Table Of ContentPRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
OF AGENT-BASED
TECHNOLOGY
Edited by Haiping Xu
Practical Applications of Agent-Based Technology
Edited by Haiping Xu
Published by InTech
Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia
Copyright © 2012 InTech
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Notice
Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors
and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the
accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no
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materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book.
Publishing Process Manager Ivona Lovric
Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic
Cover Designer InTech Design Team
First published March, 2012
Printed in Croatia
A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com
Additional hard copies can be obtained from [email protected]
Practical Applications of Agent-Based Technology, Edited by Haiping Xu
p. cm.
ISBN 978-953-51-0276-2
Contents
Preface VII
Chapter 1 Agent-Based System Applied
to Smart Distribution Grid Operation 1
D. Issicaba, M. A. Rosa, W. Franchin and J. A. Peças Lopes
Chapter 2 Conflict Resolution in Resource
Federation with Intelligent Agent Negotiation 21
Wai-Khuen Cheng and Huah-Yong Chan
Chapter 3 Homogeneous and Heterogeneous
Agents in Electronic Auctions 45
Jacob Sow, Patricia Anthony and Chong Mun Ho
Chapter 4 Developing a Multi-Issue E-Negotiation
System for E-Commerce with JADE 71
Bala M. Balachandran
Chapter 5 Adaptive Virtual Environments:
The Role of Intelligent Agents 87
Marcus S. de Aquino and Fernando da F. de Souza
Chapter 6 Software Agent Finds Its
Way in the Changing Environment 111
Algirdas Sokas
Preface
Over the past decade, there has been a strong revival of interest in agent-based
technology, with a recognition that it impacts many areas such as artificial intelligence,
distributed computing, and software engineering. Agent-based technology can be
used to solve a variety of business and technology problems. Examples of such
applications include electronic commerce, grid computing, social networks, and
adaptive virtual environment. In an agent-based system, software agents with
sufficient intelligence and autonomy are adopted to perform tasks such as sensing,
planning, scheduling, reasoning and decision-making. An agent can either work
independently or coordinate with other agents to accomplish tasks and missions. In
the former case, an agent typically generates a set of goals based on its motivation, and
also a list of plans for achieving its goals. In the later case, a collection of agents are
structured as a multi-agent system (MAS), where a coordination model based on
message passing among agents is defined to provide a uniform interface for their
interactions. In this book, we provide a collection of practical applications of agent-
based technology. Chapter 1 demonstrates how agent-based technology can be applied
to smart distribution grid operation. It presents an agent-based architecture which can
be developed to support the smooth modernization of the power distribution grids.
Chapter 2 discusses how to resolve conflicts in resource federation with agent
negotiation. A scenario of resource federation in grid computing is illustrated to show
the adoption of creative negotiation for conflict resolution. Chapter 3 and 4 provide
two application examples of agent-based technology in electronic commerce, where
homogeneous and heterogeneous agents are defined and adopted for electronic
auctions (Chapter 3), and a multi-issue e-negotiation system is developed for
electronic commerce (Chapter 4). Chapter 5 presents an innovative application of
intelligent agents in adaptive virtual environments. By using intelligent agents, a
three-dimensional (3D) virtual environment can be tuned into an adaptive system,
which improves the quality of human-computer interface. Chapter 6 provides another
example of using intelligent agent to find the shortest path between two points in a
changing drawing environment.
Although we present quite a few practical application examples of using agent-based
technology in this book, the collection of such application areas is far from completion.
The purpose of this book is to provide examples of recent advances in agent-based
VIII Preface
systems and demonstrate how agent-based technology can be used to solve practical
problems. It is our hope that this book will not only help the researchers and
practitioners to understand the practical usage of agent-based technology, but also
provides them hints of using agent-based technology in innovative ways.
This book has been a collaborative effort, which wouldn’t be possible for us to
complete it without the substantial contribution and generous assistance we received
from many people. We are most grateful, of course, to the authors of the chapters for
the quality of their research. We are also especially grateful for the generous support
from the InTech Open Access Publisher. At InTech, we thank all those who assisted in
this book, especially Ivona Lovric for her much hard work on communicating with the
authors and helping put all chapters together.
Haiping Xu, PhD
Associate Professor
Director of Concurrent Software Engineering Laboratory
Computer and Information Science Department
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Massachusetts
USA
