Agent Definition - Multi Agent Systems - Lecture Slides, Slides of Multiagent Systems

The key points in multiagent systems are:Agent Definition, Thermostat, Trivial Agents, Senses the Environment, Acts on the Environment, Goal Directed Behavior, Unix Daemons, Agent Methodology, Planning, Learning

Typology: Slides

2012/2013

Uploaded on 04/30/2013

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What makes an agent?
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What makes an agent?

Trivial agents

  • A thermostat
    • Senses the environment
    • Acts on the environment
    • Has a goal directed behavior
  • Unix daemons: e.g. xbiff
  • Even for trivial agents, the agent methodology might prove useful
  • Even for trivial agents, emerging properties might solve higher level problems.

Communication in agents

Inter-agent communication: Messages

  • Communication can be explicit or implicit
    • Explicit: through messages / signals
    • Implicit: through actions which mean something
  • Agent systems prefer message based communication - Client-server systems prefer remote procedure call (RPC) - Equivalent, but flavor is different
  • Agent communication languages: FIPA ACL, KQML
  • Various XML favors

What is an ontology?

  • Answer is 42. But what was the question?
  • Communicative acts are meaningless if the agents do not have the same understanding about the passed data.
  • An ontology defines a common vocabulary for entities who need to share information in a domain. It includes machine- interpretable definitions of basic concepts in the domain and relations among them. - Entities: agents, researchers, experts etc.

Ontology examples

  • The Yahoo categorization of web sites
  • Dewey decimal notation
    • Used in libraries since 1876
  • RDF – resource description framework and its extensions - DAML (DARPA Agent Markup Language) - OWL - A large number of frameworks: check www.semanticweb.org
  • Cyc (http://www.cyc.com)

Mobility in the physical and virtual

world

  • Physical mobility
    • Ability to move a physical artifact with whom the agent is associated
    • The laws of the physical world always apply:
      • Conservation of matter (!)
      • The laws of movement and dynamics
  • Virtual mobility:
    • Ability to move software from machine to machine
    • The laws of physical world does not apply:
      • Agents can move to remote locations without traversing intermediary locations
      • Agents might be duplicated as a failure of movementDocsity.com

Strong and weak mobility for

software agents

  • Mobility: ability to move an agent from a machine across (potentially) heterogeneous platforms
  • Strong mobility: can move any time
    • Language or virtual machine support needed
    • Telescript, modified JVM’s such as NOMADS
  • Weak mobility: can move at certain points during execution - Aglets, D’Agents (formerly AgentTcl), Jade, Bond etc. Docsity.com

Mutability

Why mutability?

  • Some applications:
    • Mobile agents, while traversing heterogeneous platforms might need to adapt
    • Remotely building up monitoring agents
  • Future:
    • Continuous updating of long-lived agents
    • Self-repair, self-debug
    • Genetic algorithms for agent design