, die or merge. We discuss the requirements of implementing a cloning mechanism and its bene ts in a Multi-Agent System, and support our claims with simulation results.
Using Explicit Requirements and Metrics for Interface Agent User Model Correction
- IN PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AUTONOMOUS AGENTS (AGENTS '98
, 1998
"... The complexity of current computer systems and software warrants research into methods to decrease the cognitive load on users. Determining how to get the right information into the right form with the right tool at the right time has become a monumental task --- one necessitating intelligent in ..."
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Cited by 33 (14 self)
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The complexity of current computer systems and software warrants research into methods to decrease the cognitive load on users. Determining how to get the right information into the right form with the right tool at the right time has become a monumental task --- one necessitating intelligent interfaces agents with the ability to predict the users' needs or intent. An accurate user model is considered necessary for effective prediction of user intent. Methods for maintaining accurate user models is the main thrust of this paper. We describe an approach for dynamically correcting an interface agent's user model based on utility-theory. We explicitly take into account an agent's requirements and metrics for measuring the agent's effectiveness of meeting those requirements. Using these requirements and metrics, we develop a requirements utility function that determines when a user model should be corrected and how. We present a correction model based on a multi-agent bidding...
