TIAS: A Transportable Intelligent Agent System

In recent years, there has been an explosive growth in the amount of information available to our society. In particular, the amount of information available on-line through vast networks like the global Internet has been growing at a staggering rate. This growth rate has by far exceeded the rate of growth in network speeds, as has the number of individuals and organizations seeking access to this information. There is thus a motivation to find abstract methods of manipulating this on-line data in ways that both serve the needs of end users efficiently and use network resources intelligently. In lieu of a traditional client-server model of information processing, which is both inflexible and potentially very inefficient, a Transportable Intelligent Agent system has the potential to achieve a more efficient and flexible network system. An intelligent agent is a program that models the information space for a user, and allows the user to specify how the information is to be processed. A transportable agent can suspend its execution, transport itself to a new location on a network, and resume execution at the new location. This is a particularly attractive model for both wireless and dialup networks where a user might not be able to maintain a permanent network connection, as well as for situations where the amount of information to be processed is large relative to the network bandwidth. Preliminary work in the field has shown that such agent systems are possible and deserve further study. This thesis describes a prototype transportable intelligent agent system that extends work already done in the field. Agents are written in a modified version of the Tcl programming language and transported using TCP/IP connections. Several simple examples demonstrate the properties of the system

A baseline for non-linear bilateral negotiations: the full results of the agents competing in ANAC 2014

In the past few years, there is a growing interest in automated negotiation in which software agents facilitate negotiation on behalf of their users and try to reach joint agreements. The potential value of developing such mechanisms becomes enormous when negotiation domain is too complex for humans to find agreements (e.g. e-commerce) and when software components need to reach agreements to work together (e.g. web-service composition). Here, one of the major challenges is to design agents that are able to deal with incomplete information about their opponents in negotiation as well as to effectively negotiate on their users’ behalves. To facilitate the research in this field, an automated negotiating agent competition has been organized yearly. This paper introduces the research challenges in Automated Negotiating Agent Competition (ANAC) 2014 and explains the competition set up and results. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the best performing five agents has been examined

Aplicación móvil para la gestión interna de la asociación Microsoft UPC

En este proyecto de Trabajo Final de Grado, se explicará el proceso de desarrollo de una aplicación desarrollada en Android con un servicio de backend en Azure. La junta de la asociación Microsoft UPC necesita un software para poder gestionar los socios, poder realizar la contabilidad y tener un calendario de eventos, con la especial característica de que debería poder utilizarse en un dispositivo móvil. El programa se desarrollará en 4 meses utilizando la metodología ágil scrum, dividido en 9 iteraciones. En el transcurso de este documento se explicarán los métodos de desarrollo desde toma de requisitos, planificación, presupuesto o tecnologías utilizadas para poder llevar a cabo el desarrollo de este software, además se desarrollará una reflexión para ver que la aplicación es sostenible.En aquest projecte de Treball Final de Grau, s'explicarà el procés de desenvolupament d'una aplicació desenvolupada en Android amb un servei de backend en Azure. La junta de l'associació Microsoft UPC necessita un software per poder gestionar els socis, poder realitzar la comptabilitat i tenir un calendari d'esdeveniments, amb l'especial característica que hauria de poder utilitzar-se en un dispositiu mòbil. El programa es desenvoluparà en 4 mesos utilitzant la metodologia àgil scrum, dividit en 9 iteracions. En el transcurs d'aquest document s'explicaran els mètodes de desenvolupament, desde la presa de requisits, planificació, pressupost o tecnologies utilitzades per poder dur a terme el desenvolupament d'aquest programari, a més es desenvoluparà una reflexió per veure que l'aplicació és sostenible.In this project Final Grade Work, will explain the process of developing an application developed in Android with a backend service in Azure. The Microsoft UPC association board needs software to be able to manage partners, to be able to perform accounting and have a calendar of events, with the special feature that it should be able to be used in a mobile device. The program will be developed in 4 months using the agile scrum methodology, divided into 9 iterations. During this document will explain the methods of development from requirements, planning, budgeting or technologies used to carry out the development of this software, in addition will be developed a reflection to see that the application is sustainable

Foraging Algorithms for Robotic Swarms

Foraging is the process of looking for food or other resources to survive in an unknown environment. Various animals exhibit foraging behavior to fend for themselves in the wild. We study group foraging by a swarm of robots, which involves collectively searching for an object of interest and bringing it back to a central location. We assume n robots start at the center of a g x g grid, called the nest. They are looking for some units of food placed at an unknown location in the grid. When the food is found by one of the robots, it must communicate its location to the other robots, which then collectively transport the food back to the nest. We divide the task into three phases: the exploration phase, in which the robots search different parts of the grid for the food; the communication phase, in which robots communicate the location of the food to each other; and the transportation phase, in which the robots transport the food back to the nest. We give five novel algorithms for the exploration phase, and analyze their competitive ratios. For the transportation phase, we give two different approaches, and give a theoretical analysis of a simple case. We implemented all our algorithms and compared their performance to an existing algorithm in the literature