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Agents, Infrastructure, Applications and Norms Michael Luck University of Southampton, UK
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Overview Monday Agents for next generation computing AgentLink Roadmap Tuesday The case for agents Agent Infrastructure Conceptual: SMART Technical: Paradigma/actSMART Agents and Bioinformatics GeneWeaver myGrid Wednesday Norms Pitfalls
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Agent Technology: Enabling Next Generation Computing A Roadmap for Agent Based Computing Michael Luck, University of Southampton, UK mml@ecs.soton.ac.uk
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Overview What are agents? AgentLink and the Roadmap Current state-of-the-art Short, medium and long-term predictions Technical challenges Community challenges Application Opportunities
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What is an agent? A computer system capable of flexible, autonomous (problem-solving) action, situated in dynamic, open, unpredictable and typically multi-agent domains.
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What is an agent? A computer system capable of flexible, autonomous (problem-solving) action, situated in dynamic, open, unpredictable and typically multi-agent domains. control over internal state and over own behaviour
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What is an agent? A computer system capable of flexible, autonomous (problem-solving) action, situated in dynamic, open, unpredictable and typically multi-agent domains. experiences environment through sensors and acts through effectors
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What is an agent? A computer system capable of flexible, autonomous (problem-solving) action, situated in dynamic, open, unpredictable and typically multi-agent domains. reactive: respond in timely fashion to environmental change proactive: act in anticipation of future goals
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Multiple Agents In most cases, single agent is insufficient no such thing as a single agent system (!?) multiple agents are the norm, to represent: natural decentralisation multiple loci of control multiple perspectives competing interests
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Agent Interactions Interaction between agents is inevitable to achieve individual objectives, to manage inter- dependencies Conceptualised as taking place at knowledge- level which goals, at what time, by whom, what for Flexible run-time initiation and response cf. design-time, hard-wired nature of extant approaches
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AgentLink and the Roadmap
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What is AgentLink? Open network for agent-based computing. AgentLink II started in August 2000. Intended to give European industry a head start in a crucial new area of IT. Builds on existing activities from AgentLink (1998-2000)
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AgentLink Goals Competitive advantage through promotion of agent systems technology Improvement in standard, profile, industrial relevance of research in agents Promote excellence of teaching and training High quality forum for R&D
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What does AgentLink do? Industry action gaining advantage for Euro industry Research coordination excellence & relevance of Euro research Education & training fostering agent skills Special Interest Groups focused interactions Information infrastructrure facilitating AgentLink work
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The Roadmap: Aims A key deliverable of AgentLink II Derives from work of AgentLink SIGs Draws on Industry and Research workpackages Aimed at policy-makers, funding agencies, academics, industrialists Aims to focus future R&D efforts
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Special Interest Groups Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce Agent-Based Social Simulation Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems Intelligent Information Agents Intelligent and Mobile Agents for Telecoms and the Internet Agents that Learn, Adapt and Discover Logic and Agents
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The Roadmap: Process Core roadmapping team: Michael Luck Peter McBurney Chris Preist Inputs from SIGs: area roadmaps Specific reviews Wide consultation exercise Collation and integration
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State of the art
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Views of Agents To support next generation computing through facilitating agent technologies As a metaphor for the design of complex, distributed computational systems As a source of technologies As simulation models of complex real- world systems, such as in biology and economics
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Agents as Design Agent oriented software engineering Agent architectures Mobile agents Agent infrastructure Electronic institutions
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Agent technologies Multi-agent planning Agent communication languages Coordination mechanisms Matchmaking architectures Information agents and basic ontologies Auction mechanism design Negotiation strategies Learning
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Links to other disciplines Philosophy Logic Economics Social sciences Biology
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Application and Deployment Assistant agents Multi-agent decision systems Multi-agent simulation systems IBM, HP Labs, Siemens, Motorola, BT Lost Wax, Agent Oriented Software, Whitestein, Living Systems, iSOCO
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The Roadmap Timeline
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Dimensions Sharing of knowledge and goals Design by same or diverse teams Languages and interaction protocols Scale of agents, users, complexity Design methodologies
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Current situation One design team Agents sharing common goals Closed agent systems applied in specific environment Ad-hoc designs Predefined communications protocols and languages Scalability only in simulation
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Short term to 2005 Fewer common goals Use of semi-structured agent communication languages (such as FIPA ACL) Top-down design methodologies such as GAIA Scalability extended to predetermined and domain-specific environments
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Medium term 2006-2008 Design by different teams Use of agreed protocols and languages Standard, agent-specific design methodologies Open agent systems in specific domains (such as in bioinformatics and e-commerce) More general scalability, arbitrary numbers and diversity of agents in each such domain Bridging agents translating between domains
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Long Term 2009- Design by diverse teams Truly-open and fully-scalable multi-agent systems Across domains Agents capable of learning appropriate communications protocols upon entry to a system Protocols emerging and evolving through actual agent interactions.
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The Roadmap Timeline
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Technological Challenges
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Increase quality of agent systems to industrial standard Provide effective agreed standards to allow open systems development Provide infrastructure for open agent communities Develop reasoning capabilities for agents in open environments
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Technological Challenges Develop agent ability to adapt to changes in environment Develop agent ability to understand user requirements Ensure user confidence and trust in agents
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Industrial Strength Software Fundamental obstacle to take-up is lack of mature software methodology Coordination, interaction, organisation, society - joint goals, plans, norms, protocols, etc Libraries of … agent and organisation models communication languages and patterns ontology patterns CASE tools AUML is one example
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Industrial Strength Software
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Agreed Standards FIPA and OMG Agent platform architectures Semantic communication and content languages for messages and protocols Interoperability Ontology modelling Public libraries in other areas will be required
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Agreed Standards
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Semantic Infrastructure for Open Communities Need to understand relation of agents, databases and information systems Real world implications of information agents Benchmarks for performance Use new web standards for structural and semantic description Services that make use of such semantic representations
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Semantic Infrastructure for Open Communities Ontologies DAML+OIL UML OWL Timely covergence of technologies Generic tool and service support Shared ontologies Semantic Web community exploring many questions
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Semantic Infrastructure for Open Communities
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Reasoning in Open Environments Cannot handle issues inherent in open multi-agent systems Heterogeneity Trust and accountability Failure handling and recovery Societal change Domain-specific models of reasoning
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Reasoning in Open Environments Coalition formation Dynamic establishment of virtual organisations Demanded by emerging computational infrastructure such as Grid Web Services eBusiness workflow systems
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Reasoning in Open Environments Negotiation and argumentation Some existing work but currently in infancy Need to address Rigorous testing in realistic environments Overarching theory or methodology Efficient argumentation engines Techniques for user preference specification Techniques for user creation and dissolution of virtual organisations
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Reasoning in Open Environments
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Learning Technologies Ability to understand user requirements Integration of machine learning XML profiles Ability to adapt to changes in environment Multi-agent learning is far behind single agent learning Personal information management raises issues of privacy Relationship to Semantic Web
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Learning Technologies
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Trust and Reputation User confidence Trust of users in agents Issues of autonomy Formal methods and verification Trust of agents in agents Norms Reputation Contracts
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Trust and Reputation
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Challenges for the Agent Community
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Community Organisation Leverage underpinning work on similar problems in Computer Science: Object technology, software engineering, distributed systems Link with related areas in Computer Science dealing with different problems: Artificial life, uncertainty in AI, mathematical modelling
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Community Organisation Extend and deepen links with other disciplines: Economics, logic, philosophy, sociology, etc Encourage industry take-up: Prototypes, early adopters, case- studies, best practice, early training
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Existing software technology Build bridges with distributed systems, software engineering and object technology. Develop agent tools and technologies on existing standards. Engage in related (lower level) standardisation activities (UDDI, WSDL, WSFL, XLANG, OMG CORBA). Clarify relationships between agent theories and abstract theories of distributed computation.
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Different problems from related areas Build bridges to artificial life, robotics, Uncertainty in AI, logic programming and traditional mathematical modelling. Develop agent-based systems using hybrid approaches. Develop metrics to assess relative strengths and weakness of different approaches.
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Prior results from other disciplines Maintain and deepen links with economics, game theory, logic, philosophy and biology. Build new connections with sociology, anthropology, organisation design, political science, marketing theory and decision theory.
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Encourage agent deployment Build prototypes spanning organisational boundaries (potentially conflicting). Encourage early adopters of agent technology, especially ones with some risk. Develop catalogue of early adopter case studies, both successful and unsuccessful. Provide analyses of reasons for success and failure cases.
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Encourage agent deployment Identify best practice for agent oriented development and deployment. Support standardisation efforts. Support early industry training efforts. Provide migration paths to allow smooth evolution of agent-based solutions, from today’s solutions,
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Application Opportunities
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Ambient Intelligence Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Grid Computing Electronic Business Simulation Semantic Web
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Ambient Intelligence Pillar of European Commission’s IST vision Also developed by Philips in long-term vision Three parts Ubiquitous computing Ubiquitous communication Intelligent user interfaces Thousands on mobile and embedded devices interacting to support user-centred goals and activity
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Ambient Intelligence Suggests a component-oriented world populated by agents Autonomy Distribution Adaptation Responsiveness Demands Virtual organisations Infrastructure Scalability
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Bioinformatics Information explosion in genomics and proteomics Distributed resources include databases and analysis tools Demands automated information gathering and inference tools Open, dynamic and heterogeneous Examples: Geneweaver, myGrid
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Grid Computing Support for large scale scientific endeavour More general applications with large scale information handling, knowledge management, service provision Suggests virtual organisations and agents Future model for service-oriented environments
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Electronic Business Agents currently used in first stage – merchant discovery and brokering Next step is real trading – negotiating deals and making purchases Potential impact on the supply chain Rise in agent-mediated auctions expected Agents recommend But agents do not yet authorise agreements
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Electronic Business Short term: travel agents, etc TAC is a driver Long term: full supply chain integration At start of 2001, there were 1000 public eMarkets 30,000 private exchange
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Simulation Education and training Scenario exploration Entertainment
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The Two Towers Thousands of agents simulated using the MASSIVE system Realistic behaviour for battle scenes Initial versions included characters running away! Previous use of computational characters did not use agent behaviour (eg Titanic).
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Current State Pivotal role in contributing to broader visions of Ambient Intelligence, Grid Computing, Semantic Web, etc. European strength is broad and deep Still requires integration, needs to avoid fragmentation, needs effective coordination Needs to support industry take-up and innovation
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For more information... Dr Michael Luck Department of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton Southampton SO17 1BJ United Kingdom Feedback sought: please send feedback! Roadmap: www.agentlink.org/roadmap
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The Book
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The CD
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The Agent Portal www.agentlink.org
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