mWater prototype #3 review

mWater is a software demonstrator developed in the Agreement Technologies Project. It is a Multi-Agent System (MAS) application that implements a market for water rights, including the model and simulation of the water-right market itself, the basin, users, protocols, norms and grievance situations. mWater is motivated due to the fact that water scarcity is becoming a major concern in most countries, not only because it threatens the economic viability of current agricultural practices, but because it is likely to alter an already precarious balance among its different types of use.Garrido Tejero, A.; Botti Navarro, VJ.; Giret Boggino, AS.; Alfonso Espinosa, B.; Noriega, P. (2013). mWater prototype #3 review. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/3181

A MAS-based infrastructure for negotiation and its application to a water-right market

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10796-013-9443-8This paper presents a MAS-based infrastructure for the specification of a negotiation framework that handles multiple negotiation protocols in a coherent and flexible way. Although it may be used to implement one single type of agreement mechanism, it has been designed in such a way that multiple mechanisms may be available at any given time, to be activated and tailored on demand (on-line) by participating agents. The framework is also generic enough so that new protocols may be easily added. This infrastructure has been successfully used in a case study to implement a simulation tool as a component of a larger framework based on an electronic market of water rights.This paper was partially funded by the Consolider AT project CSD2007-0022 INGENIO 2010 of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; the MICINN projects TIN2011-27652-C03-01 and TIN2009-13839-C03-01; and the Valencian Prometeo project 2008/051.Alfonso Espinosa, B.; Botti Navarro, VJ.; Garrido Tejero, A.; Giret Boggino, AS. (2014). A MAS-based infrastructure for negotiation and its application to a water-right market. Information Systems Frontiers. 16(2):183-199. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-013-9443-8S183199162Alberola, J.M., Such, J.M., Espinosa, A., Botti, V., García-Fornes, A. (2008). Magentix: a multiagent platform integrated in linux. In EUMAS (pp. 1–10).Alfonso, B., Vivancos, E., Botti, V., García-Fornes, A. (2011). Integrating jason in a multi-agent platform with support for interaction protocols. 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(1987). A foundation for the study of group decision support systems. Knowledge based systems, 33(5), 589–609.Eckersley, P. (2003). Virtual markets for virtual goods. Available at http://www.ipria.com/publications/wp/2003/IPRIAWP02.2003.pdf (Accessed April 2012).Fjermestad, J., & Hiltz, S. (2001). Group support systems: a descriptive evaluation of case and field studies. Journal of Management Information Systems, 17(3), 115–161.Fogués, R.L., Alberola, J.M., Such, J.M., Espinosa, A., García-Fornes, A. (2010). Towards dynamic agent interaction support in open multiagent systems. In Proceedings of the 13th international conference of the catalan association for artificial intelligence (Vol. 220, pp. 89–98). IOS Press.Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents. (2001). FIPA interaction protocol library specification XC00025E. FIPA Consortium.Garrido, A., Arangu, M., Onaindia, E. (2009). A constraint programming formulation for planning: from plan scheduling to plan generatio. Journal of Scheduling, 12(3), 227–256.Giret, A., Garrido, A., Gimeno, J.A., Botti, V., Noriega, P. (2011). A MAS decision support tool for water-right markets. In Proceedings of the tenth international conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems (Demonstrations@AAMAS) (pp. 1305–1306).Gomez-Limon, J., & Martinez, Y. (2006). Multi-criteria modelling of irrigation water market at basin level: a Spanish case study. European Journal of Operational Research, 173, 313–336.Janjua, N.K., Hussain, F.K., Hussain, O.K. (2013). Semantic information and knowledge integration through argumentative reasoning to support intelligent decision making. Information Systems Frontiers, 15(2), 167–192.jen Hsu, J.Y., Lin, K.-J., Chang, T.-H., ju Ho, C., Huang, H.-S., rong Jih, W. (2006). Parameter learning of personalized trust models in broker-based distributed trust management. Information Systems Frontiers, 8(4), 321–333.Kersten, G., & Lai, H. (2007). 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Estudio y mejora de la usabilidad de un mundo virtual híbrido: interacción humano-agente

Treballs Finals de Grau d'Enginyeria Informàtica, Facultat de Matemàtiques, Universitat de Barcelona, Any: 2013, Director: Inmaculada Rodriguez Santiago i Pablo Almajano FrancoyNowadays, due to the increasing use of the Internet and the improvements in the field of 3D graphics virtual worlds have reached a high popularity. A virtual world is a 3D simulation that features a real or imaginary world where the users, represented by avatars, interact with each other and the environment. These open 3D environments are attractive for their immersiveness and the enjoyment they offer, as well as for the social aspect that they bring by joining multiple users together in a common environment and engaging them to participate together. Taking into account not only their popularity but the many practical uses a virtual world has, serious virtual worlds arise. Their aim is to regulate the behaviors in the virtual world in order to allow certain tasks to be done, which can be for example procedures related to e-Government or e-Learning. In this project we have conducted a usability study of v-mWater, a serious and hybrid (where both humans and bots interact) virtual world. With the results that have been obtained from the study, we have implemented the most beneficial improvement of v-mWater, that has consisted in using AIML to allow the bots of v-mWater to process natural language, turning them into conversational bots

Agents with Affective Traits for Decision-Making in Complex Environments

Recent events have probably lead us to wonder why people make decisions that seem to be irrational, and that go against any easily understandable logic. The fact that these decisions are emotionally driven often explains what, at first glance, does not have a plausible explanation. Evidence has been found that proves that emotions and other affective characteristics guide decisions beyond a purely rational deliberation. Understanding the way emotions take place, the way emotions change, and/or the way emotions influence behavior, has traditionally been a concern of several fields including psychology and neurology. Moreover, other sciences such as behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, and in general, all sciences that aim to understand, explain, or simulate human behavior, acknowledge the important role of affective characteristics in this task. Specifically, artificial intelligence uses psychological findings in order to create agents that simulate human behavior. Nevertheless, individual research efforts in modeling affective characteristics are often overlapped, short of integration, and they lack of a common conceptual system. This deprives individual researches of the exchange and cooperation's inherent benefits, and makes the task of computationally simulating affective characteristics more difficult. Although much individual effort has been put in classifying, formalizing and modeling emotions and emotion theories on some fields, recognized researchers of emotions' and affective processes' modeling report that a common formal language, an informal conceptual system, and a general purpose affective agent architecture will greatly improve the interdisciplinary exchange and the intradisciplinary coordination. The research literature proposes a wide amount of affective models that deal with some of: relationship between emotions and cognition, relationship between emotions and behavior, emotions and their evolutionary account, emotions for appraising situations, emotion regulation, etc. These models are useful tools for addressing particular emotion-related issues. Furthermore, computational approaches that are based on particular psychological theories have also been proposed. They often address domain specific issues starting from a specific psychological theory. In such solutions, the absence of a common conceptual system and/or platform, makes difficult the feedback between psychological theories and computational approaches. This thesis systematizes and formalizes affect-related theories, what can benefit the interdisciplinary exchange, the intradisciplinary coordination, and hence, allows the improvement of involved disciplines. Specifically this thesis makes the following contributions: (1) a theoretical framework that includes the main processes and concepts that a model of an affective agent with practical reasoning should have; (2) a general-purpose affective agent architecture that shares the concepts of the proposed theoretical framework; (3) an implementation-independent formal language for designing affective agents that have the proposed architecture; and (4) a specific agent language for implementing affective agents which is an extension of a BDI language. Some studies with human participants have helped to validate the contributions of this thesis. They include classical games of game theory, and an study with 300 participants, which have provided the necessary information to evaluate the contributions. The validation has been performed in three directions: determine whether the proposed computational approach represents better the human behavior than traditional computational approaches; determine whether this approach allows to improve psychological theories used by default; and determine whether the proposed affective agents' behavior is closer to human behavior than the behavior of a purely rational agent.Probablemente algunos eventos recientes nos han conducido a preguntarnos por qué las personas toman decisiones aparentemente irracionales y en contra de alguna lógica fácilmente comprensible. El hecho de que estas decisiones estén bajo la influencia de las emociones a menudo explica lo que, a primera vista, parece no tener una explicación aceptable. En este sentido, se han encontrado evidencias que prueban que las emociones y otras características afectivas condicionan las decisiones más allá de una deliberación meramente racional. Entender cómo las emociones tienen lugar, cómo cambian y cómo influyen en el comportamiento, ha sido tradicionalmente de interés para muchos campos de investigación, incluyendo la psicología y la neurología. Además, otras ciencias como la economía conductual o la inteligencia artificial reconocen el importante papel de las características afectivas en esta tarea. Específicamente, la inteligencia artificial utiliza los resultados obtenidos en psicología para crear agentes que simulan el comportamiento humano. Sin embargo, a menudo los esfuerzos individuales de investigación en el modelado del afecto se solapan, carecen de la suficiente integración y de un sistema conceptual común. Esto limita a las investigaciones individuales para disponer de los beneficios que ofrecen el intercambio y la cooperación, y hace más compleja la tarea de simular los procesos afectivos. Las emociones y teorías relacionadas han sido clasificadas, formalizadas y modeladas. No obstante, reconocidos investigadores argumentan que un lenguaje formal común, un sistema conceptual informal y una arquitectura de agentes de propósito general, mejorarán significativamente el intercambio interdisciplinar y la coordinación intradisciplinar. En la literatura se propone una amplia cantidad de modelos afectivos que modelan: la relación entre las emociones y la cognición, la relación entre las emociones y el comportamiento, las emociones para evaluar las situaciones, la regulación de emociones, etc. Estos modelos son herramientas útiles para abordar aspectos particulares relacionados con las emociones. Además, se han realizado propuestas computacionales que abordan aspectos específicos sobre la base de teorías psicológicas específicas. En éstas soluciones, la ausencia de una plataforma y/o sistema conceptual dificulta la retroalimentación entre las teorías psicológicas y las propuestas computacionales. Esta tesis sistematiza y formaliza teorías relacionadas con el afecto, lo cual beneficia el intercambio interdisciplinar y la coordinación intradisciplinar, y por tanto, permite el desarrollo de las disciplinas correspondientes. Específicamente esta tesis realiza las siguientes contribuciones: (1) una plataforma teórica que incluye los conceptos y procesos principales que debería poseer un modelo de agentes afectivos con razonamiento práctico; (2) una arquitectura de agentes de propósito general que comparte los conceptos de la plataforma teórica propuesta; (3) un lenguaje formal independiente de la implementación, para diseñar agentes afectivos que poseen la arquitectura propuesta; y (4) un lenguaje de agentes específico para implementar agentes afectivos el cual es un extensión de un lenguaje BDI. Algunos estudios con participantes humanos han ayudado a validar las contribuciones de esta tesis. Estos incluyen juegos clásicos de teoría de juegos y un estudio con 300 participantes, los cuales han proporcionado la información necesaria para evaluar las contribuciones. La validación se ha realizado en tres direcciones: determinar si la propuesta computacional que se ha realizado representa mejor el comportamiento humano que propuestas computacionales tradicionales; determinar si esta propuesta permite mejorar las teorías psicológicas empleadas por defecto; y determinar si el comportamiento de los agentes afectivos propuestos se acerca más al comportamiento humano que el comporProbablement alguns esdeveniments recents ens han conduït a preguntar-nos per què les persones prenen decisions que aparentment són irracionals i que van en contra d'algun tipus de lògica fàcilment comprensible. El fet que aquestes decisions estiguin sota la influència de les emocions sovint explica el que, a primera vista, sembla no tenir una explicació acceptable. En aquest sentit, s'han trobat evidències que proven que les emocions i altres característiques afectives condicionen les decisions més enllà d'una deliberació merament racional. Entendre com les emocions tenen lloc, com canvien i com influeixen en el comportament, ha estat tradicionalment d'interès per a molts camps d'investigació, incloent la psicologia i la neurologia. A més, altres ciències com l'economia conductual, la intel·ligència artificial i, en general, totes les ciències que intenten entendre, explicar o simular el comportament humà, reconeixen l'important paper de les característiques afectives en aquesta tasca. Específicament, la intel·ligència artificial utilitza els resultats obtinguts en psicologia per crear agents que simulen el comportament humà. No obstant això, sovint els esforços individuals d'investigació en el modelatge de l'afecte es solapen, no tenen la suficient integració ni compten amb un sistema conceptual comú. Això limita a les investigacions individuals, que no poden disposar dels beneficis que ofereixen l'intercanvi i la cooperació, i fa més complexa la tasca de simular els processos afectius. Les emocions i teories relacionades han estat classificades, formalitzades i modelades. No obstant això reconeguts investigadors argumenten que un llenguatge formal comú, un sistema conceptual informal i una arquitectura d'agents de propòsit general, milloraran significativament l'intercanvi interdisciplinar i la coordinació intradisciplinar. En la literatura es proposa una àmplia quantitat de models afectius que modelen: la relació entre les emocions i la cognició, la relació entre les emocions i el comportament, les emocions per avaluar les situacions, la regulació d'emocions, etc. Aquests models són eines útils per abordar aspectes particulars relacionats amb les emocions. A més, s'han realitzat propostes computacionals que aborden aspectes específics sobre la base de teories psicològiques específiques. En aquestes solucions, l'absència d'una plataforma i/o sistema conceptual dificulta la retroalimentació entre les teories psicològiques i les propostes computacionals. Aquesta tesi sistematitza i formalitza teories relacionades amb l'afecte, la qual cosa beneficia l'intercanvi interdisciplinar i la coordinació intradisciplinar, i per tant, permet el desenvolupament de les disciplines corresponents. Específicament aquesta tesi realitza les següents contribucions: (1) una plataforma teòrica que inclou els conceptes i processos principals que hauria de posseir un model d'agents afectius amb raonament pràctic; (2) una arquitectura d'agents de propòsit general que comparteix els conceptes de la plataforma teòrica proposta; (3) un llenguatge formal independent de la implementació, per dissenyar agents afectius que posseeixen l'arquitectura proposada; i (4) un llenguatge d'agents específic per implementar agents afectius el qual és un extensió d'un llenguatge BDI. Alguns estudis amb participants humans han ajudat a validar les contribucions d'aquesta tesi. Aquests inclouen jocs clàssics de teoria de jocs i un estudi amb 300 participants, els quals han proporcionat la informació necessària per avaluar les contribucions. La validació s'ha realitzat en tres direccions: determinar si la proposta computacional que s'ha realitzat representa millor el comportament humà que propostes computacionals tradicionals; determinar si aquesta proposta permet millorar les teories psicològiques emprades per defecte; i determinar si el comportament dels agents afectius proposats s'acosta més alAlfonso Espinosa, B. (2017). Agents with Affective Traits for Decision-Making in Complex Environments [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/90497TESI