Multi-agent system

From Freepedia

In computer science, a multi-agent system (MAS) is a system composed of several agents, capable of mutual interaction. The interaction can be in the form of message passing or producing changes in their common environment (see stigmergy).

The exact nature of the agents is a matter of some controversy. They are sometimes claimed to be autonomous. For example a household floor cleaning robot can be autonomous in that it is dependent only on a human operator to start it up. On the other hand, in practice, all agents are under active human supervision. Furthermore, the more important the activities of the agent are to humans, the more supervision that they receive. In fact, autonomy is seldom desired. Instead interdependent systems are needed.

MAS can be claimed to include human agents as well. Human organizations and society in general can be considered an example of a multi-agent system.

Multi-agent systems can manifest self-organization and complex behaviors even when the individual strategies of all their agents are simple.

Topics of research in MAS include:

1. beliefs, desires, and intentions (BDI),
2. cooperation and coordination,
3. communication,
4. distributed problem solving,
5. multi-agent learning.
6. scientific communities

To share knowledge agents can use Knowledge Query Manipulation Language - KQML.

Contents 1 Multi-agent system development tools 2 Suggested reading 3 See also 4 External links

Multi-agent system development tools

• Cougaar - DARPA-funded system for developing agents and multiagent systems
• Jack - Commercial agent system development kit
• JADE - Java Agent Development Environment
• Aglets - A lightweight system for mobile agents originally developed by IBM
• BRAHMS - software tools to develop and simulate multi-agent models of human and machine behavior
• SeSAm - SeSAm (Shell for Simulated Agent Systems) provides a generic environment for modelling and experimenting with reactive agent-based simulation.
• Swarm, GPL'd software package for multi-agent simulation of complex systems
• Jason, LGPL Framework for BDI multi-agent simulation using AgentSpeak(L).
• JAS, LGPL JAS is a java library for creating agent based simulations.

Suggested reading

• Michael Wooldridge, An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2002, paperback, 366 pages, ISBN 0-471-49691-X.
• Carl Hewitt and Jeff Inman. DAI Betwixt and Between: From "Intelligent Agents" to Open Systems Science IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Nov./Dec. 1991.
• The Journal of Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Publisher: Springer Science+Business Media B.V., Formerly Kluwer Academic Publishers B.V. [1]

See also

• Software agent
• Intelligent agent
• Artificial intelligence
• Scientific Community Metaphor
• Complex systems
• Distributed artificial intelligence
• Evolutionary computation
• Human-based genetic algorithm
• Self-organization
• Emergence
• Multi-agent planning
• FIPA
• KQML
• GNUBrain (Implemetation of a multi agent framework (GPL))

External links

• The Multi-Agent Systems Lab at U. Mass.
• Teamcore Research Group at USC.
• AgentWise Research Group at KULeuven, Belgium.
• Agent technology Roadmap.
• MultiAgent systems.
• Java-based Multi-Agent Systems
• The Maia Institute
• UMBC Agent News. (It seems that this site has not been updated since 2003)
• SwarmWiki , a collaborative resource for agent-based modelling.
• MASLAB - Multiagent Systems Lab. at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul