Moving Up the Information Food Chain: Deploying Softbots on the World Wide Web

I view the World Wide Web as an information food chain (figure 1). The maze of pages and hyperlinks that comprise the Web are at the very bottom of the chain. The WebCrawlers and Alta Vistas of the world are information herbivores; they graze on Web pages and regurgitate them as searchable indices. Today, most Web users feed near the bottom of the information food chain, but the time is ripe to move up. Since 1991, we have been building information carnivores, which intelligently hunt and feast on herbivore

An Expressive Language and Efficient Execution System for Software Agents

Software agents can be used to automate many of the tedious, time-consuming information processing tasks that humans currently have to complete manually. However, to do so, agent plans must be capable of representing the myriad of actions and control flows required to perform those tasks. In addition, since these tasks can require integrating multiple sources of remote information ? typically, a slow, I/O-bound process ? it is desirable to make execution as efficient as possible. To address both of these needs, we present a flexible software agent plan language and a highly parallel execution system that enable the efficient execution of expressive agent plans. The plan language allows complex tasks to be more easily expressed by providing a variety of operators for flexibly processing the data as well as supporting subplans (for modularity) and recursion (for indeterminate looping). The executor is based on a streaming dataflow model of execution to maximize the amount of operator and data parallelism possible at runtime. We have implemented both the language and executor in a system called THESEUS. Our results from testing THESEUS show that streaming dataflow execution can yield significant speedups over both traditional serial (von Neumann) as well as non-streaming dataflow-style execution that existing software and robot agent execution systems currently support. In addition, we show how plans written in the language we present can represent certain types of subtasks that cannot be accomplished using the languages supported by network query engines. Finally, we demonstrate that the increased expressivity of our plan language does not hamper performance; specifically, we show how data can be integrated from multiple remote sources just as efficiently using our architecture as is possible with a state-of-the-art streaming-dataflow network query engine

Agent based Internet (WWW) services

The evolution of the World Wide Web heads towards the use of more and more intelligent services. A possible solution to implement this service oriented view of World Wide Web is to use agents. A framework is proposed to provide agent-based Internet services via WWW. A case study introduces the actual use of this framework and its relation to the agent technology. As an implementation effort the Personalized Home Page (PHP) system is presented here. investigates the application of this voting tool for rating purposes

Diseño, implementación y aplicación de una estrategia de búsqueda preferente por amplitud, para uso multidireccional sobre sistemas distribuidos o de procesamiento en paralelo, usando un simulador de escenarios, construido para el trazado de rutas en robótica móvil

Para la construcción de un robot móvil autónomo se debe disponer de una gran cantidad de elementos funcionales, entre los cuales se destaca un sistema de procesamiento que ayude a resolver los problemas de desplazamiento, para ir de un lugar a otro dentro de un entorno o ambiente atestado. Inicialmente se plantea la construcción de un simulador de escenarios en dos dimensiones, el cual permitirá que un robot de software (llamado Softbot) y los diferentes elementos que conforman un ambiente, se utilicen como sistema de pruebas en la búsqueda de una ruta apropiada para ir de un punto a otro. El simulador de escenarios y sus características, se construye mediante el uso de bases de datos capaces de almacenar grandes cantidades de información y con tiempos de acceso pequeños, esta información contiene la descripción de los elementos y de los cambios que se puedan producir en el modelo del mundo virtual. De esta manera es posible hacer que el Softbot realice un "recorrido" por el escenario. El modelo del escenario, construido dentro del aplicativo, se presenta como un "plano" en dos dimensiones (2D), el cual contiene la distribución física de elementos; mientras que el agente de software cuenta con una representación virtual del ambiente, basada en artificios computacionales que le permite recorrer el entorno y simular las lecturas de los sensores virtuales de proximidad en él incorporados. Como herramienta para la determinación de la ruta se utilizan técnicas de Inteligencia Artificial (IA), aplicadas en el diseño de sistemas instrumentados soportados por software avanzado. Este tipo de aplicaciones tienen en común, la necesidad de ir de un punto o estado inicial a otro, lo que se logra mediante la sucesión de cambios de estado a través de acciones o transformaciones, el uso de estrategias de búsqueda y heurísticas generales. Finalmente se implementa la capacidad de interactuar no solo uno, sino varios agentes de software, trabajando en forma cooperativa, de tal forma que con la ayuda de ellos y aplicando la estrategia de búsqueda multidireccional sea posible establecer una ruta o camino para ir de un punto a otro en el escenario.For the construction of an autonomous mobile robot must have a large number of functional elements, among which stands out a processing system to help solve the problems of displacement, to go from one place to another within an environment or atmosphere overcrowded. Initially there is the construction of a simulator scenario in two dimensions, which allow a software robot (called Softbot) and different elements that are part of an environment, used as a test system in finding a suitable route to get from one point to another. The simulator scenarios and their characteristics, is constructed by using databases capable of storing large amounts of information and access times smaller, this information includes the description of the elements and changes that may occur in the model the virtual world. Thus it is possible to make the Softbot perform a "walk" across the stage. The model of the stage, built into the application, is presented as a "flat" two-dimensional (2D), which contains the physical distribution of elements, while the software agent has a virtual representation of the environment, based on artifacts computer that allows you to traverse the environment and simulate the virtual sensor readings proximity incorporated therein. As a tool for determining the route will use techniques of Artificial Intelligence (AI), applied in instrumented system design supported by advanced software. Such applications have in common, the need to move a point or initial state to another, which is achieved by the sequence of state changes through actions or transformations, the use of search strategies and general heuristics. Finally, implement the ability to interact not only one but several software agents, working cooperatively, so that with the help of them and applying the multi-search strategy is possible to establish a route or way to get from one point another on stage

Использование мультиагентных систем для защиты информационных ресурсов компьютерных сетей

In article problems and the basic functions which face to control facilities and the control in computer networks at protection of information resources are determined. The structure of multiagent system which carries out protection of the data in computer networks in details is described.Определены задачи и основные функции, стоящие перед средствами управления и контроля компьютерными сетями при защите информационных ресурсов. Детально описана структура мультиагентной системы, выполняющей защиту данных в компьютерных сетях

MEDQUAL: Improving Medical Web Search over Time with Dynamic Credibility Heuristics

Performing a search on the World Wide Web (WWW) and traversing the resulting links is an adventure in which one encounters both credible and incredible web pages. Search engines, such as Google, rely on macroscopic Web topology patterns and even highly ranked 'authoritative' web sites may be a mixture of informed and uninformed opinions. Without credibility heuristics to guide the user in a maze of facts, assertions, and inferences, the Web remains an ineffective knowledge delivery platform. This report presents the design and implementation of a modular extension to the popular Google search engine, MEDQUAL, which provisions both URL and content-based heuristic credibility rules to reorder raw Google rankings in the medical domain. MEDQUAL, a software system written in Java, starts with a bootstrap configuration file which loads in basic heuristics in XML format. It then provides a subscription mechanism so users can join birds of feather specialty groups, for example Pediatrics, in order to load specialized heuristics as well. The platform features a coordination mechanism whereby information seekers can effectively become secondary authors, contributing by consensus vote additional credibility heuristics. MEDQUAL uses standard XML namespace conventions to divide opinion groups so that competing groups can be supported simultaneously. The net effect is a merger of basic and supplied heuristics so that the system continues to adapt and improve itself over time to changing web content, changing opinions, and new opinion groups. The key goal of leveraging the intelligence of a large-scale and diffuse WWW user community is met and we conclude by discussing our plans to develop MEDQUAL further and evaluate it

Revisión: tecnologia de agentes de software

Los agentes de software en la era de las redes globales son una herramienta vital para superar el fenómeno llamado “sobrecarga de información”. El grado de madurez alcanzado en esta tecnología permite que hoy se puedan ver aplicaciones concretas funcionado en organizaciones, como así también en el escritorio del usuario hogareño. El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar una revisión bibliográfica sobre la tecnología de agentes de software, con orientación a los modelos que permiten gerenciar la sobrecarga de información