EEL 5937 Multi Agent Systems -an introduction-

EEL 5937 Content What is an agent? Communication Ontologies Mobility Mutability Applications

EEL 5937 What is an agent?

EEL 5937 Definition… An autonomous agent is a system situated within and part of an environment that senses that environment and acts on it, over time, in pursuit of its own agenda and so as to effect what it senses in the future. Franklin and Graesser: Is it an agent or just a program? Simpler: agents are autonomous programs

EEL 5937 Coming from AI… Expert systems did not prove commercially successful: too ambitious Agents provide a way to use limited amount of intelligence to achieve useful goals Russell & Norvig: Artificial Intelligence, a Modern Approach –Modern = Agent based

EEL 5937 Coming from OOP… Allows us to use more complex entities than traditional OOP Active components, not handled in OOP OOP definition of agent: object with a thread –Simplistic, but it can be used as a marketing term Software engineering techniques need to be updated

EEL 5937 Coming from Client-Server computing… Client originates requests, server responds The model is too simple, many times we need active components, e.g. for monitoring Enterprise Java Beans actively discourage beans with threads –They have their reasons, but limits functionality –There are workarounds but will need to be handled at the standards level

EEL 5937 People also come from: Business: –Agents seen as economic entities Sociology –Social models of agent –Agent models of the society Phychology: –Behavior patterns User Interaction Design Philosophy …Lots of sources of confusion.

EEL 5937 Content of this course

EEL 5937 EEL 5937 – Practice and theory of multi-agent systems Practice…: We will learn how to write agents Theory…: We will learn the basics behind the agent systems. Topics covered –Behaviors, strategies, reactive and planned behavior –Belief-Desire-Intention models –Communication, messaging, speech act theory –Mobility –Mutability –Knowledge representation, ontologies –Negotiation models All topics covered will be used in some of the projects

EEL 5937 Contact info Instructor: Lotzi Bölöni ENG 444 – –Webpage: Course webpage: – FEEDS Video stream: –Link from the course webpage

EEL 5937 Grading Homeworks + reading: 20% –Homeworks: small assignments to get you up to speed for the project. –Reading assignments: interesting, famous, controversial etc. papers in the domain. Final exam (written, open book): 20% Project: 60% Additional credit: core development for the Bond system (up to 20%)

EEL 5937 The project Groups of 2-4 people. Application of multi agent systems. Proposed configuration: Bond agent framework –Bond libraries and tools –Jade agent framework –Protégé ontology system –Java 1.4 List of projects (growing): – You are encouraged to propose your own project. Teams should schedule a design meeting with the prof.