The world of autonomous reconfigurable systems Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems Group Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam /

Multi-level institutions of distributed autonomous systems in regulated environments Intelligent Interactive Distributed Systems Group Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam /

autonomous adaptive/reconfigurable systems Humans, p2p systems, agents, institutes, embedded self-configuring systems, autonomic computing systems,

All with some level of knowledge of characteristics of their ‘owner’/organisation, their own tasks & reasoning other systems’ characteristics & roles division of responsibility/liability of trust relationships of interaction design/negotiation

Requirements on the technology Requirements with respect to users’ specific needs, including requirements wrt transparency integrity traceability usability …

Involving … HCI autonomic computing design support systems trust models knowledge acquisition agent technology model based diagnosis distributed systems multi-modal interaction embedded systems machine learning cognitive engineering user centered design AI and design

Including interfacing with humans How are autonomous systems perceived by users? What types of interaction is needed at which levels and when?

Actor-agent community Actor-Agent Community agents actors interfaces middleware Network and Computational Resources

Interaction required for agents to acquire resources …… SLAa Well-structured, protocol and language well-defined

Standard WSAS interaction A P P A A P Agreement request agreement templates

Extended WSAS interaction Two-tiered model (mediated) with Initial request phase Explicit accept phase

WSAS based mediated negotiation A M M A A M My requirements are … This is the contract I’m offering you A M Accept contract A M What do you have to offer P P P P P P These services are currently available Mobach (2005)

WSAS based mediated negotiation AM AM Initial request Offer template P4P4 P1P1 P3P3 P1P1 Initial request P4P4 P1P1 P3P3 P1P1 Initial offers

WSAS based mediated negotiation AM AM requirements contract offer P4P4 P3P3 P1P1 request P4P4 P3P3 P1P1 offers

WSAS based mediated negotiation AM accept contract P3P3 P1P1 confirm

Very basic interaction Resource/service based Workflow – configuration of virtual organisation - responsibility of Mediator Implemented in the AgentScape agent platform

What if …… Once everything’s in place, something goes wrong – a service fails. A new configuration of services/workflow is needed – in the above case the mediator needs to find a new configuration almost immediately

In other words: … Context Initial situation:a web service configuration Problem: one or more web services fail Challenge: reconfigure, without exact match,using external web service Approach: local knowledge in templates van Splunter, 2006

One option. Automated reconfiguration: running identical backups Reconfiguration: Redirect all calls to identical backup service If no exact match available  FAIL

Another option: Semantic based approach: finding similar description UDDI Identify an (outside) web service that offers equal functionality Transform calls to syntax of outside service and redirect calls UDDI Still need exact match?

In all cases: a need to prepare for reconfiguration – eg using templates Structure the web service configuration in templates, to enable reconfiguration

Template-based Reconfiguration Structure the dependencies between services Creating compositional abstract web services Integrate local knowledge

Reconfiguration using templates

UDDI Reconfiguration Service

Reconfiguration using templates

Concise description of a template

Simple example of local knowledge Exec_time template = Exec_time retrieve + Exec_time store + Exec_time filter + Exec_time create

Simple example of local knowledge – QoS parameters Exec_time template = Exec_time retrieve + Exec_time store + Exec_time filter +Exec_time create

Local knowledge Local knowledge: define a function in a template for a specific property based on the properties of the templates direct constituents Exec_time template = Exec_time retrieve + Exec_time store + Exec_time filter + Exec_time create

What if …. More than one level within an organisation is involved: multiple compositions of workflows (institutions/configurations of services) needed

Multi level organisations/institutions Strategic level (gold) Tactical level (silver) Operational level (bronze) Network level

Each with own criteria Goals Evaluation criteria (KPI) Workflows Concepts Own “local” knowledge

Interaction between levels is needed but …… to which extent do levels need to share/communicate: Goals Expectations Context Trust Organisation Ontologies Processes, …..

As each level reasons … with the information they acquire from both higher and lower levels about when to request/provide information to other levels and/or other (possibly human) systems at the same level

Regulated environments – what’s needed? To understand the relationship between the levels: is it compositional? To agree on standards for protocols, contracts for interaction with system support (middleware). To understand the role of the users/owners organisations in such distributed environments. To explore legal implications of different technologies. (eg multi-media retrieval) To develop supporting technology

How? Explore multiple scenarios …… (eg financial transaction systems, crisis management, business workflow support, …..) Explore different use cases ….

Also requires technology … Frameworks for scalable, interactive, secure, robust, interoperable distributed autonomous systems/agents supporting service agreement negotiation and service agreement enforcement

An example: Agentscape Framework designed to support large scale distributed mobile agent applications. a distributed agent operating system kernel (AOS) services agent management lease management (ie resource mgt based on WSAS) directory services web service access gateway configuration services

AgentScape Platform for mobile agents Agent Operating System agent server WS gateway location manager ws AgentScape Interface AOS Interface XML-RPC SunRPC host manager agent

Thank you for your attention!