Architectural Design of Multi-Agent Systems: Technologies and Techniques (Premier Reference Series)

442 Pages·2007·8.04 MB·English

by  Hong Lin

Architectural Design of
Multi-Agent Systems:
Technologies and Techniques
Hong Lin
University of Houston – Downtown, USA
InformatIon scIence reference
Hershey • New York
Acquisitions Editor: Kristin Klinger
Development Editor: Kristin Roth
Senior Managing Editor: Jennifer Neidig
Managing Editor: Sara Reed
Assistant Managing Editor: Sharon Berger
Assistant Managing Editor: Diane Huskinson
Copy Editor: Toni Fitzgerald
Typesetter: Jennifer Neidig
Cover Design: Lisa Tosheff
Printed at: Yurchak Printing Inc.
Published in the United States of America by
Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global)
701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200
Hershey PA 17033
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.info-sci-ref.com
and in the United Kingdom by
Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global)
3 Henrietta Street
Covent Garden
London WC2E 8LU
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Web site: http://www.eurospanonline.com
Copyright © 2007 by IGI Global. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or distributed in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without written permission from the publisher.
Product or company names used in this set are for identification purposes only. Inclusion of the names of the products or companies does not indicate a
claim of ownership by IGI Global of the trademark or registered trademark.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Architectural design of multi-agent systems : technologies and techniques / Hong Lin, editor.
p. cm.
Summary: "This book is a compilation of advanced research results in architecture and modeling issues of multi-agent systems. It serves as a
reference for research on system models, architectural design languages, methods and reasoning, module interface design, and design issues"--Provided
by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59904-108-7 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-59904-110-3 (ebook)
1. Intelligent agents (Computer software) 2. Electronic data processing--Distributed processing. 3. Computer architecture. I. Lin, Hong, 1965-
QA76.76.I58A72 2007
006.3--dc22
2006039663
British Cataloguing in Publication Data
A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
All work contributed to this book set is new, previously-unpublished material. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors, but not neces-
sarily of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Detailed Table of Contents .................................................................................................................vi
Foreword .............................................................................................................................................xii
Preface .................................................................................................................................................xv
Acknowledgments ...........................................................................................................................xviii
Section I
Fundamentals of Multi-Agent System Modeling
Chapter I
Towards Agent-Oriented Conceptualization and Implementation / Pratik K. Biswas ............................1
Chapter II
Concurrent Programming with Multi-Agents and the Chemical Abstract Machine / Wanli Ma,
Dat Tran, Dharmendra Sharma, Hong Lin, and Mary Anderson .........................................................26
Chapter III
Coalition Formation Among Agents in Complex Problems Based on a Combinatorial Auction
Perspective / Hiromitsu Hattori, Tadachika Ozono, and Toramatsu Shintani ......................................48
Chapter IV
A Gentle Introduction to Fuzzy Logic and Its Applications to Intelligent Agents Design /
Andre de Korvin, Plamen Simeonov, and Hong Lin .............................................................................61
Section II
Agent-Oriented System Design
Chapter V
Component Agent Systems: Building a Mobile Agent Architecture That You Can Reuse /
Paulo Marques and Luís Silva ..............................................................................................................95
Chapter VI
Designing a Foundation for Mobile Agents in Peer-to-Peer Networks / Daniel Lübke and
Jorge Marx Gómez ..............................................................................................................................115
Chapter VII
Dynamic Scheduling of Multi-Agent in Agent-Based Distributed Network Management /
Luo Junzhou, Liu Bo, and Li Wei ........................................................................................................125
Chapter VIII
Scalable Fault Tolerant Agent Grooming Environment (SAGE) / Forooq Ahmad,
Hiroki Suguri, Arshad Ali, Amna Basharat, and Amina Tarqiq ..........................................................143
Chapter IX
Toward Agent-Based Grid Computing / Lizhe Wang ..........................................................................173
Chapter X
MAITS: A Multi-Agent-Based IT Security Approach / Dharmendra Sharma, Wanli Ma, Dat Tran,
Shuangzhe Liu, and Mary Anderson ...................................................................................................189
Section III
Agent-Based Intelligent Systems
Chapter XI
A Methodology for Modeling Expert Knowledge for Development of Agent-Based Systems /
Michael Bowman ................................................................................................................................210
Chapter XII
Three Perspectives on Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning / Yang Gao, Hao Wang, and
Ruili Wang ...........................................................................................................................................234
Chapter XIII
Modeling Knowledge and Reasoning in Conversational Recommendation Agents /
Maria Salamó, Barry Smyth, Kevin McCarthy, James Reilly, and Lorraine McGinty .......................247
Chapter XIV
Task Allocation in Case-Based Recommender Systems: A Swarm Intelligence Approach /
Fabiana Lorenzi, Daniela Scherer dos Santos, Denise de Oliveira, and Ana L. C. Bazzan ..............268
Section IV
Applications of Multi-Agent Systems
Chapter XV
A Multi-Agent System for Optimal Supply Chain Management / Hyung Rim Choi,
Hyun Soo Kim, Yong Sung Park, and Byung Joo Park .......................................................................281
Chapter XVI
Macroscopic Modeling of Information Flow in an Agent-Based Electronic Health Record
System / Ben Tse and Raman Paranjape ............................................................................................305
Chapter XVII
Robust Intelligent Control of Mobile Robots / Gordon Fraser, Gerald Steinbauer, Jörg Weber,
and Franz Wotawa ..............................................................................................................................335
Chapter XVIII
RiskMan: A Multi-Agent System for Risk Management / Manolya Kavakli, Nicolas Szilas,
John Porte, and Iwan Kartiko .............................................................................................................356
Compilation of References ...............................................................................................................377
About the Contributors ...................................................................................................................407
Index ...................................................................................................................................................417
Detailed Table of Contents
Foreword .............................................................................................................................................xii
Preface .................................................................................................................................................xv
Acknowledgment .............................................................................................................................xviii
Section I
Fundamentals of Multi-Agent System Modeling
Chapter I
Towards Agent-Oriented Conceptualization and Implementation / Pratik K. Biswas ............................1
This chapter provides an in-depth analysis of agent concept and compares it to conventional program-
ming models such as object-oriented design. It defines agent models and proposes a high-level method-
ology for agent-oriented analysis and design. It also looks at the heart of agent-oriented programming
and outlines its advantages over traditional approaches to distributed computing and interoperability.
It reviews the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA)-compliant infrastructure for building
agent-based systems and suggests a multi-agent systems framework that merges this infrastructure with
the emerging Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technologies.
Chapter II
Concurrent Programming with Multi-Agents and the Chemical Abstract Machine / Wanli Ma,
Dat Tran, Dharmendra Sharma, Hong Lin, and Mary Anderson .........................................................26
A framework, MACH (multi-agent extended chemical abstract machine), for specifying autonomous
agents using the chemical reaction metaphor is developed. Temporal logic is used to reason the prop-
erties of the specified system. This chapter focuses on the design, implementation and verification of
MACH. The aim on MACH is to develop a reactive programming language based on an interactive
computational model.
Chapter III
Coalition Formation Among Agents in Complex Problems Based on a Combinatorial Auction
Perspective / Hiromitsu Hattori, Tadachika Ozono, and Toramatsu Shintani ......................................48
Combinatorial auction metaphor is used to develop a scheme for coordinating agents in solving complex
problems. A ombinatorial auction for scheduling is formalized as an MIP (mixed integer programming)
problem, which integrates the constraints on items and bids to express complex problems. This integra-
tion solves the trade-off between the computation time to find the solution and the expressiveness to
represent a scheduling problem.
Chapter IV
A Gentle Introduction to Fuzzy Logic and Its Applications to Intelligent Agents Design /
Andre de Korvin, Plamen Simeonov, and Hong Lin .............................................................................61
This chapter presents a gentle introduction to fuzzy logic and discusses its applications to multi-agent
systems. The purpose of this chapter is to present the key properties of fuzzy logic and adaptive nets and
demonstrate how to use these, separately and in combination, to design intelligent systems.
Section II
Agent-Oriented System Design
Chapter V
Component Agent Systems: Building a Mobile Agent Architecture That You Can Reuse /
Paulo Marques and Luís Silva ..............................................................................................................95
This chapter proposes component-based mobile agent systems to overcome the limitations of traditional
platform-based approach for developing mobile agents and demonstrate the effectiveness of their method
by two case studies, viz., the JAMES platform, a traditional mobile agent platform specially tailored for
network management; and M&M, a component-based system for agent-enabling applications. It also
presents a bird’s-eye perspective on the last 15 years of mobile agent systems research is presented along
with an outlook on the future of the technology.
Chapter VI
Designing a Foundation for Mobile Agents in Peer-to-Peer Networks / Daniel Lübke and
Jorge Marx Gómez ..............................................................................................................................115
This chapter presents an effort to develop a common platform and framework for developing mobile
agents that operate on a peer-to-peer network and contain the logic of the network services. By deploy-
ing mobile agents who can travel between network nodes to a large P2P network, one could embrace the
peer-to-peer technology and use it for all kinds of services, like anonymizing network traffic, distributed
storage of documents, replicating contents of heavily accessed Internet sites, trading of information, and
so forth. For many of these things, there are solutions available, but by using a common framework and
moving the logic into the agents, there is the opportunity to access all kinds of information through a
common API, which guarantees extensibility and widespread use.
Chapter VII
Dynamic Scheduling of Multi-Agent in Agent-Based Distributed Network Management /
Luo Junzhou, Liu Bo, and Li Wei ........................................................................................................125
This chapter develops some algorithms to support dynamic multi-agent scheduling decisions in a network
management scenario. The algorithms are developed using functional decomposition strategy, and an
experiment has been done and shown promising results.
Chapter VIII
Scalable Fault Tolerant Agent Grooming Environment (SAGE) / Farooq Ahmad,
Hiroki Suguri, Arshad Ali, Amna Basharat, and Amina Tariq ............................................................143
This chapter introduces a Scalable fault tolerant Agent Grooming Environment (SAGE) for creating
distributed, intelligent and autonomous entities that are encapsulated as agents. SAGE has a decentral-
ized fault tolerant architecture that provides tools for runtime agent management, directory facilitation,
monitoring and editing messages exchange between agents, and a built-in mechanism to program the
agent behavior and their capabilities. SAGE can be used to develop applications in a number of areas,
such as e-health, e-government, and e-science.
Chapter IX
Toward Agent-Based Grid Computing / Lizhe Wang ..........................................................................173
This chapter presents methodologies and technologies of agent-based grid computing from various aspects
and demonstrates that agent-based computing is a promising solution to bring a scalable, robust, thus
tractable grid. This chapter firstly reviews backgrounds for multi-agent system, agent-based computing,
and Grid computing. Research challenges and issues are characterized and identified together with pos-
sible solutions. After the investigation of current research efforts of agent-based grid computing, future
research trends are presented and studied.
Chapter X
MAITS: A Multi-Agent-Based IT Security Approach / Dharmendra Sharma, Wanli Ma, Dat Tran,
Shuangzhe Liu, and Mary Anderson ................................................................................................189
This chapter studies multi-agent based IT security approach (MAITS) as a holistic solution to the increas-
ing needs of securing computer systems. In this approach, each specialist task for security requirements
is modeled as a specialist agent, which has the ability of learning, reasoning, decision making, and an
agent interface that enables inter-agent communications.
Section III
Agent-Based Intelligent Systems
Chapter XI
A Methodology for Modeling Expert Knowledge for Development of Agent-Based Systems /
Michael Bowman ................................................................................................................................210
This chapter describes a methodology for modeling expert problem-solving knowledge that supports
ontology import and development, teaching-based agent development, and agent-based problem solv-
ing. The methodology is applicable to a wide variety of domains and has been successfully used in the
military domain.
Chapter XII
Three Perspectives on Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning / Yang Gao, Hao Wang, and
Ruili Wang ...........................................................................................................................................234
This chapter concludes three perspectives on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL): (i) cooperative
MARL, which performs mutual interaction between cooperative agents, (ii) equilibrium-based MARL,
which focuses on equilibrium solutions among gaming agents, and (iii) best-response MARL which sug-
gests a no-regret policy against other competitive agents. Then, the authors present a general framework
of MARL that combines all the three perspectives in order to assist readers to understand the intricate
relationships between different perspectives. Furthermore, a negotiation-based MARL algorithm based
on meta-equilibrium is presented that can interact with cooperative agents, games with gaming agents,
and provides the best response to other competitive agents.
Chapter XIII
Modeling Knowledge and Reasoning in Conversational Recommendation Agents /
Maria Salamó, Barry Smyth, Kevin McCarthy, James Reilly, and Lorraine McGinty .......................247
This chapter presents recent research of the authors on critiquing-based recommendation and a compari-
son between standard and recent proposals of recommendation based on critiquing. Their work leads to
conversational recommender agents that facilitate user navigation through a product space.
Chapter XIV
Task Allocation in Case-Based Recommender Systems: A Swarm Intelligence Approach /
Fabiana Lorenzi, Daniela Scherer dos Santos, Denise de Oliveira, and Ana L. C. Bazzan ..............268
Case-based recommender systems can learn about user preferences over time and automatically suggest
products that fit these preferences. In this chapter, such a system, called CASIS, is presented. In CASIS,
an approach inspired by swarm intelligence is applied to a case-based recommender system in the tourism
domain and experiment results are shown that using the proposed metaphor the system always return
some recommendation to the user, avoiding the user’s disappointment.