Weiss (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 2006. Thompson (Eds.), Proceedings from the Industry Track of the Fourth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 2005.
Approach
The routing of messages in the overall overlap can therefore be related to the semantic importance of the resources that the messages describe to each peer. In the next section, we describe the flexible Mercury service selection that was developed as part of the Nexus middleware.
Autonomic Computing Case Study - Mercury Adaptive Service Selection
Overview
However, the focus of the autonomous capability is on the upper levels of the system model. This includes the defined structure of the model and the precise algorithms involved in its construction and adaptation.
Related Work
This ensures that agents have a reliable understanding of the distribution of QoS that can be achieved throughout the network of services, improving their decision-making ability whether to explore or not. Further details of the Mercury framework and similar approaches in the literature are discussed in depth in [6].
Experimental Analysis
Average total effect of different selector-agent collaboration strategies on the resulting system QoS derived by averaging each of the 25-cycle sequences. 6 is an illustration of how the probability of exploration changes on average over time in the experiments.
Conclusion
Moreover, this distributed problem solving is largely implicit: the establishment of preference relations between voters and providers incorporates any bias associated with initial conditions and/or the influence of the early history of the system. These activities are part of the wider cluster of projects within DIF DTC [2] called Hyperion.
The race to achieve Network Enabled Capability (or NCW) is a major challenge that can only be realized through the use of autonomous agents and self* system approaches such as Mercury adaptive service selection. Luck, “Travos: Trust and reputation in the context of inaccurate information sources,” Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.
Information-Based Control of Decentralised Sensor Networks
- Introduction
- Background
- Related Work
- Information-Based Control
- Decentralised Sensor Networks
- Examples and Applications
- Platform Control
- Sensor Control
- Communication Control
- Complex System Control
- Discussion and Conclusions
This chapter provides a general formulation of the IBC problem (Section 2) before relating it specifically to DSN systems and identifying some solutions (Section 3). Information pull performs better (that is, has less Shannon information) due to the different objectives of the sensor agents.
Managing Intelligence Resources Using
Semantic Matchmaking and Argumentation
Semantic Matchmaking of Sensors and Missions
- Ontologies for matchmaking
- Matchmaking abstract architecture
- Towards a multidimensional solution
Subsumes (S3, Q) apply when the class of information described by the query is subsumed by the specification of the component, i.e. when the specification of the component is more general than the query. Disjoint (S4, Q): applies when there is no degree of information constraint between the specification of the component and the query.
Arguing About Evidence in Partially Observable Domains
- The Framework
- An example scenario
- Discussion
The edge enters the argument in the case where the predicate is a premise, and exits the argument otherwise. In the interest of clarity, the description of the dialogue that follows is semi-formal.
Conclusions
The separation between arguments and agent knowledge created by argument schemas raises the exciting possibility of modification and dynamic creation of argument schemas during a dialogue. Walton, "Toward a formal account of reasoning about evidence: Argumentation schemes and generalizations," Artificial Intelligence and Law pp. Verheij, “Dialectical argumentation with argumentation schemes: An approach to legal logic,” Artificial intelligence and Law11, 2003, pp. .
Department of Computer Science, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, AB24 3UE, UK e-mail: [email protected].
Agent Applications in Defense Logistics
The Vision of Future Military Logistics
The ALP program has directly addressed the shortcomings of existing logistics support systems and developed automated, multi-echelon, real-time collaboration technologies for the joint logistics communities. The goal of the DARPA follow-up program, UltraLog, is to build on the progress and successes of the Cougaar agent architecture developed under ALP, while extending that architecture in terms of security, robustness, and scalability. The scope of UltraLog's activities is therefore the scope of Focused Logistics' activities.
All of these efforts demonstrate the power and efficiency of agent technology to address the many diverse challenges of the Defense Logistics problem domain.
The DARPA Advanced Logistics Project (ALP)
- ALP Grand Challenges
- Building Operations-Logistics Plans
- Demonstrating Command and Control in the Logistics Domain
Joint Vision 2020 reached one critical conclusion about logistics - the military MUST gain control of the logistics pipeline. This effort will develop technologies and methods to maintain end-to-end control of the transportation/logistics pipeline through the automated development of responsive transportation plans and continuous monitoring techniques. All the collaborative processes support the creation of this very large distributed logistics plan.
Over the five years of the program, the Advanced Logistics Project demonstrated the technology to achieve the vision of an end-to-end logistics system.
The DARPA UltraLog Project
- UltraLog Approach
- Technical Focus
- UltraLog Extensions to Cougaar
- Key Experimental Findings
At the end of the UltraLog program, the ability to reliably create a high-quality logistics plan, even with significant infrastructure losses, was proven. 9 shows the increase in the number of functional and management agents over the course of the program. Because evaluation was a key aspect of the UltraLog program, the program employed several independent red teams.
10 shows the survivability findings for the UltraLog test bed over the course of the program.
The Adaptive Logistics Project
- Situational Understanding as the Basis of Optimized Planning
- ALCT Demonstrated Capabilities
- ALCT Situation Reasoning Agents
Prior to the evaluation, the reading team was given full access to the source code, configuration, topology and other aspects of system operation. These requirements were largely met by the Cougaar architecture, but lacked support for the shared situation representation and reasoning. The ALCT project was developed on a commercial version of the Cougaar architecture developed by Cougaar Software, Inc.
The higher echelons composed the elements of the lower level situational figures to create the composites.
The Cognitive Agent Architecture (Cougaar)
- The Cognitive Model
- Communication, Tasking and Collaboration
- Planning and Execution
- Summary of Key Benefits of the Cougaar Approach
The Cougaar infrastructure has a logical representation for each of these cognitive elements and uses a dynamic workflow engine to build the models, correlate the representations of the cognitive components, and accomplish the task. The behavior of an agent will be realized by the emergency behavior of the collection of PlugIns in its configuration. Evaluator plugins are responsible for continuously monitoring the state of the blackboard for self-consistency and prompting a re-evaluation of the agent's solutions as appropriate.
Changes affecting any discrete unit of functionality may occur without affecting any other part of the system or network.
Conclusions
Further, for planning systems that include a simulation and projection capability, Cougaar blurs the line between simulation and execution using the same business processes in a real or virtual context. This largely avoids the problems of behavior distortion and behavior abstraction, which cause many simulations to inaccurately reflect the behaviors of the real systems they are modeling. The distributed agent approach provides a way to introduce rapid, low-cost, low-risk changes, additions, and enhancements to a set of applications when changes are available or needed.
As of this printing, ActiveEdge (www.cougaarsoftware.com) was the first commercial distributed intelligent agent development platform based on the DARPA-sponsored Cougaar technology.
Acknowledgement
AGENTFLY
Towards Multi-Agent Technology in Free Flight Air Traffic Control
- AGENTFLY System Architecture
- Flight Planning in AGENTFLY
- Agent-Based Collision Avoidance Methods
- Rule-Based Collision Avoidance (RBCA)
- Iterative Peer-to-peer Collision Avoidance (IPPCA)
- Multi-Party Collision Avoidance (MPCA)
- Non-Cooperative Collision Avoidance Architecture
- Multi-layer Collision Avoidance Architecture
- Deployment Scenarios and Selected Experimental Results
- Conclusion
If the flight plans change for some of the aircraft, such aircraft is removed from the group. The next step is to predict the collision point, an intersection of the flight plan and the uncooperative object. Therefore there is a multiple collision of all the planes at the same time located in the center of the circle.
Scalability experiment: the comparison of the difference in the final flight plan length for the RBCA and IPPCA.
Acknowledgement
Scalability - its emphasis on the high efficiency of the computational process allowing the scalability of multi-agent simulations. MIGRATION - full support of migration of agents and computing processes in the distributed environment, and. They use multi-agent simulation to analyze and measure the performance and efficiency of their manufacturing processes.
Sridharan, redaktør, Proceedings of the Eleventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, side 912-917, San Mateo, CA, 1989.
Controlling Teams of Uninhabited Air Vehicles
- Concept
- Scenario
- Overview
- Variable Autonomy
- System Overview
- Multi-Agent System
- User Agent
- Group Agents
- Specialist Planning Agents
- UAV Agents
- Example Run
- System Integration Issues
- Reactive and Deliberative Planning
- Communication
- Logging and Debugging
- Test Harness
- Trials Results
- System Performance
- Trust
- Summary
- Related Work
- Conclusions
This section describes typical system operation, highlighting the actions taken by the agents and their interactions with the operator. BDI images are sent to the operator who confirms the destruction of the target. Richards, “Human-Machine Interface for Airborne UAV Control,” 2nd AIAA Conference and Workshop on Unmanned Systems, Technologies, and Operations in Space, Land, and Sea, September 2003.
Strens, “Learning search strategies with multiple agents”, Interdisciplinary Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Behavior Simulation (AISB.
Simulating Fighter Pilots
Thinking Quickly and Clearly
The information resulting from these studies guides acquisition and can be used to evaluate successive designs, thereby mitigating some of the risks associated with the physical development of modern defense systems. In training simulators, the quality of the results is often judged by the reliability of the images presented to the human participant. As long as the subjects appear to behave correctly, the details of the internal modeling are not questioned.
For this reason, preference is given to approaches that reveal the detailed functioning of the agent model.
Agents in Deployed Simulations
- F/A-18 Hornet
- Airborne Early Warning and Control
- Strike Tactics
- Maritime Surveillance
Within this simulation agent were used to model the AEW&C aircrew and other simulated entities that met the scenarios of interest. This has yielded a version of the simulation with the agents removed and instead an interface that allows real aircrews to experiment with the tactical use of the aircraft. However, an agent-oriented approach was taken to capture and specify the requirements and to design the architecture for the agents.
A tactics development cycle involving the use of constructive simulation with intelligent agents and crew-in-the-loop exercises is used to iteratively develop tactics and CONOPS over a period of time.
Agent Research and Development
- Agent Languages
- Teams and Command and Control
- Intention Recognition
- Software Engineering
- Computer Generated Forces
- Autonomous Aircraft
- Intelligent Environments for Intelligent Agents
- Civilian Modelling
A detailed description of the dMARS system related to air combat modeling can be found in [12]. Another thread of research is exploring the addition of naturalistic decision-making (NDM) principles to agents [26]. The investigation relied on theories of situational cognition and ecological psychology to inspire the design of virtual environments and agent-environment interaction [36].
Durfee, "UM-PRS: An Implementation of the Procedural Reasoning System for Multirobot Applications," i Proc.
MAS Combat Simulation
Van Dyke Parunak
- Combat Modeling
- Mathematical Models
- Behavioral Models
- Unmet Challenges
- Polyagent Combat Simulation
- The Architecture
- Polyagents for Route Planning
- Polyagents for Battle Planning
- Discussion
- Meeting the Challenges
- Further Extensions
The avatar maintains a model of the entity (such as a UAV or a warfighter) and manages the dynamics of the ghosts. We experimented with several different forms of the combination equation that generates the segment sizes. The potential field method plans a complete path based on a snapshot of the terrain being traversed.
The personality of each ghost of each entity is reported to the rest of the system as the potential personality of that entity.
Using Multi-Agent Teams to Improve the Training of Incident Commanders
- Motivation
- System Architecture
- Omni-Viewer
- Proxy: Team Coordination
- Proxy: Adjustable Autonomy
- Lessons Learned from Initial Deployment Feedback
- Adjustable Autonomy in Practice
- Questioning the Incident Commander
- Perspective
- Fire Behavior
- Gradual Training
- User Intent
- Scale
- Lessons Learned from Training Exercises
- Training Exercises
- Analysis
- Related Work and Summary
- Acknowledgments
The primary duties of the incident commander during a fire bears overall responsibility for the safety of firefighters. To do this, the incident commander must be in constant contact with the firefighters and have a complete overview of the entire situation. This will usually be due to the fact that the incident commander has a broad global view of the disaster, while the agents each have a more detailed local view.
The 3D perspective of the Omni-Viewer was initially thought of as an example of a futuristic vision of the actual view given to the incident commander.
